Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 2. Томас Де Квинси

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СКАЧАТЬ of the severe weather, bodies of armed men were weaving to and fro, fast as a weaver's shuttle. The forest rang with alarums, and sometimes, under gleams of sunshine, the leafless woods seemed on fire with the restless splendor of spear and sword, morion and breast-plate, or the glittering equipments of the imperial cavalry. Couriers, or Bohemian gypsies, which latter were a class of people at this time employed by all sides as spies or messengers, continually stole in with secret despatches to the Landgrave, or (under the color of bringing public news, and the reports of military movements) to execute some private mission for rich employers in town; sometimes making even this clandestine business but a cover to other purposes, too nearly connected with treason, or reputed treason, to admit of any but oral communication.

      What were the ulterior views in this large accumulation of military force, no man pretended to know. A great battle, for various reasons, was not expected. But changes were so sudden, and the counsels of each day so often depended on the accidents of the morning, that an entire campaign might easily be brought on, or the whole burthen of war for years to come might be transferred to this quarter of the land, without causing any very great surprise. Meantime, enough was done already to give a full foretaste of war and its miseries to this sequestered nook, so long unvisited by that hideous scourge.

      In the forest, where the inhabitants were none, excepting those who lived upon the borders, and small establishments of the Landgrave's servants at different points, for executing the duties of the forest or the chase, this change expressed itself chiefly by the tumultuous uproar of the wild deer, upon whom a murderous war was kept up by parties detached daily from remote and opposite quarters, to collect provisions for the half-starving garrisons, so recently, and with so little previous preparation, multiplied on the forest skirts. For, though the country had been yet unexhausted by war, too large a proportion of the tracts adjacent to the garrisons were in a wild, sylvan condition to afford any continued supplies to so large and sudden an increase of the population; more especially as, under the rumors of this change, every walled town in a compass of a hundred miles, many of them capable of resisting a sudden coup-de-main, and resolutely closing their gates upon either party, had already possessed themselves by purchase of all the surplus supplies which the country yielded. In such a state of things, the wild deer became an object of valuable consideration to all parties, and a murderous war was made upon them from every side of the forest. From the city walls they were seen in sweeping droves, flying before the Swedish cavalry for a course of ten, fifteen, or even thirty miles, until headed and compelled to turn by another party breaking suddenly from a covert, where they had been waiting their approach. Sometimes it would happen that this second party proved to be a body of imperialists, who were carried by the ardor of the chase into the very centre of their enemies before either was aware of any hostile approach. Then, according to circumstances, came sudden flight or tumultuary skirmish; the woods rang with the hasty summons of the trumpet; the deer reeled off aslant from the furious shock, and, benefiting for the moment by those fierce hostilities, originally the cause of their persecution, fled far away from the scene of strife; and not unfrequently came thundering beneath the city walls, and reporting to the spectators above, by their agitation and affrighted eyes, those tumultuous disturbances in some remoter part of the forest, which had already reached them in an imperfect way, by the interrupted and recurring echoes of the points of war—charges or retreats—sounded upon the trumpet.

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