The Seven Weeks' War

by H M Hozier

  At the two latter places the crown prince was thrusting against the Austrian detachments. The Prussian Second Army was thus at less than half the distance from the mass of Benedek’s troops than was the First Army. It was also in a more favourable position to sweep down on a vital point of Benedek’s line of communication with Vienna than was the First. Clearly every exertion should have been made to crush the crown prince on the 28th. The feldzeugmeister, however, designed to hold the crown prince by three corps while he made his great attempt against Prince Frederick Charles. Orders were sent to the commanders of the corps at Trautenau and Skalitz, not to compromise themselves in a serious action, but to retreat slowly, if pressed by superior numbers. These orders were neglected. If they had been observed, it is doubtful whether the crown prince would not have pushed them back, and concentrated his army on the Austrian communications, before Benedek had time to strike down Prince Frederick Charles, and return with his main force to support his troops in front of the Second Army.

  The result of the neglect of the orders of the commander-in-chief was, however, that the three Austrian corps engaged on the 28th near Josephstadt were severely mutilated for further operations. Intending to support Clam Gallas and the Saxons before he knew of the unfortunate issue of the combats of Nachod and Skalitz, Benedek instructed them to stand firm at Gitschin; and promised to support them with his third corps on the 29th, and ultimately with other corps. This despatch was received at the Saxon head-quarters about mid-day on the 29th. The Saxons and Clam Gallas took up a strong position to fight at Gitschin. When they were already engaged, and had compromised themselves in a serious action with the leading divisions of Prince Frederick Charles, a second despatch arrived from Benedek.

  This had been written after the results of Trautenau and Skalitz on the 28th were known to him. In it he ordered the crown prince of Saxony to fall back slowly before Prince Frederick Charles, while he himself collected his forces on the heights above Königinhof to oppose the Second Army. By the crushing defeat at Gitschin, the left flank of this position was laid open to the Prussian First Army, and the Austrian commander was reduced to make fresh dispositions, unable any longer to prevent the junction of the two Prussian armies on the ground upon which at the outbreak of hostilities he himself stood. Thus, by a neglect to strike boldly on his nearest adversary, Benedek sacrificed all the advantages which he had possessed from a central situation, and the separate lines of operation of his antagonists. To the superior armament of the Prussians a degree of importance has rather hastily been awarded, which seems not to be wholly merited. The needle-gun came into action under certainly favourable circumstances.

  At Podoll the Prussians armed with breech-loaders fired upon the troops of Clam Gallas while the latter were crowded together in the narrow street of a village. At Nachod the soldiers of Steinmetz fired from the cover of a wood upon their Austrian assailants in the open. In both cases the rapid discharges told fearfully upon the men who were armed with the more slowly loaded weapons. The consequence was that the Prussians gained a great moral victory at the very beginning. They found confidence, their opponents lost heart. Yet in the subsequent operations the difference of armament had little physical effect, Superior strategical capabilities, superior organisation, and greater activity seemed to have been more powerful in gaining the junction of the Prussian armies than superior armament. Yet the Prussian leaders hazarded much by their two convergent lines of operation. The result is but another proof of the old maxim that “in war he is the victor who makes the fewest errors.”

  BOOK 7

  CHAPTER 1: Operations Preceding the Battle of Königgrätz

  After his unsuccessful attempts at Soor and Skalitz on the 28th, to prevent the issue of the columns of the crown prince from the mountains, Feldzeugmeister Benedek determined to take up a strong position on the right bank of the Upper Elbe, in order to prevent the passage of that river by the Army of Silesia.

  The Elbe, which runs in a course nearly directly from north to south between Josephstadt and Königgrätz, forms almost a right angle at the former fortress. Its upper course above that place lies from north-west to east. Parallel to the stream, and about one mile from it, a chain of hills thickly wooded with fir-trees rises with a steep ascent, and forms the southern bank of the valley. About halfway up the hillside runs the railway which leads from Josephstadt to Türnau. It was along these heights that the Austrian commander designed to draw up his troops, in such a manner as to bar the passage of the Upper Elbe against the crown prince, and to command the bridges of Arnau, Königinhof, and Schurz.

  The right wing of the troops under the immediate command of Benedek rested on the fortress of Josephstadt, and his position extended along the heights towards Daubrowitz, while his extreme left was formed and covered by the first corps and the Saxons under Count Clam Gallas at Gitschin. In Königinhof he left one brigade, and at Schweinschädel three brigades of his fourth corps, in order to check the advance of the crown prince while he was making his dispositions. These troops were, as has been already said, driven in by the Prussians on the 29th, when they retired and formed a portion of the new Austrian line near Josephstadt.

  On the night of the 29th Prince Frederick Charles stormed Gitschin, and defeated Count Clam Gallas, who retired in disorder towards Königgrätz. The loss of Gitschin exposed the left flank of Benedek’s intended position. As soon as he heard the news of Count Clam Gallas’s failure on the morning of the 30th, he was obliged to make new arrangements to oppose the advance of the enemy towards Vienna.

  Of his eight corps, five—namely, the first corps, the Saxons, the sixth, eighth, and tenth—had been decidedly beaten, and had suffered great loss both in men and morale. The fourth corps had also been under fire and suffered, though to a much less serious extent. Two corps only remained to the Austrian commander which were thoroughly intact. He had no hope of any supports, reserves, or reinforcements. His left flank was exposed, and no course remained open to him except to retire before he was cut off from his line of communication with Vienna, and to accept battle from his adversary in a chosen and prepared position. The Austrian army had suffered a loss of about forty thousand men since the opening of the campaign in its attempts to prevent the junction of the Prussian armies. Notwithstanding this, its bravery and power of endurance were still great. High hopes were entertained that Benedek’s generalship would retrieve all previous failures by a decisive victory.

  The Austrian commander felt himself unequal to assume the offensive. He was forced to seek a defensive position, and could choose one in either of two entirely distinct manners. If he desired a purely defensive position he might withdraw behind the Elbe, and take up the line of that river between the fortresses of Josephstadt and Königgrätz; or, what would perhaps have been better, he might have concentrated his army behind the Adler, between Königgrätz and Hohenbruck. Here his left flank would have been secured by the fortress, his right by the Adler, and he would have covered a safe retreat and source of supply in the railway between Pardubitz and Böhmisch Trübau.

  On the other side he might choose a defensive position, where he would still retain the power of assuming the offensive. This appears to have been his object. He hoped in a great battle to repair the misfortunes of the last few days, and then on his side to advance as an assailant. Whether he would have done better to have taken up an entirely defensive position until the confidence of his army was restored is a question which few could decide. He has been blamed for not doing so, but in war success is generally regarded as the sole criterion of merit Fortune declared against Benedek. He did not reap success.

  On the afternoon of the 30th June, he issued orders for the whole army to retire towards Königgrätz, and to concentrate in front of that fortress. This retreat along crowded country roads was attended with considerable difficulty, and it was not till the night of the 2nd July that his whole force was assembled in front of Königgrätz, where it took up a position between that town and t
he little river Bistritz.

  On the Prussian side four divisions of the First Army, and part of that of General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, had not yet been under fire. Of the Second Army three brigades had not as yet pulled a trigger. The first corps had had time to recruit itself after its defeat at Trautenau, and the remainder of the troops were flushed with victory, high of courage, and eager for battle. In order to complete effectually the junction between the army of the crown prince, which on the 30th June had concentrated on the left of the Upper Elbe, with that of Prince Frederick Charles, which, with the Army of the Elbe as its right wing, was halted that day round Gitschin, the Second Army would require to make a wheel to its left, pivoted on Gradlitz.

  To carry out this movement, on the 1st July the first corps, which formed the right wing of the Army of Silesia, advanced from Arnau to Ober Prausnitz, and threw its advanced guard forward to Zelejow on the road to Miletin. The cavalry division took post at Neustädtl. The first division of the Guards occupied Königinhof, while its advanced guard seized the plateau of Daubrowitz, on the bank of the Elbe. The second division of the Guards, the reserve artillery, and the heavy cavalry of the Guard halted at Rettendorf, while the fifth and sixth corps concentrated round Gradlitz. The headquarters of the crown prince were in Königinhof. The Prussian generals thought that Feldzeugmeister Benedek would accept battle on the left bank of the Elbe, with his flanks resting on the fortresses of Josephstadt and Königgrätz, which lie ten miles apart along the river, and with his front covered by the stream; or that, if he did not do so, he would cross the Elbe at Pardubitz, and take up a position there behind the river.

  Under this idea two and a half Prussian corps were held on the left bank of the Elbe both to observe the fortress of Josephstadt and to be prepared vigorously to oppose any attack made from behind the cover of that fortress against the line of communication of the crown prince with Silesia.

  Prince Frederick Charles, on the 1st July, pushed forward from Gitschin. The Army of the Elbe formed his right wing, and occupied Smidar and Hoch Wessely. The sixth division, with the fifth in its rear, occupied Miletin; the seventh and eighth, Höritz; the third and fourth, with the cavalry corps and the reserve artillery corps, were bivouacked along the road from Gitschin to Höritz. The headquarters of the prince were at Kammenitz.

  The small château and village of Kammenitz lie on the northern slope of an isolated hill, which stands on the left-hand side of the road from Gitschin to Höritz, about half-way between the two towns. The headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles were moved here on the evening of the 1st July from Gitschin.

  From the hill south of the village of Kammenitz a wide view could be obtained of the undulating plain which, richly cultivated and studded with villages and fir-woods, stretches southwards for nearly thirty miles. Near to Kammenitz, the smoke of the bivouac fires and the glitter of the sunlight on the piled arms marked the position of the Prussian troops, but no Austrian outposts could be made out. During the march of that day a sudden thunderstorm came on, and the rain fell heavily for an hour; the road, crowded with thousands of waggons and military carriages, ran into ruts under the excessive transport, and the convoys of Austrian wounded, who had been perforce deserted by their retreating friends, jolted painfully along towards the hospitals which had been established at Gitschin.

  The maimed soldiers suffered much, for every time the waggons rocked some wound was opened afresh, or some bandage came undone, but they bore it patiently, and their guardians did all they could to alleviate their sufferings. The different coloured facings of the wounded told that many Austrian regiments had been engaged in the late combats, for the uniforms of the different infantry regiments could be distinguished, besides those of hussars and riflemen.

  On the night of the 1st the main body of the First Army lay between Kammenitz and Höritz. General von Bittenfeld had occupied Smidar on the fight flank, and Jung Bunzlau, (on the railway between Münchengrätz and Prague), was also occupied in the same direction. The head of the columns of the Second Army had crossed the Upper Elbe, and the whole Prussian force was free for operations in Bohemia, for the Hanoverians had laid down their arms near Erfurth, and there were now no hostile troops in Northern Germany.

  The inhabitants of the towns had mostly fled on the approach of the Prussian Army, but the country villagers, unable to afford to pay for transport, had been obliged to remain in their houses. Nor did they suffer by doing so, for the Prussian soldiers behaved well, and there was no plundering where the inhabitants remained. In the towns where there was no one to sell, the commissariat was obliged to take the necessaries of life, for the marches had been long, the roads had been crowded with troops, and the provision trains had not always been able to keep up with the army. But the soldiers never used force to supply their wants. Forage for the horses was taken from the barns of the large landed proprietors, who had deserted their castles and châteaux; but the men paid for what they had from the peasantry: unable to speak the Bohemian language, they by signs made their wants understood, and the peasantry, as far as lay in their power, supplied them readily, for none were found so ignorant as not to appreciate Prussian coin.

  The villagers were invariably kindly treated; no cottages had been ransacked, their poultry yards had been respected, their cattle had not been taken away from them, and, though the women of this province are beautiful, no Bohemian girl had cause to rue the invasion of her country. Yet the inhabitants of a land where a war is carried on must always suffer; troops must move through the standing corn, cavalry and artillery must trample down the crops; hamlets must be occupied, defended, and assaulted, and a shell, intended to fall among fighting men, must often unintentionally set fire to a cottage, which, blazing fiercely, communicates the flames to others, and thus a whole hamlet is often destroyed. Then the ejected cottagers have little hope of anything but starvation, for a vast army with its many hundred thousand mouths eats up everything in the country, and can spare little after its own necessities are supplied to give away in charity.

  The proprietors of the burnt houses sometimes wandered about the fields dejected and desponding, sometimes stood staring vacantly at the cinders and charred timbers which marked the place where a few days ago stood their homes; the little money that was given to them by kind-hearted officers might keep off the pangs of hunger for a short time, but was no compensation for the heavy losses they had sustained, for often their cottage and their cowhouse and a little field was all their wealth, and since these were gone and their crop destroyed, they had nothing. The young men even in the country districts had nearly all fled south, frightened by a report that the Prussians would make them join the ranks; for this report there was never a foundation, for no recruits had been demanded or received in the countries occupied by the armies.

  Brilliant success had attended the skilful plans laid for the prosecution of this campaign by the Prussian leaders. The army of Prince Frederick Charles had fought five severe combats without a reverse, and had secured a favourable position in which to fight a great battle. The crown prince fought severe actions on the 27th, 28th, and 29th, and had now secured his junction with Prince Frederick Charles, bringing with him as trophies of his victories 15,000 prisoners, 24 captured guns, six stands of colours, and two standards.

  The places where there had been fighting did not long retain the more ghastly signs of the combat; the wounded were always removed as quickly as the krankenträger could work, and though broken boughs, burnt houses, and down-trodden corn marked for a few days the places where the hostile troops had been engaged, the broken arms and castaway knapsacks were soon removed, and the graves dotted among the fields, each with a wooden cross at the head, alone told the spots where soldiers had fallen. And these, too, soon disappeared, for the sun and the rain rapidly diminished the mounds of newly-turned earth, and it will soon be impossible to distinguish the positions of the graves from the other parts of the fields. But this will matter little to those who sleep below.
The wounded merited greater commiseration. The hospital resources of the Prussian Army had been tasked to the utmost for more wounded prisoners had been taken than could have been anticipated.

  Every available house and the churches in Gitschin had been converted into hospitals, but still there was more room required; nor would the few remaining inhabitants help to assist the wounded Austrian soldiers; in vain did the Prussian staff entreat, imprecate, and threaten; the towns-people who were still at Gitschin would not even carry some of the coffee which they had in abundance to give to the wounded, and these from the scarcity of provisions in the army fared badly. As the news spread abroad in the country that the Prussians did not pillage and murder, the people began to return to their houses, but they all appeared to be totally callous to the sufferings of their fellow-countrymen.

  The Austrian medical men and hospital attendants who were captured at Gitschin worked hard, and were aided powerfully by the Prussian officers, but they had few materials with which to supply the wants of so many; and though none went totally unprovided for, and none were entirely neglected, a little trouble on the part of the inhabitants would have tended materially to the comfort and cure of many.

  The inhabitants pleaded as an excuse that the Austrian soldiery had treated them badly, and had pillaged; but this did not seem true, for the houses bore no signs of having been plundered, and if plundering had been allowed in the Austrian Army the prisoners would, not have had to complain of want of food. Railway traffic was already opened to Münchengrätz, but the army had now left the line of railway, many miles of road separating it from the nearest station; and in those miles of road lay the difficulty of supplying the troops with provisions. The railway trains easily brought enough to any station, but at this time the roads were required for the marching columns, and everything had to give way for the passage of the troops.