The defeated troops of the VIth French Corps hurriedly retired into the valley of the Moselle, their retreat covered by the brigade holding the Bois de Jaumont and by the cavalry. Only then did the Guard Grenadier Division make its first appearance, and the Reserve Artillery of the French Army deployed east of Amanvillers. The German batteries at once took up the fight, which lasted till late in the night, and in the course of which Amanvillers was burned.
In that quarter the retirement of the IVth French Corps had also already commenced, masked, however, by repeated heavy attacks to the front. In the course of these there occurred a hand-to-hand encounter with the charging battalions of the right wing of the Guard and the left of the IXth Corps. Amanvillers, however, remained in the hands of the French for the night. Not until three o'clock on the morning of the 19th did the IIIrd French Corps evacuate its position about Moscou; and the IInd Corps held its ground until five o'clock, engaged in constant sharp frays with the outposts of the Pomeranians, who on its withdrawal took possession of the plateaus of Moscou and Point du Jour.
The results attained on the 18th of August had been made possible only by the battles of the 14th and 16th.
The French estimate their losses at 13,000 men. In October 173,000 were still in Metz, consequently it is certain that the enemy had at disposition in the battle of the 18th of August more than 180,000 men. The exact strength of the seven[15] German Corps on that day amounted to 178,818 men. Thus with the forces on either side of approximately equal strength, the French had been driven out of a position of almost unrivalled natural advantage.
Naturally the loss of the assailants was much heavier than that of the defence; it amounted to 20,584 men, among them 899 officers.
Whereas by the war-establishment the average is one officer to every forty men, in this battle one officer fell to every twenty-three men; glorious testimony to the example set by their leaders to their brave men, but also a loss which could not be restored during the course of the war. Altogether the six battles fought in the first fourteen days of August had cost the German army 50,000 men.[16] It was naturally impossible immediately to call out at home a sufficient levy in substitution for the losses; but reinforcements drawn from the time-expired cadres were already bespoken.
First of all that same evening the earliest instalment of the trains and the Field-Hospitals had to be brought up from the right bank of the Moselle; and the ammunition had to be replenished throughout. In Rezonville, thronged as it was with the wounded, it was with difficulty that a little garret for the King and shelter for his General Staff were found. Its members were engrossed throughout the night in preparing the dispositions which the new phase of the situation created by the victory rendered immediately necessary. This exertion enabled all those orders to be laid before his Majesty for approval on the morning of the 19th.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The XIIth Corps never stood on the right. It occupied its assigned position on the extreme left, and the delay arose from the Guard Corps having occupied a position other than that designed for it, and having been allowed to remain there.
[12] Vionville in text seems a slip of the pen for Verneville.