THE FRANCO-GERMAN CAMPAIGN—THE GERMAN ADVANCE.
RENEWED FIGHTING—ROUT OF THE FRENCH ARMY.
(From our Special Correspondent with the Germans.)
Suippes, May 19.
A whole week has passed and we have not moved. Our cavalry and most of my Corps are enjoying the hospitality of the French barracks at the camp of Chalons, horribly dirty, still, better than a bivouac in the pouring rain we have been enduring. Our officers’ patrols go daily south of Chalons-sur-Marne and eastward to Bar-le-Duc.
Rheims is observed—practically invested—for our scouts tear up the railways leading to it from Paris as fast as the enemy can lay them down again, and further to the westward patrols are in touch with the French Army of the North, and we learn that troops are daily being moved by rail to the southward, which corroborates other information that they are again going to try on us Bourbaki’s stroke of 1870, and, under the circumstances, it is about the best thing they can do.
In our rear the Reserve Divisions are working day and night to complete our road and railway communications with the Namur-Luxembourg Railway, and as everything has been foreseen to the smallest detail years in advance—even the girders for bridges made and kept in stock—and the country, moreover, presents no serious difficulties (certainly none to frighten our engineers of Afghanistan experience, and the Germans are but little behind us), I have no doubt that our halt here will be but of short duration; indeed, some of the roads are evidently through already, for our Reserve ammunition waggons came up yesterday. The line through Mezières-Givet is also expected to be open in a day or two, and then our siege train will be able to take the works of Rheims under fire in earnest. This delay, I need hardly say, is very much against the feelings of our Hotspurs, and I have listened to many an oration from young subalterns to prove how differently old Moltke would have led them. With due deference, I think it can be shown from his own works that he would have done nothing of the kind. His own saying was that the art of war was only the practical application of principles to the attainment of the end in view—viz., the subjugation of the enemy to your will—at what knowledge of the circumstances shows you to be at the moment the cheapest possible cost to the country.
In 1870, with a vast numerical superiority, no fortifications to speak of on the enemy’s side, and no allies on his own, the principle of extermination by a series of battles was the best policy to adopt. How, against almost equal numbers, backed by fortresses not to be despised—the first victory having been won and the fighting value of our troops thereby doubled—our best game is not to break our heads against the enemy’s strong places, but in a central position to await his offensive returns and move out to meet him—not stand to be attacked—as soon as his plans are sufficiently indicated by our cavalry outposts.
It was a wise stroke on the part of the enemy to lead off with a first blow from Russia; but we countered it by the immediate assumption of the offensive, which enabled us to score first blood against France. For the present we can await the decision in Russia in comparative security.
The troops are not idle meanwhile. After a day’s rest and the reorganisation of the regiments in consequence of losses—which, by the way, amount to only 10 per cent. in the Corps engaged—they were at work again drilling with the same intensity of purpose as if the spring inspections and not a battle lay before them. That was a lesson they learnt from the last war—viz., that the command of men in the squadron or company is personal property, and cannot be handed over like charge of the quartermaster’s store. A leader must know his men, and they must know him by actual contact on the parade ground if the full fighting worth is to be got out of the men.
11 P.M.
News of our victory at Alexandrovo has just come in. That will set free a couple of Corps at least for this, the decisive theatre. If only they had our Midland and North-Western traffic managers!
Suippes, May 25, 10 P.M.
We move at 5 A.M. to-morrow, direction Bar-le-Duc—i.e. S.E.
Heith le Maurupt, May 27, 10 P.M.
Another most decisive victory for the Germans. Censor will not allow any more.
Camp of Chalons, May 31, 10 A.M.
Another victory; now I may tell you all that has happened in the order in which it occurred. As I had anticipated, the French have again tried Bourbaki’s move, with much the same results. As far as we can learn, three Corps were transferred from the line of the northern fortresses, by Paris—Lyons, and the whole of their Army of the East moved northward to meet us, their right on the line of their eastern defences.
Our 2d Army moved up both banks of the Aisne to meet them, it was theoretically wrong, no doubt, but we could not help it. The 3d passed troops over the Meuse, to form on their left, and we—i.e. the 1st—detached three Corps to reinforce the right, leaving two ‘field’ Corps and a number of Reserve Divisions (I understand six) to hold the Army of the North in check, and retire slowly before it if seriously attacked.
My Corps rendezvoused on the 26th at 4 A.M. around Suippes. The country had been thoroughly reconnoitred, and, guided by officers of the Topographical Staff, all combatant branches moved straight across country, in the good old Napoleonic method, trains and Corps Artillery only by the roads. The rain had ceased, and the going was fairly good; anyway, we all agreed that it was infinitely preferable work to stewing in dusty lanes in closed columns, with never a breath of fresh air, even though in the bottoms the soil was somewhat heavy. The men were in the best of spirits at the start—reviving the good old march to Sedan joke, ‘Mit Armen links schwenkt! Gerade aus’—but the sun came out, and by 5 P.M., when we had covered nearly twenty miles as the crow flies, faces began to look drawn and weary. Then we caught the sound of the guns in front, and the men stepped out again briskly.
About 6.30 we got the order to halt and bivouac; fortunately we were close to some ponds and a stream. Our cavalry had this time come little into conflict with the enemy, but after driving in a few patrols had come on the French infantry, practically deployed for action, heading a little west of north, and had not attempted to make any impression. Indeed, there was no reason why they should, for they could see everything perfectly from some neighbouring ridges, and so had fulfilled their duties. We, at least, knew where the enemy was, and he did not know where we were. So far we had the advantage.
The fight began with a race for the ridges. We had no particular advantage, and a scrimmaging fight began at once all along the line. Our artillery was in great part neutralised; so was that of the other side. It simply became a struggle of endurance—the Germans, relying on the superior discipline of their men, could afford to feed the fighting line more slowly (i.e. with greater distance between the following lines), and thanks to the perfection of their Staff, trained to work as nearly as possible under wartime conditions, the mechanism of the feed worked with less friction and more certainty; fresh troops were always forthcoming when they were required. On the other side the machinery wanted lubricating, owing to their radically defective conception of the nature of the infantry fight, which induced them to move to the attack in a succession of extended lines following one another too quickly; their strength melted away almost before they reached the actual fighting line, and then the Staff failed to send support quickly enough. It was soon evident that they were bleeding to exhaustion more rapidly than we were.
Thus hour by hour our attack pressed home like waves of an incoming tide, and from a distance the effect was most curious to watch. Two long undulating lines—a light blue haze hanging over them—each seemed to be backed by some elastic force; as the equilibrium at one point was disturbed, one line recoiled and the other pressed forward till flanking fire brought it again to a stop for the moment.
By noon the edge of the high ground overlooking the valley, through which runs the Rhine-Marne Canal, was reached, and now the flood was running strong in our favour. Then we could see, too, how these disturbances in the equilibrium of the two lines were occasioned. The smaller units of the French thought too much of their flanks, too little of their centre. Thus, where two battalions or companies touched, the men balled up and crowded together, offering a better target; then the fire from the centre relaxed, and the moment the pressure of the enemy’s fire gave way, the Germans dashed forward to fill up the vacuum. Soon, too, the French endeavoured to bring up their reserves in column, for their men would no longer advance in extended order; and now the small calibre rifle and its great penetration justified its existence; I had not thought much of it before. But the employment of columns induced a new feature—viz., a tendency in the larger units (e.g. divisions) to close on their centre—and presently before our eyes we saw a great gap opening out behind the enemy’s fighting line. The time for the final blow was close at hand. Our gunners, coming up under cover of the hills, were crushing the artillery of the enemy out in the plain, and had some attention to spare for his reserves. I saw a cavalry aide-de-camp leave the Staff of the Army Commander, who was close at hand, and I made tracks as fast as I could for some broken ground, where I hoped to be safe from the coming storm.
Twenty minutes afterwards, heading straight for the gap I described above, came at least eight squadrons in line at a gallop. Their ground scouts yelled at their own infantry in front to lie down, and they mostly did so. The cavalry checked for a moment at them, as if at a fence, and then swept down on the infantry in front, not two hundred yards distant, rode over and beyond them, wheeled outwards, and bore down on the reserves. As they passed our infantry, the latter threw themselves into groups to let the second line of cavalry—which still remained in squadron columns—through, and then four more lines of cavalry followed, and the whole plain became a sea of dust and confusion. Our infantry rallied into company columns, and dashed forward with the bayonet in pursuit, and we had the last tableau of Waterloo over again. The canal and the stream in the hollow put a stop to our advance, and fresh infantry with the pioneer companies moved forward to make good the crossing, which might have been a troublesome business enough, had not the troops to our left—i.e. west—already carried the passages at Revigny.
Darkness was now rapidly coming on, and the fight here died away. I rode back to the rear, and found food and a welcome with the Headquarters of our third Corps, which had only just reached the ground and had not been engaged.
About five next morning the troops again stood to their arms, but in the night news of an advance of the French Army of the north had come in, and we began to retrace our steps over the same ground already traversed. As we were starting, intelligence of the British victory in the Mediterranean arrived, and with it rumours of Communistic disturbances in Paris. I was also told that two Corps had been detached from the 2d Army from near St. Menehould, and two more from the Russian frontier had arrived about Pont-a-Mousson, and with the four Bavarian reserve divisions were preparing to strike the French Army of the west in their right flank. At night we reached the line of the great road Chalons-sur-Marne—St. Menehould, and about 4 P.M. fell right on the flank of a French corps moving from Epernay on the Camp of Chalons. Part of the Corps from St. Menehould marching by Suippes was on our right, and together we drove the French back in some disorder into the complex of hilly ground about Moronvilliers, cutting them off from Rheims.
The Corps left to watch this latter place had fallen back fighting the previous day, and lay along the road from Suippes by Somme-puis-Attigny—i.e. about north and south.
At daybreak we advanced again, and soon a struggle began which, in the hilly, wooded ground we now were in, utterly defies description. As before, it was mainly decided by superior endurance of loss and a better-trained Staff. Of tactical combination there was none on a large scale, but divisional artillery and cavalry suffered heavily in endeavouring to support their comrades of the infantry.
We reached the culminating point of the plateau after five hours’ successive fighting, but the exhaustion of our men was extreme; hundreds dropped unable to go a step further, and we afterwards picked up at least an equal number of French in the same condition. Indeed, during the last hours of the afternoon, it had become a struggle of the survival of the fittest. The French fought with a determination they never before displayed—probably because the ground, by giving scope to our cavalry on previous occasions, never gave them the opportunity.
But this time every copse and bush gave them the chance to rally, and many are the instances recounted of how superior officers on the French side emulated the example of Ney in the retreat from Russia, and rifle in hand stood to the last.
The battle was actually decided by a blow delivered some six miles to the north, where the ground did give our three arms a chance of co-operation, and about 6 P.M. the resistance in front of us gave way altogether. The fighting broke off, and the men lay on their arms where they stood, too weary to move another step.
During the night, however, a cavalry division belonging to the 2d Army—which had moved round our rear while the action was going on—beat up the bivouacs of the French, falling first on the artillery and some cavalry and stampeding their horses, who took flight right down the extent of the line. And this last blow turned the French retreat into rout. It was York’s manœuvre at Laon, in 1814, over again, only more thoroughly carried out.
GERMAN CAVALRY ATTACK BY NIGHT ON THE FRENCH BIVOUACS.
Our Corps were too weary to follow, but the one next on our right, which had been squeezed out of line by our converging movement the day before, took up the pursuit before daybreak in the direction of Rethel.