But it was the foreigners resident in Mulhouse who at that time suffered the worst treatment at the hands of the enemy. Directly after the retreat of the French, several scores of them, men of all ages (from boys of fourteen to old men of over eighty) were peremptorily rounded up in the town barracks, and carried off to Germany as prisoners, leaving behind them practically all their possessions except the clothes in which they stood up. Before their departure, after they had been left for many anxious hours herded together without any food, they were suddenly told to form themselves into ranks, and the first batch were lined up, in front of some soldiers with loaded rifles, with their backs to the wall. Not unnaturally they concluded that they were to be shot, and some of them even gripped the hands of those standing near them in a last farewell. But it was only the torture of the anticipation of death, not death itself, that they were to suffer, though I suppose none of them will ever forget the time of agonized suspense that they went through before they were brusquely ordered by the officer in command to fall out, with the explanation that he had meant to show them exactly what would happen to them if they gave any trouble, and that now they knew. Afterwards, when they were on their way to their first prison-camp, one young fellow who had just married a girl-wife, who was forcibly torn away from his side, driven half crazy by his sufferings, made a feeble attempt at an assault on the guard, and was at once shot. The rest of them, after a long journey in cattle trucks, were kept in prison-camps in the interior of Germany for periods of varying length up to about six months, in many cases insufficiently fed and clothed, and as a rule it was the Englishmen among them who were the most harshly treated and set to do the most ignominious and disagreeable tasks. All of them during their journey east and on their arrival at Rastadt were constantly jeered at and insulted, not only by the populace, but by their guards.