by H M Hozier
The result of the combat of Liebenau was not over-valued in the Prussian Army; the officers on that side did not despise their enemy, and they fully recognised the fact that it was to superior numbers that the Austrians yielded. They had great confidence in their chief and in the needle-gun and their rifled cannon, but they had no vain assurance. They knew that the Austrian Army was a good one, and they determined to omit nothing that their skill or science could suggest to let their troops meet it on the best of terms.
The Austrians retired to Podoll in order to hold that important point, where not only the road to Münchengrätz but also the railway between Türnau, Kralup, and Prague crosses the Iser.
General Horne, after the action of Liebenau, pushed forward to the Iser and occupied Türnau, the junction of the railway from Reichenberg with that to Prague. After a bridge of pontoons had been thrown across the river here in order to replace the one broken by the Austrians, he determined to occupy the bridges of Podoll five miles below Türnau. The movement by which he effected this brought on the
ACTION OF PODOLL
The railway and high road which lead down the valley of the Iser from Türnau to Münchengrätz run for a distance of about five miles from the former town on the north side of the river, but on reaching the village of Podoll cross to the south bank by two bridges, which are about 200 yards distant from each other, that of the railway being on the right, and that by which the road crosses on the left of a person, looking towards Münchengrätz. The railway bridge is constructed of iron; that which carries the road across the stream is made of wood, and lies on a level with the causeway, which is raised on an embankment about ten feet above the fiat meadows lying alongside it The Iser is at Podoll near upon 100 yards wide, and runs with a deep but fast stream between steep banks, which only rise about four feet above the level of the water.
By the side of the road and on the banks of the stream grow large willow-trees, planted at equal distances from each other, and at about ten yards apart. Three roads lead from the plateau of Sichrow to the high road that runs down the valley of the Iser. That on the east, a country road, which leaves the plateau near the Schloss of Sichrow and joins the highway near the village of Swierzin, almost at an equal distance between Türnau and Podoll; in the centre the chaussée from Liebenau strikes into the high road halfway between Swierzin and Türnau, and the road from Gentschowitz on the west joins it close to this town.
On the afternoon of the 26th, Prince Frederick Charles threw a light pontoon bridge over the river a little below the broken bridge of Türnau, and occupied the town with a small force without opposition. Part of Horne’s division marched at the same time by the country road on the east, occupied the village of Swierzin, and pushed its advanced guard towards Podoll. The troops directed on this point consisted of two companies of the 4th Jäger battalion, the 2nd and fusilier battalions of the 31st regiment, and the 1st battalion of the 71st. The Jägers, who were leading, got to within three-quarters of a mile of Podoll-bridge before they came into collision with Austrian outposts, but here they found the enemy, and a sharp action ensued, for the Austrians had six battalions in the village, and meant to hold the place and cover the passage of the river.
It was about 8 o’clock, and the dusk of the evening was rapidly closing in, when the Jägers first felt their enemy. On the right-hand side of the road, about half a mile before the bridge, stands the first house of the village. It is a large square farmhouse, with windows without glass, but with heavy gratings. The Austrians had occupied it in force, and their outlying pickets, as they retired before the advancing Prussians, formed line across the road beside it. As soon as the Jägers came within sight the garrison of the farmhouse and the formed-up pickets opened a bitter fire upon them. From the grated windows and from the line of soldiers in the road there came one rapid volley, which told severely on the Prussian riflemen, but these went quickly to work, and had fired about three times before the Austrians, armed only with muzzle-loading rifles, were able to reply.
Then the noise of musketry rose high, occasionally swelling into a heavy roar, but sometimes falling off so that the ear could distinguish the separate reports. But this did not last Major von Hagen, commanding the 2nd battalion of the 31st, which was following the Jägers on the first sound of the firing, had put his troops into double quick time, and was soon up to reinforce the riflemen. It was now nearly dark, and the flashes of the rifles, the reports of the shots, and the shouts of the combatants were almost the only indications of the positions of the troops; yet it could be seen that the rapid fire of the needle-gun was telling on the Austrian line in the road, and the advancing cheers of the Prussians showing that they were gaining ground.
Then while the exchange of shots was still proceeding rapidly between the window-gratings of the farmhouse and the Prussian firing parties, who had extended into a cornfield on the right of the highway, there was a sudden pause in the firing on the road, for the Jägers, supported by the 31st, had made a dash, and were bearing the Austrians back beyond the farmhouse to where the cottages of the village closed on each side of the road, and where the defenders had hastily thrown some hewn down willow-trees as a barricade across the way. Then the tumult of the fight increased. Darkness had completely closed in, and the moon had not yet risen; the Prussians pressed up to the barricade, the Austrians stoutly stood their ground behind it, and, three paces distant, assailants and defenders poured their fire into each other’s breasts. Little could be seen, though the flashes of the discharges cast a fitful light over the surging masses; but in the pauses of the firing the voices of the officers were heard encouraging their men, and half-stifled shrieks or gurgling cries told that the bullets were truly aimed. This was too severe to endure. The Prussians, firing much more quickly, and in the narrow street, where neither side could show their whole strength, not feeling the inferiority of numbers, succeeded in tearing away the barricade, and slowly pressed their adversaries back along the village street.
Yet the Austrians fought bravely, and their plans for the defence of the houses had been skilfully though hastily made; from every window muskets flashed out fire, and sent bullets into the thick ranks of the advancing Prussians, while on each balcony behind a wooden barricade Jägers crouched to take their deadly aim; but in the street the soldiers, huddled together and encumbered with clumsy ramrods, were unable to load with ease, and could return no adequate fire to that of the Prussians, while these, from the advantage of a better arm, poured their quick volleys into an almost defenceless crowd.
As the battle in the street was pushed inch by inch towards the Iser, the Austrians, in every house which the foremost ranks of the Prussians passed, were cut off from their retreat, and were sooner or later made prisoners, for the houses of the village do not join on to each other, but are detached by spaces of a few yards, and there is no communication from one house to the other except by the open street The whole of the Prussian force was now up, and extending between the houses which the first combatants had passed by, cut off the escape of their garrisons, and exchanged shots with the defenders.
With shrieks and shouts, amid the crashing of broken windows, the heavy sounds of falling beams, and the perpetual rattle of the firearms, the battle was heavily pressed down the narrow street, and about half-past eleven the moon came up clear and full to show the Austrian rearmost ranks turning viciously to bar the Prussians from the bridge. The moonlight, reflected in the stream, told the assailants that they were near the object of their labour, and showed the Austrians that now or never the enemy must be hurled back. Both sides threw out skirmishers along the river bank, and the moon gave them light to direct their aim across the stream; while on the first plank of the bridge the Austrians turned to bay, and the Prussians pausing some short paces from them, the combatants gazed at each other for a few moments. Then they began a fiercer fight than ever. The discharges were more frequent, and in the narrower way the bullets told with more severe effect.
Herr von Drygalski, leading the fusilier battalion of the 31st, a lieutenant-colonel of only two days’ standing, went down with two bullets in his forehead, and a captain at his side was shot in both legs; many men fell, and the grey horse of a Prussian field-officer, with a ball in his heart, fell heavily against the wall, kicking amid the ranks; but he was soon quieted forever, and at that moment men regarded but little such wounds as could be inflicted by an iron-shod hoof, even in the agonies of death. The Austrians stood gallantly, and made an attempt to set fire to the bridge; but the difference of their armament again told upon them here; and it is said that, galled by their hard fortune, they charged with the bayonet, but that the Prussians also took kindly to the steel, and this charge caused no change in the fortune of the fight: certain it is that the defenders were ultimately obliged to retire across the bridge.
While this combat was proceeding slowly along the street, another fight was carried on upon the railway almost with an equal progress, and with an almost similar result. A party of the Austrians fell back from the point where shots were first exchanged, and where the railway crosses the road, along the line. They were pushed by some Prussian detachments, but neither side was here in strong force, and the principal fighting was done upon the road; but here, too, the needle-gun showed its advantage over the old-fashioned weapons of the Austrians, for the latter fell in the proportion of six to one Prussian. The railway bridge was not broken, but the lines were torn up by the retiring troops, and the line was not passable by trains.
The Prussians pushed over both bridges after the retreating Austrians; the latter threw a strong detachment into a large unfinished house, which stood by the chausée about a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge, and again made a stand, but not of long duration; they had lost many killed, wounded, and prisoners; many of their officers were dead or taken; but they stood till they could gather in all the stragglers who had escaped from the houses of the village, and, harassed by the pursuing Prussians, drew off sullenly by the main road to Münchengrätz. Thus terminated a contest which, fought upon both sides with the greatest vigour and determination, yet resulted in a clear victory for the Prussians; for, when the last dropping shots ceased, about four o’clock in the morning, there were no Austrian solders within three miles of Podoll-bridge except the wounded and the taken.
There was no artillery engaged on either side; it was purely an infantry action, and the Prussians derived in it great advantage from the superiority of their arms over that of their opponents, not only in the rapidity, but in the direction of their fire, for a man with an arm on the nipple of which he has to place a cap, naturally raises the muzzle in the air, and in the hurry and excitement of action often forgets to lower it, and only sends his bullet over the heads of the opposite ranks, while the soldier armed with a breech-loading musket keeps his muzzle down, and if in haste he fires it off without raising the butt to his shoulder, his shot still takes effect, though often low, and a proof of this is that very many of the Austrian prisoners were wounded in the legs.
The road to Podoll was next morning crowded with hospital waggons and ambulance cars bringing in the wounded; every cottage in the way was converted into a temporary hospital, and the little village of Swierzin was entirely filled with stricken men. The sick-bearers, one of the most useful corps which any army possesses, were at work from the very beginning Of the action. As the combatants passed on these noble-minded men, regardless of the bullets and careless of personal danger, removed with equal hand both friend and enemy who were left writhing on the road, and carried them carefully to the rear, where the medical officers made no distinction in their care for both Austrian and Prussian.
Not only was it those whose special duty is the care of the wounded who alone were doing their best to ease the sufferings of those who had suffered in the combat; soldiers not on duty might be seen carrying water for prisoners of both sides alike, and gladly affording any comfort which it was in their power to give to those who overnight had been firing against their own hearts! Nor is this wonderful; for after the flush of the battle was over, and the din of the musketry had died away, the men of the Prussian Army could not forget that one common language linked them to their adversaries, and that, after all, it was probably German blood which, flowing from an Austrian breast, trickled over the white livery of the House of Hapsburg.
In the village the utmost disorder gave evidence of the severity of the contest Austrian knapsacks, shakos, clothes, and arms were scattered about in wild confusion. Dead horses lay in the ditches by the roadside. White coats and cloaks, which had been thrown off in the hurry of the fight, lay scattered along the road; the trees which had formed the Austrian barricade were still on the side of the street, and many held a bullet. The cottages had been ransacked of their furniture, and their beams and roof-trees had been torn down to form defences for the doors and windows; while along the street and upon the banks of the river lay objects which in the distance look like bundles of untidy uniform, but which on nearer approach were seen to be the bodies of slain soldiers. Sometimes they lay in groups of twos or threes, twisted together as if they had gripped one another in their mortal agony, and sometimes single figures lay on their backs, staring with livid countenance and half-closed hazy eyes, straight up against the hot morning sun. The dark-blue uniform with red facings of Prussia, and the white with light-blue of Austria, laid side by side, but the numbers of the latter much preponderated, and on one part of the railway three Prussian corpses opposite nineteen Austrian formed a grisly trophy of the superiority of the needle-gun.
Close on 500 unwounded Austrian prisoners were next morning marched up to headquarters, and the Austrian loss in killed and wounded was very considerable. The Prussians lost two officers dead, and seven or eight wounded. The medical officers officially reported that the proportion of wounded Austrians to wounded Prussians was as five to one. Thus the needle-gun told both on the battlefield and in the hospital.
On the 27th the headquarters of the First Army halted at the castle of Sichrow. There had been no skirmishing; but white smoke curling up from beyond some fir woods beside the Iser told that the bridge of Mohelnitz, about five miles below Podoll, which the Austrians had set on fire to obstruct pursuit, was burning steadily.
The results of the actions of Liebenau and Podoll were, that two of the important passages of the Iser, those of Türnau and Podoll, fell into the hands of the First Prussian Army. That of Münchengrätz still was in the hands of the Austrians, but was soon also to be seized from their grasp. The Army of the Elbe had advanced on the 23rd by Schluckenau, and on the 26th the fourteenth division, under the command of General Mündter, had been pushed to Bömisch Aicha in order to feel Prince Frederick Charles’s right.
Count Clam Gallas had only opposed a few hussar regiments to the advance of General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, so that this general met with no serious opposition in issuing from the mountains. On the 27th, the day after the night action of Podoll, his eighth corps, which was advancing from Gabel by Niemes, in the direction of Münchengrätz, first fell in with any serious hostile force. The Prussian advanced guard, consisting of two squadrons and two battalions of Schöler’s brigade, which, followed by the whole 8th corps, was on the march from Hayda, pushed forward on a reconnaissance as far as Hühnerwasser.
The Austrians, bound only to furnish intelligence, and ordered not to engage seriously, retreated, after a slight skirmish to Münchengrätz, and evacuated the right bank of the Iser, thus permitting a full communication to be opened between the Army of the Elbe and that of Prince Frederick Charles. The two armies were able on the following day to advance in concert, so as to take possession of the whole line of the Iser.
Count Clam Gallas, after the skirmish at Hühnerwasser, withdrew the greater part of his force to the left bank of the Iser, occupied Münchengrätz in force, and made preparations for the destruction of the bridge over the river on the west of the town. The Prussian plan to seize that place brought on the<
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ACTION OF MÜNCHENGRÄTZ
On the 27th Prince Frederick Charles halted in the position of Sichrow, and made his dispositions for his further advance. The seventh division had occupied Türnau, where the engineers had quickly thrown a pontoon bridge over the Iser, to replace the permanent one, which had been burnt by the retiring Austrian cavalry. The eighth division, under General Horne, occupied the village and bridge of Podoll; the sixth division, under General Manstein, moved forward to the support of Horne. The main body of the army was on the plateau of Sichrow, and General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, after a sharp skirmish, in which he took many prisoners, seized Hühnerwasser.
The road and railway which lead from Türnau to Jung Bunzlau cross the Iser near together at the village of Podoll, and run beside each other on the southern side of the river to a point about three miles below Münchengrätz; about a quarter of a mile below Podoll the hills which form the plateau of Sichrow, turning southwards, come close to the northern bank of the Iser, and form a chain of heights which descend with a steep slope to the water’s edge. The hills which form the southern boundary of the valley of the Iser rise to a height of about 500 feet in the Muskey Berg, which, running parallel to the road for a mile of its length from its extremity nearest Podoll, then trends southwards and strikes the road from Münchengrätz to Unter Bautzen at the village of Bossin. The Muskey Berg presents towards the river on its upper part a rocky, precipitous front; below this the débris fallen from the rocks has accumulated and formed a slope, which, although steep, would, were it not for the precipice above, be still practicable for light infantry.