Some of the side passages looked very bad indeed, but every one somehow got through, no matter what the size of their carriage. Often at such points there were companies that rested along the grassy banks of the road; in other places one saw, to the side, great parks of small grey wagons. Those carrying straw for the bivouacs were in front; but sometimes one came upon a resting battery. The brotherhood between officers and men is another notable feature of the march of a Russian army. [Illustration: a.b. _Austro German march on Warsaw_ c _Russian resistance_ d _Russian offensive on Kosienice_ e _Germans driven west_ f _Austrians driven south-west_] At Szydlowiec, seventeen miles south of Radom, I saw the first signs of devastation, but these were not the work of the advancing Russian artillery but had been perpetrated deliberately by the retreating Germans. The tower of the town hall was crumbled to ruins. The church is not large, but has a high pointed roof, of which the open woodwork still remains, with the cupola as if caught astride of it in its fall. Inside, the beautiful painted inner roof is mutilated, but the monuments of the ancient Szydlowiecki family, and notably the graceful figure of a sleeping woman, have for the most part escaped. The floor was covered with rubbish and the damage is estimated at a very high figure. While I was in the church, the dignified old priest entered with six young men, who knelt with faces full of reverence before they set to work to clear the nave of rubbish. The Pole who told me the story of the ruin of the church told it quietly but with flashing eyes. He said the inhabitants asked rather that the whole town should be destroyed and the church be left standing. The only excuse was a few shots from the advancing Russian infantry and artillery, and there was no regular fighting there, the Germans making no resistance and retreating too quickly to blow up the castle. After Szydlowiec, the Cracow road on its way to Kielce (twenty-seven miles) passes through country of quite a different character. A long rise, and we were now close up among the troops. At one point the long train of wagons branched away to a village on our left, and out of it by another road there came in another stream of fighting men. We passed some two hundred Austrian prisoners in their blue shakos and uniforms; they were all Poles, with hardly any guard but giving no trouble; one of them courteously stepped out of the ranks to pick up my field glass, which I had dropped. These men, who talked freely to us, did not look at all miserable, only confused. The Russians behaved to them as to their own people.