CAPTURE OF CZENSTOCHAU BY PRINCE GEORGE OF SAXONY.
PRINCE ALEXANDER OF BATTENBERG A PRISONER.
(By Telegraph from our Special Correspondent, Mr. Charles Lowe.)
Alexandrovo, May 4.
There is great jubilation among the troops here, for, following hard on the telegram announcing the Emperor’s departure from Berlin to the Rhine amid an unparalleled scene of excitement and enthusiasm, came a despatch reporting that Prince George of Saxony, by dint of forced marches of immense difficulty through the devious moors and marsh-grounds east of Rosenberg and Tarnowitz on the Kreuzburg-Tarnowitz line, had also succeeded in surprising the Russians at Czenstochau, on the Warsaw-Vienna Railway, and, capturing that important place, after a desperate but unavailing resistance on the part of its defenders, who, incredible to relate, consisted of not much more than its usual garrison—a brigade of infantry and two brigades of cavalry. But the German losses here were much more serious than with us yesterday, one infantry regiment in particular—the 22d Silesian—being more than decimated in its desperate, yet successful, endeavours to drive the enemy from a clump of wood, surmounted by a battery—a proof that it still continues to be animated by the heroic spirit of its name-chief, Field-Marshal James Keith, whilom of Inverugie and Dunnottar, in the Kingdom of Scotland, who, at its head, met his own death, under the eye of Frederick the Great, when saving the surprised right flank of the Prussian Army from utter annihilation by the Austrians at Hochkirch in the Lausitz.
These two engagements, then, though on a smaller scale, have been the Wörth and Spichern of the present war; and it now only remains to be seen whether we shall be able to improve upon these initial successes—which were due to a great extent, I repeat, to the exceeding swiftness and daring of our own movements, as compared with the incredible slowness of our foes, and the faultiness of their mobilisation process, no less than to the fact that the Russians, imagining the Germans would never dare invade Poland, but remain upon their guard and form a flanking reserve support in Silesia to their Austrian allies, directed the main stream of their mobilisation further to the east, towards Dragomiroff’s line of hostile advance upon Lemberg and the Carpathian Passes to the south thereof at Stryj.
How Gourko, who is known to be still at Warsaw, though the bulk of his forces must now be well in front of him, will endeavour to cope with the situation thus so suddenly created for him, is naturally the question which occupies all minds here, and it cannot be very long before his intentions are made manifest.
Meanwhile the telegrams from Galicia, where our Austrian allies have concentrated the bulk of their forces, are not quite so encouraging, indicating, as they do, less initiative and promptitude of action on their part, as well as considerable difference of opinion in the minds of the Corps and Army Commanders as to whether they ought to remain on the defensive, or espouse an audacious policy of invasion like ourselves, and essay to beard the lion, or rather the bear, in his den.
Count von Schlieffen, who proves to be as amiable a man as he is an able Chief of the Staff, tells me that news reached the German Headquarters this afternoon of a tremendous conflict between no fewer than five Cavalry Divisions, three on the Russian side and two on the Austrian, somewhere near Brod, on the Volhynian frontier—a conflict which resulted, as it could scarcely otherwise have done from the relative proportion of numbers, in the total defeat of the Austro-Hungarian horsemen. The latter, it seems, were covering the movements of the 3d Austrian Corps, which had been appointed to head an advance in the direction of Dubno; and when they had been overthrown in a mêlée which, in its colossal magnitude, recalled the mounted conflicts of the Crusaders, the victorious Russians, rallying and reforming line, swept down upon a detached portion of the Austrian infantry, regardless of the smokeless volleys from the Mannlicher repeating rifle, and made awful havoc among the sturdy men from the Steiermark, taking one whole battalion prisoners, including, it is rumoured, the colonel of the regiment, the 27th, who is none other than Count Hartenau, better known as Prince Alexander of Battenberg, ex-Prince of Bulgaria—a wonderful piece of luck, indeed, for the Russians, if the rumour proves true.
Later.
Later despatches confirm the rumour of Prince Alexander’s capture by the Russians, and add that, when the news became known at Dragomiroff’s headquarters—which are said to be at Dubno—there was almost as much jubilation as when the intelligence of Napoleon’s surrender flew like wildfire around the German lines at Sedan.
The ex-Bulgarian Prince is to be sent to St. Petersburg, where rooms are being already prepared for him at the Katherinenhof, and meanwhile he has been allowed to retain his sword in order that his unforgiving and exultant cousin, the Czar, may have the satisfaction of receiving it from the humiliated captive’s own hands—a picture that will eclipse in interest all the romantic incidents which have already marked the Prince’s strangely chequered career.