A STORY OF SADOWA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 142, 14 June 1909, Page 7

A STORY OF SADOWA.

The Archduke Joseph, a ■distant re--Jative of the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, Belonged to a branch of the Hapsburgs for more than a century. He was the great protector of the local gipsies; hence his name, "The Gipsy Archduke," and he had popularised the Tigane music by arranging many of their tunes in scores for orchestras. During the Prussian-Austrian War of 1566, on the night of July 2-3, before the battle of Sadowa, a division commanded by the Archduke, retreating before the Prussian Army, had bivouacked near a town in Bohemia facing north. At midnight the Archduke, when resting in a peasant's cottage, was awakened by tli9 arrival of a gipsy, who insisted on seeing him personally, having come to report the advance of the enemy. The Archduke, who spoke Romani fluently, asked, "How do you know? Our outposts have not- reported any movement." "That, your Highness, is because the enemy is still some way off." "Then how do you know?" The gipsy, pointing to the dark sky, lighted by the moon, observed, "You see those birds flying over the woods from north to south V" "Yes; what of them?" "Those birds do not fly at niglit unless disturbed, and the direction of their flight indicates that the enemy is coming "this way." The Archduke put his division under arms, and reinforced the outposts, which in two hours' time were attacked heavily.—Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, in the Saturday Review.