"In the second place, our light-fingered forces carry off all the horses
we can take with us; all toilet things, glasses, stockings, brushes,
boots and shoes, linen--in a word, everything is `stuck to!'

"The officers, I may add, are no exception to the private soldiers, but
steal in their proper precedence, appropriating whatever objects of art
or pictures of value they can find in the mansions we visit in these
archaeological tours of ours. Only yesterday, the adjutant of my
regiment, a noble by birth, but I am sorry to say not a gentleman either
by manners or moral demeanour, came to me and said, `Fritz Dort, do me
the favour to steal for me all the loot you can bring me. We will at
all events show Moltke that he has not sent us into this war for
nothing.' Of course, this being an order from a superior officer, I
could not say anything but `At your command, your highness!' But what
will come of it all only God knows! I'm afraid, when there is nothing
left to lay our hands on, we will begin to appropriate the goods and
chattels of each other; although, little mother, I will endeavour to
keep my fingers clean, if only for your sake!"

Fritz, however, soon had something more exciting to think about than the
morals of his comrades; for, only a few days after he joined his
regiment, he went into action again at the battle of Amiens, when the
Germans drove back Faidherbe's "army of the north," routing them with
much slaughter, and taking many prisoners, besides thirteen cannon. A
French regiment of marines was ridden down by a body of German Hussars,
who were almost decimated by the charge--which resembled that of
Balaclava, the "sea soldiers" standing behind entrenchments with their
guns.

Later on, too, Fritz was in a more memorable engagement. It occurred on
the morning of the 23rd of December at Pont Noyelles, where the army of
General Manteuffel, numbering about fifty thousand men with some forty
guns, attacked a force of almost double the strength, commanded by
Faidherbe, the last of the generals on whom the French relied outside of
Paris. The two armies confronted each other from opposing heights,
separated by the valley of the Somme and a small, winding stream, which
falls into the larger river at Daours, on the right and left banks of
which the contending forces were respectively aligned; and the combat
opened about eleven o'clock in the forenoon with a heavy cannonade,
under cover of which the German ti