End of the Battle.
It was now past seven o’clock, and both sides were exhausted by the tremendous strain which they had borne so long; yet the battle continued until darkness had settled over the woods and villages and fields. For Barnekow’s division and a Hessian brigade had entered the woodlands and pressed forward on the Gorze road, creating new alarm in the mind of Bazaine, who throughout the day was governed by his belief that the Germans intended to turn his left and cut him off from Metz. So that when Colonel von Rex pushed boldly up the ravine against Lapasset and his flankers opened fire from the edge of the Bois des Ognons, the French Commander drew still more troops to that flank. Between Rezonville and the ridges near Gravelotte he had, by eventide, placed the whole of the Guard, Frossard’s Corps, Lapasset’s brigade, and one-half of Lebœuf’s Corps. Fearing the storming columns which ever and anon surged outward from the woods towards the commanding heights south of Rezonville, Bourbaki brought up fifty-four guns and arrayed them in one long battery. The closing hours of the day witnessed a stupendous artillery contest, which was carried on even when the flashes of flame alone revealed the positions of the opposing pieces. The thick smoke increased the obscurity, and yet within the gloom bodies of German infantry, and even of horse, sallied from the woods or vales and vainly strove to reach the coveted crests or storm in upon Rezonville itself. At the very last moment a violent cannonade burst forth on both sides, yet to this day neither knows why it arose, where it began, or what it was to effect. At length the tired hosts were quiet; the strife of twelve hours ended. The German line of outposts that night ran from the Bois des Ognons along the Bois St. Arnould, then to the east of Flavigny and Vionville through the Tronville Copses; and after the moon rose upon the ghastly field the cavalry rode forth and placed strong guards as far westward as Mars la Tour and the Yron. The French slept on the ground they held, the heights south of Rezonville, that village itself, and the ridges which overlook the highway to Verdun as far as Bruville and Greyère. It had been a day of awful carnage, for the French had lost, in killed and wounded, nearly 17,000, and the Germans 16,000 men.
It is impossible to state exactly the numbers present on the field—probably, 125,000 French to 77,000 Germans. The latter brought up two complete Corps, the 3rd and 10th, two divisions of cavalry, the 5th and 6th—these sustained the shock and bore the chief loss—a brigade of the 8th Corps, the 11th Regiment from the 9th, and four Hessian regiments of that corps under Prince Louis, the husband of the British Princess Alice. They also had, in action or reserve, 246 guns. The French mustered the Imperial Guard, the 2nd Corps, three divisions and one regiment of the 6th Corps, three divisions of the 3rd, and two of the 4th Corps, five divisions of cavalry, and 390 guns; so that on the 16th, they were, at all times, numerically superior in every arm. When Alvensleben came into action a little after ten o’clock with the 3rd Corps and two divisions of cavalry—perhaps 33,000 men—they had in their front the 2nd and 6th Corps, the Guard, and the Reserve Cavalry—not less than 72,000, the guns on the French side being always superior in number. The 3rd Corps, less one division, was at ten o’clock only three miles from the field; these and half the 4th Corps arrived in the afternoon, adding more than 50,000 men to the total, while the Germans could only bring up the 10th, and parts of the 8th and 9th, fewer than 40,000, some of them marching into line late in the evening. The French Marshal, who fought a defensive battle, did not use his great strength during the forenoon, or in the afternoon when his right wing had wheeled up to the front. The result was an “indecisive action”—the phrase is used by the official German historian—and that it was indecisive must be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that Marshal Bazaine, nor he alone, stood in constant dread of an overwhelming inroad of “Prussians” on his left, with intent to cut him off from Metz and thrust him, unprovided with munitions of all kinds, on to the Briey–Longuyon road. But it may be inferred from the mode in which the battle was fought by the French commanders, from the first shot to the last, that the Germans had obtained a moral ascendency over the leaders and the led, and that such an ascendency had a great influence upon the tactics, as well as the strategy, of Marshal Bazaine and his subordinates in command. Nothing supports the correctness of this inference more strongly than the fact that an Army of 120,000 men considered a great success had been achieved when it had resisted the onsets of less than two-thirds of its numbers, and had been driven from its line of retreat!