Their mother heard them murmuring in sleep, and stole to their bedsides.
Tears rolled down one pale sleeper's face; while a bright smile was playing on the other's, and illumined its sweet repose.
Damjanics' army halted opposite Szolnok during the night, after two hours' march, and awaited in battle order, and without watch-fires, the signal to resume the march.
The roar of cannon on the opposite side of the Theiss was the expected signal.
The Hungarian General had seen several campaigns. Whenever he came up with the enemy, his quick glance discovered as if by instinct their strongest point, and there he directed all his force, crying, at the head of his troops, "Follow me!"
His system, however, was not generally approved of in the army. Many of the Generals affirmed that it was not enough to gain a battle: attention must be paid to the rules of war, various obligations attended to for which every General is responsible, proclamations issued, harangues made, &c.--with all of which Damjanics dispensed. He was neither a statesman nor a student--he was simply a soldier.
On quitting the Banat, however, he issued the following proclamation to his enemies:--
"If in the meantime you dare stir, I will sweep you from off the face of the earth, and then shoot myself through the head as the last Raczien, that no remnant of our race may be left!"[59]
[Footnote 59: Damjanics was by birth a Racz or Raczien, who were the bitterest enemies of the Hungarians, and committed many excesses and cruelties during the rebellion of 1848-9. The proclamation is here translated word for word.]
The results of this first attempt so much encouraged the General, that he determined, of the many necessary things required of him, to harangue his troops before the next action, and actually made a vow to that effect.
It was the night before the battle of Szolnok.
"Singular!" muttered the General, as he paced up and down his tent; "my spirits were wont to rise before a battle, and now I feel as anxious as if the thought of to-morrow were unwelcome!" And he strove to solve in his own mind the cause of such unusual gloom.
Some time after, an _officier de corps_ remarked within the General's hearing, that to-morrow they should have the famous harangue.