However that might be, the enemy was approaching, and the little troop resolved to defend vigorously.
Madame Millet's house was the second or third on the right as you came into the town from Villers-Cotterets—the same road that the enemy was taking.
The windows looked up that road.
We went up into the attics, which we turned into a general camping ground,—for Madame Millet, my mother, and the two daughters had settled not to stir out. From the windows of these attics we could see the approach of a little corps of about a hundred men.
Was it, we questioned, an isolated corps like ours at Crespy? or the advance-guard of a more considerable force? We were unable to tell, or rather to see, from our attic windows, as the road turned a few paces outside the town, was lost behind the houses that stood on our right, and completely cut off from sight a quarter of a league further by the wood of Tillet, which was large enough to conceal a much larger force than the one that had just passed through it.
It was Prussian cavalry. The men were clothed in short blue coats, tight-fitting round the chest, loose below and fastened at the waist by belts.
They wore grey trousers, with a blue stripe like their coats, and had small vizored helmets on their heads, fastened by a leather chin-strap.
Each man carried a sabre and two pistols.
I can still see the first rank, preceded by two trumpeters, holding their trumpets in their hands but not blowing them.