Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/253

 Sometimes we tried to amuse ourselves with frolics in the wine houses—for the town was still well provided with wine. Then there was occasionally an effort at gayety, but it was little more than an effort, for everybody knew that behind his chair stood the dark specter of the inevitable catastrophe. Suddenly one day—it was in the third week of the siege—a Prussian officer, under a flag of truce, came into the fortress with a summons to surrender, bringing the news that the revolutionary army had crossed the Swiss frontier, and had therefore ceased to exist; that not a single armed insurgent remained on German soil, and that the Prussian commander would consent to permit any man whom the garrison of Rastatt would entrust with such a mission, to convince himself of these facts with his own eyes, and to this end they would give him safe conduct wherever he might wish to go. This caused tremendous excitement. At once the governor called a general council of war, which, if I remember rightly, consisted of all officers of the garrison from captain upward. The council met promptly in the great hall of the castle. After a stormy discussion it was resolved that the offer of the Prussian commander should be accepted, and Lieutenant Colonel Corvin received the commission to explore the condition of things outside; and in case he found it to be as the Prussian flag of truce had represented, to negotiate for a capitulation on conditions as favorable as could be obtained.

The hall in the castle in which that council of war was held, had been, during the siege, always accessible to me, and one of the big lounges, upholstered with yellow silk damask, had been my accustomed resting place when I returned from my observations on the castle tower, or from my rounds through the fortress. I had selected this sofa because from it