written in their hearts. All summer long, in their black caps and linen
pantaloons, they would trudge after him, begging a crust here and a
cheese there, to spread his teachings far and wide under the thatched
roofs.

"Then came 1811. I have heard my father tell how in the heat of that year
a great red comet burned in the sky, even as that we now see, my friend.
God forbid that this portends blood. But in the coming spring the French
conscripts filled our sacred land like a swarm of locusts, devouring as
they went. And at their head, with the pomp of Darius, rode that
destroyer of nations and homes, Napoleon. What was Germany then? Ashes.
But the red embers were beneath, fanned by Father Jahn. Napoleon at
Dresden made our princes weep. Never, even in the days of the Frankish
kings, had we been so humbled. He dragged our young men with him to
Russia, and left them to die moaning on the frozen wastes, while he drove
off in his sledge.

"It was the next year that Germany rose. High and low, rich and poor,
Jaeger and Landwehr, came flocking into the army, and even the old men,
the Landsturm. Russia was an ally, and later, Austria. My father, a last
of sixteen, was in the Landwehr, under the noble Blucher in Silesia, when
they drove the French into the Katzbach and the Neisse, swollen by the
rains into torrents. It had rained until the forests were marshes. Powder
would not burn. But Blucher, ah, there was a man! He whipped his great
sabre from under his cloak, crying 'Vorwarts! Vorwarts!' And the Landwehr
with one great shout slew their enemies with the butts of their muskets
until their arms were weary and the bodies were tossed like logs in the
foaming waters. They called Blucher Marachall Vorwarts!

"Then Napoleon was sent to Elba. But the victors quarrelled amongst