Later despatches confirm the rumour of Prince Alexander’s capture by the Russians, and add that, when the news became known at Dragomiroff’s headquarters—which are said to be at Dubno—there was almost as much jubilation as when the intelligence of Napoleon’s surrender flew like wildfire around the German lines at Sedan.
The ex-Bulgarian Prince is to be sent to St. Petersburg, where rooms are being already prepared for him at the Katherinenhof, and meanwhile he has been allowed to retain his sword in order that his unforgiving and exultant cousin, the Czar, may have the satisfaction of receiving it from the humiliated captive’s own hands—a picture that will eclipse in interest all the romantic incidents which have already marked the Prince’s strangely chequered career.
NIGHT ATTACK BY THE RUSSIANS.
FIGHTING BY THE ELECTRIC LIGHT—ROUT OF GENERAL GOURKO—RETREAT UPON WARSAW.
(By Telegraph from our Special Correspondent, Mr. Charles Lowe.)
Alexandrovo, May 7, 5 A.M.
The German Army of the Vistula has just inflicted on the Russians another Plevna, and they are now in full retreat towards Warsaw. Such, in brief, is the result of the sanguinary night battle of which I have just been a witness. The Russians were the first to practise night attacks as a means of obviating the dreadful losses certain to result from magazine-rifle fire during the day, but they will long have cause to remember their first serious application of the nocturnal principle of modern warfare.
By seven o’clock last night the 3d and 4th German Corps had completed their concentration at and near this place, and, after extending the lines of entrenchment begun by the 6th Division on capturing Alexandrovo, had gone into fireless bivouac on both sides of the railway line, their tents extending for about a couple of miles in either direction. Several reconnaissances executed by us during the day had elicited that the Russians were marshalling in great force at a place called Waganiek, and were receiving reinforcements from the right bank of the Vistula, by means of a pontoon bridge which had been thrown across the stream a little higher up, at Dobrowniki; but, owing to the dense masses of cavalry which hovered on their front, concealing their movements as a stage curtain hides from view the shifting of the scenes in a theatre, it was impossible for our scouts to bring back more definite information. One item, however, of their intelligence, gathered from a captured Cossack, had a special interest for us, to wit, that the Russian forces immediately in front of us consisted mainly of the 5th and 6th Corps, with part of the 4th (including the relics of Grodnovodsky’s Brigade), and were under the personal command of General Gourko, the hero of the Balkans. On the strength of this information it was decided to attack Gourko before he got his preparations complete, and for this purpose to break bivouac, and start in quest of him at the dawn of day, as Prince Frederick Charles had done with Benedek at Sadowa.
I had spent the evening with a particular friend of mine, Captain von Jagdkönig, of Stülpnagel’s Brandenburg Infantry Regiment, and was just on the point of setting out with him on a visit of inspection among the fore-posts, when a Uhlan dashed up with the intelligence that there were signs of a mysterious commotion in front, and that something was audible in the otherwise noiseless night like the distant rumbling of waggon and cannon wheels. Anon other messengers from the front came spurring in with similar news, and as the general purport of all these ‘Meldungen’ could no longer be doubted, the bugles were at once set to work, and presently all the silent bivouacs, taking up the shrilling war-note one after the other, like the multiplication of a distant echo, were resonant with the thrilling call to arms; and thanks to the severe training in the discipline of ‘alarms’ which the German army has been put through by the present Emperor since his accession to the throne, the army of the Vistula had all started from its sleep and was standing in perfect battle array, with its face to the suspected foe, within ten minutes of the first trumpet summons.
The night was intensely dark, the moon having just gone down behind an impenetrable bank of pitchy clouds, and all fighting seemed to be utterly out of the question. Presently, however, the inky darkness all around us was pierced, one may almost say scattered, by a sudden blaze of light, which, appearing to possess all the illuminating power of the mid-day sun, flashed lightning-like upon us its blinding beams from the murky forehead of the midnight sky. ‘The electric light!’ ran from mouth to mouth, after a moment’s bewildered pause, while every one instinctively shaded his eyes from the glare of this all-irradiating and all-penetrating lamp which modern Science had thus hung up to facilitate the work of slaughter, as if the very sun refused to look any longer upon human carnage. For some moments the more than mile-long rays of this blinding ball of light, this detective bull’s-eye of modern science, swept round the horizon in front of it, as if uncertain where to fix its focus—now shooting beyond, now falling short of us, and anon settling on us and suffusing us with a sea of dazzling light. Presently another, and yet another such luminary burst forth from elevations of pretty equal distances in front of us, and the process of their groping about for our lines revealed to us dense masses of grey and dark-green coated battalions picking their cautious way down the distant slopes in front of us. For the electric light has this disadvantage, that in flinging its beams about to discover the locality of foes, it frequently at the same time unveils the whereabouts of friends. This was the case here, but our gunners were on the alert, and next time the focus of the light, in its jerky search-movement, fell on the Russian troops in the course of their stealthy advance towards us, we opened the concert with a screaming chorus of shells, accompanied by a rattling orchestration of small-arms. Nor had we long to wait for the antiphone; for next time the search-light managed to flood us with its blinding effulgence, the Russian batteries, which had been planted on the same elevations, gave lusty voice, and bellowed away at us in most leonine fashion, though their projectiles, being aimed at much too long a range, flew high over our heads and left us scatheless. Not so, however, the rifle-rain of our enemies, which, first in intermittent showers, and then in a steady downpour, began to fall among our ranks with deadly effect; and the word was passed from flank to flank for all the infantry to lie down and court the shelter of our field entrenchments, which crested the ridge of our line of battle.