The Franco-German War of 1870-71 Part 42

By the adoption of the first the communications of the Austrian Army with Pardubitz would be so seriously threatened that it might probably be compelled to retreat. But to secure the safety of such a movement our IInd Army must relieve our Ist and cross over to the right bank of the Elbe. And in this case the flank march of the latter close past the enemy's front might easily be interfered with, if pa.s.sages enough across the river had been prepared by him.

In the second case, success could only be hoped for if an advance of the IInd Army on the right flank of the enemy's position could be combined with the attack in front. For this it must be kept on the left bank.

The separation of the two armies, which was for the present intentionally maintained, allowed of either plan being followed; but mine was the serious responsibility of advising his Majesty which should be chosen.

To keep both alternatives open for the present, General von Herwarth was ordered to occupy Pardubitz, and the Crown Prince to remain on the left bank of the Elbe, to reconnoitre that river as well as the Aupa and the Metau, and to remove all obstacles which might oppose a crossing in one or the other direction. At length, on July 2nd, Prince Frederick Charles was ordered, in the event of his finding a large force in front of the Elbe, to attack it at once. But, on the evening of that day, it came to the knowledge of the Prince that the whole Austrian Army had marched to and was in position on the Bistritz; and in obedience to instructions received, he at once ordered the Ist Army and the Army of the Elbe to a.s.semble close in front of the enemy by daybreak next morning.

General von Voigts-Rhetz brought the news at eleven o'clock in the evening to the King at Gitschin, and his Majesty sent him over to me.

This information dispelled all doubts and lifted a weight from my heart.

With a "Thank G.o.d!" I sprang out of bed, and hastened across to the King, who was lodged on the other side of the Market Place.

His Majesty also had gone to rest in his little camp-bed. After a brief explanation on my part, he said he fully understood the situation, decided on giving battle next day with all three armies in co-operation, and desired me to transmit the necessary orders to the Crown Prince, who was at once to cross the Elbe.

The whole interview with his Majesty lasted barely ten minutes. No one else was present.

This was the "Council of War" before Koniggratz.

General von Podbielski and Major Count Wartensleben shared my quarters.

The orders to the IInd Army were drawn up forthwith and despatched in duplicate by two different routes by midnight. One, carried by General von Voigts-Rhetz, informed Prince Frederick Charles of all the dispositions; the other was sent direct to Koniginhof.

In the course of his night-ride of above twenty-eight miles, Lieutenant-Colonel Count Finckenstein had to pa.s.s the rayon of the Ist Army Corps, which was furthest to the rear. He handed to the officer on duty a special letter to be forwarded immediately to the general in command, ordering an immediate a.s.semblage of his troops and an independent advance, even before orders should reach him from Koniginhof.

The position of the Austrians on July 3rd had a front of not more than 4-3/4 miles. Our three armies advanced on it in an encompa.s.sing arc of about twenty-four miles in extent. But while in the centre the Ist and IInd Corps of the Ist Army stood before daylight close in front of the enemy, on the right wing General von Herwarth had to advance on the Bistritz from Smidar in the dark, by very bad roads, above nine miles; and on the left, the orders from the Royal head-quarter could not even reach the Crown Prince before four in the morning. It was therefore decided that the centre would have to maintain a detaining engagement for several hours. Above all, a possible offensive on the part of the enemy must here be met, and for this the whole IIIrd Corps and the cavalry corps stood ready; but the battle could only be decided by the double flank attack by both the flanking armies.[84]

I had ridden out early to the heights in front of Sadowa with my officers, and at eight o'clock the King also arrived there.

It was a dull morning, and from time to time a shower fell. The horizon was dim, yet on the right the white clouds of smoke showed that the heads of the Ist Army were already fighting some way off, in front of the villages on the Bistritz. On the left, in the woods of Swip, brisk rifle-firing was audible. Behind the King, besides his staff, were his royal guests, with their numerous suites of adjutants, equerries, and led horses, in number as many as two squadrons. An Austrian battery seemed to have selected them to aim at, and compelled him to move away with a smaller following.

Soon afterwards, with Count Wartensleben, I rode through the village of Sadowa, which the enemy had already abandoned. The advanced guard of the 8th Division had ma.s.sed its guns behind the wood under cover of the sharpshooters who had been sent forward, but many sh.e.l.ls fell there from a large battery in front of the exits from the copses. As we rode further along the road we admired the coolness of a huge ox, which went on its way, heedless of the shot, and seemed determined to charge the enemy's position.

The formidable array of the IIIrd and Xth Austrian Corps' Artillery opposite the wood prevented any attempt to break through it, and I was in time to countermand an order which had been given to do so.

Meanwhile, further to the left, General von Fransecky had vigorously pa.s.sed to the offensive. After a sharp struggle he had driven the enemy out of the Swip woods, and come through to the further side. Against him he had the IVth Austrian Corps; but now the IInd and part of the IIIrd Austrian Corps turned on the 7th Division; 57 battalions against 14. In the thick brushwood all the bodies had become mixed, personal command was impossible, and, in spite of our obstinate resistance, isolated detachments were taken prisoners, and others were dispersed.

Such a rabble rushed out of the wood at the very moment when the King and his staff rode up; his Majesty looked on with some displeasure,[85]

but the wounded officer, who was trying to keep his little band together, at once led it back into the fight. In spite of heavy losses the division got firm possession of the northern side of the wood. It had drawn on itself very considerable forces of the enemy, which were subsequently missing from the positions which it was their duty to have defended.

It was now eleven o'clock. The heads of the Ist Army had crossed the Bistritz, and taken most of the villages on its further bank; but these were only the enemy's advanced posts, which he had no intention of obstinately holding. His Corps held a position behind, whence their 250 guns commanded the open plain which had to be crossed for the delivery of a further attack. On the right, General von Herwarth had reached the Bistritz, but on the left nothing was yet to be seen of the Crown Prince.

The battle had come to a standstill. In the centre the Ist Army was still fighting about the villages on the Bistritz; the cavalry could not get forward, and the artillery found no good position to occupy. The troops had been for five hours under the enemy's lively fire, without food, to prepare which there had been no time.

Some doubt as to the issue of the battle existed probably in many minds; perhaps in that of Count Bismarck, as he offered me his cigar case. As I was subsequently informed, he took it for a good sign that of two cigars I coolly selected the better one.

The King asked me at about this time what I thought of the prospects of the battle. I replied, "Your Majesty to-day will not only win the battle, but decide the war."

It could not be otherwise.

We had the advantage in numbers,[86] which in war is never to be despised; and it was certain that our IInd Army must finally appear on the flank and rear of the Austrians.

At about 1.30 a white cloud was seen on the height, crowned with trees, and visible from afar, on which our field-gla.s.ses had been centred. It was indeed not yet the IInd Army, but the smoke of the fire which, directed thereon, announced its near approach. The joyful shout, "The Crown Prince is coming!" ran through the ranks. I sent the wished-for news to General von Herwarth, who meanwhile had carried Problus, in spite of the heroic defence of the Saxons.

The IInd Army had started at 7.30 in the morning; only the Ist Corps had delayed till about 9.15. The advance by bad roads, in part across the fields, had taken much time. The hill-road stretching from h.o.r.enowes to Trotina, if efficiently held, could not but be a serious obstacle. But in its eager pressure on Fransecky's Division the enemy's right wing had made a wheel to the left, so that it lay open to some extent to the attack on its rear now impending.

The Crown Prince's progress was not yet visible to us, but at about half-past three the King ordered the advance of the Ist Army also.

As we emerged from the wood of Sadowa into the open we found still a part of the great battery which had so long prevented us from debouching here, but the teams and gunners lay stretched by the wrecked guns. There was nothing else to be seen of the enemy over a wide distance.

The Austrian retreat from the position grasped by us on two sides, had become inevitable, and had, in fact, been effected some time before.

Their admirable artillery, firing on to the last moment, had screened their retreat and given the infantry a long start. The crossing of the Bistritz seriously delayed the advance, especially of the cavalry, so that only isolated detachments of it yet came up with the enemy.

We rode at a smart gallop across the wide field of battle, without looking much about us on the scene of horror. Finally, we found our three armies which had at last pushed on into a circ.u.mscribed s.p.a.ce from their several directions, and had got much mixed. It took twenty-four hours to remedy the confusion and re-form the bodies; an immediate pursuit was impossible, but the victory was complete.

The exhausted men now sought resting-places in the villages or the open field as best they might. Anything that came to hand by way of food was of course taken; my wandering ox probably among the rest. The death-cries of pigs and geese were heard; but necessity knows no law, and the baggage-waggons were naturally not on the spot.

The King, too, remained at a hamlet on the field. Only I and my two officers had to journey some twenty-four miles back to Gitschin, where the bureaux were.

We had set out thence at four in the morning, and had been fourteen hours in the saddle. In the hurry of departure no one had thought of providing himself with food. An Uhlan of the 2nd Regiment had bestowed on me a slice of sausage, bread he had none himself. On our way back we met the endless train of provision and ammunition waggons, often extending all across the road. We did not reach our quarters till midnight. There was nothing to eat even here at this hour, but I was so exhausted that I threw myself on my bed in great-coat and sash, and fell asleep instantly. Next morning new orders had to be prepared and laid before his Majesty at Horitz.

The Great King[87] had needed to struggle for seven years to reduce the might of Austria, which his more fortunate and also more powerful grandson[88] had achieved in as many weeks. The campaign had proved decisive in the first eight days from June 27th to July 3rd.

The war of 1866 was entered on not as a defensive measure to meet a threat against the existence of Prussia, nor in obedience to public opinion and the voice of the people: it was a struggle, long foreseen and calmly prepared for, recognized as a necessity by the Cabinet, not for territorial aggrandizement or material advantage, but for an ideal end--the establishment of power. Not a foot of land was exacted from defeated Austria, but she had to renounce all part in the hegemony of Germany.

The Princes of the Reich had themselves to blame that the old Empire had now for centuries allowed domestic politics to override German national politics. Austria had exhausted her strength in conquests south of the Alps while she left the western German provinces unprotected, instead of following the road pointed out by the course of the Danube. Her centre of gravity lay outside of Germany; Prussia's lay within it. Prussia felt her strength, and that it behoved her to a.s.sume the leaders.h.i.+p of the German races. The regrettable but unavoidable exclusion of one of them from the new Reich could only be to a small extent remedied by a subsequent alliance. But Germany has become immeasurably greater without Austria, than it was before with Austria.

But all this has nothing to do with the legends of which I am telling.

One of these has been sung in verse, and in fine verse too.

The scene is Versailles. The French are making a sortie from Paris, and the generals, instead of betaking themselves to their fighting troops, are a.s.sembled to consider whether head-quarters may safely remain any longer at Versailles. Opinions are divided, no one dares speak out. The Chief of the General Staff, who is above all called on to express his views, remains silent. The perplexity seems to be great. Only the War Minister rises and protests with the greatest emphasis against a measure so injurious from a political and military point of view as a removal.

He is warmly thanked by the King as being the only man who has the courage to speak the truth freely and fearlessly.

The truth is that while the King and his whole escort had ridden out to the Vth Army Corps, the Marshal of the household, in his over-anxiety, had the horses put to the royal carriages, and this became known in the town; and indeed may have excited all sorts of hopes in the sanguine inhabitants.

Versailles was protected by four Army Corps. It never entered anybody's head to think of evacuating the town.

I can positively a.s.sert no Council of War was ever held either in 1866 or 1870--71.

Excepting on the march and on days of battle, an audience was regularly held by his Majesty at ten o'clock, at which I, accompanied by the Quartermaster-General, laid the latest reports and information before him, and made our suggestions on that basis. The Chief of the Military Cabinet and the Minister of War were also present, and while the head-quarters of the IIIrd Army were at Versailles, the Crown Prince also; but all merely as listeners. The King occasionally required them to give him information on one point or another; but I do not remember that he ever asked for advice concerning the operations in the field or the suggestions I made.

These, which I always discussed beforehand with my staff officers, were, on the contrary, generally maturely weighed by his Majesty himself. He always pointed out with a military eye and an invariably correct estimate of the situation, all the objections that might be raised to their execution; but as in war every step is beset with danger, the plans laid before him were invariably adopted.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] viz. The IInd Army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia, which was to strike the Austrian right flank and right rear; and the Army of the Elbe, commanded by General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, which was to strike the Austrian left flank.

[85] I have a history of the war, published at Tokio, in the j.a.panese language, with very original ill.u.s.trations. One of these has for its t.i.tle, "The King scolding the Army." [MOLTKE.]