The king had a headache. He had difficulty breathing. He had not been prepared for the smell of the camp. He had known that cleanliness didn’t prevail when thousands upon thousands of soldiers along with their supply train were camping in one place, and he still remembered the smell of his own army, which he had commanded outside Prague before it disappeared, seeping away into the ground, dispersing like smoke, but that had been nothing like this—this was unimaginable. You smelled the camp even before it came into view, a whiff of sourness and acridity hovering over the depopulated landscape.
“God, how it stinks,” the King had said.
“Awful,” the fool had replied. “Absolutely awful. Winter King, it’s time you took a bath.”
The cook and the four soldiers the Dutch States General had reluctantly given him for protection had laughed stupidly, and the King had considered for a moment whether he should put up with it, but that’s what fools were for, in the end, such conduct was proper when you were a king. The world treated you with respect, but this one person was permitted to say anything.
“The King needs a bath,” said the cook.
“He needs to wash his feet,” cried a soldier.
The King looked at Count Hudenitz riding next to him, but since the count’s face remained impassive, he could pretend he hadn’t heard it.
“And behind his ears,” said another soldier, and again everyone laughed except the count and the fool.
The King didn’t know what he ought to do. It would have been appropriate to strike at the shameless fellow, but he didn’t feel well, for days he had had a cough, and what if the man struck back? The soldier was ultimately answerable to the States General, not to him. On the other hand, he certainly couldn’t let people insult him who were not his court jesters.
Then they had seen the camp from a hilltop, and the King had forgotten his anger, and the soldiers had no longer thought to mock him. Like a white city wavering in the wind it had lain at their feet—a city with a gentle movement going through its houses, a back and forth, a gliding and undulating. Only at second glance did you realize that this city consisted of tents.
The closer they came, the stronger the smell grew. It stung your eyes, it pierced your chest, and when you held a cloth over your face, it penetrated the fabric. The King squinted, he gagged. He tried to take shallow breaths, but in vain, there was no escape, he gagged more violently. He noticed that Count Hudenitz wasn’t doing any better, and the soldiers too were pressing their hands over their faces. The cook was deathly pale. Even the fool no longer had his usual impudent expression.
The earth was churned up. The horses sank in, trudging as if through deep mire. Muck was heaped up dark brown on the roadside. The King tried to tell himself that it probably wasn’t what he suspected, but he knew it was precisely that: the excrement of a hundred thousand people.
That wasn’t all it stank of. It also stank of wounds and sores, of sweat and of all diseases known to man. The King blinked. It seemed to him as if you could even see the smell, a poisonous yellow thickening of the air.
“Where are you heading?”
A dozen cuirassiers were blocking their way—tall, composed-looking men with helmets and breastplates, such as the King hadn’t seen since his days in Prague. He looked at Count Hudenitz. Count Hudenitz looked at the soldiers. The soldiers looked at the King. Someone had to speak, had to announce him.
“His Bohemian Majesty and Serene Highness Elector and Count Palatine,” the King finally said himself. “On the way to your supreme commander.”
“Where is His Bohemian Majesty?” asked one of the cuirassiers. He spoke Saxon dialect, and the King had to remind himself that only a small number of Swedes fought on the Swedish side—just as there were hardly any Danes in the Danish army and merely a few hundred Czechs had stood outside Prague during the battle.
“Here,” said the King.
The cuirassier gave him an amused look.
“It’s me. His Majesty. That’s me.”
The other cuirassiers grinned too.
“What’s so funny?” asked the King. “We have a letter of safe conduct, an invitation from the King of Sweden. Bring me to him at once.”
“All right, all right,” said the cuirassier.
“I will tolerate no disrespect,” said the King.
“Very well,” said the cuirassier. “Come along now, Majesty.”
And then he had led them through the outskirts of the camp into the interior. As the stench, which had already been so pestilential that you might have thought it couldn’t grow any stronger, grew ever stronger, they passed the covered wagons of the supply train: drawbars jutted into the air, sick horses lay on the ground, children played in the filth, women nursed infants or washed clothes in tubs of brown water. These were the buyable soldiers’ brides, but they were also the wives with whom many a soldier traveled. A man who had a family brought them with him to war; where else should they have stayed?
Here the King saw something horrible. He looked at it, didn’t realize at first what it was, it defied recognition, but when you looked at it longer, it took shape, and you understood. He quickly looked elsewhere. He heard Count Hudenitz groaning next to him.
It was dead children. Probably none of them older than five, most of them not even a year old. They lay there heaped up and discolored, with blond, brown, and red hair, and when you looked closely, many pairs of eyes were open, forty or more, and the air was dark with flies. When they had passed, the King was tempted to turn around, because even though he didn’t want to see it, he did want to see it, but he resisted the temptation.
Now they were in the interior of the camp, among the soldiers. Tents stood beside tents, men sat around fires, roasted meat, played cards, slept on the ground, drank. Everything would have been normal if you hadn’t seen so many sick men: sick men in the mud, sick men on sacks of straw, sick men on wagons—not merely wounded men, but men with sores, men with bumps on their faces, men with watering eyes and drooling mouths. Not a few lay there motionless and bent; you couldn’t have said whether they were dead or dying.
The stench was now hardly bearable. The King and his escorts pressed their hands over their noses. They all tried not to breathe. Only when there was no other choice did they gasp for breath behind their palms. The King gagged again, he gathered all his strength, but he gagged even more violently, and then he had to vomit off his horse. Immediately Count Hudenitz and the cook and then even one of the Dutch soldiers had the same reaction.
“Are you finished?” asked the cuirassier.
“It’s Your Majesty,” said the fool.
“Your Majesty,” said the cuirassier.
“He’s finished,” said the fool.
As they rode on, the King closed his eyes. This helped a little, for you actually smelled less when you didn’t see anything. Still, you smelled enough. He heard someone saying something, then he heard shouts, then he heard laughter from all sides, but it didn’t matter; let them make fun of him. All he wanted was not to have to endure this stench anymore.