The bridge-head, considering its strength, and the numerous supporting works, fell into our hands with astonishing ease. Its capture did not cost us more than 100 men. We killed 200, captured eighty, and about 1,000 ran away. The pontoon on the extreme right was also captured, but with some difficulty and loss; while the defenders of the centre bridge drove back its assaulters with the loss of nearly half their strength: and it becoming certain that there was a strong supporting body in the German rear which was fast coming up, we received orders to destroy all we could, and retire.
There was not much time for destruction. We perceived at least four battalions of the enemy close upon us; and their artillery began to fire into the gorge of the work. So we destroyed the breach-blocks of some of the guns we had captured, and ran for it, taking our prisoners with us, though most of them afterwards escaped.
Our engineers had discovered that the bridge was mined; and they blew it up so quickly after we had passed, that I am not sure one or two of our men did not go up with it. I know that I had an unpleasantly narrow escape myself, besides being half suffocated with dust and smoke. I afterwards learned that one of the wooden pontoons was destroyed; but on the whole the expedition was not as successful as it should have been. It had been undertaken with too weak a force; and should have been accompanied by artillery. We got away with a total loss to the three columns of about 800 men, or more than a third of their number.
It was a night of curious adventures, and singular mistakes on the part of the enemy. For we had not retreated more than four versts when a squad of thirty Prussian hussars rode up to us, mistaking us for a battalion of their own countrymen. When they discovered their mistake they tried to escape by spreading out, and galloping away full tilt. Twenty of them and a dozen horses went down before our fire: the rest got away.
I understood that the Russian commander was not well pleased with the results of this expedition; but nobody was so much to blame as himself for not sending a stronger detachment, and for not adequately supporting what he did send. The whole force was a flying detachment, and as such ought to have been differently constituted. For instance we ought to have had a strong body of Cossacks with us; and that very useful corps ought to have linked us up with headquarters.
As it was we had to make a forced march well into the next day, bivouac in the snow on short commons, and continue our march before we were half rested. We passed through several towns and villages, in which we saw groups of starving people. Many of them followed us, in dread of the Germans whom they believed were closely pursuing us; but I think those acute gentlemen were far behind, probably suspecting a trap; and I have firmly believed that it was only the daring presumption and impudence of our proceedings that saved us. Had the Germans known how weak we were, and at so great a distance from our base, it is probable that we should have tasted the delights of a German military prison.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FIGHTING NEAR SKYERMEVICE ON THE 3RD, 4TH, AND 5TH FEBRUARY
We rejoined headquarters in the early morning of the 30th, all much exhausted for lack of food and rest; but there was no respite. News was to hand that the Germans were closing in on us on all sides, and that we must fall back on Lovicz without a moment's delay. At the same time I learned that Lodz was in the hands of the Germans, had been for some time, and was called Neu-Breslau by them. This, and other items of information, tended to confirm what for some time I had suspected, that our division had been nearly surrounded by the enemy: and that, for some reason which did not appear, we had been kept in a position of grave danger for several weeks.