In an almost incessant throng the columns of the Austrian army streamed by: white-clad cuirassiers; hussars in red and blue and grey; battery after battery of cocked-hatted, brown-garbed artillerymen, riding with or on their rumbling dull-yellow wheeled guns; battalion after battalion of white-coated linesmen; dark-green coated jägers; Hungarian grenadiers, and so on. Twenty-seven thousand officers and men and sixty field-guns in all defiled past the Eagles, proudly arrayed there above them, in front of the serried lines of glittering French bayonets along the hillsides. For five hours on end the host of captives plodded on before the rocky brow from which Napoleon surveyed the spectacle; tramping by, their muskets without bayonets and unloaded, their cartridge-boxes emptied. In several regiments the men maintained a fair semblance of discipline and military order; but the ranks of all were sadly bedraggled-looking, the white uniforms torn and soiled and besmirched with powder-smoke, with many of the men hatless, or limping from wounds, or with bound-up heads, and their arms in bloodstained slings. As had been ordered by Napoleon, they carried with them their standards; no fewer than forty silken battle-flags--for the most part cased, but here and there was to be seen one not furled, displaying, as though in futile defiance, its flaunting yellow folds with the double-headed Black Eagle. As the Austrian linesmen came abreast of where Napoleon stood, the pace of the men slackened. Every eye was turned to look at “him”; at the small grey-coated figure on foot beside the watchfire, standing near the crestfallen group of their own generals, a few paces from the bright and brilliant-hued cavalcade of French marshals and the staff. All stared at Napoleon, gazing as if under a spell. Then, in the midst of it all, this happened. Suddenly, as they passed Napoleon, a shout rose from among the ranks of the defeated army: “Es lebe der Kaiser!” (“Long live the Emperor!”) The cry burst forth with startling effect. It was repeated, and then several men took it up. But what did it mean? “Es lebe der Kaiser!” was the national German greeting in salute to their own Austrian sovereign as Head of the Empire, to the Kaiser at Vienna, the Emperor of Germany. Did the soldiers who first raised the cry intend it for that, or to hail Napoleon, as his own men did, with a “Vive l’Empereur!”? The words bore the same meaning. Or did the men fling the words at Napoleon in a sort of bravado, as a show of defiance? Some of the Austrians assuredly did mean them so; to relieve the breaking strain, the terrible tension of the ordeal. At least some of the French officers near Napoleon took that view of it. “As they passed by,” describes one, “the prisoners, seized with wonder, with admiration, slowed down in their march to gaze at their conqueror, and some cried out ‘Long live the Emperor!’ but no doubt under very different emotions; some with evident mortification.”