The consequences were more serious to some of the members of a second party, despatched to Ladenburg. In the middle of the night, the sentry posted on the bridge mistook the trotting of some stray donkey for a charge of dragoons, and firing his rifle, without farther deliberation he threw himself over the bridge, breaking a thigh and a couple of ribs in the fall. The others stood their ground; but it is well known that several of the party were laid up next day with _nerven feber_, (a sort of low typhus,) brought on by the fear and agitation they had undergone. These facts are merely mentioned to show that, had the government, at the commencement of the outbreak, made the slightest show of firmness, they would not have met with the resistance which they afterwards found. The dragoons, after dodging about for two days and nights, worn out with fatigue and hunger, at length allowed themselves to be captured near the frontiers of Würtemberg. It seems that the soldiers positively refused to make use of their arms after the Duke's flight, which, indeed, is the only way of accounting for three hundred mounted dragoons, with sixteen pieces of artillery fully supplied with ammunition, falling into the hands of as many peasants, who would undoubtedly have fled at the first shot fired. Whilst these events passed, the reins of government at Carlsruhe had been seized by Brentano, Peter, Fickler, and Goegg--the latter a convicted felon. Struve and Blind, condemned to eight years' imprisonment for their rebellion the year before, were released, and, with their friends, took a prominent part in the formation of the new ministry. The war department was given to a Lieutenant Eichfeld, who, by the way, had some time previously quitted the service, on account of a duel in which he displayed the white feather. His first measure was to order the whole body of soldiers, now entirely deprived of their officers, to select others from the ranks. The choice was just what might have been expected; and instances occurred in which recruits of three weeks' standing passed at once to the rank of captain and major. All discipline was soon at an end. The army, consisting of 17,000 men, was placed under the command of Lieutenant Sigel, a young man of twenty-two, whose sole claims to preferment seem to have been, that he was compromised in Struve's abortive attempt at Friburg, and had since contributed a number of articles, violently abusive of the government, to some low revolutionary newspapers. Headquarters were established at Heidelberg, where Sigel, accompanied by Eichfeld, arrived on the 19th of May.