And in the isolated swampy bleakness of the garrison, one or another officer fell prey to despair, gambling, debts, and sinister men.
Any number of them lived from spying and counterspying they received Austrian guldens from the Austrian police and Russian rubles from the Russian police. They profited even from these preparations. The borderlanders felt it coming earlier than the others, not only because they were used to sensing future things but also because they could see the omens of doom every day with their own eyes. Petersburg were already starting to prepare for the Great War. By this time, the high-placed gentlemen in Vienna and St. No one could hold out against the borderland. The Radetzky March is mainly the story of the grandson who decided to follow in footsteps of his heroic grandfather.Īny stranger coming into this region was doomed to gradual decay. He was as simple and impeccable as his military record, and only the anger that sometimes took hold of him would have given a judge of human nature some inkling that Captain Trotta’s soul likewise contained the dim nocturnal abysses where storms slumber and the unknown voices of nameless ancestors. He had an average military gift, of which he provided average samples at maneuvers every year he was a good husband, suspicious of women, no gambler, grouchy, but a just officer, a fierce enemy of all deceit, unmanly conduct, cowardly safety, garrulous praise, and ambitious self–seeking. In keeping with his status, Trotta married his colonel’s not-quite-young well–off niece, the daughter of a district captain in western Bohemia he fathered a boy, enjoyed the uniformity of his healthy military life in the small garrison, rode horseback to the parade ground every morning, and played chess every afternoon with the lawyer at the café, eventually feeling at home in his rank, his station, his standing, and his repute. The round years rolled by, one by one, like peaceful, uniform wheels. “Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!” Isaiah 17:12Įmpires rise and fall… Dynasties appear and dissipate… The Radetzky March is a story about a perishment of both an empire and a family.
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