A single French regiment would have driven the whole pack like chaff before the wind, say the would-be wise. It may be so, say I, but they would not have driven away the spirit; one may laugh at the individual signs; no one then, not even Buonaparte himself, laughed at the whole. On one and the same day the cry went through the whole of Lower Germany from the Vistula to the Elbe, from the Baltic to Berlin "The French are coming!" They say now that this cry was raised on purpose to see what Lower Germany would do. If that is true, then they had their wish: Lower Germany stood the test. Everywhere, far and wide, the alarm-bell sounded, not a village remained at home; everywhere there was marching hither and thither, and the "single French regiment" must have had long legs to crush the movement in all places at once. The Stemhagen folk marched on Ankershagen; the French were said to be in Ankershagen. The Malchin folk marched on Stemhagen; the French were said to be in Stemhagen. Yes, it was a queer medley. In the market-place at Stemhagen the pike-men were divided into companies; Droz and the Miller's Friedrich were to manage them because they were the only ones who understood anything about war; but the burghers would not obey their commands, because the one was a Frenchman and the other a Miller's man. Nobody would stand in the rear rank. Deichert, the shoemaker, objected because Bank stood in the front; Groth, the taxgatherer, because Stahl the weaver, who was in the front, always sent the reverse end of the pike into his ribs in levelling bayonets, and he could not put up with it.