, who thought victory could be gained by one
strenuous effort, tried to arrest the departing troops, endeavoring to
bring them back to another advance. When they were at last distributed
in the villages, the exhausted Germans found rest and refreshment for
the first time for forty-eight hours. They had lost a tenth part of
their powers of endurance in those dreadful two days spent on the hills
in sight of Dijon.

The brigade had retreated, as one who jumps goes a step or two backward
to obtain more impetus. The next morning, January 23, they ware again
on the march to Dijon. This time, however, they chose another way to
avoid the batteries of Talant and Fontaine, and approached the town
from the north instead of from the west. Following the road and the
railway embankment from Langres to Dijon, the German troops pressed
forward without halting. The French outposts and breastworks soon fell
before the advancing Germans, and made no stand till they got to the
Faubourg St. Nicholas, the northeast suburb of Dijon. The greater
number of the Germans stationed themselves on the embankment, but the
walls of the vineyard, plentifully loopholed, pressed them hard with
shot. Toward evening the second battalion of the 61st, to which Wilhelm
belonged, received the order to advance. Over pleasure-gardens and
vineyards they went, through poor people's deserted houses the four
companies of skirmishers worked their way to the entrance of the Rue
St. Catherine, a long, narrow street. Just at the end stood a large
three-storied factory, whose front, filled with large high windows,
looked like a framework of stone and iron. At every window there was a
crowd of soldiers; the whole front bristled with death-dealing weapons.
Sixteen windows were on each floor, and at every window at least three
rows of four soldiers stood. It was therefore easy to reckon the total
number at six hundred at the very least.

As the points of the German bayonets came round the corner in sight of
this fortress a terrible change took place: in the twinkling of an eye
all the openings blazed out at once, and the building seemed to shake
from its foundations; forty-eight red tongues of flame blazed out
suddenly to right and left, as if so many throats of Vulcan or abysses
into hell had been opened, and soon the whole building was wrapped in a
thick white smoke, through which the men were invisible. Then a fresh
roar and fresh bursts of flame, and fresh puffing out o