The Flight to Mouzon.
When the left wing of the 4th Corps, pressing towards the defile of the Yoncq and the slopes above it, sought to discover the French on that side, they were at first sharply punished; but, following on, they came up and closed with their adversaries. One brigade of Bavarians had been sent to the 4th Corps and moved on the left flank of the toilsome advance. For the ground was difficult, the obstacles numerous, and the French, though shattered and dispirited, still displayed a fighting front. But at length, late in the afternoon, the Germans mastered a hill-top whence adverse artillery had fired upon the assailants; and then these fairly entered the plain before Mouzon. Here, however, the French occupied an isolated hill, called Le Mont de Brune, close to and almost overhanging the Faubourg of Mouzon, from which its summit is less than a mile distant. Unluckily for them they formed front facing eastward, apparently anticipating an attack on that side; but the Germans promptly turned the flank from the south and south-west, and drove the defenders down the steep slopes towards Mouzon, capturing ten guns. The victorious forward movement brought the leading companies in front of Villeneuve’s brigade and the Cuirassiers in the plain. The Germans halted, and opened a steady fire, when suddenly they beheld the 5th Cuirassiers coming down on their left flank and rear. Captain Helmuth, who commanded the three companies exposed to this ordeal, made the left company face about in time, and then forbidding his men to form rallying squares or groups, ordered them to stand fast as they were, and only open fire when he gave the signal. The gallant French horsemen, as was their wont, rode straight upon the infantry; but the independent firing opened on them at point blank range, broke the impetus and crushed in the head of the charging squadrons. Colonel Contenson fell mortally wounded within fifteen paces of the infantry line; and, although some fiery spirits dashed into their ranks, and one engaged in single combat with Captain Helmuth until he fell pierced by ball and bayonet, yet the whole mass of cavalry was routed with immense loss, and driven into the Meuse.
For, by this time, the wreck of De Failly’s Corps was in full retreat on all sides, and troops, artillery, transport trains, and stragglers, were crowding on towards the bridge. When his right was turned by the movement upon the Brune hill, and still further by the march of the Bavarian brigade upon Pourron, De Failly quitted his post at Villemontrey, which enabled the right division of the 4th Corps, the Saxon regiments fighting by its side, and the artillery to push on by the main road to Mouzon. After the first surprise of the Beaumont camp, the French had mainly stood, here and there, to facilitate their retreat, and the contest, which went on all the afternoon among the woods and hills and ravines, was really a running fight. The Germans had pursued with relentless pertinacity. Their soldiers had been marching all day, but they seemed to be tireless, for they never halted until the fugitives were over the Meuse, or the darkness forbade further motion. De Failly had been surprised and thrust in disorder over the river, and when the evening closed the Germans were in possession of the faubourg of Mouzon, and of the bridge at its western end. The 7th Corps, cut off from Villers, had moved, in a state bordering on panic, upon Remilly; but there they found Bonnemains’ cuirassiers, the tail of a division belonging to the 1st Corps, and a baggage column. The Meuse had been dammed to fill the ditches of Sedan, and not only were the fords rendered useless, but the swelling stream was unusually high. Douay, halted at seven o’clock, became impatient after dark, and at ten rode down to the bridge. He found the cuirassiers engaged in passing over the feeble construction. “The horses,” writes Prince Bibesco, “affrighted, because they could not see the shaking planks hidden by the water, and shifting under their steps, moved with hesitation, their necks extended, their ears erect. Sitting upright, shrouded in their large white cloaks, the cuirassiers marched on silently, and appeared to be borne on the stream. Two fires, one at each end of the bridge, flung a ghastly light on men and horses, and, flickering on the helmets, imparted a fantastic aspect to this weird spectacle.” At length the white horsemen passed over; but when the turn of the artillery came the horses were still more recalcitrant, and the passage was so slow that, at two in the morning of the 31st, only three batteries and two regiments of foot had passed the Meuse. Douay then learned that the Marshal had ordered all the Army to assemble at Sedan, and he moved the rest of his Corps over the bridge at Torcy. These few details will give some idea of the terrible disorder which prevailed throughout the French Army.
On the evening of the 30th the Germans were upon the Meuse. The 4th Corps was before Mouzon; one Bavarian Corps at Raucourt, the other at Sommauthe; the 5th and 11th Corps about La Besace and Stonne; the 12th was near the Meuse in front of Beaumont, and the Guard just behind them; the Würtembergers were at Verrières, and the 6th Corps well out to the west at Vouziers. On this flank also were the 5th and 6th Cavalry Divisions threatening and watching the French communications; while the 12th Cavalry Division was astride the Meuse at Pouilly, and one of its squadrons, evading and passing through Margueritte’s vedettes, had discovered and reported the presence of French troops on the Chiers near Carignan, and the movement of trains on the railway towards Sedan.
So ended this ominous day. The Army of the Meuse had lost 3,500 men in killed and wounded, but they had routed one French Corps, and fractions of two others, and they had captured forty-two guns. The French loss is set down at 1,800 killed and wounded, but the Germans aver that, included among the 3,000 acknowledged to be missing, there were 2,000 who bore no wounds.