In thunder and smoke the battle goes burning on. For hours the result is in doubt. All depends on the second battle line, but where is the Crown Prince? Will he arrive in time?
¶ The vast artillery duel began early and lasted many hours. At the height of the battle, old King William asked for a cigar, and when the box was brought took a long time to select one, to his fancy. Bismarck regarded it as a good sign! “If he can bother about the best cigar, the battle cannot be lost,” was Bismarck’s mental comment.
¶ At last, the Austrians began giving way.
¶ In joy, the King took from his neck his own Iron Cross and hung it on Bismarck’s neck.
¶ Moltke came up, bright and happy, with these words: “Your Majesty has not only won the battle, but the whole campaign.”
¶ It was true; the great Austrian war was practically now won, and in three short weeks!
¶ Sadowa, or Koeniggraetz as the Germans call it, is one of the great battles of history. There were 445,000 men engaged; Austria lost 30,000 and 1,147 officers.
¶ Bismarck, on his tall roan, was eighteen hours in the saddle; neither man nor faithful beast had food or drink, except that the horse, standing now and again among the windrows of corpses, ate corn-tops and nibbled at leaves. That night, Bismarck slept by the roadside, without straw, a carriage cushion under his head. The rain beat down in a drizzle, and for miles the smoke hung like a pall. Bismarck’s rheumatic pains, his weakness from loss of food, wore him down.
¶ At last, the course of nature can no farther go; and the master falls into a deep sleep—surrounded by windrows of the dead.
¶ At dawn, as he stood up, half-dead from exhaustion, against the lowering skies he saw the vultures ready to pick the bones that Glory had provided in this phase of the terrifying story of German Unity.