Early on August 4, a quiet, clear, luminous morning, seventy miles to the east of Brussels, the first invaders, units of von Marwitz's Cavalry, crossed into Belgium. Coming at a steady purposeful trot, they carried twelve-foot steel-headed lances and were otherwise hung about with an arsenal of sabers, pistols, and rifles. Harvesters looking up from the roadside fields, villagers peering from their windows, whispered, "Uhlans!" The outlandish name, with its overtones of the savage Tartar horsemen from whom it derived, evoked Europe's ancestral memory of barbarian invasion. The Germans, when engaged in their historic mission of bringing Kultur to their neighbors, showed a preference, as in the Kaiser's use of the word "Huns," for fearful models.
( Barbara W. Tuchman )
[ The Guns of August ]
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