Their artillery was
captured, retreat cut off. There was but a single alternative to
massacre--the white flag.
A few regiments between Lustadt and Blentz, but nearer the latter
town, escaped back into Austria, the balance Barney arranged with
the Serbian minister to have taken back to Serbia as prisoners of
war. The Luthanian army corps that the American had promised the
Serbs was to be utilized along the Austrian frontier to prevent the
passage of Austrian troops into Serbia through Lutha.
The return to Lustadt after the battle was made through cheering
troops and along streets choked with joy-mad citizenry. The name of
the soldier-king was upon every tongue. Men went wild with
enthusiasm as the tall figure rode slowly through the crowd toward
the palace.
Von der Tann, grim and martial, found his lids damp with the
moisture of a great happiness. Even now with all the proofs of
reality about him, it seemed impossible that this scene could be
aught but the ephemeral vapors of a dream--that Leopold of Lutha,
the coward, the craven, could have become in a single day the heroic
figure that had loomed so large upon the battlefield of Lustadt--the
simple, modest gentleman who received the plaudits of his subjects
with bowed head and humble mien.
As Barney Custer rode up Margaretha Street toward the royal palace
of the kings of Lutha, a dust-covered horseman in the uniform of an
officer of the Horse Guards entered Lustadt from the south.
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