by H M Hozier
The army carried no tents; sometimes at night the soldiers were billeted in villages, but more often slept in the open air. As soon as a regiment arrived at the place where it was to pass the night, the rifles were piled four together resting against each other, and the knapsacks were taken off and laid on the ground beside them. The men quickly lighted their fires and began cooking their rations; a couple of stones or a few bricks formed their field stoves, and their whole cooking apparatus consisted of the one tin can which they carry with them. This serves for both boiling the water for coffee and for making their meat into a thick soup, which they seem to prefer to roasted food.
As soon as it got dark each man lay down to sleep wrapped in his cloak with his knapsack for a pillow, and the muffled figures lay as regularly in the bivouac as they stood in the ranks on parade. The officers lay separate in groups of two or three, and in rear of the battalion the horses were picketed and champed at their bits uneasily all night long, and seldom seemed to lie down. When a village was occupied a rush was made to secure mattresses, but these were only used by the luxurious. The men, as a rule, appeared to prefer straw, and if they could get plenty of it were quite content to sleep in the open air. General and staff officers usually contrived to get into houses, and then there was a heavy drain on the sleeping accommodation of the establishment.
One had a pillow, another a mattress, a third a couple of blankets, and beds were made on the floor on the most advanced shake-down principles, but all slept soundly, for the day’s work was long and tiring, and the march generally begun at early morning. The proprietors of most of the large houses had not only left them, but had taken most of their furniture with them, so that the temporary occupants were entirely dependent on what little had been left behind, and had to make it up by borrowing from the nearest cottages.
On the 30th June the king left Berlin, and on the afternoon of the 1st July arrived at Gitschin, where in person he assumed the supreme command of the three Prussian armies in Bohemia, It was decided by him that the troops should halt on the 2nd July, to recover from the great fatigues they had lately undergone.
A council of war was ordered to assemble at Gitschin, to which Prince Frederick Charles and the crown prince were summoned. It was decided that on the 3rd the First Army should send a reconnaissance towards Königgrätz, that the Second should send a strong detachment towards Josephstadt, and if possible cut that fortress off from communication with the army of Feldzeugmeister Benedek; while the remainder of the troops halted in their actual positions.
These plans were, however, entirely altered within a few hours.
CHAPTER 2: Battle of Königgrätz
When Prince Frederick Charles left Kammenitz on the morning of Monday, the 2nd July, to attend the council of war summoned by the king to meet at Gitschin, he sent out two officers to reconnoitre beyond Höritz; both fell in with Austrian troops, and had to fight and ride hard to bring their information home safely. Major Von Ungar, who went in the direction of Königgrätz, escorted by a few dragoons, came upon a large force of Austrian cavalry and Jägers before he got to the little river Bistritz, over which the road from Höritz to Königgrätz crosses, about halfway between those two towns.
A squadron of cavalry made an immediate dash to catch him, and he and his dragoons had to ride for their lives; the Austrians pursued, and those best mounted came up to the Prussians, but not in sufficient numbers to stop them, and after a running skirmish, in which Von Ungar received a lance thrust in the side which carried away most of his coat, but hardly grazed the skin, this reconnoitring party safely gained the outposts of their own army. More on the Prussian right the other reconnoitring officer also found the Austrians in force, and was obliged to retire rapidly. From the reports of these officers, and from other information which Prince Frederick Charles received at Kammenitz on his return from the council of war held at Gitschin, he inferred that the Austrian commander had the intention of advancing the next day from the Bistritz, with the object of attacking the First Prussian Army with superior force, before its junction with that of the crown prince was practically effected.
Prince Frederick Charles, in order to secure a favourable position in which to accept this probable attack, resolved immediately to move his army forward beyond Höritz, and sent orders to General Von Bittenfeld to advance with the army of the Elbe to Neu Bidsow, and be prepared thence to fall upon the left wing of the Austrian column of advance, while he himself assailed its leading divisions; At the same time he sent Lieutenant Von Normand with a letter to the crown prince, asking him to push forward in the morning from Miletin with one corps, and attack the right flank of the Austrians while he himself engaged them in front.
There was some fear that the Austrian cavalry patrols and detachments which were prowling about would intercept the aide-de-camp and stop the letter, but Von Normand succeeded in avoiding them, and got safely to the crown prince’s headquarters at one o’clock on the morning of the 3rd, and rejoined Prince Frederick Charles at four to report the success of his mission, and to bring to the leader of the First Army an assurance of the co-operation of the Second. Had this aide-de-camp been taken prisoner or killed on his way to Miletin, his loss would have probably influenced the whole campaign, for on that letter depended in a great measure the issue of the battle.
The commander of the First Army sent at the same time his chief of the staff. General Von Voigt Rhetz, to acquaint the king at Gitschin with the steps he was prepared to take, and to solicit his approval of them. The king expressed his entire approbation of the plan of Prince Frederick Charles, and sent an officer of his own staff to order the crown prince to advance in the morning against the Austrian right, not with one corps alone, but with all his available forces. An officer of the king’s staff was also sent to General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, with an endorsement of the order already signed by Prince Frederick Charles.
Long before midnight the troops were all in motion, and at half-past one in the morning the general staff left Kammenitz. The moon occasionally shone out brightly, but was generally hidden behind clouds, and then could be distinctly seen the decaying bivouac fires in the places which had been occupied by the troops along the road. These fires looked like large will-o’-the-wisps as their flames flickered about in the wind, and stretched for many a mile, for there were 100,000 soldiers with the First Army alone, and the bivouacs of so great a force spread over a wide extent of country. Day gradually began to break, but with the first symptoms of dawn a drizzling rain came on, which lasted until late in the afternoon. The wind increased and blew coldly upon the soldiers, for they were short of both sleep and food, while frequent gusts bore down to the ground the water-laden corn in the wide fields alongside the way.
The main road from Höritz to Königgrätz sinks into a deep hollow near the village of Milowitz. On the side of this hollow furthest from Höritz, is placed near the road the village of that name, and on the left of the road, on the same bank, stands a thick fir wood. A little after midnight the army of Prince Frederick Charles was entirely concealed in this hollow, ready to issue from its ambush and attack the Austrians if they should advance. (The eighth division and cavalry, with the fifth and sixth divisions in rear, were on the left of the road, while the third and fourth divisions were behind the villages of Bristau and Stracow respectively, in the same hollow).
Soon after dawn, a person standing between the village of Milowitz and the further hill of Dub could see no armed men, except a few Prussian vedettes posted along the Dub ridge, whose lances stood in relief above the summit, against the murky sky. A few dismounted officers were standing below a fruit-tree in front of Milowitz, with their horses held by some orderlies behind them. These were Prince Frederick Charles and his staff. All was still, except when the neigh of a horse, or a loud word of command as the last divisions formed, rose mysteriously from the hollow of Milowitz. Until nearly four o’clock the army remained concealed. No Austrian scouts came pricking over the hill of Dub
, no enemy’s skirmishers were detected in the corn by the side of the high road. Prince Frederick Charles began to fear that the Austrian commander meant to slip away from the encounter, and to steal behind the Elbe, where his right flank would be covered by Josephstadt, from the assault of the Army of Silesia.
To hold the Austrian Army in front of the Elbe was absolutely necessary for the success of the Prussian plans, and Prince Frederick Charles resolved, with his own army alone, to engage the whole of Benedek’s forces, and clinging to the Austrian commander, to hold him on the Bistritz until the Prussian flank attacks could be developed. A few short words passed from the commander of the First Army to the chief of his staff; a few aides-de-camp, mounting silently, rode quietly away; and, as it were by the utterance of a magician’s spell, one hundred thousand Prussian warriors springing into sight as if from the bowels of the armed earth, swept over the southern edge of the Milowitz ravine, towards the hill of Dub.
The head of the eighth division was on the main road to Königgrätz, while the third and fourth divisions spread through the corn lands on its right The fifth and sixth divisions followed the eighth in reserve. A brigade of cavalry served on the left of the eighth division to connect the main army with the seventh division under Franzecky, which had been sent straight from Miletin to Cerekwitz, in order to cover the left flank of the First Army.
About four o’clock in the morning of the 3rd July, the army began to advance, and marched slowly up the gentle hill which leads from Milowitz to the village of Dub, two miles nearer Königgrätz. The corn lay heavy and tangled from the rain, upon the ground; the skirmishers pushed through it nimbly, but the battalions which followed behind in crowded columns toiled heavily through the down-beaten crops, and the artillery horses had to strain hard on their traces to get the wheels of the gun-carriages through the sticky soil. At six the whole army was close up to Dub, but it was not allowed to go upon the summit of the slope, for the ridge on which Dub stands had hidden all its motions, and the Austrians could see nothing of the troops collected behind the crest. Perhaps they thought that no Prussians were near them, except ordinary advanced posts; for the cavalry vedettes which had been pushed forward thus far over night remained on the top of the ridge, as if nothing were going on behind them.
From the top of the slight elevation on which the village of Dub stands, the ground slopes gently down to the River Bistritz, which the road crosses at the village of Sadowa, a mile and a quarter from Dub. From Sadowa the ground again rises beyond the Bistritz, and to the little village of Chlum, conspicuous by its church tower standing at the top of the gentle hill, a mile and a half beyond Sadowa. A person standing that morning on the top of the ridge saw Sadowa below him, built of wooden cottages, surrounded by orchards, and could distinguish among its houses several water-mills, but these were not at work, for all the inhabitants of the village had been sent away, and a white coat here and there among the cottages was not a peasant’s blouse, but was the uniform of an Austrian soldier; three quarters of a mile down the Bistritz a big red-brick house, with a high brick chimney near it, looked like a manufactory, and some large wooden buildings alongside it were unmistakeably warehouses; close to these a few wooden cottages, probably meant for the workmen employed at the manufactory, completed the village of Dohalitz.
A little more than three quarters of a mile still further down the Bistritz stood the village of Mokrovous,—like most Bohemian country villages, built of pine-wood cottages enclustered in orchard trees. The château of Dohalicka stands midway between Dohalitz and Mokrovous, on a knoll overhanging the river. Behind Dohalitz, and between that village and the high-road which runs through Sadowa, there lies a large thick wood; many of the trees had been cut down about ten feet above the ground, and the cut down branches had been twisted together between the standing trunks of the trees which were nearest to the river, to make an entrance into the wood from the front extremely difficult.
On the open slope between Dohalitz and Dohalicka along the ground there seemed to run a dark dotted line of stumpy bushes, but the telescope showed that these were guns, and that this battery alone contained about sixty pieces. Four miles down the Bistritz, from Sadowa could be seen the house-tops of Nechanitz, above which rose the dark fir-woods that clustered round the castle of Hradek. Looking to the left, up the course of the Bistritz, the ground was open between the orchards of Sadowa and the trees which grow round Benatek, a little village about two miles above Sadowa, except where, midway between these villages, a broad belt of fir-wood runs for three-quarters of a mile. Above and beyond these villages and woods on the course of the river, the spire of Chlum was seen; below it a few houses, gardens, and patches of fir-wood; and a little to the left, rather down the hill, the cottages of the hamlet of Cistowes, and on the side of the main road the orchards, and the house-tops of Lipa.
On the extreme left, at the foot of the hills, lay the larger village of Horenowes, above which stood on the bare plateau what appeared to be a large single tree. (The supposed solitary tree was in reality two trees, but was taken to be one by both Prussian armies, and from the fortress of Königgrätz).
The air was thick and hazy, the rain came down steadily, and the wind blew bitterly cold, while the infantry and artillery were waiting behind the brow of the hill near Dub. At seven o’clock Prince Frederick Charles pushed forward some of his cavalry and horse artillery. They moved down the slope towards the Bistritz at a gentle trot, slipping about on the greasy ground, but keeping most beautiful lines; the lance flags of the Uhlans, wet with the rain, flapping heavily against the staves. At the bottom of the hill the trumpets sounded, and in making their movements to gain the bridge the squadrons began wheeling and hovering about the side of the river, as if they courted the fire of the enemy. Then the Austrian guns opened upon them from a battery placed in a field near the village at which the main road crosses the Bistritz, and the Battle of Königgrätz began.
Feldzeugmeister Benedek had drawn up the Austrian Army to accept battle in this position seen from the Dub hill. His centre lay in front of Chlum, where the hills attain their greatest height; in his front was the marshy stream of the Bistritz. Batteries had been thrown up in some positions favourable for bringing a heavy artillery fire to bear against his assailants, and the ranges of different distances from these batteries marked by poles and barked trees.
Little was spared to bring the artillery, the best arm of the Austrian service, into action with every advantage. (The great loss of Austrian guns was due to the horses and limbers being sent under cover of the hill out of fire. When the Prussians advanced only the lightest guns could be saved, and nearly one third of the Austrian pieces engaged fell into the hands of the victors).
The villages were also barricaded and prepared with abattis for infantry defence, but not sufficiently. The right flank of the Austrian position was covered to a certain extent by the Trotina brook, which flows through a deep marshy ravine into the Elbe, but little had been done by the engineer to aid in opposing the passage of this naturally strong feature. The left wing was supported by the wood and castle of Hradek, while the left centre was strengthened by possession of the villages of Problus and Prim. Feldzeugmeister Benedek had formed his army in the following order of battle:—
The Saxons on the left wing held Problus, with an advanced guard in Nechanitz; in rear of them stood the eighth corps, the first light cavalry division, and the second division of reserve cavalry at Prim.
In the centre, the tenth corps was posted round Langenhof, the third corps round Cistowes, and the fourth corps at Maslowed, with a detachment in Benatek.
On the right wing, the second corps and the second division of light cavalry were at Sendrasctz, while on the extreme right flank the Schwarz-gelb brigade held the Trotina.
As reserves, the first corps was posted on the left of the main road near Rosnitz, the sixth corps on the right of the road on the south of Rosberitz; in rear of these were the first and third divisions of reser
ve cavalry.
The first shot was fired about half-past seven. The Prussian horse artillery, close down to the river, replied to the Austrian guns, but neither side fired heavily, and for half an hour the cannonade consisted of but little more than single shots. At a quarter before eight the King of Prussia arrived on the field, and very soon after the horse artillery were reinforced by other field batteries, and the Prussian gunners began firing their shells quickly into the Austrian position. As soon as the Prussian fire actively commenced Austrian guns seemed to appear, as if by magic, in every point of the position; from every road, from every village, from the orchard of Mokrovous, on the Prussian right, to the orchard of Benatek, on their left, came flashes of fire and whizzing rifle shells, which, bursting with a sharp crack, sent their splinters rattling among the guns, gunners, carriages, and horses, often killing a man or horse, sometimes dismounting a gun, but always ploughing up the earth, and scattering the mud in the men’s faces.
But the Austrians did not confine themselves to firing on the artillery alone, for they threw their shells up the slope opposite to them towards Dub, and one shell came slap into a squadron of Uhlans, who were close beside the king; burying itself with a heavy thud in the ground, it blew up columns of mud some twenty feet in the air, and, bursting a moment after, reduced the squadron by four files.