The French did not press upon the orderly Prussian retirement, and, indeed, both of the bridges across the Saar remained in the possession of the Prussians. The firing had almost died out when, soon after noon, the French began to bombard the lower bridge and the railway station from three batteries which they had brought up on to the heights overhanging Saarbrück. One of these was a mitrailleuse, the storm of bullets from which swept the bridge so that nothing could live on it, and an unfortunate burgher, who did not believe in the mitrailleuse, had to alter his views on this subject when the lower part of his person was riddled by the bullets it poured forth. The Prussian artillery about Malstatt tried with four guns to make head against the French batteries, but had to give up the attempt and retire. The final detachment of Prussians remained under the shelter of Hagen’s Hotel while the French were shelling the railway station, but ultimately ran the gauntlet and found refuge in the Köllerthal. The casualties of the day were trivial. The Prussians had eight men killed, four officers and seventy-one men wounded. The French loss amounted to six officers and eighty men. During their short stay in and about Saarbrück the French behaved with great moderation. General Frossard, on the evening of the attack, sent for the Mayor of Saarbrück, and told him that his orders were very strict against marauding, and that if any cases occurred the townspeople were to take the numbers on the caps of the evil-doers, when the fellows would be severely punished. But there was little occasion for complaint: the French soldiers paid their way honestly. They did, to be sure, drink a brewery dry, but the brewer refrained from reporting them. A corporal attempted to kiss pretty Fräulein Sophie--the _dame du comptoir_ of the Rhinescher Hof; but a captain caught him in the act, ran him off the premises, and himself kissed the winsome lass. On the morning of the 6th the Prussian troops were back again in Saarbrück: the French had gone back to the Spicheren position on the previous night. [Illustration: THE STORMING OF THE TAKU FORTS BY A. HILLIARD ATTERIDGE] “There’s many a victory, surely, decisive and complete, As meant a sight less fightin’ than a hardly fought defeat; And if people do their duty, every man in his degree, Why defeat may be more glorious than a victory needs to be.” These lines from a modern ballad put very clearly a truth that is too often forgotten. Victories are remembered and commemorated by medals and names inscribed in letters of gold on our regimental colours; but people do not talk about defeats. Yet when brave men fail against desperate odds, the story of their gallant efforts to carry their flag to victory is quite as well worth the telling and the remembering as if the chance of war had given them the coveted prize of success.