It was as though we English learned that a huge foreign army had suddenly landed on our shores and, having cut the wires and seized the railways, was marching upon London.

The effect of such tidings upon a nation that always believed invasion to be impossible may easily be imagined, only I hope that we should take them better than did the Abati.
Their swagger, their self-confidence, their talk about the "rocky walls of Mur," evaporated in an hour.

Now it was only of the disciplined and terrible regiments of the Fung, among whom every man was trained to war, and of what would happen to them, the civilized and domesticated Abati, a peace-loving people who rightly enough, as they declared, had refused all martial burdens, should these regiments suddenly appear in their midst.

They cried out that they were betrayed--they clamoured for the blood of certain of the Councillors.

That carpet knight, Joshua, lost popularity for a while, while Maqueda, who was known always to have been in favour of conscription and perfect readiness to repel attack, gained what he had lost.
Leaving their farms, they crowded together into the towns and villages, where they made what in South Africa are called laagers.