The same instant a shot came from a cottage behind them, and a rush of shrieking women down the lane. We turned at once and waited: the Uhlans, some eight of them, had wheeled back out of sight, where the cottages ran into the wood. The men shouted to the women to keep indoors; a few stray children ran back and forwards in the lane, crying. Then the door of a far cottage opened, and the crippled soldier who had fired the shot was half-carried out. A fine red-bearded fellow. He was perspiring, inarticulate with rage at having missed and with the lust of fighting. We shoved him into the car, with a few more women, and got back to Wavre. As we passed, we saw some thirty of the Civic Guard shut in a yard, down a lane, behind a wooden barrier.
Even the civic calm had begun to quiver. The surging, homeless crowd of villagers were talking loudly at the corners; and every now and then a farmer in shirtsleeves bicycled furiously in, to complain of a house occupied or horses stolen. The German outposts were all round us, and the place undefended.
The utterly helpless agitation of a population unable to do anything, seeing itself, without an hour's notice from the authorities, forced to surrender home after home, and forbidden to resist, was an inexpressibly painful sight, and cannot occur often, even in war. Undefended towns, when abandoned, generally have some warning. Here the enemy dropped out of the sky in an hour; and the peasants looked round to find their own army gone. There was not even the previous "working up" of a losing fight.
A shout and a rush. A cyclist, red-flushed, raced into the square, brandishing a Uhlan helmet, picked up—who knows where? Another greater shouting and swarming, and two stout farmers rode in, leading four splendid Uhlan horses, Irish-bred, and full of mettle. Where did they come from? What did it all mean? Time may show.
Waterloo, Thursday night.
To-day's story is still unfinished.
As the day wore on at Wavre, it became clear that Brussels was to be included in the general evacuation. The sound of the guns could be followed, as the Belgians fell back towards Antwerp.
This was, then, no more a matter of "Uhlan-hunting," by withdrawal and encircling movement. The Prussians had penetrated too far, by surprise or with foreknowledge; the country was being evacuated.
The horses of Uhlans captured were fresh, signifying no lost or wandering parties, but portions of a main column that had camped near. The troops, also, which we had seen were behaving quietly, not in the savage manner of the after-fight. They knew the country was clear of soldiers, and could take their time. To this, probably, we owed our own immunity at Gastouche. A column of some eight hundred horse could be seen with the glass moving over the hills south of Wavre.
We heard that Louvain was being evacuated. About five o'clock we left the Civil Guard behind their railings, helpless and furious, and hurtled towards Brussels. To some twenty little patrols of cavalry and cars we gave the news. Their faces told me it was not the unexpected.