With them, and lined up all
along the village street, was one battery, with the drivers dismounted,
and all that body were at ease. There were men sitting on the doorsteps
of the houses and men trotting to the canteen-wagon or to the village
shops to buy food; and there were men reading papers which a pedlar had
brought round. Mud and dust had splashed them all; upon some there was a
look of great fatigue; they were of all shapes and sizes, and altogether
it was the sort of sight you would not see in any other service in the
world. It was the sort of sight which so disgusted the Emperor Joseph
when he made his little tour to spy out the land before the
Revolutionary Wars. It was the sort of sight which made Massenbach
before Grandpre marvel whether the French forces were soldiers at all,
and the sort of sight which made Valmy inexplicable to the King of
Prussia and his staff. It was the sort of sight which eighteen months
later still convinced Mack in Tournai that the Duke of York's plan was a
plan "of annihilation." It is a trap for judgment is the French service.
So they lounged about and bought bread, and shifted their packs, and so
the drivers stood by their horses, and so they all waited and slouched;
until there came, not a man with a bugle nor anything with the slightest
savour of drama but a little fellow running along thumping in his loose
leather leggings, who went up to a Major of Artillery and saluted, and
immediately afterwards the Major put his hand up, and then down a
village street, from a point which we could not see came a whistle, and
the whole of that mass of men began to swarm.
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