At the base of the mountain lay a little market-town, reached by a winding road up which, with flags and music, a glad procession was now marching to welcome the home-coming hussars. Hearing the band and seeing the banners from afar, Richard and his companions fired their pistols as a signal to their slower comrades, who presently came up with them. All were there,—not a man missing. Dressing their ranks, the horsemen waited to receive the procession. What occurred when it reached them is more than the present generation of readers can be asked to picture to themselves.
A banquet had been spread for the home-coming heroes, and after partaking of it generously, the toil-worn but happy hussars, who had not slept for six nights, danced through the seventh until broad daylight.
All this is no piece of fiction, no picture of the imagination. A young hussar, now a veteran of many wars, wrote it all down in his diary as it occurred, and is to-day ready to take oath that it is every word true as here described.
CHAPTER XVII.
TIMELY AID.
Meanwhile the Hungarian army had advanced to meet the enemy; but being ill officered and poorly drilled, with no experience whatever of actual fighting, it was easily routed. The Austrians had but to sweep the highway with their twelve-pounders, and the opposing centre gave way at once. It was a shameful defeat: all turned tail and ran before the enemy; and when the Congreve rockets were sent, ricochetting, hissing, and spitting fire, to explode among the panic-stricken fugitives, the chaos became complete.
On such trying occasions, one man with his nerves under control is invaluable. Ödön Baradlay was no soldier, no born tactician, but he possessed that first requisite of success in any calling, self-control. As soon as he saw that the battle was going against his countrymen, although his place was in the rear as commissary-general, he threw himself on his horse and made an attempt to save the day. To rally the fugitives, demoralised as they were by the bursting of shells on every side, was hopeless. Along the highway he saw advancing a troop of the enemy's cavalry, sweeping everything before it.
"Let us give them something to do," said he to himself, scanning the fleeing troops in quest of a few young men who might respond to his call. "Look here, boys," he shouted, "shall we let the enemy capture all our cannon without our striking a blow?"
A little knot of sturdy lads paused in their flight at this call. They were only common soldiers, but they shouted to one another: "Let us die for our country!" and therewith faced about against the cavalry that came charging down upon them.
Suddenly help appeared from an unexpected quarter: out of the acacia hedge that lined the highway such a raking fire was opened upon the cavalry that it was thrown into disorder and forced to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the road strewn with its dead and wounded. With loud huzzas there now sprang out from behind the hedge the Death's Head Legion, its leader, the long-legged Mausmann, waving his hat and calling to Ödön: "Hurrah, patron! That's what we call barricade tactics."