"The plate-glass fronts of many shops in the principal thoroughfares are smashed, and the interiors present a picture of desolation, overturned cash registers and objects that have not been stolen lying broken and scattered on the floor, but the majority of the establishments that have been ransacked do not show outward signs of it. The system seems to have been to obtain ingress from the back.
"In the Rasia there is a stately mansion. Its owner, M. Kersmanovitz, died a short time ago, leaving large sums for charitable purposes. The house was occupied by his widow when the war broke out. Chalked on the door were names distinguished in the Austro-Hungarian peerage--Baron Zichy, Graf Festetics, and Graf Vanderstraten, all Lieutenants on the staff, who had been its denizens during occupation. Though their tenure was brief they had made the most of their time. The place was gutted, carpets torn up, tapestry torn down, and pictures destroyed. It was also indescribably filthy. This may have been the work of the soldiery after the departure of the young noblemen.
"The poor suffered equally with the rich. A humble restaurant used by the working classes, one of two or three still open, was despoiled of its linen and cutlery. Small shops had been sacked as well as the larger establishments. It was all fish that came to the Austrian net. I have not yet met any one whose dwelling escaped. The Russian Legation is wrecked.
"The Royal Palace was thrown open to the people. 'It is yours,' said the Austrian liberators in the generosity of their hearts; but they had gone over it with care first."
A German cavalry division was pursuing a division of English infantry. The English ranks were suddenly reinforced; they turned and charged the Germans, who fled in disorder.
All the Germans fled--but one. Says an English soldier, Trooper S. Cargill:
When they saw us coming they turned and fled, at least all but one, who came rushing at us with his lance at the charge. I caught hold of his horse, which was half mad with terror, and my chum was going to run the rider through when he noticed the awful glaze in his eyes, and we saw that the poor devil was dead.
That ghastly vision of the mounted corpse can find no place in histories of this war. It has no historical significance even if it did receive a place in the cable dispatches from the front. Only from the lips of soldiers or from their pens when they snatch a few moments from the business of war to write to their people at home come such naïvely graphic accounts of trivial but illuminative incidents.