THE RIDERLESS WAR-HORSES.
TN almost the last letter written by Lieutenant-Colonel Pember- .1 ton from the seat of war before his untimely death, there was a passage which strikes us as describing one of the most pathetic of all the incidents of war, though the pathos of it relates, not to the human belligerents, but to their only active allies in the animal world, the horses. A Prussian hussar, who had got off his horse to carry water to two wounded and dying comrades, was killed, with the poor soldiers he was relieving, by a shell, in the very act of pouring the water down the throat of one of them, and just then his regiment moved off, his empty horse following in the ranks,—whereupon Lieutenant-Colonel Pemberton remarked :- "Only those who have seen a battle-field can form a notion of the extraordinary way in which the horses, as long as they have a leg to crawl on, will follow the regiment to which they belong. I saw what evidently bad been serjeants' horses keeping their position in rear of their squadron, wheeling with it, and halting exactly as if their riders were on their backs, and all the time streaming with blood. Poor creatures ! they are indeed to be pitied, for they have neither Vaterland, promotion, nor the coveted medal to think of, whatever may be the issue ; and few indeed are there which have been in action which have not some honourable scars to show." Again, the German Post relates, " that after theslaughter at Vion- ville, on the 18th of August, a strange and touching spectacle was presented. On the evening call being sounded by the 1st Regiment of Dragoons of the Guard, 602 riderless horses answered to the summons, jaded, and in many cases maimed. The noble animals still retained their disciplined habits." The image of these poor riderless, bleeding creatures going through their drill to the last with puuctieious precision, without any regard to the absence of the only hands which could have enforced the duty, and in utter unconsciousness that with the loss of their riders the reason for their evolutions had disappeared, strikes us as one of the most pitiful, though, of course, far from the most grievous, of the incidents of the battle-field. The poor things themselves, of course, suffered no more—probably rather less—from their works of military supererogation, than they would have suffered if, with the same wounds, they had been bearing about their proper riders ; and yet there is something that touches the heart much more in this evidence of complete failure to apprehend their part in the system of things to which they belonged, in connection with their unremitting efforts to discharge to the utmost of their failing powers a task the object of which had ceased to exist. It excites a less degree of the same kind of pity which we feel for alienation of mind, when the sufferer diligently makes preparation every day at the same hour for the com- fort of one who is long dead. Of course, there is in it none of the contrast between undying love and dead intellectual power, which makes scenes of the latter kind so profoundly pathetic. But then, on the other band, there is a contrast between the admirable fortitude and discipline of which an animal like the horse is capable, and the entire absence of any of those intellectual or moral roots to fortitude and discipline which have fed them in human character, going beyond the analogy even of alienation of mind. That the implanted lessons given by man, and the new sense of collective order they have conveyed, although they have never carried their own drift and meaning with them, should triumph so completely over the animal impulses of pain and lassitude, and this, too, when there is no one left to appeal to the creature's spirit and command its obedience, fills us with pity, probably because it gives us so vivid a picture of a creature whose characteristic nature is far more than touched, absolutely con- trolled and exalted, by the influences of a higher life—in which, nevertheless, it can reach to no full or satisfying participation. To the cavalry horse the sense of obligation attaching to the movements it goes through with its comrades may perhaps corre- spond, in some degree, to the sense of obligation attaching, on the High-Church theory, to pure ritual, as distinguished from worship. It does not know at all why these movements were imposed on it, but it has a certain delight of obedience to a higher
law in their punctual observance, which, as it is not limited by any knowledge or conjecture of the aims and objects with which that higher law was imposed, is, of course, just as potent when those aims and objects remain entirely unfulfilled, as when they are achieved in the most perfect manner. Even admitting for a moment to the full the High-Church theory,—to a divine knowledge which penetrates all the reasons why particular fasts, and cere- monies, and genuflexions have been imposed on man, there must be a profound pathos in seeing them observed with the utmost solicitude, and at the cost of grievous and painful exhaustion, by exceptional individuals to whom they do not bring any portion of the good for the sake of which they were imposed upon the multi- tude ; and how does this pathos differ in kind from that with which poor Lieutenant - Colonel Pemberton saw the bleed- ing and riderless, but docile cavalry horses obediently going through all the useless evolutions which they had been taught, not for their own sakes, but for the sakes of their riders?
Will anybody say that the difference consists in this,—that the
anxious ritualist does at least understand fully the duty of obedience as such, and gains the reward of obedience, even though he fail to gain the further grace for the sake of which, in the majority of cases, the law demanding this particular obedience was imposed,—whereas the poor cavalry horse obeys only from the overpowering effect of pertinacious training, and without the faintest feeling that obedience to the rules in which he has been trained is a duty at all ? Of course, no one doubts that the sense of duty, like all other conceptions of the higher order, is far less clearly developed in the lower animals than in man ; but what makes the artificial life, the life of discipline, so much more capable of development and so much more tenacious in one animal than in another? What is it that makes the horse and the dog faithful unto death in the trusts which have been imposed upon them by man, while almost every other animal loses under physical pain and weakness the thin varnish of artificial habits? Surely
it is that these creatures do feel a profound pride in responding faithfully to the authority of a being above themselves, directly
they apprehend its drift,—that a real nature in themselves fulfils itself in this implicit obedience to what they have been taught,— and that, therefore, in some dim sense, the tendency to obey man
and his lessons contains for them the clear rudiments of an ethical obligation. Were not this at least the impression conveyed to us by horses and dogs which persist, even in the worst moments of animal anguish, in the effort to carry through punctually the artificial les- sons they have been taught, why should such incidents as those narrated by Lieutenant-Colonel Pemberton and the German papers move us so profoundly ? Whether we interpret the phenomenon rightly or not, it is clear, we think, that every one does naturally interpret it as implying a certain pride in the lessons these animals have learnt from man, and an attachment to their duties in con- nection with man, which elevates the purely animal nature. And here lies the pathos of the scene ; — the wounded and riderless war-horses punctually but vainly muster to the sound of the trumpet, being proud of a yoke and a companionship of which they only dimly feel the ennobling character ; while, at the same
time, in so many distracted regions of human life, men who know the full meaning of order and of anarchy, and who feel in their hearts that they are due to the same sort of trumpet-call, fling off the yoke of which they know the obligation, and become riderless, as it were, by their own will. Is it that complete loyalty, to human authority at least, is always half-blind,—and loses in force with every gain of insight into the complex nature of the fascination exerted over us? The higher animals .are loyal
because, while they feel constantly that they are really in the hands of man, cared for, guided, in every way led by him, they cannot criticize the superior nature thus put over them, but only feel that it is superior. But once let in a reason common to the leader and the led, and you lose all the simplicity of the loyal
feeling, and find minute spheres of repulsion arising within the general spheres of attraction, which hamper and embarrass the attitude of moral submission. The horse and the dog, once they have gained the feeling of loyalty to their master, dispute as little the caprices, as the wisest exercise, of his will, regarding not his motives, but only his authority. Men, on the contrary, are often really at a loss to find the authority they can fully respect, and feel with the rebellious poet in Mr. Clough's long-vacation pastoral, who, when instructed by his tutor,— "When the armies are set in array and the battle beginning, Is it well that the soldier whose part is far to the leftward
Say, will go the right, it is there I should do best service?' There is a great Field-Marshal, my friend, who arrays our battalions ; Let us to Providence trust, and abide and work in onr stations," "I am sorry to say your Providence puzzles me sadly; Children of Circumstance are we to be? You answer, 'On no wise!'
Where does Circumstance end ? and Providence where begins it Oh, that the armies indeed were arrayed, Oh joy of the onset! Sound, thou Trumpet of God, come forth, Great Cause, to array us, King and Leader, appear, thy soldiers sorrowing seek thee. Would that the armies indeed were arrayed, oh, where is the battle ? Neither battle I see, nor arraying, nor King in Israel, Only infinite jumble, and mess, and dislocation, Backed by a solemn appeal, 'For God's sake do not stir there I' "
In puzzle of this kind arising out of the human anarchies of life, the poor riderless war-horses, sensible only of the controlling, and, we must add, ennobling influence they have received from their training by man, and of a certain joy in organization and joint action, have, of course, no share. Without any insight into the reason of the discipline to which they have been subjected, they .carry it on spontaneously when there is no one to enforce it because it has taken such a hold of their life as influences limited by
• doubts and reasons seldom take. And the spectacle touches the springs of pity in us for several reasons ; partly, that the faithful • creatures should be so spontaneously loyal to their duty all in vain; partly, that they should be so irrationally faithful to authority, when men are so often rationally unfaithful to much higher authority ; partly, again, that they remind us not only of what • men don't do which they ought to do, but of what they do do which they ought not, when they obey an obsolete summons, which • ought to have lost all its meaning for them, far more assiduously than they obey a living authority of the highest claims. Indeed, • men are often loyal to a dead custom, because it is dead, and because obedience to it can now only be spontaneous, when they 'would resent heartily the check of the reins in a living hand. That was not the poor horses' cases. Missing the rein, they obeyed the bugle, as the next best symbol they could get of an authority they .really loved. They did not resist the call to battle while they had a master to carry, and obey it only when the master hand was gone,—which is too much the case with those amongst our own -race who love to show their obedience to an authority that has passed away.
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