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Updated: June 10, 2025
The fact is, the first notice I had that the battle was on was when a shell fell among my drummers and fifers, who were at the head of my Regiment, and killed and demoralized them, so that we heard no more of drumming and fifing that day.
The next morning the company turned out to a man and escorted him to the train, with Si and his father marching arm-in-arm at the head, the company fifers playing, "Ain't I glad to get out of the Wilderness, Way down in Tennessee," and Abraham Lincoln, laden with the striped carpetsack, the smashed musket and other relics, bringing up the rear, under the supervision of Shorty.
He, or course, begged for more beads; but, not able to trick me again, set his drummers and fifers at work, in hopes that he would get over our feelings in that way. Henceforth, as we marched, Irungu's drummers and fifers kept us alive on the way.
Then he ordered out his whole army, horse, foot, and artillery; and set forth at the head of an innumerable host, and I should think twenty thousand drummers, trumpeters, and fifers. King Giglio's advance guard, you may be sure, kept that monarch acquainted with the enemy's dealings, and he was in nowise disconcerted.
Some of Lord Shoreby's men now cleared a passage down the middle aisle, forcing the people back with lance-stocks; and just then, outside the portal, the secular musicians could be descried drawing near over the frozen snow, the fifers and trumpeters scarlet in the face with lusty blowing, the drummers and the cymbalists beating as for a wager.
First, between the torches that lined the procession through all its length, came a band of fifers, very fine, in scarlet tunics and stiff beaver-hats; shrilling a dirge as they walked; and immediately behind them a funeral herald in black, walking very upright and stiff, with a bell in one hand which he rang, while he cried out in a great mournful bellowing voice: "Remember Justice Godfrey!
In the courtyard fronting them, were hundreds of men and women dressed in smart mbugus the males wearing for turbans, strings of abrus-seeds wound round their heads, with polished boars' tusks stuck in in a jaunty manner. These were the people who, drunk as fifers, were keeping up such a continual row to frighten the devil away.
Moving on the next morning over hill and dale, we came to the junction of two roads, where Irungu, with his drummers, fifers and amazon followers, took one way to Kufro, followed by the men carrying Suwarora's hongo, and we led off on the other, directed to the palace.
On all the borders of dear Dixie more tents than ever whitened sea-shores and mountain valleys, more sentinels paced to and fro in starlight or rain, more fifers and trumpeters woke the echoes with strains to enliven fortitude, more great guns frowned silently at each other over more parapets, and more thousands of lovers reclined about camp fires with their hearts and fancies at home, where mothers and maidens prayed in every waking moment for God's mercy to keep the brave truants; and with remembrance of these things Anna strove to belittle her own distress while about the library lamp she and Miranda seemed each to be reading a book, and Constance the newspaper sent from Charleston by Mandeville.
We had not gone far before we heard military music in advance of us, and saw the road blocked up with people, and then the glitter of muskets, and soon appeared the drummers, fifers, and trumpeters, and then the first battalion of a French regiment, marching into the city, with two mounted officers at their head; then appeared a second and then a third battalion, the whole seeming to make almost an army, though the number on their caps showed them all to belong to one regiment, the 1st; then came a battery of artillery, then a detachment of horse, these last, by the crossed keys on their helmets, being apparently papal troops.
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