One of the lieutenants speaks of him in a sarcastic vein, and evidently with some degree of prejudice. According to his account, there was more bustle than business at the post. The men were harassed with watches, detachments, and pickets, without purpose and without end. The cannon must be drawn forth every day from their proper places, and paraded about the town, seemingly only to make a stir and uproar. The lieutenant was especially annoyed by the colonel’s passion for music. Whether his men when off duty were well or ill clad, whether they kept their muskets clean and bright, and their ammunition in good order, was of little moment to the colonel, he never inquired about it;—but the music! that was the thing! the hautboys—he never could have enough of them. The main guard was at no great distance from his quarters, and the music could not linger there long enough. There was a church close by, surrounded by palings; the officer on guard must march round and round it, with his men and musicians, looking, says the lieutenant, like a Catholic procession, wanting only the cross and the banner, and chanting choristers. According to the same authority, Rahl was a boon companion; made merry until a late hour in the night, and then lay in bed until nine o’clock in the morning. When the officers came to parade between ten end eleven o’clock, and presented themselves at head-quarters, he was often in his bath, and the guard must be kept waiting half an hour longer. On parade, too, when any other commander would take occasion to talk with his staff officers and others upon duty about the concerns of the garrison, the colonel attended to nothing but the music—he was wrapped up in it to the great disgust of the testy lieutenant. And then, according to the latter, he took no precautions against the possibility of being attacked. A veteran officer, Major Von Dechow, proposed that some works should be thrown up, where the cannon might be placed, ready against any assault. “Works!—pooh—pooh:”—the colonel made merry with the very idea—using an unseemly jest, which we forbear to quote. “An assault by the rebels! Let them come! We’ll at them with the bayonet.” The veteran Dechow gravely persisted in his counsel. “Herr Colonel,” said he, respectfully, “it costs almost nothing; if it does not help, it does not harm.” The pragmatical lieutenant, too, joined in the advice, and offered to undertake the work. The jovial colonel only repeated his joke, went away laughing at them both, and no works were thrown up. The lieutenant, sorely nettled, observes sneeringly: “He believed the name of Rahl more fearful and redoubtable than all the works of Vauban and Cohorn, and that no rebel would dare to encounter it. A fit man truly to command a corps! and still more to defend a place lying so near an enemy having a hundred times his advantages. Every thing with him was done heedlessly and without forecast.”[153]