At last, at five o’clock, the first Frenchmen appeared, a handful of Chasseurs-à-cheval, who rode in not from the west, from which quarter they were expected, but by the Basle road at the other side of the town, where they must have passed dangerously close to the enemy. Like the patrol which had been the heralds of the first occupation, they were merely a scouting party, and, having established the fact that the Germans had retired, quickly rode off again to make their report to the Staff. The people, who had followed them in a body, then split up into two main detachments, and streamed out to Dornach and Brunstatt, on the Thann and Altkirch roads, the Germans having meanwhile massed their forces two or three miles to the east and south-east of the town, from which they were in full view, at Rixheim, Habsheim, and Zimmersheim close to the Basle railway, just about where the French had taken up their position after the first occupation. This time, however, there was to be no triumphant entry—at least not as yet. The enemy meant to make a fight for it, and so far as that day, August 18th, was concerned, the faithful population of Mulhouse had had their long wait for nothing. During the night a big change was made in the disposition of the German troops. From their lines on the Basle railway they advanced above and below the town till they occupied a position of considerably more than a semicircle round it from Pfastatt and Lutterbach on the north to Brubach, Brunstatt, and Hochstatt on the south, and some of them were even at Dornach, to the west of the town. The French line, which was much straighter, extended from Illfurth on the south, by Zillisheim and Morschweiler to Reichweiler on the north, where it slightly outflanked the German right at Pfastatt.