Under the Tartar Wall, as I climbed again to the ground-level, I met
the head of fresh columns of men. This time they were white
troops--French Infanterie Coloniale, in dusty blue suits of torn and
discoloured Nankeen. There must have been thousands of them, for after
some delay they got into movement, and, enveloped in thick clouds of
dust, these solid companies of blue uniforms, crowned with
dirty-white helmets, started filing past me in an endless stream. The
officers were riding up and down the line, calling on the men to exert
themselves, and to hurry, hurry, hurry. But the rank and file were
pitifully exhausted, and their white, drawn faces spoke only of the
fever-haunted swamps of Tonkin, whence they had been summoned to
participate in this frantic march on the capital. They had always been
behind, I heard, and had only been hurried up by constant forced
marching, which left the men mutinous and valueless. Once again they
were being hurried not to be too late....

I only lost these troops to find myself crushed in by long lines of
mountain artillery carried on mules, and led by strange-looking
Annamites. In a thin line they stretched away until I could only
divine how many there were. These batteries, however, were not going
forward, and to my surprise I found the guns being suddenly loaded and
hauled to the top of the Tartar Wall up one of the ramparts which had
been our salvation. This was a new development, and in my interest,
forgetting my pony, I ran up, too.

Up there I found a mass of people, mostly comprising those who had
been spectators rather than actors in the siege. I remember being
seized with strange feelings when I saw their little air of derision
and their sneers as they looked down towards the Palace in pleasurable
anticipation. They imagined, these self-satisfied people who had done