During his dinner, Prince Alexander of Hesse had received this dispatch:
"The Prussian vanguard has appeared at the end of the Vogelsburg pass!"
This news very much astonished the commander-in-chief, who was expecting the enemy to come by the pass through the Thuringian Forest. He had, in consequence, immediately sent a telegram to Darmstadt to order a detachment of three thousand men to come by rail to Aschaffenburg and seize the bridge. Then he had immediately sounded the bugle-call and the signal to saddle.
Two steamboats were waiting at Hackenhausen. A hundred railway carriages were waiting at the station, capable of holding a hundred men each.
We have already mentioned the effect produced by the double trumpet call.
There was a moment of confusion: for a moment every one ran to a
