Chapter xxi.
_Julian's adventures in the post of a soldier._
"I was born at Caen, in Normandy. My mother's name was Matilda; as formy father, I am not so certain, for the good woman on her deathbedassured me she herself could bring her guess to no greater certaintythan to five of duke William's captains. When I was no more thanthirteen (being indeed a surprising stout boy of my age) I enlisted intothe army of duke William, afterwards known by the name of William theConqueror, landed with him at Pemesey or Pemsey, in Sussex, and waspresent at the famous battle of Hastings.
"At the first onset it was impossible to describe my consternation,which was heightened by the fall of two soldiers who stood by me; butthis soon abated, and by degrees, as my blood grew warm, I thought nomore of my own safety, but fell on the enemy with great fury, and did agood deal of execution; till, unhappily, I received a wound in my thigh,which rendered me unable to stand any longer, so that I now lay amongthe dead, and was constantly exposed to the danger of being trampled todeath, as well by my fellow-soldiers as by the enemy. However, I had thefortune to escape it, and continued the remaining part of the day andthe night following on the ground.
"The next morning, the duke sending out parties to bring off thewounded, I was found almost expiring with loss of blood: notwithstandingwhich, as immediate care was taken to dress my wounds, youth and arobust constitution stood my friends, and I recovered after a long andtedious indisposition, and was again able to use my limbs and do myduty.
"As soon as Dover was taken I was conveyed thither with all the rest ofthe sick and wounded. Here I recovered of my wound; but fell afterwardsinto a violent flux, which, when it departed, left me so weak that itwas long before I could regain my strength. And what most afflicted mewas, that during my whole illness, when I languished under want as wellas sickness, I had daily the mortification to see and hear the riots andexcess of my fellow-soldiers, who had happily escaped safe from thebattle.
"I was no sooner well than I was ordered into garrison at Dover Castle.The officers here fared very indifferently, but the private men muchworse. We had great scarcity of provisions, and, what was yet moreintolerable, were so closely confined for want of room (four of us beingobliged to lie on the same bundle of straw), that many died, and mostsickened.
"Here I had remained about four months, when one night we were alarmedwith the arrival of the earl of Boulogne, who had come over privily fromFrance, and endeavoured to surprize the castle. The design provedineffectual; for the garrison making a brisk sally, most of his men weretumbled down the precipice, and he returned with a very few back toFrance. In this action, however, I had the misfortune to come off with abroken arm; it was so shattered, that, besides a great deal of pain andmisery which I endured in my cure, I was disabled for upwards of threemonths.
"Soon after my recovery I had contracted an amour with a young womanwhose parents lived near the garrison, and were in much bettercircumstances than I had reason to expect should give their consent tothe match. However, as she was extremely fond of me (as I was indeeddistractedly enamoured of her), they were prevailed on to comply withher desires, and the day was fixed for our marriage.
"On the evening preceding, while I was exulting with the eagerexpectation of the happiness I was the next day to enjoy, I receivedorders to march early in the morning towards Windsor, where a large armywas to be formed, at the head of which the king intended to march intothe west. Any person who hath ever been in love may easily imagine whatI felt in my mind on receiving those orders; and what still heightenedmy torments was, that the commanding officer would not permit any one togo out of the garrison that evening; so that I had not even anopportunity of taking leave of my beloved.
"The morning came which was to have put me in the possession of mywishes; but, alas! the scene was now changed, and all the hopes which Ihad raised were now so many ghosts to haunt, and furies to torment me.
"It was now the midst of winter, and very severe weather for the season;when we were obliged to make very long and fatiguing marches, in whichwe suffered all the inconveniences of cold and hunger. The night inwhich I expected to riot in the arms of my beloved mistress I wasobliged to take up with a lodging on the ground, exposed to theinclemencies of a rigid frost; nor could I obtain the least comfort ofsleep, which shunned me as its enemy. In short, the horrors of thatnight are not to be described, or perhaps imagined. They made such animpression on my soul, that I was forced to be dipped three times in theriver Lethe to prevent my remembering it in the characters which Iafterwards performed in the flesh."
Here I interrupted Julian for the first time, and told him no suchdipping had happened to me in my voyage from one world to the other: buthe satisfied me by saying "that this only happened to those spiritswhich returned into the flesh, in order to prevent that reminiscencewhich Plato mentions, and which would otherwise cause great confusion inthe other world."
He then proceeded as follows: "We continued a very laborious march toExeter, which we were ordered to besiege. The town soon surrendered, andhis majesty built a castle there, which he garrisoned with his Normans,and unhappily I had the misfortune to be one of the number.
"Here we were confined closer than I had been at Dover; for, as thecitizens were extremely disaffected, we were never suffered to gowithout the walls of the castle; nor indeed could we, unless in largebodies, without the utmost danger. We were likewise kept to continualduty, nor could any solicitations prevail with the commanding officer togive me a month's absence to visit my love, from whom I had noopportunity of hearing in all my long absence.
"However, in the spring, the people being more quiet, and anotherofficer of a gentler temper succeeding to the principal command, Iobtained leave to go to Dover; but alas! what comfort did my longjourney bring me? I found the parents of my darling in the utmost miseryat her loss; for she had died, about a week before my arrival, of aconsumption, which they imputed to her pining at my sudden departure.
"I now fell into the most violent and almost raving fit of despair. Icursed myself, the king, and the whole world, which no longer seemed tohave any delight for me. I threw myself on the grave of my deceasedlove, and lay there without any kind of sustenance for two whole days.At last hunger, together with the persuasions of some people who tookpity on me, prevailed with me to quit that situation, and refresh myselfwith food. They then persuaded me to return to my post, and abandon aplace where almost every object I saw recalled ideas to my mind which,as they said, I should endeavour with my utmost force to expel from it.This advice at length succeeded; the rather, as the father and mother ofmy beloved refused to see me, looking on me as the innocent but certaincause of the death of their only child.
"The loss of one we tenderly love, as it is one of the most bitter andbiting evils which attend human life, so it wants the lenitive whichpalliates and softens every other calamity; I mean that great reliever,hope. No man can be so totally undone, but that he may still cherishexpectation: but this deprives us of all such comfort, nor can anythingbut time alone lessen it. This, however, in most minds, is sure to worka slow but effectual remedy; so did it in mine: for within a twelvemonthI was entirely reconciled to my fortune, and soon after absolutelyforgot the object of a passion from which I had promised myself suchextreme happiness, and in the disappointment of which I had experiencedsuch inconceivable misery.
"At the expiration of the month I returned to my garrison at Exeter;where I was no sooner arrived than I was ordered to march into thenorth, to oppose a force there levied by the earls of Chester andNorthumberland. We came to York, where his majesty pardoned the heads ofthe rebels, and very severely punished some who were less guilty. It wasparticularly my lot to be ordered to seize a poor man who had never beenout of his house, and convey him to prison. I detested this barbarity,yet was obliged to execute it; nay, though no reward would have bribedme in a private capacity to have acted such a part, yet so much sanctityis there in the commands of a monarch or general to a soldier, that Ipe
rformed it without reluctance, nor had the tears of his wife andfamily any prevalence with me.
"But this, which was a very small piece of mischief in comparison withmany of my barbarities afterwards, was however the only one which evergave me any uneasiness; for when the king led us afterwards intoNorthumberland to revenge those people's having joined with Osborne theDane in his invasion, and orders were given us to commit what ravages wecould, I was forward in fulfilling them, and, among some lessercruelties (I remember it yet with sorrow), I ravished a woman, murdereda little infant playing in her lap, and then burnt her house. In short,for I have no pleasure in this part of my relation, I had my share inall the cruelties exercised on those poor wretches; which were sogrievous, that for sixty miles together, between York and Durham, not asingle house, church, or any other public or private edifice, was leftstanding.
"We had pretty well devoured the country, when we were ordered to marchto the Isle of Ely, to oppose Hereward, a bold and stout soldier, whohad under him a very large body of rebels, who had the impudence to riseagainst their king and conqueror (I talk now in the same style I didthen) in defence of their liberties, as they called them. These weresoon subdued; but as I happened (more to my glory than my comfort) to beposted in that part through which Hereward cut his way, I received adreadful cut on the forehead, a second on the shoulder, and was runthrough the body with a pike.
"I languished a long time with these wounds, which made me incapable ofattending the king into Scotland. However, I was able to go over withhim afterwards into Normandy, in his expedition against Philip, who hadtaken the opportunity of the troubles in England to invade thatprovince. Those few Normans who had survived their wounds, and hadremained in the Isle of Ely, were all of our nation who went, the restof his army being all composed of English. In a skirmish near the townof Mans my leg was broke and so shattered that it was forced to be cutoff.
"I was now disabled from serving longer in the army; and accordingly,being discharged from the service, I retired to the place of mynativity, where, in extreme poverty, and frequent bad health from themany wounds I had received, I dragged on a miserable life to the age ofsixty-three; my only pleasure being to recount the feats of my youth, inwhich narratives I generally exceeded the truth.
"It would be tedious and unpleasant to recount to you the severalmiseries I suffered after my return to Caen; let it suffice, they wereso terrible that they induced Minos to compassionate me, and,notwithstanding the barbarities I had been guilty of in Northumberland,to suffer me to go once more back to earth."