THE PRUSSIAN UHLAN.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 895, 17 December 1870, Page 3

THE PRUSSIAN UHLAN.

He is a horse soldier—a Lancer; and the warriors of his name with whom we have hitherto been most familiar were the-Aus-trian Uhlans in their scanty white tunics, tight blue pantaloons, and lace up boots. The Prussian Uhlan of 1870 seems destined to fill in French legendary .chronicle the place which during the invasions of 1814-15, was occupied by the Cossack. The Uhlan is a great traveller, Nancy, Bar-le-Duc, Commercy, Rhqioas, Chalons, St. Dizer, Chaumont, have all heard of him.. The Uhlan makes himself quite at home, and drops in, entirely in a friendly way, on mayors and corporations, asking not only himself to dinner, but an indefinite number of Uhlans, who, he says, may be expected hourly. The Uhlan wears a blue uniform turned up with yellow, and to the end of his lance is affixed a streamer, resembling a dirty white pocket handkerchief. 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 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 murmer 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, driuk, and oigars. If his demands are acceeded 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 fel low'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 Prussians, he has acquired in the regimental school. He gives himself out to be the precursor of an imminently advancing army, when, after all, he is only a boldly adventurous free lance, who has ridden thirty miles across country on the chance of picking up something ia the way of information or victuals. For the rest, the Prussian Uhlan does not seem destitute of many human traits. At some village post office the other day he was very particular in making requisitions for postage stamps, and wanted itheia of all procurable colors. The postmaster expressed his amazement. The stamps, he pleaded, were no longer of any use in a Province which King William had declared annexed to Germany. J * They are for my Kinder album " —for my children's collection —quoth the Uhlan. And again, one of these wandering specimens, being sent to mount guard over a telegraph station, got into talk with the telegraph clerk's children, and after a while took the head of a little fkxenhaired girl between his huge brown hands and kissed it. Sword and lance, blood and gunpowder, and pillage and desolation bad all faded away from Hans Breit* man, far away into the Ewiglteit. He only saw his placid Saxon or Pomeranian home ; his eld grandmother at her spinning wheel; his father smoking his big porcelain pipe before the fire ; the helmet which a Frenchman's sabre cleft in two at Jena hanging over the mantle; the kind pastor looking in at the window to bid them good-day ; the bird singing in •the cage; the print on the wall of Oretchen pulling her flower to pieces; the palm branch behind the mirror with the box-wood frame ; the house mother pouring the savory mid-day soup into the platters; the troop of white haired children careering about, brandishing abundant butter-brods ; and Schnaps, the dog with the shaggy bide and one eye, leaping upon them and wagging his tail for joy. The Uhlan looked back into the distant laud, and saw peace smiling and fearing God, /doing no harm. When was their peace upon earth ? Five thousand years ago ? lam sure, to me, it seems so; yet 'tis but six weeks since.