Attack on Woerth.
We have already said that the Crown Prince, not having all his Corps in compact order, did not intend to fight a battle until the next day. But what befell was this. The officer at the head of the staff of the 5th Corps reached the front after the reconnaissance on Woerth was over. Just as he rode up, the smoke of Hartmann’s guns was visible on one side, and the noise of the skirmishers at Gunstett on the other. In order to prevent the French from overwhelming either, it was agreed, there and then, to renew the contest, and shortly after nine o’clock the artillery of the 5th Corps, ranged on the heights, opened fire. At the same time, a portion of the 11th Corps, hearing the guns, had moved up rapidly towards Gunstett, and three of their batteries were soon in line. Thus, the Bavarians rushed into battle in order to support the 5th Corps, this body resumed the combat to sustain the Bavarians, and the advanced guard of the 11th fell on promptly, because the 5th seemed in peril. The Prussian artillery soon quelled, not the ardour, but the fire of the French gunners; and then the infantry, both in the centre and on the left, went steadily into action, passing through Woerth, and beginning to creep up the opposite heights. They made no way, and many men fell, while further down the stream, opposite Spachbach and Gunstett, part of the troops which had gone eagerly towards the woods, were smitten severely, and driven back headlong over the river. Still some clung to the hollow ways, Woerth was always held fast, and when the foot recoiled before the telling Chassepot, the eighty-four pieces in battery lent their aid, averted serious pursuit, and flung a shower of shells into the woods. It was at this period that the defect of the French position became apparent. If the hardy Gauls could repel an onset, they could not, in turn, deliver a counter stroke, because the advantages of the defensive would pass, in that case, to the adversary. But the Germans across the Sauer, who still held their ground, had much to endure, and were only saved by the arrival of fresh troops, and by seeking every available shelter from the incessant rifle fire. In the meantime, the 11th Corps was marching to the sound of the guns. General von Bose, its commander, had reached Gunstett in the forenoon, and, seeing how matters stood, had called up his nearest division, had ordered the other to advance on the left, and had informed Von Werder that an action had begun, in consequence whereof the Badeners and Würtembergers were also directed on the Sauer.
It was about one o’clock when the Crown Prince rode up to the front and took command. He had ridden out from Soultz at noon, because he plainly heard the sounds of conflict, and on his road had been met by an officer from Von Kirchbach, bearing a report which informed the Commander-in-Chief that it was no longer possible to stop the fray. At the time he arrived, the advanced brigade of Von der Tann’s Bavarians had thrust itself into the gap between Preuschdorf and Goersdorf, and had brought three batteries into action, but the remainder of the Corps were still in the rear. The Crown Prince thus found his front line engaged without any reserve close at hand, and that no progress had been made either on the centre or the wings; but he knew that the latter would be quickly reinforced, and that the former, sustained by two hundred guns, constituted an ample guarantee against an offensive movement. No better opportunity of grappling with a relatively weak enemy was likely to occur, and it was to be feared that if the chance were offered, he would escape from a dangerous situation by skilfully extricating his Army. The Crown Prince, therefore, determined to strike home, yet qualifying his boldness with caution, he still wished to delay the attack in front and flank until the troops on the march could reach the battlefield. No such postponement was practicable, even if desirable, because the fighting Commander of the 5th Corps had already, before the advice came to hand, flung his foremost brigades over the Sauer. So the action was destined to be fought out, from beginning to end, on places extemporized by subordinate officers; but they were adapted to the actual facts, and in accordance with the main idea which was sketched by the Chief. It may be said, indeed, that the battle of Woerth was brought on, worked out, and completed by the Corps commanders; and the cheerful readiness with which they supported each other, furnished indisputable testimony to the soundness of their training, the excellence of the bodies they commanded, and the formidable character, as well as the suppleness of the military institutions, which, if not founded, had been carried so near to perfection by Von Roon, Von Moltke and the King.
Begun in the early morning by a series of skirmishes on the river front, the action had developed into a battle at mid-day. The resolute Von Kirchbach, acting on his own responsibility, had thrown the entire 5th Corps into the fight; yet so strong was the position occupied by the defenders, that a successful issue depended upon the rapidity and energy with which the assaults on both flanks were conducted by brigades and divisions only then entering one after the other upon a fiercely contested field. At mid-day, the French line of battle had been nowhere broken or imperilled. Hartmann’s Bavarians on one side had been checked; the advance brigade of the 11th Corps, on the other, had been driven back over the Sauer, and Lartigue’s troops were actually pressing upon the bridges near the mill in the marsh, which, however, they could not pass. The enormous line of German guns restrained and punished the French infantry, when not engaged in silencing the inferior artillery of the defender. But no impression had been made upon the wooded heights filled with the soldiers of Ducrot, upon Raoult’s men in the centre above Woerth, or on Lartigue’s troops, who, backed by Conseil-Dumesnil, stood fast about Morsbronn, Eberbach, and Elsasshausen. So it was at noon, when the hardihood of Von Kirchbach forced on a decisive issue. Passing his men through, and on both sides of Woerth, he began a series of sustained attacks upon Raoult, who stiffly contested every foot of woodland, and even repelled the assailants, who, nevertheless, fighting with perseverance, and undismayed by the slaughter, gradually gained a little ground on both sides of the road to Froeschwiller. By comparatively slow degrees, they crept up the slopes, and established a front of battle; but the regiments, battalions, companies, were all mixed together, and, as the officers fell fast, the men had often to depend upon themselves. While these alternately advancing, receding, and yet again advancing troops were grappling with the centre, Hartmann renewed his onsets, part of Von der Tann’s Corps dashed over the Sauer, filling up the gap in the line, and joining his right to Hartmann’s left; and the leading brigades of a fresh division of the 11th Corps, moving steadily and swiftly over the river below Gunstett, backed by all the cannon which the nature of the ground permitted the gunners to use, assailed the French right with measured and sustained fury, and, indeed, decided the battle.
Attack on the French right.
The French were posted in great force on their right—where they had two divisions, one in rear of the other, between the Sauer and the Eberbach, having in support a powerful brigade of horsemen, Cuirassiers and Lancers, under General Michel. The infantry, as a rule, faced to the eastward; while the attacking columns not only fronted to the westward, but also to the north-west; in other words, they fastened on the front from Spachbach, struck diagonally at the outer flank from Morsbronn, and even swept round towards the rear. The area of the combat on this part of the field was included on an oblong space bounded on the west by the Eberbach, and on the east by the Sauer, having Morsbronn at the south-eastern angle and outside the French lines; Albrechtshaüser, a large farmstead, a little to the north of the former, and opposite Gunstett; and beyond that point to the north-west the undulating wooded uplands, called the Niederwald, whence the ground slightly fell towards Elsasshausen, and rose again to a greater height at Froeschwiller, the centre and redoubt of the position. As the 22nd Division of the 11th Corps came up from Dürrenbach, they broke obliquely into this oblong, the direction of their attack mainly following the cross road through the forest from Morsbronn to Elsasshausen, while their comrades pierced the woods to the north of the great farmstead. No difficulty was encountered in expelling the handful of French from the village, but at the farm the Germans had a sharper combat, which they won by a converging movement, yet the defenders had time to retire into the forest. Thus two useful supports were secured, almost perpendicular to the French flank, and the pathways leading towards Reichshofen were uncovered. General Lartigue at once discerned the peril, and, in order that he might obtain time to throw back his right, he directed General Michel to charge the left flank of the Germans before they could recover from the confusion consequent on a rapid and irregular advance through the villages, outbuildings, and hopfields, and array a less broken front.
The French cavalry appear to have considered that their main function was restricted to combats in great battles. The traditions handed down from the days of Kellerman and Murat and Lasalle survived in all their freshness, and the belief prevailed that a charge of French horseman, pushed home, would ride over any infantry, even in serried formation. They had disdained to reckon with the breech-loader in the hands of cool, well-disciplined opponents; and as their chance of acting on their convictions had come, so they were ready and willing to prove how strong and genuine was their faith in the headlong valour of resolute cavaliers. Instead of using one regiment, Michel employed both, and a portion of the 6th lancers as well. He started forth from his position near Eberbach, his horsemen formed in echelon from the right, the 8th Cuirassiers leading in column of squadrons, followed by the 9th and the Lancers. Unluckily for them, they had to traverse ground unsuitable for cavalry. Here groups of trees, there stumps, and again deep drains, disjointed the close formations, and when they emerged into better galloping ground, indeed before they had quitted the obstructions, these gallant fellows were exposed to the deadly fire of the needle-gun. Nevertheless, with fiery courage, the Cuirassiers dashed upon the scattered German infantry, who, until the cavalry approached, had been under a hail of shot from the Chassepots in the Niederwald. Yet the Teutons did not quail, form square, or run into groups—they stood stolidly in line, hurled out a volley at three hundred yards, and then smote the oncoming horsemen with unintermitted fire. The field was soon strewn with dead and wounded men and horses; yet the survivors rushed on, and sought safety by riding round the German line or through the village, where they were brought to bay, and captured by the score. Each regiment, as it rode hardily into the fray, met with a similar fate, and even the fugitives who got into the rear were encountered by a Prussian Hussar regiment, and still further scattered, so that very few ever wandered back into the French lines. As a charge Michel’s valiant onset was fruitless; yet the sacrifice of so many brave horsemen secured a great object—it enabled General Lartigue to throw back his right, rearrange his defensive line in the woods, and renew the contest by a series of violent counter-attacks.
A furious outburst of the French infantry from the south-west angle of the Niederwald overpowered the German infantry, and drove them completely out of the farmstead so recently won. Yet the victors could not hold the place, because the batteries north of Gunstett at once struck and arrested them with a heavy fire, which gave time for fresh troops to move rapidly into line, restore the combat, and once more press back the dashing French infantry into the wood. On this point the fighting was rough and sustained, for the French charged again and again, and did not give way until the Germans on their right, forcing their way through the wood, had crowned a summit which turned the line. The sturdy adversary, who yielded slowly, was now within the forest, and the German troops on the left had come up to Eberbach, capturing MacMahon’s baggage, thus developing a connected front from stream to stream across the great woodland. In short, nearly all the 11th Corps was solidly arrayed, and in resistless motion upon the exposed flank of MacMahon’s position, while part of the Würtembergers, with some horse, were stretching forward beyond the Eberbach, and heading for Reichshofen itself. The Germans, indeed, had gained the north-western border of the woodland, and General von Bose had ordered the one-half of his guns and his reserve of foot to cross the Sauer, and push the battle home. His right was now in connection with the left of the 5th Corps, which had continued its obstinate and sanguinary conflict with Raoult’s division on both sides of the road from Woerth to Froeschwiller, without mastering much ground. As the Bavarians were equally held at bay by the French left, the issue of the battle plainly depended on the vigorous and unfaltering energies of the 11th Corps.