Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

Camps, Quarters, and Casual
Places

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Title: Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Author: Archibald Forbes
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CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.

NOTE
My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in this
volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James
Knowles of the Nineteenth Century, Mr. Percy Bunting of the
Contemporary Review, and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.
LONDON, June 1896.

CONTENTS
1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS
4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
9. RAILWAY LIZZ
10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN
WAR
13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR

14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY
17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN

MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of
1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince
Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at
Saarbrücken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself,
in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war
would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be like
this early phase of it, of which I speak! It was playing at warfare, with
just enough of the grim reality cropping up occasionally, to give the
zest which the reckless Frenchwoman declared was added to a pleasure
by its being also a sin. The officers of the Hohenzollerns--our only
infantry regiment in garrison-- drank their beer placidly under the
lime-tree in the market-place, as their men smoked drowsily, lying
among the straw behind the stacked arms ready for use at a moment's
notice. The infantry patrol skirted the frontier line every morning in the
gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with little result a few shots with
the French outposts on the Spicheren or down in the valley bounded by
the Schönecken wood. The Uhlans, their piebald lance-pennants
fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round the crests of the little
knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising mightily the
straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them from time to
time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they were, now and
then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the ground--an occurrence
invariably followed by a little spurt of lively hostility.
I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on
the St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern officers
frequented the _table d'hôte_ and where quaint little Max, the drollest
imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Fraülein Sophie the landlord's
niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the pleasantness and
comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did I spend at the

table of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped red head of silent
and genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over the great ice-pail,
with its chevaux de frise of long-necked Niersteiner bottles--the worthy
Hauptmann supported by blithe Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever
ready with the _Wacht am Rhein_; quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of
recollections of "six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to
crack a joke or clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Zülow--he who
one day brought