Peter Charles Remondino Autobiography (1846-1926)
Transcript of an original document on file at the San Diego Historical Society, Dr. P.C. Remondino Papers, MS-4.
Soon after his arrival at his home, to his great disappointment, he found that, seemingly, that attack of fever had totally changed his constitution, as well as that in the past three years the Minnesota climate, from which he had expected so much, had greatly changed since his departure in 1863. There was an occurrence of chilling winter fogs in place of the former dry cold atmosphere of former days. The number of overcast dark days had also greatly increased. The Indian summer had lost its former mellow, steady charm and was often replaced by autumn fogs. Even the Northern Lights which had been wont to make a grand display, seem to have lost most of their former splendor and brilliancy.
The dry open winters which had made of the Minnesota winter climate a seasonal heaven for consumptive and other invalids -- similarly to the famed Swiss above-the-snow-line winter resorts wherein the extremely dry cold air is the main beneficient medical climatic feature -- seemingly had departed forever. The great ploughing up of the prairie-lands, was what had brought about that great and unpleasant change. So again here was another evidence of the erosions that civilization in one way brings on the health of a people thru the cultivation of the land. To raise huge crops of wheat Minnesota had bartered away the beauties of its Northern Lights, its dreamy Indian Summer, and the comforts and health consequent on its dry open winters.
The disappointment of the doctor when he fully realized the position in which he was left thru that Good Samaritan errand of mercy to do up the wounds of those oyster-men at the head of the York river in Virginia, no pen can describe. While he enjoyed frequent encouraging spells wherein his Virginia malarial enemy would seem to lessen its hold upon his constitution and permit him to recover, he suffered the reverse when he received an unwelcomed set-back. Nevertheless, fatigue, weather exposure, or the unavoidable worries and anxieties that accompanied professional life, would soon and very uncomfortably remind him that the effects of that malaria was still upon him.
Thus he lingered partly enjoying what seemed to be spells of perfect health interspersed with spells of discouraging physical depression, return of the fever, and the attending depression of spirits and morale, until the capture of Napoleon III at Sedan in 1870 which brought about the opportunity of France to declare its third Republic, which eventually took him to France and in the French army, where for the time being his Virginia malarial tormentor left him in peace -- until his return to America in the late summer of 1871.
It was then that he realized how he wished that he was well enough to start for France and offer his services to the newly established Republic; especially when considering that about the whole of the regular staff had been taken prisoner, except those who were still being besieged in Metz, a condition which would necessarily create a great demand for surgeons to thoroughly equip the new armies that the republic would call to its colors. In talking these matters over with Dr. Milligan, whose partner he then was, the elder doctor suggested that by going over to Europe and the thorough change of climate he would undergo might effectually alter the miasmatic state from which the doctor was still suffering.
Dr. Remondino, seeing the medical logic residing in the doctor's suggestion, at once decided upon his departure for the seat of war. The Minnesota legislature happened then to be in cession in St. Paul. The doctor journeyed thither and thru Mr. T. S. Vandyke, who then represented his county in the legislature but who now resides A Dagget, California, who introduced him to the governor from whom he obtained a certificate relating to his professional and civil standing in the state and of his medical services in the armies during the Civil War under the seal of the state of Minnesota. On departing for Washington, the doctor was furnished letters of recommendation by General Babcock, who was Secretary of War under President Grant, to Mr. Washburn our minister in France, and to his personal friend General Ruggles who was then also in France. With these recommendations he sailed for Brest, France from the port of New York.
The ship that carried him overseas was Saint Laurent. It carried some five hundred volunteers for the French army and was heavily laden with ammunition and some seventy-five thousand stands of arms which included about every form of repeating rifle manufactured in the United States, besides several complete batteries of small field pieces of the latest pattern for the Republic. On arriving at Brest, we were landed and started for Tours, but one of the doctor's recurring attacks of miasmatic fever compelled him to leave the train at Rennes in Brittany, where he remained for some days before being able to resume his journey. This city was at the time reeking with smallpox. The unsettled political condition of France having placed the imperial government of Napoleon in such a position that it did not dare to do anything which might arouse any contention or opposition, so that the people had for some decades gone unprotected by vaccination.
As soon as he was able to resume his journey, the doctor left Rennes and its smallpox stricken population for the city of Tours which was then the temporary seat of the French government. With this recurring of the fever at Rennes, he was free from the affection until his return to Minnesota in the late summer months of 1871. The American Legation,of which Mr. Washburn was the head, had remained in Paris, but was represented in Tours by Mr. Stephen Lee of Baltimore MD. to whom the doctor presented his credentials. Mr. Lee introduced him to Mr. Gambetta and Clais-Bizoin, the representatives of the French government, by whom he was kindly received and thanked for his republican sympathies in coming over to France to offer that country his services in its hour of need.
A few evenings later, the doctor had the pleasure of being introduced to M. Thiers the statesman and historian and M. Cremieux, who had arrived that morning from Paris by balloon. They were members of the French Republican government of National Defence, for whom a reception was given that evening by the members of the lodge of the Scottish Rite Masons of Tours to which he was invited by Mr. Glais-Bizoin.
A few days later, Mr. Glais-Bizoin obtained an appointment for the doctor as surgeon of a regiment which was then being formed in Lille in the extreme north of France, for which city the doctor started to join the regiment. Later on when that regiment of volunteers was disbanded, along with all other troops of the same order, the doctor was appointed as surgeon to the Second Battery of artillery of the Seine Inferieure which was then garrisoning Ft. St. Addresse. The doctor in his first appointment was continually on outpost duty facing the enemy lines and was present or rather engaged in a number of battles and a great many skirmishes.
He has the honor of being the only American citizen who was commissioned by the French government as a surgeon in its army with a rank of captain. He was accorded the military medal as a volunteer of the war of 1870-71 with the certificate of the Secretary of war entitling him to wear it.
In regard to, some of the early experiences in France before reaching his regiment, the doctor related how on two occasions he came very near ending his knight errant career to assist France in the days of her miseries thru his being mistaken for a Prussian spy. The police saved him from a mob on the evening of his arrival in Tours, and a tactfully broad-minded and intelligent Englishman saved him one day on the coast of Brittany as he was journeying northward by stage to go to his regiment. Anyone who has ever read Les Chouans, by Balzac will remember how those Bretons are frantically set in their loyalty. As an historian observed, they were the last in France to be converted to Catholicism and to royalty, as they were the last to accept the republic as founded by the Revolution. They are very conservative and men of few words and quick actions and the doctor feels a never to be forgotten debt of gratitude to that ready witted and full of initiative great hearted Englishman who extricated him out of what might have been for him a quick and sudden ending.
Such accidents were then occurring more or less all over France. The people had just learned how Russia had honeycombed and permeated France with trained governmental spies. Their sudden awakening to this discovery had made them too ready to believe that every presenting strange person accidentally supposed by some visionarily inclined and hot-headed individual to be a spy to really be one and they had lost all sense of consideration, tolerance, of analyzing, and of proportion, so that all that then was required to precipitate a tragedy was the activities of some hot-headed haranguer.
How inconsiderately over hasty the people had become maybe imagined by the following episode which took place on the day in which occurred the terrible arctic blizzard that caused the death of some hundreds of youthful French soldiers on that fearful night at Pont Audemer.
The movements or whereabouts of the army were unknown. That they were disorganized, starving, without ammunition, and in rapid retreat were all things at that moment unknown. Even at Rouen and at Buchy the army was believed to be driving back the Prussians somewhere in the north near Amiens. But that poor army was then a demoralized mass moving westward. The stablest, best equipped, and most reliable corps in that army had been chosen by Admiral Monchez, who had planned the retreat, to be the vanguard as there existed a very probable possibility that the Prussians might send some light batteries and a sufficient force of light cavalry on each of our flanks, close in on our front, and suddenly cut off our retreat. The chosen corps was Col. Moquard's Eclaireurs de la Seine, a French regiment composed of determined, inured to battle, extra intelligent, and cool-headed old veterans of the Crimean, Italian, Mexican and Algerian wars, all men who never fired at random but all deliberately patient sharpshooters and fully habituated and initiative skirmishers, well versed in all the tricks of individual fighting who could be relied upon to a man, not only to open up the blocked way, if that should occur, but to tactfully and thoroughly exterminate their opponents, without themselves suffering any great loss.
The Colonel realizing what the changed and rapidly increasing colder weather would do to those starved, famished, over-fatigued, poorly dressed, and poorly protected, uninjured young soldiers, had, on crossing to the south bank of the Seine at Rouen, sent Surgeon Xavier Raspail, his assistant, and the regimental chaplain in a hack, to travel rapidly ahead as far as Bourg-Achard to notify the authorities of that burg to hastily prepare all the immediately available prepared food, as a starved-out army was fast approaching, that was in the most imperative need of food as well as of whatever old blankets or man coverings that could be spared.
This delegation started at once on their humane and patriotic mission and as fast as their horse could trot; but at the entry of the town which was their destination, they were met by a sentry, who had probably been ruminating over night on Prussian spies and was on the lookout for something sinister to turn up in that line, when the trio arrived. Two of them were garbed in what was to the Guards Nationale sentry a strange uniform, the regiment having adopted dark blue pantaloons and dark blue caps as being best suited for their manner of warfare, in lieu of the flashy red pants and capa of the regular French regiments of the line. Seeing here nothing more or less than a bevy of spies silly enough to think they could fool him, this sentry tactfully prepared an unexpected and surprising reception for that delegation, and that without heeding what they said about their mission, by suggesting that he would have to escort them to the mayor to whom they could make their request known.
As this was in line with their wishes, they properly followed the elated sentry who took them to the town hill where he asked them to enter a room and as soon as they entered the delegation heard the door slammed shut and the key turning in the lock. He had put them in the prison where he stood guard over them with his loaded musket ready to kill the trio if they attempted to escape. Meanwhile the guard felt like a hero as he informed the assembling other members of the Guarde and the mob of rapidly collecting citizens that he had single handed captured three Prussian spies which the mayor, whom he had sent for, would soon examine and properly deal with.
Meanwhile, the crowd was gaining in numbers and increasing in turbulence looking in upon the surprised and caged envoys thru the iron bars at the windows. The mayor, apprised of the capture, immediately summoned his two legal counsellors and the trio repaired to the jail to interrogate and decide upon the fate of the spies. It must not be overlooked that the mayor and his counsellors, as well as all the inhabitants of Pours-Achard, were in the most complete ignorance that the Prussians would that very afternoon march into Rouen, and that all the army that France had in that region would in a couple of hours be rapidly marching on the highway passing thru their town toward the distant seaport of Honfleur on the shores of the Channel.
The three caged envoys were patiently awaiting the arrival of the mayor with not the least doubts in their minds, but that as soon as he saw their papers that they would not only be set free; but that he would get busy and collect the food which the retreating column needed so badly. When the town authorities entered the room and saw the dark blue uniforms with which they were unacquainted and knowing nothing of the approaching rapidly retreating army, they all felt sure that they had in their hands three vicious spies and proceeded to examine them, Surgeon Raspail, was the son of the celebrated Dr. Raspail who was well known throughout the whole of France, but neither that, nor his commission, or his card, as well as those of the other two men, testifying them as entitled to wear the insigna of the French Red Cross badge then on their arms counted for anything. One of the couneellors, who was scrutinizing the official seals on the commission, on the cards, and on the badges, ventured the not comforting suggestions as to express his surprise as to how the spies of that period could procure such really deceptive forgeries with which to deceive and assist them in carrying out their nefarious pursuits. The mayor argued with the councellor that times and methods had sadly changed in the last decade and that there was no telling where all this would end. A couple of hours were thus spent in attempting to arrive at some definite conclusions, when all of a sudden the load and shrill but clear and silvery but stirring sounds of a regimental bugle corps sounding a rapid march rang out in the distance coming nearer and nearer. When the bugle stopped and the sharp tread of marching soldiers broke in upon their ears, all the examining proceedings stopped, especially when Col. Moquard and his staff brushing away the guard at the prison as if they had been so many flies, and entering asked the three town officials where the provisions were that surgeon Raspail had ordered. What was the meaning of his finding his three envoys in prison undergoing an examination? Here were some thousand of men perishing for want of food and here were those who should have seen to the collection of that food amusing themselves playing at holding a court.
The time had been all misspent and could not be replaced, especially as there was no time to be lost but they must go on and the troops suffer all the unavoidable consequences of this uncalled for foolishness. The bugle sounded the assembly and away went the regiment followed by the rest of the corps with their empty haversacks and empty stomachs. The doctor realized the danger they had run into thru the stupidity of that sentry and that stupid town counselor and the trio congratulated each other on the opportune arrival of the regiment, as things were looking badly for the three arrested men.
"That same night of the day in which Dr. Raspail and his companions were temporarily jailed as Prussian spies at Bourg-Archard, there took place a tragedy on the same order -- a mistake -- ending in the horrible death of a poor demented person, wh1ch must have occurred when those volleys were being fired in the night as the affair took place not far from the stable in which I had found a, shelter," observed the doctor, as I was told as we trudged along in the morning, by an eyewitness to a part of the scene. But he had, however, only seen the shooting of the supposed spy, as he was marching along on the other side of the road in search of some shelter.
"Some years later on, to my surprise, I found the relation of the reigning spirit and mental and physical state of the whole series of episodes as they had occurred during that day followed in the night by the atrocious murder of the unfortunate person as related in the fifth volume of a set of Guy do Manpassant's works, under the title of L' Horrible.
"In that story he also vividly detailed what in general happened on that day and on that fearful night to some hundreds of poor worn-out French youths, who must still be lying in their improvised and nameless or unmarked graves somewhere about Pont-Audmer, youths of whose maker of death or cause of disappearance many parents never will know. That retreat and its many calamities made one feel, how, at times, an individual life may seem of so little value and how easily and quickly dissolved may be the partnership between the eternal soul and its frail human body and how ingloriously it can be suddenly and unconsciously snuffed out.
"Maupassant places the story in the mouth of a general who, some years later on, was heard disserting on the horrors of an obscure and unexpected violent death, one which may be classed as being horrible, as compared to some deaths which may be shocking or only momentarily frightful. He very evidently had seen both, the frightful on the battle field and the horrible where there was no battle, and was well able to delicately discriminate between the two. I had seen the horrible on that morning, soon after the break of day, when a soldier brained that demented young guarde-mobile in the suburb of Rouen, made demented by exposure to limitless privation, cold, and fatigue, and fully realized what fearful depression of spirits that boy must have suffered both mentally and physically, before his mind finally gave way and became unhinged. Maupassant's relation of those phases and episodes, as they appear in the St. Dunstan Society edition of his works is as follows:
Now, here are two personal examples, which have shown me what is the meaning of horror:"As I read the balance," continued Dr. Remondino, "of the story of that night of horrors -- that had followed a day that had begun by the braining of that demented soldier, and attended by a number of suddenly occurring deaths, the pathos which they awakened being somewhat dulled, however, by sense of expected danger under which we were all more or less laboring with the added sense that we knew absolutely nothing of the victims of these accidents -- and finally reached the story of that brutal murder, it brought to my mind how often my French with its inevitable and undeniable English accent, easily mistaken for a German accent, might have brought me to a similar fate. If Dr. Raspail and his companions, undeniably French in all senses, ran the risks of experiencing a similar fate at Bourg-Achard, what would have been my chances at the hands of as frantic and as obsessed a nob? The episode as related by he general was as follows:It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating toward Pont Audmer, after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting of about twenty thousand men, twenty thousand men in disorder, disbanded, demoralized, exhausted, was going to reform at Havre.
The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not eaten, anything since the day before, and were flying rapidly, the Prussians not far off. The Norman country, livid, dotted with the shadows of the trees surrounding the farms, stretched away under a heavy and sinister black sky.
Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight save the confused sound, soft and undefined, of a marching throng, an endless tramping, mingled with the vague clink of canteens or sabers. The men, bent, round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged themselves along, hurrying through the snow, with a long broken-backed stride.
The skin of their hands stuck to the steel of their muskets' butt-ends, for it was freezing dreadfully that night. I frequently saw a little soldier take off his shoes, in order to walk barefooted, so much did his footgear bruise him; and with every step he left a track of blood. Then, after some time, he sat down in a field for a few minutes rest and never got up again. Every man who sat down died.
Should we have left behind us those poor exhausted soldiers, who fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had somewhat refreshed their stiffened legs? Now, scarcely had they ceased to move, and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their veins, than an unconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to the ground, closed their eyes, and in one second the overworked human mechanism collapsed. They gradually sank down, their heads falling toward their knees -- without, however, quite tumbling over, for their loins and their limbs lost the capacity for moving, and became as hard as wood, impossible to bend or straighten.
The rest of us, more robust, kept still straggling on, chilled to the marrow of our bones, advancing by dint of forced movement through that cold and deadly country, crushed by pain, by defeat, by despair, above all overcome by the abominable sensation of abandonment, of death, of nothingness.
L.C. I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious looking little man, old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.After the close of the war, the doctor made a journey into the south of Switzerland and thru Italy visiting the universities and hospitals in those countries and later on visited Spain from whence he returned to France, from where after a short sojourn he departed for England, where he spent some months visiting the various hospitals, Col. Elphinstone, the Head Chief of the British Red-Cross in Tours, having furnished him with letters of introduction to a number of the leading hospital surgeons in London. When thru with his London visit the doctor returned to New York and from thence went back to his home in Minnesota.They were looking out for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy. The word "Spy" at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice exclaimed: "He must be shot!" And all those soldiers who were falling from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their guns, felt of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger, which urges on a mob to massacre.
I wanted to speak! I was at that time in command of a battalion; but they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers; they would have shot me.
One of the gendarmes said: "He has been following us for the last three days. He has been asking Information from everyone about the artillery."
I took it on myself to question this person: "What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the army?"
He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was, indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such an agitated air in my presence that I had no longer any real doubt that he was a spy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept staring at me from under his eyes with a humble, stupid, and crafty air.
The men all around to exclaimed: "To the wall! to the wall!"
I said to the gendarmes: "Do you answer for the prisoner?"
I had not ceased speaking when a terrible push threw me on my back, and in a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown down, struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a tree. He fell in the snow, nearly dead already.
And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, reloaded their guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse, and kept firing at him, just as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin.
But suddenly a cry arose of "The Prussians! the Prussians!" and all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this panic-stricken army in full flight.
The panic, generated by these shots fired at this vagabond, had filled his very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that they were themselves the originators of the scare, they rushed away and disappeared in the darkness.
I remained alone in front of the corpse with the two gendarmes whom duty had compelled to stay with me.
They lifted up this riddled piece of flesh, bruised and bleeding.
"He must be examined," said I to them.
And I handed them a box of vestas which I had in my pocket. One of the soldiers had another box. I was standing between the two.
The gendarme, who was feeling the body, called out: "Clothed in a blue blouse, trousers, and a pair of shoes."
The first match went out; we lighted a second. The man went on, as he turned out the pockets: "A horn knife, check handkerchief, a snuffbox, a bit of packthread, a piece of bread."
The second match went out; we lighted a third. The gendarme, after having handled the corpse for a long time, said: "That is all"
I said: "Strip him. We shall perhaps find something near the skin."
And, in order that the two soldiers might help each other in this task, I stood between them to give them light. I saw them, by the rapid and speedily extinguished flash of the match, take off the garments one by one, and expose to view that bleeding bundle of flesh still warm though lifeless.
And suddenly one of them exclaimed: "Good God, Colonel, it is a woman!"
I cannot describe to you the strange and poignant sensation of pain that moved my heart. I could not believe it, and I kneeled down in the snow before this shapeless pulp of flesh to see for myself: it was a woman.
The two gendarmes, speechless and stunned, waited for me to give my opinion on the matter. But I did not know what to think, what theory to adopt.
Then the brigadier slowly drawled out: "Perhaps she came to look for a son of hers in the artillery, whom she had not heard from."
And the other chimed in: "Perhaps indeed that is so." And I, who had seen some terrible things in my time, began to weep. I felt, in the presence of this corpse, in that icy cold night, the midst of that gloomy plain, at the sight of this mystery, at the sight of this murdered stranger, the meaning of that word "horror."
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