Each regiment was headed by its field music and colours,
and when darkness fell and the street lights were turned on, the
shriek of the fifes and the clamour of the drums and the rhythmic
tramp of marching feet reminded me of a torchlight political parade
at home.

At the head of the column rode a squadron of gendarmes--the
policemen of the army--gorgeous in uniforms of bottle-green and
silver and mounted on sleek and shining horses. After them came
the infantry: solid columns of grey-clad figures with the silhouettes of
the mounted officers rising at intervals above the forest of spike-
crowned helmets. After the infantry came the field artillery, the big
guns rattling and rumbling over the cobblestones, the cannoneers
sitting with folded arms and heels drawn in, and wooden faces, like
servants on the box of a carriage. These were the same guns that
had been in almost constant action for the preceding fortnight and
that for forty hours had poured death and destruction into the city,
yet both men and horses were in the very pink of condition, as keen
as razors, and as hard as nails; the blankets, the buckets, the
knapsacks, the intrenching tools were all strapped in their appointed
places, and the brown leather harness was polished like a lady's tan
shoes. After the field batteries came the horse artillery and after the
horse artillery the pom-poms--each drawn by a pair of sturdy
draught horses driven with web reins by a soldier sitting on the
limber--and after the pom-poms an interminable line of machine-
guns, until one wondered where Krupp's found the time and the
steel to make them all. Then, heralded by a blare of trumpets and a
crash of kettledrums, came the cavalry; cuirassiers with their steel
helmets and breastplates covered with grey linen, hussars in
befrogged grey jackets and fur busbies, also linen-covered, and
finally the Uhlans, riding amid a forest of lances under a cloud of
fluttering pennons. But this was not all, nor nearly all, for after the
Uhlans came the sailors of the naval division, brown-faced,
bewhiskered fellows with their round, flat caps tilted rakishly and the
roll of the sea in their gait; then the Bavarians in dark blue, the
Saxons in light blue, and the Austrians--the same who had handled
the big guns so effectively--in uniforms of a beautiful silver grey.
Accompanying one of the Bavarian regiments was a victoria drawn
by a fat white horse, with two soldiers on the box. Horse and
carr