The Seven Weeks' War

by H M Hozier

  These provision columns thus carry three days’ provisions, but in a country where supplies are not very abundant they can do nothing in the way of collecting food; their duty is simply to bring provisions from the magazines where they are gathered together, and to carry them to the troops. It is evident, therefore, that as the army advances these magazines must advance also, and that means must be provided for keeping the magazines full. The collection of food in such magazines entails an enormous amount of transport; this transport is obtained by hiring waggons and carts at home in the country where the war is being carried on, or in the countries near it. Waggons hired in the country are also used for carrying forage for the horses of the cavalry and artillery from the magazines to the front, for the provision columns only carry food for the men.

  When the army of Prince Frederick Charles advanced from Saxony, it made its first marches as if in a totally desert country as far as the supply of provisions was concerned, because the Prussian generals knew it was quite possible that the Austrians might, in order to retard their progress, lay waste the country. Immense magazines were accordingly collected at Görlitz and in Saxony, which, as the army advanced, were brought forward by railway and by long trains of country waggons to places where they could be conveniently reached by the provision waggons and forage carts. These magazines were constantly replenished both by food and forage brought by railway from the interior of Prussia, or by requisitions levied on Saxony and Bohemia of food and forage, for which the commissariat paid by cheques which the fortune of war afterwards allowed to be defrayed from the war contributions paid by the Austrian and Saxon Governments.

  Had the fate of arms been different, of course Saxony and Austria would have provided that these cheques should be honoured by the Berlin Exchequer. When it was found that the country was not laid waste, the provision waggons in some cases were filled in the neighbourhood of the troops by requisitions, but this was found not to be so good a plan as to send them back to magazines where the provisions were collected ready for them, because the time taken up in gathering together driblets of food and forage from each village, and the great distances over which waggons had to move, imposed an enormous amount of work on both the men and horses.

  Although the requisition system was very useful, it was only regarded as an auxiliary means of supply, for the armies moved prepared every day to find that the country in front of them might be devastated, and Prussia and Saxony were always looked upon as the real sources of supplies; and this was absolutely necessary, because it would have been impossible to feed such a large force as the Prussian armies presented by requisitions alone, for requisitions cannot conveniently be made at great distances from the direct line of communications, and in a very short time the quarter of a million of men who were in the front line alone would have eaten up everything in the country around them if they had been dependent on that tract of country only for supplies. Then, even if the troops could have got food from more distant places, the villagers and country people would have starved; but it is the interest of a general to make his requisitions so that they do not drive the inhabitants to destitution, for terrible sickness always follows in the train of want, and, if pestilence breaks out among the people of the country, it is certain immediately to appear in the ranks of the invading army. (In the campaign in France, the system of requisitions was ultimately abandoned. Stores which were wanted were purchased, and the cost recovered by money contributions levied on the occupied towns and districts).

  The trains which accompany the medical department of a corps d’armée into the field consist of three heavy hospital trains, each of which has 14 surgeons, 114 men, 69 horses, and 11 waggons, and twelve light divisional hospital trains, each with 13 surgeons, 74 men, 56 horses, and 11 waggons. Each light train carries medicines, materials, instruments, and ambulances for 200 sick. Each corps d’armée has, besides, three detachments of sick-bearers, who, on the day of battle, are divided among the troops; each battalion has also sixteen men appointed as assistant sick-bearers, who, with the regular sick-bearers, carry the wounded to the rear; no other man is ever allowed to quit the ranks under fire.

  When a man is struck, he is taken immediately a short distance out of fire to where the battalion surgeons are waiting; they hastily bind up his wound, he is then placed in an ambulance waggon and carried to the light divisional field hospital, which is kept out of fire about a couple of miles in the rear. The surgeons here perform any necessary operation that is absolutely required, but men are only kept here until a sufficient number arrive to fill a large ambulance waggon, which, as soon as filled, is sent off to the heavy hospital trains which are established in the villages in the rear. At the beginning of the Battle of Sadowa the regimental surgeons were occupied in every sheltered nook of ground on the hill of Dub, the divisional hospitals were behind that hill and in Milowitz, the heavy hospitals were in and about Höritz. When the Austrians retreated and the Prussian troops advanced, the divisional hospitals followed; and, before the Austrian guns had ceased firing, were established in Sadowa, Chlum, and Lipa, and all the other villages in the field whither the indefatigable sick-bearers were rapidly bringing in both Austrian and Prussian wounded.

  When the field army, the depôt and garrison troops, and the provisional and medical department trains have been mobilised, the Prussian Army is fit to take the field. The necessary commandants and staffs of the districts where the depôt troops are stationed are composed either of officers detached from the regular army or of invalid officers. When the army takes the field, its movements must be directed not only so as to pursue the original plan of the campaign, but also so as to keep pace with the enemy’s combinations, and the movements of its different parts must be guided by orders from the directing general.

  The above is a sketch of the general system on which the Prussian Army is normally organised. How such an army is worked in the field, how its resources are made available, and how it achieves the objects for which it has been mobilised, must depend in a great measure upon the skill of the general to whose direction it is entrusted. What an army so organised can effect when its motions are guided by a skilful hand, the rapid victories of the late campaign have shown. When the field army enters on the theatre of war, the organiser and administrator has done with it; his province is then to take care that its recruits are forthcoming and its supplies are ready when required.

  But when an army is handed over to the general who is to use it, he has a right to expect that when he receives his divisions he shall also receive the means of manoeuvring them; and when he assumes the command of his corps he shall be provided with every appliance which can help him to move them in the combination and unison without which different bodies of troops are not an army, but a series of scattered detachments, which must be easily defeated in detail, or in isolation taken prisoners by an active and energetic enemy. After the plan of a campaign has been once decided upon, the means by which a general moves his troops into positions where they may act most advantageously, and from which they may strike the heavy blows that will gain a speedy and profitable peace—for a peace is the ultimate object of all wars—may be classed under the heads of Information, Intelligence, and the Transmission of Orders. Information of the enemy’s preparations, of the number of troops be can put into the field,—how those troops will be armed, organised, and administered,—should be obtained by the government of the country to which the army belongs, and communicated to the general when he takes the command of the army.

  To acquire this information concerning foreign armies during peace every country in Europe devotes a special department of its War Office, which is ever busy collecting and compiling statistics of every foreign army, because, however friendly the relations of any two countries may be, it can never be known how long they may remain so. As soon as hostilities are imminent, a War Office has little chance of obtaining much information from inside the lines of the probable enemy; then the duty of collecting informati
on devolves upon the general himself who must, by every means he can avail himself of, discover, as far as possible, every position and intention of his adversary’s troops. For this purpose, during war, spies are generally employed. Spies have a dangerous task, and not an honourable one; consequently, except in very rare and extreme cases, officers will not accept the invidious duty, and it is often extremely difficult to find persons who will consent to act as spies sufficiently conversant with military matters to make their information worth having.

  Money is the great means of obtaining good spies; needy adventurers and unscrupulous men will, if well paid, do the work, and, for the sake of a sufficient sum, run the risk of the certain death which awaits them if discovered in disguise within the hostile outposts. Even if it were accurately known how the Prussian information was derived from within the Austrian lines during the 1866 campaign, it would be too delicate a subject to enter upon; but it may be stated here, though such a statement is hardly necessary, that all the absurd rumours circulated at the beginning of the campaign, which implied that Austrian officers were guilty of the hideous crime of betraying the movements of their army to the enemy, were utterly without foundation, and were cruel libels against brave men who, however unfortunate in the result of the war, won the admiration of every rank in the Prussian Army by their gallantry, chivalrous bearing, and courage, not only on the field of battle, but in all the trying incidents to which a disastrous campaign gives rise. It is not proper even to express a guess as to how information was collected, but the Austrians dealt out death with no sparing hand among suspected persons found within their lines, so probably they had cause to imagine that there were spies in the midst of their troops.

  The information collected from spies is not, in most cases, completely trustworthy. In the first place, the men who undertake this duty are nearly always mercenary wretches, who will sell friend and foe alike as best suits their own interests; in the second place, spies are seldom sufficiently acquainted with military matters not to exaggerate movements of slight importance, and miss observing vital combinations. To test the accuracy of their reports intelligence is collected by means of reconnoitring officers, who, either alone or attended by a few troopers, get as close as they can to the enemy’s posts; observe as far as possible, without the use of disguise and in full uniform, the positions of his troops; and, when discovered and pursued by his patrols, fight or ride to bring their intelligence safe home to their own outposts. Intelligence is also culled by every vedette and every advanced sentinel, but the reconnoitring officer is the main source.

  To reconnoitre well requires not only a brave but a very able officer, with a quick eye, a ready memory, and a great knowledge of the indications which tell the presence of hostile troops, and allow an estimate to be formed of the force in which they are. Two Prussian officers of the staff of Prince Frederick Charles, the afternoon before the Battle of Königgrätz, boldly approached the Austrian lines, observed the positions of the Austrian troops, and, though both pursued and assaulted by cavalry, got safe home, and brought to their general certain intelligence which allowed him to frame the combinations that resulted in the morrow’s victory. When the reconnoitring officer regains the shelter of his own outposts, he must either personally bring or by some means send his intelligence as quickly as possible to headquarters. The plan usually pursued in European armies has been for the officer himself to ride quickly to his general, and to be the first bearer of his intelligence.

  When a general receives intelligence, he has to weigh it, consider it, and often strike the balance between conflicting information. He has then to move his own divisions in accordance with his deductions, and must send word to any cooperating force of what he has heard, and what he is about to do. Undoubtedly, the quickest way for a reconnoitring officer to despatch his reports to his general, and for the general to communicate with his own divisions and with his colleagues, would be by electric telegraph; but it would be almost impossible for a reconnoitring officer to communicate with headquarters by electricity. Reconnoitring expeditions are made so suddenly and so uncertainly that, quick as the Prussian field telegraph is laid down, this means of communication is hardly available with the outposts. Nor is the electric telegraph easily used to communicate with every division; it might be so used, but its application would require a number of extra waggons to be attached to every division, and would bring a confusing number of lines into the office of the chief of the staff.

  During the late campaign, orders were sent to the divisional commanders by mounted officers, who were attached to headquarters for this special purpose. Besides these officers a certain number of picked troopers are selected from every cavalry regiment, and formed into a special corps at the beginning of a campaign, and a certain number attached to every general. These troopers form the general’s escort, and act as orderlies to carry unimportant messages. When an officer is sent with an important order, one or two of these soldiers are sent with him, in case of his being attacked to act as a defence as far as possible, to yield up a horse to him in case of his own breaking down, or, in case of his being killed, to carry the order themselves to its destination, or, at any rate, to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy if the officer is wounded and likely to be taken. During the campaign the communications between headquarters and divisions were kept up by means of mounted officers; but communications between the headquarters of each army and the king were maintained by means of the field-telegraph.

  For this purpose a field-telegraph division is attached to the headquarters of each army. It consists of three officers, one hundred and thirty-seven men, seventy-three horses, and ten waggons. Two of the waggons contain batteries and instruments, and are fitted up as operating rooms; the other eight waggons each contain the wires and means of putting them up over five miles of country; thus each division can, with its own materials, form telegraphic communication over forty miles. These forty miles are, however, seldom all required, for the lines of the communications of armies usually run along railways, and as far as possible the permanent wires arc repaired by the men of the division, and made use of for the telegraphic communication of the army.

  Each division carries with it five miles of insulated wire for the purpose of laying through rivers or lakes if these should come in the way of the line. The wires are coiled inside each waggon on rollers, from which they can be uncoiled as the waggon moves along, or in bad ground the roller can be transferred to a stretcher, which is carried between two men. The poles are exceedingly light, and about ten feet high, so that where the wire crosses roads it may pass clear over the heads of mounted men. As it is equally culpable in war to prevent communication by unfair means within the lines of an army as it is to seek to obtain the same in disguise between the enemy’s sentries, any enemy not in uniform, or any one in the enemy’s pay who is detected cutting the telegraph wire, is regarded as a spy, and treated accordingly.

  During the war of 1866 this organisation had not been entirely introduced into the Prussian Army, and the arrangements for the prosecution of the war consequently slightly differed from those which would have been made if time had allowed the regulated organisation to have been thoroughly introduced into the service.

  It may be convenient to subjoin here a summary statement, compiled carefully from the best authorities, of the organisation and strength of the Prussian Army, which was employed for the various purposes of the war.

  Every Prussian who was twenty years old entered the army as a soldier without distinction of rank or wealth. Time of service was with the colours three years, in the reserve five years, and in the Landwehr eleven years.

  The armament of the Infantry regiments was the needle-gun with the ordinary bayonet; that of the Fusilier regiments the fusilier musket, which only differed from the ordinary needle-gun in being rather shorter and lighter; that of the Jägers the needle-rifle with sword-bayonet.

  The armament of the Cuirassier regiments was cuirass, helmet, s
abre, and pistol; that of Uhlans, lance, sword, and pistol; of Dragoons and Hussars, sword and needle-carbine. Cuirassiers and Uhlans were heavy, Dragoons and Hussars light cavalry. The horses were all of Prussian breed, mostly from good English sires and grandsires.

  DEPÔT TROOPS.

  Each regiment of Infantry on being mobilised formed a depôt battalion, each regiment of Cavalry a depôt squadron, each Jäger battalion a depôt company, each brigade of artillery a depôt division, each battalion of Pioneers a depôt company:—

  Thus the strength of the Prussian regular army at the commencement of the campaign was—

  The Landwehr, the first levy of which formed the troops of reserve supports, and for garrison duties in support of the regular army, and consisted of men between twenty-eight and thirty-two years of age, was organised as follows:—

  At first the majority of the battalions were formed 500 strong, and at a later period raised only to the strength of 800 men by calling up some of the second levy of the Landwehr, so that the actual strength of the Landwehr did not reach 118,900 men. Of these one hundred and sixteen battalions, twenty-four were amalgamated together in the first reserve corps d’armée; the remainder were used as garrisons for fortresses and for the maintenance of occupied territories.