As we approached the Prussian frontier the German resistance became sterner, and they made more frequent attempts to rally. As I have said, their retreat never assumed the character of a rout--very far from it. Only straggling or isolated parties ever fell into disorder. Their retirement was steady and orderly as far as their military movements were concerned; but in the towns and villages they behaved like beasts. We had plenty of evidence that nearly all their junior officers, and thousands of their men, never lost an opportunity of getting drunk. The Kaiser was said to be a teetotaler: the Crown Prince was often as drunk as a lord--a German lord; and it is said that when in this condition he beat his wife so badly that she left the palace, and took refuge in the house of a nobleman. The story was told on excellent authority; otherwise I should not run the risk of being thought a gossip-monger by repeating it. I have, myself, seen the man in the company of courtesans; and, apparently, under the influence of drink. Though the Germans made attempts to beat back our pursuit, and to some extent checked it, they could not altogether stop it; and I think the gradual slackening of our endeavours to beat them quite out of Poland was the outcome of the men's exhaustion. The country was in a terrible state. The Germans had no time or opportunity to bury many of their dead, and the whole district, for hundreds of miles, was strewn with the bodies of men and horses, sometimes half covered by water, often floating in it. Though the weather was changing, and becoming colder, especially at night-time, portions of the days were hot, close, or muggy. Consequently the corpses soon began to decay, and the whole land stank revoltingly; and the men kept their pipes constantly alight to counteract the offensiveness. Owing to the state of the ground it was scarcely possible to bury many of these bodies, and they were left to rot away where they lay, or floated. Our own dead were conveyed to the cemeteries and burying-grounds; but the people would not tolerate the desecrating Germans in "God's acre." Amongst the enemy's dead were some Austrians, showing that the troops of their nation had been engaged in this region. On the afternoon of the 26th we came to a standstill near the River Warta. The headquarters of the 40th were at a small village the name of which I never clearly heard. Very few people were left in it; but others arrived when they heard that it was in our hands. All those who had most to fear from the enemy (that is, all those who possessed a rouble's worth of property) had been in hiding in the woods, where some of them had been living in underground burrows wherever they could find a spot dry enough to construct them in.