Karl Ludwig Sand: Celebrated CrimesDumas, Alexandre
History
Karl Ludwig Sand: Celebrated Crimes
Dumas, Alexandre
Crime
“Perchance above our foeman lying dead
We may behold the star of liberty.”
With this farewell to his parents, and with Korner’s poems on his lips,
Sand gave up his books, and on the 10th of May we find him in arms among
the volunteer chasseurs enrolled under the command of Major
Falkenhausen, who was at that time at Mannheim; here he found his second
brother, who had preceded him, and they underwent all their drill
together.
Though Sand was not accustomed to great bodily fatigues, he endured
those of the campaign with surprising strength, refusing all the
alleviations that his superiors tried to offer him; for he would allow
no one to outdo him in the trouble that he took for the good of the
country. On the march he invariably shared: anything that he possessed
fraternally with his comrades, helping those who were weaker than
himself to carry their burdens, and, at once priest and soldier,
sustaining them by his words when he was powerless to do anything more.
On the 18th of June, at eight o’clock in the evening, he arrived upon
the field of battle at Waterloo, On the 14th of July he entered Paris.
On the 18th of December, 1815, Karl Sand and his brother were back at
Wonsiedel, to the great joy of their family. He spent the Christmas
holidays and the end of the year with them, but his ardour for his new
vacation did not allow him to remain longer, and an the 7th of January
he reached Erlangen. Then, to make up for lost time, he resolved to
subject his day to fixed and uniform rules, and to write down every
evening what he had done since the morning. It is by the help of this
journal that we are able to follow the young enthusiast, not only in all
the actions of his life, but also in all the thoughts of his mind and
all the hesitations of his conscience. In it we find his whole self,
simple to naivete, enthusiastic to madness, gentle even to weakness
towards others, severe even to asceticism towards himself. One of his
great griefs was the expense that his education occasioned to his
parents, and every useless and costly pleasure left a remorse in his
heart. Thus, on the 9th of February 1816, he wrote:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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