The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary Part 14

During the last three or four days of the stay, the so-called "Treibjagds," or "Battues" take the place of stalking. They are far more ceremonious, but infinitely less fatiguing and interesting affairs, and as they begin between eight and nine, and last till four, they do not involve getting out of bed at the unearthly hour of three or four in the morning. They necessitate, however, an enormous amount of preparation and organization on the part of the grand huntsman. For at least forty-eight hours previously, a vast corps of "treibers,"

or Styrian mountaineers engaged for the purpose have been employed in surrounding a district of mountain and valley many miles in area.

The circle is gradually narrowed down until the whole of the game is driven from the heights into the valley, where the emperor and his guests have taken up their positions.

The selection of the positions of the party is regarded as a matter of the utmost importance, and on the evening before, the grand huntsman submits to the emperor a carefully drawn up plan of the locality. His majesty thereupon designates with his own hand the spot where each of his guests is to take up his position on the following morning. He himself and the King of Saxony generally await the game in the lowest part of the valley, the remaining guests and officials being spread up the mountain side on each hand according to their degree of rank and the imperial favor, those who enjoy the greatest share of the latter being the nearest to the sovereign down the valley, while those of less importance are posted higher up on the mountain side. By nine o'clock, every member of the party must be in the place a.s.signed to him on the plan, and the beaters, who have kept the game carefully within the circle of their lines, now proceed to drive it down towards the shooting party.

Usually, great nets are stretched a hundred yards to the rear of the two monarchs, with the object of forcing the game which may have got past their majesties to retrace its steps, and to face the royal and imperial sportsmen once more.

Sometimes curious scenes result in connection with these nets. On one occasion a magnificent gemsbock had managed to get past the King of Saxony, and finding a net in the way, charged it full tilt with a flying leap. Its horns got entangled in the meshes, seven or eight feet high, and there it remained hanging and kicking until a couple of jagers in attendance on the king disentangled it and carefully placed it on the ground. For a moment it stood as if transfixed with amazement, gazing steadfastly at the net, and then deliberately charged head down, and with a tremendous bound, at the obstacle once more, with the same result, of course. Again the jagers disengaged it, but in its struggles to recover its liberty the gemsbock left its beard torn out by the very roots in the hand of one of the men who had grabbed it for the purpose of holding the animal fast. A third time the gallant buck charged the net, and cleared it in magnificent style and made good its escape. The beard which it left behind it figures to this day on the Alpine hat of King Albert, who is probably the only man living who can boast of wearing the beard of a chamois that may still be roaming over the Styrian Alps.

Emperor William's favorite form of sport is wild-boar hunting.

This species of game abounds in the imperial preserves of Konigs-Wusterhausen, Letzlingen, Gohrde and Springe, the latter being quite near to the ancient city of Hamelin, celebrated in legendary lore for its "_pied-piper_" and for its rats!

The preserves at Gohrde are liked best by the kaiser, as they were by his grandfather, the old emperor, for they are alive with wild boars.

Persons invited for the first time to these imperial shooting parties have to go through a regular form of initiation, somewhat akin to that practised in the case of people crossing the line for the first time at sea.

On the eve of the day on which the hunt is to begin, and when the party are a.s.sembled in the smoking and card-rooms of the jagdschloss, after dinner, the great oak table in the dining-room is cleared and ornamented with several lines of chalk; thereupon, the deputy grand huntsman, Baron Heintze Weissenrode, after receiving the emperor's final instructions, selects a dozen members of the party, and conducts them to the dining-room, where they take their places around the table, each armed with a wooden spoon of a different size from those of his neighbors.

At a given signal the huntsman in charge of the imperial pack of boar-hounds, who has been stationed at the entrance leading into the dining-room, sounds the "view-halloo!" on his horn, and immediately every one of the wooden spoons is rubbed up and down the oaken table in a manner that produces a sound similar to that of the noise made by a pack in full pursuit. The person about to be initiated is then seized and blindfolded, after which the doors are thrown open, and he is carried into the dining-room, and laid upon the table athwart the chalk lines. The emperor immediately draws his short hunting-knife, and after making several mystic pa.s.ses with it in the air, strikes the prostrate body of the neophyte a smart blow with the flat of the broad blade. The huntsman toots forth the signal of "dead! dead!" which is used to call the pack off the quarry, and the new-fledged "weide-man"

is permitted to struggle off the table and onto the ground.

I may add that the emperor's blow with the hunting-knife is not the only one which the neophyte receives while stretched on the table on his face, nor does it const.i.tute the sum total of the initiation, but only the conclusion thereof. Indeed, there is sometimes a good deal of rough horse-play on these occasions, in which the emperor, who delights therein, takes a prominent part.

The boar hunt on the following day partakes of the nature of the chamois drives already described, the only difference being that the beaters are a.s.sisted in their work by a carefully trained pack of boar-hounds, which are accustomed to obey the horn signals of the huntsman in charge, and are of much service in driving the quarry from its lair in the dense brush and underwood.

Another difference is that the shooting parties, instead of firing in the direction of the drivers, are under the strictest orders only to fire away from them; that is to say, the hunters are practically forced to wait until the wild boar rushes past before their rifles may be levelled. Of course, it sometimes happens that the boar, instead of charging past, charges directly at some member of the party in the fiercest and most dangerous manner, and it is in order to be prepared for an a.s.sault of this kind, that each of them is provided with a kind of pike, or lance, which goes by the euphonious name of "sowpen."

The costume worn on these occasions is an exceptionally hideous uniform, specially invented and devised by the present emperor.

It consists of a double-breasted frock coat of grey cloth, with gra.s.s-green lapels and collar, green striped pantaloons, high boots, and a grey Tyrolese hat, with a wide green band. In the emperor's case it is further adorned by the ribbon and badge of a Hohenzollern family order known as that of the "White Hart."

At these shooting parties the emperor is accustomed to wind up the day with a most extraordinary kind of drink, of which he himself is very fond, and of which he insists upon everybody's partaking, a.s.suring them that it will help them to sleep. It consists of the following ingredients: White beer, sugar, citron peel, ginger spices, the yolks of at least a dozen eggs, Rhine wine, Madeira, and old Santa Cruz rum.

All this, after being thoroughly stirred, is placed on the fire and slowly heated, several large pats of b.u.t.ter being added to the concoction while it is warm.

It need scarcely be said that it requires a stomach as strong as that of the emperor to be able to absorb several gla.s.ses of such a drink before retiring, and it is a.s.serted at the Court of Berlin that there are many of his subjects of high rank who feign illness when commanded to join the imperial hunting parties, solely because of the apprehensions they entertain of being called upon by the kaiser to drink this extraordinary brew.

For shooting wild-fowl, hares and other small game, William uses a very dainty and extremely light fowling-piece, specially constructed for him, which he raises to his shoulder with one hand, and with extraordinary rapidity takes a remarkably sure aim; but when it comes to hunting the wild boar, stag, elk, bear and big game in general, the killing of which requires a heavier gun, he is naturally forced to adopt other devices. His crippled left arm being useless to support the weapon, his body jager, specially trained for this particular duty, steps forward and offers either his arm or his shoulder for the support of his master's rifle. This, _bien entendu_, when his majesty is engaged in stalking. In cases where the chase takes the form of a "battue," a species of horizontal bar is affixed at right angles to the tree beside which the emperor stands, and it is on this support that the kaiser rests his gun when shooting at the driven game.

Handicapped as William is by this crippled arm, his record of 33,967 head of game killed with his own hand, during the past two decades, is a very remarkable one. It may be found in his "Game Book," published a few months ago for private circulation among the royal personages and court circles of the Old World.

Comprised in this grand total are some pieces which do not fall to the lot of every sportsman. Thus there are a couple of "aurochsen," which is a species of bison-like wild cattle, still to be found strictly preserved in the private domains of the Emperor of Russia. Unless I am mistaken, there are only about five hundred of them left, and, in spite of all the efforts made to foster the breed, they are so rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng in number that ere many years are past they will surely become extinct. In pre-Christian times they roamed all over Germany, and were, and still are, larger, fiercer, and much lighter colored than the American buffalo.

The wild boars number in the "Game Book" over 2,700. There are eleven elks shot in Sweden, three reindeer killed in Norway, and ten bears laid low, some of them in Russia, and others in Hungary. The emperor has, much to his vexation, only managed to bag three unfortunate snipe, an extremely difficult bird to shoot on the wing; but his record of 120 chamois is decidedly good, when it is remembered what an exceedingly difficult game this is to reach, entailing, as it does, mountaineering of the most arduous and perilous character, especially in the case of a man who can use but one arm easily. These 120 chamois serve in a measure to atone for the twenty foxes which figure as having been shot by the emperor, a fact which is more likely to injure his reputation and prestige in the eyes of hunting men than any other fault or even crime of which he could possibly render himself guilty. The most unique item of this "Game Book," with the exception, naturally, of the two aurochsen, are a.s.suredly the three whales which the emperor shot with a harpoon gun, on the occasion of his yachting trip to the furthermost portion of Norway a few summers ago. These three huge monsters of the deep form a fitting and amusing counterpart in the "Game Book" to the three snipe above mentioned.

Emperor William has a number of shooting-lodges, among the best known of which is Hubertusstock, of which he is particularly fond owing to its proximity to the capital. Yet it is hated by the members of his suite, for it is a terribly gloomy place. It stands in the midst of a dense, dark forest of vast extent, and swarming with game, within a few hundred yards of the reed covered and marshy sh.o.r.es of the Werbellin Lake, and was built by the late King Frederick-William IV.

During the last few years of his madness this monarch was frequently taken out to Hubertusstock by his attendants, who hoped that the entire absence of all excitement and the intense solitude of the place would diminish the recurrences of his attacks of violence.

The emperor sometimes spends an entire week at Hubertusstock and it has frequently been a.s.serted that he takes advantage of the complete absence from public observation which he then enjoys, to make secret trips abroad. It was his absence at this place for a period of ten days while the czar was at Paris that led to the very circ.u.mstantial story in the German and foreign press about his having been in the French capital, in the strictest incognito, for several days during the Russian emperor's stay on the banks of the Seine. A number of people claim to have recognized him, and it is even alleged that he caught the czar's eye, and was recognized by him during the grand entertainment given by President Faure in honor of his Muscovite visitors at the Palace of Versailles.

A story was told at the time about a couple of German officers, one of them attached to the emba.s.sy, who happening to find themselves face to face with an individual presenting a striking likeness to the kaiser, save for the fact that his moustache was twisted downwards instead of upwards, and his hair brushed in a different way, lost to such an extent their presence of mind that they could not help drawing their heels together and standing at attention; a form of courtesy which received as its only response the muttered exclamation of "Verdammte Esel!" which may be translated: "Accursed jacka.s.ses!"

That served to confirm their suspicions, and unfortunately both their behavior and the growl of the stranger had been witnessed and heard by people who were quick to make the matter public.

It was with the object of endeavoring to disprove and discredit these stories that the emperor caused a telegram, to be sent to the czar from Hubertusstock, not written, as usual, in cipher, but in ordinary language. There is an old French proverb according to which "he who seeks to prove too much, proves nothing," and thus it happened that this open telegram which reached the czar at Chalons, and which was published in the German newspapers, even before Nicholas had made it known to the members of his entourage, merely served to convince people that the kaiser had really been in Paris when he was supposed to be buried amidst the gloomy forests of Hubertusstock.

Hubertusstock is not, as most people seem to imagine, a castle, but merely a huge, overgrown two-storied chalet, surrounded by a number of smaller wooden dwelling-houses for the use of the imperial suite.

Formerly, it required a drive of at least three hours from the station on the main line in order to reach the jagdschloss. But since the accession of the emperor he has caused a private railroad to be constructed from the trunk line to a small station within a few hundred yards of the chalet.

Seldom is the kaiser found in the schloss after daybreak. The entire morning is spent by him in the woods, which are so vast that one can wander about them for days without meeting a soul. Luncheon is usually partaken of at some point in the forest, and frequently during this repast a concert takes place, the performers consisting of a quartette of foresters, their instruments being mere hunting horns, and their melodies those of old hunting-songs. Within the limits of the imperial preserves is the celebrated Schorfhaide, which each year, towards the month of November, becomes the meeting place of thousands of stags.

They come from all parts of Germany and Austria, this being rendered possible by the proximity to one another of the great estates of the territorial n.o.bility, so that it would be feasible to march almost from the Adriatic to the Baltic without leaving forest glades. This annual a.s.semblage of stags on the Schorfhaide has been taking place every autumn for untold centuries. In fact, mention thereof has been found in doc.u.ments more than a thousand years old. The meetings afford an extraordinary sight, and are the scenes of numerous single combats to death between "Royals," the other stags and the deer standing round, as if to form a huge amphitheatre, and gravely watching the duel without making any attempt to interfere.

All sorts of theories have been put forward with regard to this annual concourse of stags on the Schorfhaide. Foresters, however, insist that it is nothing more nor less than a species of great animal congress, at which the various antlered tribes meet for a big "palaver" to decide matters affecting the policy and the leaders.h.i.+p of their various clans! Far-fetched as this theory may seem at first sight, it is evident that there is something of the kind which brings stags and their mates from the remote forests of Galicia on the Russian border, from the vast Liechtenstein game preserves to the South of Vienna, and from the still larger sporting property of Belyer, in Hungary, belonging to Archduke Frederick, all the way to the Schorfhaide on the reedy banks of the Werbellin Lake, in order to flock together by thousands.

It is a matter of forest ethics, and of the law of the chase, to abstain from disturbing this annual _convivium_ of the stags, as it is called, and while it lasts, not a single shot is to be heard in the forests around Hubertusstock. In fact, November has on this account become a species of close season there, no one interested in sport wis.h.i.+ng to do anything that could in the least degree interfere with this, so far as I know, altogether unique custom in the animal world.

The meetings, however, have been witnessed by the emperor and a few chosen companions who concealed themselves in the branches of trees, bordering on the Schorfhaide, and William is never tired of expatiating on the magnificence of the spectacle presented.

Next to Hubertusstock, the most favored shooting-lodge and sporting-estate of the kaiser, is Rominten, not far from the Russian frontier. Owing to this proximity, bears and wolves, especially the latter, of Muscovite origin, are frequently to be found in the Rominten forests, adjoining which is the celebrated imperial Trakenen stud and horsebreeding establishment, founded as far back as 1732 by Frederick the Great. Some idea of the size and importance of this stud-farm may be gathered from the fact that over two thousand hands are employed in connection with the concern. Trakenen was originally famous for elk, and an elk's horn remains to this day the Trakenen brand placed upon all horses bred there. The emperor's headquarters at Rominten are situated at a place called Theerbude. His jagdschloss or shooting-lodge consists of a handsome Norwegian block house, brought from Norway, and erected on the Goldberg on the left bank of the Rominten River. The stables are built on a most extensive scale, and the chapel, as well as all the other buildings, are constructed in the picturesque Norwegian style, which harmonizes so well with the dark fir forests by which they are surrounded.

There is no interruption of the business of slate during the emperor's stay at Rominten. Theerbude is connected with Berlin by wire, and telegrams are arriving and departing at all hours of the day.

The kaiser shoots as a rule twice a day, at four in the morning, and four in the afternoon, the drive to the hunting-grounds often taking several hours, for most of them are at a considerable distance. The various foresters' lodges, even at the most remote portion of the estates, are connected by telephone with the imperial residence, and thus the emperor is able to know at midday where the game is likely to be most plentiful in the afternoon.

When the emperor is not shooting, he transacts business with his various military and civil secretaries, and long after his guests are asleep he himself is still at work, signing state papers or reading and annotating reports. Indeed one of the most remarkable things about Emperor William is his apparent ability to do almost entirely without sleep.

On Sundays the emperor invariably makes a point of attending divine service at the Chapel of St. Hubert, opposite his residence, and subsequently is accustomed to walk to the Konigshohe, a neighboring hill on which he has built an observatory-tower about one hundred feet high, which commands a magnificent view of the surrounding forest, extending about twenty miles in every direction from the tower.

Curiously enough, wild boars are not found at Rominten; but the stags there are superb, and specimens turning the scales at a thousand pounds are the rule rather than the exception.

One of the features of the Theerbude is a goblet of the time of King Frederick-William III. The vessel is held between the points of a couple of antlers, and it is only possible to drink out of it by squeezing one's face between these two points. The possessor of a rotund countenance experiences considerable difficulty in performing this feat, and is apt to spill the contents over himself, yet every one of the emperor's guests has to submit to the ordeal, for an inscription on the goblet says that all persons attending shooting-parties at Rominten for the first time must empty the vessel of its contents,--a pint bottle of champagne,--at one draught, to the health of the sovereign.

So great are the quant.i.ties of game shot by the emperor and his guests at these shooting-parties that they very much exceed the needs for the consumption of the imperial household. Formerly, it was the kaiser's custom to distribute all the surplus among the various hospitals and charitable inst.i.tutions; but since discovering that these gifts of game seldom reached the persons for whom they were destined, namely the inmates, but were monopolized by the staff and the attendants of the establishments, he has given orders that the game that is not needed for imperial consumption should be sold, and the money derived therefrom turned over to the funds of the hospitals and convalescent homes under the patronage of the crown. That is why one so frequently sees in the great Central Market of Berlin, deer, stags, wild boars, etc., adorned with greenery, and with cards intimating that the quarry in question has been shot by his imperial majesty the kaiser.