THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
ant of the Badish army, which transformed me into a respectable-looking officer and gave me a sort of military consciousness which until then I had not possessed.
Colonel Tiedemann succeeded in maintaining among the garrison—which was composed partly of regular Badish soldiers and partly of volunteers—pretty good discipline. Only once, as far as I can remember, I witnessed a serious breach of order. Some soldiers thought they had detected a spy, and soon a furious crowd rushed after the poor fellow, who tried to save himself by flight, but who succumbed after a few steps to the saber thrusts and stones hurled at him. It was all the work of a moment. The officers who accidentally were near, among them myself, succeeded, after a while, in quieting the soldier mob, but we were unable to save the victim. We had also other excitements.
One morning, shortly after break of day, I was awakened by a violent explosion on the street immediately under my window. As I jumped out of bed the thought struck me that the Prussians might, during the night, have penetrated into the city, and that there was now a street fight going on. A second explosion, immediately above the house, and the rattling noise of heavy objects falling upon the roof, taught me that the fortress was being bombarded, and that a shell had knocked down the chimney of my house. One explosion came after another, and the guns of our fortress boomed in response. I hurried as quickly as possible to headquarter in the castle and there I beheld a heartrending spectacle. The court of the castle was crowded with citizens, among them many women and children who had fled out of their houses and instinctively sought in the vicinity of the commander, protection against the threatening catastrophe. Most of the grown-up people, and even some of the children, carried beds or boxes and all
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