V
Extract from the Note of the Military Expert of the aforesaid weighty and reputable Journal of the Capital of Patagonia: A Journalist.
“It is not easy to reconstruct from the fragmentary telegrams that have come through from the front the tactical nature of the great and happily decisive victory upon the Tusco which has just ended the campaign. So far as one can judge, His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief lay en biais, reposing his right upon the river itself and his left upon the Cañon of the Encantado, his centre somewhat advanced ‘in gabion,’ his pivot points refused, and his right in double concave. Upon a theory of Ballistic and Shock, which all those who have read His Royal Highness’s daring and novel book of thirty years ago, entitled ‘Cavalry in the Field,’ will remember, our Corps Artillery and reserve of horse were doubtless some miles in the rear of the firing line. The enemy, with an amazing ignorance of the elements of military knowledge, appear to have attacked the left of this position. It is an error to which we should hardly give credence were not the telegrams so clear and decisive on this point. The reader will immediately grasp the obvious result of such a piece of folly. His Royal Highness promptly refused en potence, wheeled his left centre round upon the Eleventh Brigade as a pivot, and supported this masterly move by the sudden and unexpected appearance of no less than thirty-six guns, the converging fire of which at once arrested the ill-fated and mad scheme of the enemy. The rest is easily told. Our centre retaining its position, in spite of the burning zeal of the men to take part in the general advance, the right, which had not yet come into action, was thrown forward with a sudden, sweeping movement, and behind its screen of Cavalry debouched upon the open plateau which dominates the left bank of the Tusco. After that all was over; the next news we shall have will certainly be the capitulation of our broken foe, unless, indeed, he prefer to be destroyed piecemeal in a scattered flight.”