Sometimes he hunts in couples, sometimes he goes in threes, and
sometimes in fives. When he lights upon a village, he holds it
to ransom; when he comes upon a city, he captures it, making it
literally the prisoner of his bow and his spear. A writer in
Blackwood's Magazine once drove the people of Lancashire
to
madness by declaring that, in the Rebellion of 1745, Manchester
'was taken by a Scots sergeant and a wench;' but it is a
notorious fact that Nancy submitted without a murmur to five
Uhlans, and that Bar-le-Duc was occupied by two. When the Uhlan
arrives in a conquered city, he visits the mayor, and makes his
usual inordinate demands for meat, drink, and cigars. If his
demands are acceded to, he accepts everything with a grin. If he
is refused, he remarks, likewise with a grin, that he will come
again to-morrow with three thousand light horsemen, and he
gallops away; but in many cases he does not return. The secret
of the fellow's success lies mainly in his unblushing impudence,
his easy mendacity, and that intimate knowledge of every highway
and byway of the country which, thanks to the military
organisation of the Prussian army, he has acquired in the
regimental school.
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