The Prussian Guard on the Centre and Left.
It may be said, indeed, that not one, but several battles were fought on the 18th of August, in the long space between the Bois de Vaux and the Forest of Moyœuvre. They were inter-dependent, because one mass of combatants held fast another, and the essence of the German plan was that three-fourths of the French Army should be nailed to the positions they had taken up, while the remainder were crushed by the pressure of superior forces. The original design of Von Moltke was framed on the supposition that the French right stood near Amanvillers, and that he would be able to fling upon an exposed flank two Corps d’Armée. Before the error was discovered, several hours had been consumed; the Guard had been obliged to prolong the front fighting line; only a part of the Saxon Corps could be spared to engage in the turning movement, and the ground which they had to traverse grew longer and longer as the day waxed shorter. The extent of country over which the various armies operated, and the smoke which obscured the view, prevented a correct appreciation of the situation of affairs at a given moment, and the German commanders were liable to be deceived, and were deceived by appearances. The knowledge that so brief an interval of daylight remained, and an anxiety to make the most of precious moments, quickened the tendency to decisive action, and thus brought about the rash and premature attack which was so destructive, and nearly proved so fatal to the Prussian Guard.
Their magnificent divisions of Infantry, it will be remembered, stood between St. Ail and St. Marie, except one brigade which had been annexed to the 9th Corps. It was intended that they should remain quiescent until the Saxon column broke out upon the French right in the direction of Roncourt, and for a brief interval of time, after five o’clock, the action in the centre as well as on the left was confined to a deliberate cannonade. Prince Augustus of Würtemberg, who was then near St. Ail gazing alternatively on the ebb and flow of Manstein’s battle in the Bois de la Cusse and towards the Bois de Genivaux, and on the aspect of the field about St. Privat, thought he saw French troops moving south from Roncourt. Combining this impression with the fact that, as we have already stated, a long line of Saxon guns had been arrayed due north of St. Marie, he rapidly formed the opinion that the turning column was on the point of striking the enemy, and that the moment had come when the Guard should be employed. He was also somewhat affected by the condition of the combat in the centre, and, perhaps, as much by the waning day which left so narrow a margin of time for decisive activity. He appealed to Prince Frederick Charles and easily converted the Commander-in-Chief of the Second Army to his views. So the order went forth that the Guard should attack, and having set Budritzki’s division in motion from St. Ail, Prince Augustus rode to St. Marie. There General von Pape revealed to him his misconception—the turning column was not even then in sight, and unless preceded by bombardment from all the batteries, a front attack on St. Privat, Pape said, would have but a slight chance of success. Why, then, was it delivered? Because the other division of the Guard was actually at that moment under fire and losing men by scores on the open slope. It was a bitter moment for Prince Augustus, whose error was to cost the Guard losses which are counted by thousands. Moreover, General Manstein, seeing Budritzki in motion, and De Cissey, whose division formed De Ladmirault’s right, wheeling up diagonally on the flanks of the new foe, determined to despatch his Brigade of Guards, the 3rd, straight upon Amanvillers, to resume the offensive with his Hessians, and support, by all the means he possessed, the daring onset initiated on his immediate left. Practically, therefore, although other troops were engaged at different points on the front of the 9th Corps, the battle on the northern half of the field was thenceforth fought out by the Saxons and the Guard.
The character of the unequal combat was the same from end to end of the line—superb, because it proved the steadfast valour of Prussia’s chosen infantry; awful, because the bare fields in the track of the onslaught were soon literally strewed with thousands of dead and wounded. The charge of the 3rd Brigade towards Amanvillers was pushed with such unwavering velocity that, although the ranks were thinned at every stride, the hardy survivors, spread out in skirmishing order, carried their front to the brow of a hill within half a mile of Amanvillers. There they were stopped by the fire which smote them in front and flank. Yet there they stayed undaunted, and maintained a steady contest with antagonists who, if they tried to dash forward, could not reach the unyielding line of the 3rd Brigade. On their left the Hessians moved up on both sides of the railroad cutting, and finally captured a house built for the watchman at a level crossing. Comrades of the 9th Corps, from the Bois de la Cusse, soldiers who had been toiling for many hours, essayed to reach the Guard, but they had not strength enough left, and retired when they suddenly discerned, above Amanvillers, two regiments of Grenadiers—it was Bourbaki who had led Picard’s battalions on to the plateau, but who, distrusting appearances visible about and beyond St. Privat, feared to plunge into the fight at Amanvillers. Looking out from his hill, Bourbaki may have seen the devoted march of Budritzki’s troops up the gentle slope in front of St. Ail; for these, what was left of them, were closing on the spur which lies south-west of St. Privat, and stretching out as far as the high road to St. Marie, a long dark streak of fire and smoke and the broad fields behind them black with the dying and dead. For the constant Guards, undismayed, the remnant of a splendid division, not only persevered and won the little rounded hill, but rooted themselves under its shelving terraces, while the left companies, next the high road, found shelter in its ditches. They had suffered most when beyond the effective range of the needle-gun, in the belt where the chassepot had rained balls as thick as hail. They could now retort the fire, and at least keep their opponents at bay. These battalions, like those of the 3rd Brigade, had dared all the deadly perils of the open ground; they had bought a relative success at a heavy price, and were resolved to retain what they had won, their line of fire extending from the high road to the rounded eminence, or long hillock, south-west of Jerusalem. Three batteries had driven up to aid the infantry; the main body of the Guard Artillery had advanced eastward; and the Hessians and 3rd Brigade prolonged the front of combat to the south.
During part of the period thus occupied General Pape, holding one brigade in reserve at St. Marie, attacked with the other on the north of the high road. Starting at a quarter to six o’clock, this body of Guardsmen crossed the road facing north, and then wheeling in succession to the right, went obstinately forward. The French fire, from the outset, was close and deadly; officers of all ranks fell fast; companies were reduced to straggling groups or scattered files; the whole line was soon dispersed here and there; but they still pressed on. One moiety trended to the right another to the left, and General von Pape, watchful, active, and fortunate, for he was not hit, led fresh battalions to fill up the gaping intervals. Soon after the foremost bands had got within seven hundred yards of St. Privat, where, in places, at least, the slope afforded shelter, the reinforcements arrived; and it may be said that thenceforth a continuous, yet thin line, curved inwards at the northern end, and fringed with smoke and fire, stretched irregularly over the vast glacis-like declivities from opposite Amanvillers to the outskirts of Roncourt, where the Saxons prolonged the ragged and shapeless, but redoubtable array. Against this mere thread of riflemen, not even when they were weakest, the French directed no bold attack, perhaps because they had no reserves and stood in respectful awe of the hostile artillery which drew nearer and nearer as the evening wore on, until the black batteries formed a second line to the intrepid infantry.
It was about seven o’clock. St. Privat was in flames, the black and tawny smoke of the burning village, boiling upwards, stood out against the obscured sky in strong contrast to the swelling clouds of white vapour, through which leaped incessant sparkles from hundreds of rifles, and the broader flashes of the cannon. At no preceding period of this dreadful day had the battle raged with such intensity; for now along the whole front of eight miles there was a deafening roar and crash and tumult, and a murky atmosphere concealing the ghastly sights which make these fields of carnage so appalling to the lively imagination, which seeks in vain to realize its multitude and variety of horror. Yet there was an element of grandeur and sublimity in the exhibition of courage, constancy and fortitude upon such a stupendous scale. “It is a good thing that war is so terrible,” said General Robert Lee, “otherwise we should become too fond of it.” Here, among these woods and villages of Lorraine, war showed in abundance its attractive and repulsive forms.