The battles of the world

by J. Douglas Borthwick

An animating and magnificent feature was now added to the terrible spectacle by the forward movement of the heavy cavalry near the Prague road and towards the centre. These great squares of white, spreading out slowly, obliterated the cornfields. The very colour of the ground was changed and darkened under the trampling of horses. One column went towards the Nechanitz road, the other two moved towards Klum; but after a few formations they halted again, and some of these regiments dismounted and stood by their horses. The Saxons, readily to be distinguished by their light blue, also advanced parallel with the Prague road towards the top of the slope. This was some time after eleven o’clock, when the Prussian left and centre had visibly given way, though fighting with extreme tenacity and fervour. The light cavalry, at the same time, or part of them, advanced towards Klum in the centre, awaiting the moment to deluge the plain with an exulting flood. But the time was not come. The Prussians, reinforced, or calling in their second line and reserves, came with a desperate impetus up the slopes on the left and centre, and also developed a new attack on the left of the Prague road, which looked like a black riband now and then as the smoke was driven off by the wind. They were intent on turning our left if possible, but they met with a stubborn and successful resistance at that point. Soon afterwards, in the midst of a heavy fall of rain, the cavalry made another advance, and when it cleared the Austrian infantry were seen to have moved still further to the left and centre, while the sound of the cannonade grew so deafening that the Prussians must have been driven back beyond the position they occupied when they began the action. Between half-past eleven and twelve o’clock the Austrians were to all intents successful on the centre and on its flanks, although the fury of the cannonade and the incessant rattle of musketry all along the front, from the front of Nechanitz to the plateau beyond Klum attested the severity of the struggle and the obstinate resistance of the Prussians. Probbis, another pretty village, was now in flames; three villages burning at once, farmhouses adding their contingents to the fire and smoke, caissons blowing up, shells bursting, and the slopes and hill tops covered with grey and blue specs—each a man in agony or in death. Again the cavalry moved onwards. This time one division, in three bodies, crowned the ridge and formed near the front line under the church, on the left of Klum, in the centre and left of the position, and there they waited once more. But now on the right the action awoke again, and, to our surprise, a very heavy fire of musketry, comparatively close at hand, came from the direction of Smirlintz; the Austrians on the crest of the ridge moved uneasily, while many more stragglers than one cared to see pressed down towards the railroad. Whatever the cause of the agitation, the Prussians on the centre and left pressed their attack with renewed vigour, and the contest which ensued was of exceeding fierceness; but still the enemy did not prevail—the Austrians not only held their ground, but repulsed the enemy advanced against them, took their ground, and made prisoners. From the left of Klum to the Prague road, and beyond it, all was fire and smoke. The tumult of voices was dreadful, and such as is never to be heard save in such awful agony of battle. The Austrians again advanced a little nearer the big tree, and two batteries of reserve artillery could be seen driving fast to the left to strengthen the attack. But the Prussian reserves were once more called upon, and from 12.30 till nearly 1 o’clock there was an artillery fire from centre to left for six miles or more, which could not well have been exceeded in any action of which history makes mention. That ammunition was becoming needed in the advanced position was evident from the motion of the trains of supply and reserve, and we watched the cavalry with intense interest, as it seemed to be the time for them to make an impression. The Prussians were wavering. At 1 o’clock the Prussians, however, recovered some of the ground on the right near the big tree. The Austrian artillery began to fall back over the brow of the hill, and again battalions of infantry came in sight and moved away obliquely towards the centre. Still, no Prussians appeared in that direction, but they were certainly forcing the Austrians back on the right. It might have been expected that the reserves to the right would have been sent up to hold the top of the slope, but I could not see it was so. Many stragglers now appeared on the railway, the fields were spotted with them; and now and then a shell bursting in or over the infantry marching along the slope or the reserves, struck them, or left a little pile of dead or struggling men in the voids which the opening columns displayed. I confess the advance of the Prussians in this direction appeared to me inexplicable and very serious; for, although the left and centre of the Austrians might be victorious, this movement threatened, by forcing back their right, to cut them off from Konigsgratz—so, at least, was the situation as viewed from the tower; but it is strange how different a field of action appears from different points of view, as any one may find out by riding from place to place on a field-day. However, a General who saw what was visible to those in the tower would have felt uneasiness and have turned his attention to fill the gap in his line at the centre, and to drive back the Prussians who were doubling up his right.

While the centre advanced slowly, but surely, a space seemed to be left between the ground they had occupied and the left of the Austrians, who were continually retiring there. The houses burning fiercely in Klum emitted volumes of smoke, which were swept away towards the right. Another village lying apparently to the left of Prague road, named Gres Biaritz, or Hiaritz, as well as I could catch the name, was now in flames. More tumbrils blew up in that direction, so that there were now six or seven villages and hamlets on fire from left to right. The battle was assuming a more awful and tremendous aspect, and the faint rays of sunshine which shot at intervals through the lifting clouds only gave the scene greater terror. Horses without riders careered among the wounded, who were crawling all over the plain, dismounted dragoons dragged themselves to the rear, and men came crawling along in such numbers that they appeared like a broad fringe to the edges of the battle. The rolling of musketry in the hollows beyond smothered the voice of the cannon. At last the reserves behind were pressed forward with energy. Their artillery unlimbering opened from sixteen guns into the dense blue columns which were driving the Austrians before them, and checked their advance, till the Prussian artillery, getting upon the small ridge and firing down so as to get a slight enfilade, began to knock over horses and men. The Austrians, however, here, as elsewhere, stuck to their pieces admirably, and it was not till the Prussian infantry, getting into a clump of timber, opened a sharp fire on their flank that they limbered up, leaving more than one black heap to mark the position they had occupied. Meanwhile the Austrians on the left pursued their onward career. The Saxon reserves pushed up the hills in the direction of Nechanitz; and a great body of cavalry sweeping round between the left and centre, dashed in wavelike columns through the smoke towards the Prussians, and menaced their artillery, against which some thirty or forty pieces in line were directing a steady and rapid fire. Prussian prisoners begun to arrive at intervals between the convoys of wounded, winding their way along the Prague road. Most of those men belonged to the 6th and 31st regiments, to judge from the numbers on their shoulder-straps; and among them was an officer of great stature, with red moustaches and whiskers, who bore his captivity with great sang froid, and walked along like a conqueror. As the Austrian left and centre gained ground, the right yielded, and column after column of Prussians came upon the ridge, firing as they advanced, while their guns on the flanks swept the slowly retreating, but not disorderly, Austrians with shrapnel and shell. At times the Austrians halting opened a brisk fire; once or twice several regiments formed square to receive cavalry, but I could not see any Prussian horse on the slope near them. There was a hesitation, both in the Austrians and the enemy, which was not intelligible, and several times the officers at the head of the Prussian columns riding forward, fired over their horses’ heads, and stood up in their stirrups as if to see into the hollows. A shell burst close over one of them, and when the smoke cleared away, man and horse were down, and never stirred again. The folds of the ground must have hid most of the Prussians from the Austrian artillery as they got near the big tree, for the gunners principally directed their pieces against the Prussian guns, which received accessions rapidly, and occupied their full attention. At last the Prussians were perceived, and five battalions of Austrians from the reserve, coming from the extreme right, tried to check their advance by a flanking fire. The Prussians halted, and in an instant a fire of surprising volume and sharpness flew along their front. The Austrians for a few minutes replied steadily, but they fell fast, and at last two battalions, with great vigour, charged up the hill, but were broken in the run, were shaken by a rolling volley and by several rounds from the artillery in flank, and retreated in some disorder towards the left, behind a spur of the ridge. The enemy pressed on anew, and soon gained the plateau close by the big tree, where they dipped into an undulation only to reappear at the other side, and then formed up in compact square-like formations, pushing out lines of skirmishers towards Klum, from which they were about a mile distant. The Austrians below them and nearer to Konigsgratz halted and faced round to meet a new enemy, for the Prussians now showed near the railway, and a sanguinary encounter took place around some houses in a wood, in which artillery and musketry raged for a quarter of an hour in a perfect tornado. A range of buildings near a large factory chimney on the very banks of the Elbe, as it seemed to me, was the scene of another very severe struggle. Another village, Trothina, burst into flames, and from under the very smoke appeared the Prussian skirmishers on the very extreme right, followed by more infantry. The enemy were, indeed, quite inexhaustible in number, though still he could not hold his own on the left. Suddenly an Austrian battery, galloping from the left centre, began to mow down the Prussians on the right. They were retiring behind the burning Trothina. But their artillery was at hand again. From a lane above the village a battery opened on the Austrians, and, at the same time, another battery, wheeling over the slope below the big tree, crossed its fire on the devoted Austrians. “Ein Kreuz feuer? Ein Kreuz feuer?” exclaimed the officers. “Good God! where do they come from?” Where, indeed! This combat now assumed larger proportions. The Prussian right showed in great force, and the hills were covered with their regiments advancing in the most perfect order. All over the field were hundreds limping away, and piles of dead lay in rows along the lanes and in the thick corn. The enemy, whose strength had been hidden from us by the hills, now displayed numbers, which accounted for the retreat of the Austrians on the right.

The Austrian gunners could not hold up against the cross fire, and the weight of pieces opposed to them. What avail was it that they were winning on the centre? Through the glass they could be seen pressing on from point to point in a tempest of smoke and flame. It was now near two o’clock. On the left and centre there could be no hesitation in declaring that the Prussians were all but beaten. It seemed as if a charge en masse of the horse deployed for miles on the plateau could roll up their centre on their left, or crumble the left into pieces. The fire at Klum, in the centre, which had died out, broke forth with fresh violence, and all the village began to burn. The Prussians in the centre made another grand effort, and it would only be a repetition of adjectives, utterly feeble at the strongest, to endeavour to give the smallest conception of the roar of cannon which announced and met this fresh attempt to change the fortunes of the day. The strong wind could not clear away the smoke, which poured in banks as agitated as the sea itself over the battle-field, now contracted to the centre and right, for all towards the Prague road the fight had apparently ended in the discomfiture of the Prussian left. As it contracted it heated up, and the caissons and tumbrils blew up repeatedly. The movements of the Austrians from the right centre to oppose the last effort of the Prussians increased the open interval between the centre and the extreme right resting on the lower ground near the river, but the Austrians did not perceive it, or if they did, could not prevent the advance of the enemy along the plateau by the big tree towards Klum. The Austrian right and reserves become more unsteady, but their artillery contests every foot of ground. Suddenly a spattering of musketry breaks out of the trees and houses of Klum right down on the Austrian gunners, and on the columns of infantry drawn up on the slopes below. The gunners fall on all sides—their horses are disabled—the fire increases in intensity—the Prussians on the ridge press on over the plateau; this is an awful catastrophe—two columns of Austrians are led against the village, but they cannot stand the fire, and after three attempts to carry it, retreat, leaving the hill-side covered with the fallen. It is a terrible moment. The Prussians see their advantage; they here get into the very centre of the position. In vain the staff officers fly to the reserves and hasten to get back some of the artillery from the front. The dark blue regiments multiply on all sides and from their edges roll perpetually sparkling musketry. Their guns hurry up, and from the slope take both the Austrians on the extreme right and the reserves in flank. They spread away to the woods near the Prague road and fire into the rear of the Austrian gunners.

Thus a wedge growing broader and driven in more deeply every instant was forced into the very body of the Austrian army, separating it at the heart and dividing its left and centre from the right. The troops in the centre and left are dismayed at hearing the enemy’s guns in their rear, and are soon exposed to the fire which most of all destroys the morale of soldiers already shaken by surprise. The right, previously broken up and discomfited, hurry towards the Prague road in something like confusion, and spread alarm among the reserves of the centre and left. The regular lines of the columns below are gradually bulging out, and are at last swallowed up in disordered multitude. Officers gallop about trying to restore order. Some regiments hold together, though they are losing men in heaps every instant. The left wing is arrested in its onward progress. The Prussian Generals in front of them and on the centre, seeing their enemy waver, throw their battalions against them, and encourage their artillery to fresh efforts; but the formidable Austrian cavalry prevents any hasty or enthusiastic demonstrations on the part of the Prussian right, whom long continued fighting and heavy losses must have somewhat enervated.

Even yet there was hope for the Austrians! There, on the Prussian front, wheeled a force of horse with which a Murat or a Kellerman or a Seidlitz could have won a battle and saved an empire. There, still unshaken, were at least 40,000 men, of whom scarcely one had ever fired a shot. The indomitable Austrian artillery still turned hundreds of muzzles on the enemy’s guns, and girt their men in a band of fire. To let slip that cavalry on both sides of Klum, to crash through infantry and guns, seemed really worth doing, though failure would have made the difference between a defeat and a rout. It would have been a supreme deed fit for such a force to accomplish or to perish in attempting. And there were no natural obstacles visible from the tower to a grand charge. The Prussian right, separated from its centre and left, would have been rolled down into the valley among the Austrians, and utterly crushed, and the Austrian centre and left have been liberated to continue their contest with the enemy. Moments were precious. The Prussian fire became more severe, the wavering of the Austrians greater. The falling of trees on the Prague road, the rush of fugitives, the near approach of the Prussian shells to the place, some of them bursting over the railway station, were awful warnings of the state of the battle. All the roads were blocked up with retreating trains and waggons. Men were throwing down their arms and wading through the inundations. The Austrian gunners on the causeway began to catch a sight of the Prussians near at hand in the woods, and opened on them with shrapnel and shell. It was now somewhere about 2.30; but it was not possible to note time when such things were going on so near. Scarce could the glass be directed to one point ere an exclamation from a bystanding officer or an awful clamour carried it to another. Seconds were of inestimable value—not only that hundreds were falling, but that they were falling in vain—that all the issues for which an empire had summoned its might and the Kaiser his people to the field were being decided, and that the toils of generations of Emperors, warriors, and statesmen were about being lost for ever. The genius of the Prussian was in the ascendant.

The spirit of Bismark or his genius ruled the battle-field. While the Austrian was hesitating, the Prussian was acting. The lines of dark blue which came in sight from the right teemed from the vales below as if the earth yielded them. They filled the whole back ground of the awful picture of which Klum was the centre. They pressed down on the left of the Prague road. In square, in column, deploying or wheeling hither and thither—everywhere pouring in showers of deadly precision—penetrating the whole line of the Austrians; still they could not force their stubborn enemy to fly. On all sides they met brave but unfortunate men, ready to die if they could do no more. At the side of the Prague road the fight went on with incredible vehemence. The Austrians had still an immense force of artillery, and although its concentrated fire swept the ground before it, its effect was lost in some degree by reason of the rising ground above, and at last by its divergence to so many points to answer the enemy’s cannon. Many Austrians must have fallen by their own artillery. Once an Austrian column, separating itself from the great multitude below, with levelled bayonets, led by its officers in front waving caps and sabres, went straight at the wood around Klum and drove back the Prussian Tirailleurs, but were staggered by fearful volleys of musketry. Their officers were all killed or wounded. They fell suddenly back. Down came the Prussians, but they were received on the bayonet point and with clubbed muskets, and were driven back to the shelter of the wood, and some were carried off prisoners in the retreating column. Indeed, handfuls of Prussians were coming into the town behind us all the day, showing how close the fight was, and a considerable body of the 27th Regiment, with some officers, are now in the Grosser Ring. Chesta and Visa were now burning, so that from right to left the flames of ten villages, and the flashes of guns and musketry, contended with the sun that pierced the clouds for the honour of illuminating the seas of steel and the fields of carnage. It was three o’clock. The efforts of the Austrians to occupy Klum and free their centre had failed, the right was driven down in a helpless mass towards Konigsgratz, quivering and palpitating as shot and shell tore through it. “Alles ist verloren!” Artillery still thundered with a force and violence which might have led a stranger to such scenes to think no enemy could withstand it. The Austrian cavalry still hung like white thunder-clouds on the flanks, and threatened the front of the Prussians, keeping them in square and solid columns. But already the trains were streaming away from Konigsgratz, placing the Elbe and Adler between them and the enemy. The grip of the Prussians could not be shaken. Word was brought to me to leave at once, for the city gates were about being closed, and the gunners on the walls were laying their pieces to cover the inundations and the causeways. One more glance showed a very hell of fire—cornfields, highways, slopes, and dells, and hillsides covered with the slain—the pride and might of Austria shattered and laid low. What happened more I can only tell from hearsay. But I am told that at the last the Austrian horse saved all that was not lost, and in brilliant charges rolled back the tide of Prussian infantry; that the gunners threw their pieces into the Elbe and into the inundated fields as they retreated; that men were drowned in hundreds as they crowded over pontoon bridges hastily laid and sunk or burned ere the columns could cross over; that luggage-trains, reserve ammunition, guns, and prisoners, the spoils of that enormous host, fell into the hands of the victors, who remained masters of that hard-fought field, covered for nine miles with myriads of the slain. Well might Benedek exclaim, “All is lost but my life! Would to God I had lost that too!”

There is no account of our losses, estimates varying from 10,000 to 25,000. If prisoners be included, I am inclined to think the latter number correct. The loss in guns is reckoned at 150 to 180. It would not astonish me to hear it was more.”

INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE.

Incidents of the battle are furnished by several other correspondents of the London papers. The following are selections:—

“In the Austrian ranks some striking instances of inhumanity have been exhibited. Yesterday, a prisoner was brought hither loaded with chains, to suffer well-deserved punishment. He was a Croat, and was taken in the very act of cutting off his own wounded captain’s fingers to get quicker at his rings.