rse--I was in his
Pandour regiment, worse luck! But after a skirmish or two, what with the
roads and what with the enemy, our horses were foundered and useless.
"The horses are used up!" says the Oberhauptmann. "Lassen Sie hinter!"
he cries; and I warrant that he would have pushed on to Prague with his
staff, had they allowed him. "General Hinterlassen" we called him after
that.'

'A dashing commander, too,' cried Sir Gervas. 'I would fain have served
under him.'

'Aye, and he had a way of knocking his recruits into shape which would
scarce be relished by our good friends here in the west country,' said
Saxon. 'I remember that after the leaguer of Salzburg, when we had taken
the castle or fortalice of that name, we were joined by some thousand
untrained foot, which had been raised in Dalmatia in the Emperor's
employ. As they approached our lines with waving of hands and blowing of
bugles, old Marshal Hinterlassen discharged a volley of all the cannon
upon the walls at them, killing three score and striking great panic
into the others. "The rogues must get used to standing fire sooner
or later," said he, "so they may as well commence their education at
once."'

'He was a rough schoolmaster,' I remarked. 'He might have left that part
of the drill to the enemy.'

'Yet his soldiers loved him,' said Saxon. 'He was not a man, when a city
had been forced, to inquire into every squawk of a woman, or give ear to
every burgess who chanced to find his strong-box a trifle the lighter.
But as to the slow commanders, I have known none to equal Brigadier
Baumgarten, also of the Imperial service. He would break up his
winter-quarters and sit down before some place of strength, where he
would raise a sconce here, and sink a sap there, until his soldiers were
sick of the very sight of the place. So he would play with it, as a cat
with a mouse, until at last it was about to open its gates, when,
as like as not, he would raise the leaguer and march back into his
winter-quarters. I served two campaigns under him without honour, sack,
plunder, or emolument, save a beggarly stipend of three gulden a day,
paid in clipped money, six months in arrear. But mark ye the folk upon
yonder tower! They are waving their kerchiefs as though something were
visible to them.'

'I can see nothing,' I answered, shading my eyes and gazing down the
tree-sprinkled valley which rose slowly in green uplands to the grassy
Blackdown hills.

'Those on the ho