Naturally enough this must have a most demoralising effect on all soldiers, and when Blücher at Lingy said: ‘My men like to see the enemy,’ he was only characterising the fighting men of most nations. Still, as far as I could discover, the German Infantry were less disconcerted by these unseen terrors of modern war than were their Russian foes, who are most dour and indomitable devils when they can fight shoulder to shoulder and in the mass, but lose much of their morale and their dogged powers of resistance when each man has mainly to rely upon his own intelligence (not a very marked feature of the Slavonic soldier), his own initiative, and his own isolated sources of courage. Indeed, we thought we could now and then detect traces of panic among the soldiers of the Czar; and in one case, at least, we distinctly saw an officer draw his revolver on some of his men who would rather have fled than fallen before a foe whom they could neither see nor feel.
In spite, however, of these demoralising influences which were at work among the scattered ranks of the Russians, they held their ground with singular tenacity; and the battle had thus raged for hours without our being able to carry out completely our main purpose, which was, under cover of the feint attack that we had directed against the enemy’s centre, to turn his right and roll him up—a manœuvre, as we knew, which Prince George of Saxony was equally fain to accomplish with the Russian left.
About noon, however, the scales of victory were suddenly turned in our favour in the following manner. The day was bright, clear, and warm, and though the battlefield immediately in front of the knoll occupied by King Albert and his Staff (to which I had attached myself) was completely free from powder-smoke, the horizon behind the Russians all at once began to grow clouded with a long line of thick yellow dust, which floated ever nearer and nearer to us in dense billowy volumes like a huge, irregular wave of muddy sea foam. I saw the King exchange glances of intelligent meaning with the various members of his Staff, but did not myself comprehend the meaning of the phenomenon, until the rolling dust-cloud began to be relieved by sparks and glintings such as are emitted by mica from a grey hillside, and then it flashed upon me all at once that these coruscations of light in a whirlwind of dust could only come from the flashing of the sun’s rays on the sabres, helmets, and lances of our cavalry.
And so it was. For our Two Divisions of Horse, numbering in all thirty-two squadrons, starting betimes, had stolen away through Lowitz, up the right bank of the Bzura, and fording this stream above its confluence with the Ravka, had mounted this other brook and crossed it at Bolimoff, where they were fairly in the rear of the Russian right, on which they thus came thundering down. I had seen operations of this kind repeatedly carried out at the autumn manœuvres in Germany, but deemed them Kriegspiel in the literal sense of the word—and not to be thought of or hazarded in real warfare. Yet here was a vivid proof that the Germans are terribly earnest, even in their military pastimes, and that they only apply in war what they practise in peace. I daresay, however, King Albert would never have sanctioned so bold a venture had he not discovered early in the day that the Russians had shifted the bulk of their cavalry to their left flank as being the more exposed of the two, and only left a weak Brigade of Dragoons to strengthen the natural inaccessibility of their right. It had never occurred to them as a physical possibility that the Germans, unperceived by their Cossack scouts, could positively work two Cavalry Divisions round to their rear; but the Germans had done so, and, riding down the Dragoon Brigade in question, it rushed with a ringing cheer like a whirlwind upon the Russian battalions and smote them hip and thigh.
Becoming aware, though all too late, of this impending avalanche of squadrons in their rear, the Russians had faced about with wonderful alacrity and steadiness, and delivered a well-directed volley against their assailants, emptying a very considerable number of saddles; but though this staggered them a little, it did not in the least stop the long audacious wave of horsemen, who, couching their lances (for the German cavalry of all kinds are now armed with this weapon), rode full tilt at the lines of Russian marksmen, stabbing and spearing them as they so stubbornly stood their ground. The shock and mêlée were all over in less time than it takes to tell of it, and having thus performed their dare-devil and death-dealing ride through the shattered ranks of Gourko’s infantry, the gallant squadrons put spurs to their jaded steeds, and with another rousing cheer came galloping across to our lines, through which they passed amid ringing salvoes of cheers, retiring into the hollow ground beyond to rally and re-form—though very much thinned in numbers, it must be admitted. It was an heroic feat, executed at a great cost of life and limb; but it had completed the demoralisation among the ranks of the Russian infantry which our invisible musketry fire had begun, and paved the way for the crowning manœuvre of the day.
This was performed by our reserve Division of Infantry (the 8th), which, imitating the strategy of the Prussian Guards at Chlum, had edged its way round and taken the Russians full on their right flank, which it was now rapidly rolling up and forcing in upon the centre in huddled masses of demoralised and defeated troops of all arms. At the same time it was clear, from certain signs on the extreme right, that our army of the Vistula had succeeded in performing a similar turning movement in its particular part of the field (where the bulk of the Russian Cavalry had bravely, but vainly, attempted to stem the tide of our advance); and by two o’clock in the afternoon our line of battle had assumed something like semi-circular shape, which was ever narrowing down upon our out-manœuvred opponents.
By this time a general advance on our side had been ordered, and our Corps Artillery, after raining another most awful torrent of shells on the Russian position, now slackened and gradually stopped its fire, in order to let our infantry do the rest of the bloody work unhampered by the fire of their own guns. Our infantry, indeed, were only too eager to finish its terrible task; and although whole ranks were mown down before it could succeed in ousting the enemy from the field entrenchments, which ran bastion-like all round their position in Skierniwiçe, still Teutonic courage and discipline proved more than equal to Russian doggedness, and volley after volley of the Mauser repeater soon filled Gourko’s trenches with heaps of dead and wounded.
THE STORMING OF SKIERNIWIÇE.
The townlet of Skierniwiçe was in flames, and no longer afforded shelter to its defenders; the chateau itself (with all its three-Emperor memories) had been converted into a heap of smoking ruins; the Russian batteries had been reduced to silence as much by our long-range rifle-fire as by our own field guns; the wood had also been rendered untenable by our encompassing it on three sides; and so nothing remained to be done but storm the position at the point of the bayonet. It is marvellous how troops can so dispose themselves as to escape observation in a terrain not over rich in natural and artificial cover; for the general advance had not been sounded long before reserve companies and battalions seemed to start from out the very earth and join in the universal rush forward upon the Russians, as they began to waver and finally give way all along the line. By one battalion a determined stand was made at the railway station, where there was some desperate hand-to-hand fighting that recalled the butchery of Bazeilles; but here, too, German obstinacy and valour carried the day; and as the ‘Old Dessauers’ had distinguished themselves by the capture of the Russian battery at Vlokavek, so now it was reserved to the 2d battalion of that same regiment to storm, with colours flying and kettle-drums beating, the final foothold of Gourko’s gallant Muscovites on the field which had been selected by him and his fellow-commander as the Waterloo of this portion of the war.