TEMPORARY SERVICE. 81 



Flensburg. The streets were completely barricaded 

 with all soils of vehicles, and no military or civil 

 authority was discoverable. At last I stumbled in the 

 throng upon Captain von Zastrow. well-known to me 

 in Berlin, to whom I imparted my difficulty. He told 

 me that he had received the command of a newly- 

 formed Schleswig-Holstein corps, and had orders to 

 march with it to Tondern on the following day. He 

 was very much in want of officers however, and pro- 

 posed that I should join him. and undertake the 

 command of the battery. He would set everything 

 formally right with the commander-in- chief and also 

 take in charge my report to the same. This proposal 

 particularly pleased me. as it would have been anything 

 but agreeable to me to have been removed just then 

 from the seat of war to peace -quarters in Berlin. I 

 therefore wrote my report detailing the execution of niy 

 orders, and announced that I had discharged the volun- 

 teer peasantry and in the absence of further instructions 

 was about provisionally to undertake the command that 

 had been offered me of a Schleswig-Holstein battery. 

 Accordingly I rode on the following day at the 

 head of the battery assigned me over the sterile ridges 

 of the "sea-girt"' land towards Tondern. The joy 

 however was not to last long. Arrived in marching- 

 quarters, the commander handed me a despatch from 

 head-quarters brought by estafet, according to which 

 I was at once to report myself to the commander- 

 in- chief. In consequence of this I requisitioned a 



vehicle, arrived towards midnight again in Flensburg. 



6 



