The Seven Weeks' War

by H M Hozier

  That night the king’s headquarters were at Hohenmauth; the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles, commanding the centre, were at the village of Reichenberg, about twenty-five miles south-east of Pardubitz. The crown prince, with the headquarters of the Second Army, halted for the night at Leitomischl, one march to the east of the First Army; and the Army of the Elbe was pursuing its way, at an even pace with the two others, under General von Bittenfeld, along the road which leads to Iglau. No intelligence had yet been received of the occupation of Prague, although it was considered certain that Prussian troops must have occupied that town. Tidings of the capital of Bohemia being actually possessed were eagerly looked for, not only by those who took a strategical interest in the campaign, but by all who wished to receive private supplies from Berlin; for till the railway communication was established parcels could hardly be expected to arrive; and tobacco and cigars, which rank in Germany almost on a par with food, were very scarce, and a fresh supply was eagerly desired.

  This day’s was a short march, but the most unpleasant one which the army had yet had. A drizzling rain fell in the early morning, and a cold wind was blowing, which drove their wet clothes against the soldiers’ bodies, and made them shiver even as they marched; but towards mid-day the rain ceased, and the sun burst through the clouds, so that the men got dry; but heavy rain again fell in the afternoon, and the bivouac at night was moist and uncomfortable. Again this day the country was found fertile, and the inhabitants still in their houses; all received kindly the soldiers who came into the cottages along the line of march to buy food or tobacco, and some even expressed a desire to become Prussians, stating as a reason that they should pay less taxes than under the Austrian rule; but whether this wish was sincere, or only elicited by the presence of the Prussian troops and from a desire of flattering their national pride, is open to question.

  At this time Feldzeugmeister Benedek was working hard to reorganise the relics of the Austrian Army of the North at Olmütz, Although over sixty years old, he displayed a capacity for labour, both in the saddle and at the desk, which would have shamed many a younger man. He was at this time ordered to despatch the mass of his army by rail to Vienna, where it was to be united to the Austrian army from Italy, under the command of the Archduke Albrecht. (Letters from the correspondents of the Times with the Austrian Army). Count Mensdorf was despatched from Vienna directly, after the defeat at Königgrätz, to the headquarters of the Army of the North, in order there to inquire into the circumstances of that disaster. The consequences of his mission were that a military commission was later assembled at Weiner Neustadt, before which Count Clam Gallas and Generals Henikstein, Krismanics, and Benedek himself were summoned to appear.

  General von John was appointed chief of the staff to the Archduke Albrecht. The Austrian Government wished, by bringing up its Army of the South, to oppose a force to the advance of the Prussians, but the troops from Italy did not arrive quickly enough. It was only on the 12th July that the first detachment of nine thousand men arrived at Vienna.

  From the time of the Battle of Königgrätz, the Prussian armies had lost all traces of the Austrians until the 8th July, when some of the crown prince’s advanced troops fell in with an outpost of the enemy before Zwittau, near the junction of the two branches of rail which lead from Olmütz and Brünn to Böhmisch Trübau. After a slight skirmish the Austrians fell back, and on the 9th the crown prince occupied Mährisch Trübau and Zwittau, two towns of Moravia. That evening the first corps d’armée halted at Zwittau, the Guards at Wildenschwert, the fifth corps at Landskron.

  The first intelligence which the Prussians received of the retreat of the Austrian army had made it appear probable that Benedek had withdrawn the greater portion of it to Brünn, on the direct line to Vienna. Now the whole of his movements were cleared up. An Austrian field post happened to be captured in front of Mährisch Trübau, and many interesting private letters found in it, which established the demoralized condition of Benedek’s army, as well as a copy of the orders of that general for the marches of his corps, and the movements of his administrative services. It was thus discovered that only the tenth Austrian corps and the heavy cavalry of the Prince of Schleswig-Holstein had been sent to Brünn, and that the rest of the Army of the North was seeking shelter under the guns of Olmütz until it should be in a fit condition to attack the Prussians.

  A few days later the Austrian cavalry retaliated, and captured a Prussian field post, in which a despatch was found that gave them some valuable information with regard to the Prussian movements.

  On the 10th July, the King of Prussia moved his headquarters to Zwittau. This day it was known to the Prussians that the Austrian Army of the South had commenced its journey to Vienna from Olmütz by railway. The transport of this army was conducted as quickly as possible, and between the 7th and the 13th Benedek despatched three corps—the 3rd, 4th, and 6th—to the capital. (On no point is there so much popular misunderstanding as on the transport of troops by rail in war. The experience of the German campaign proves that 10,000 men, equipped for the field, is the most that can be safely calculated upon to be moved per day on a single railway).

  When it was ascertained that the Austrian Army was moving to the south, the march of the crown prince was directed towards Prerau, that he might there cut the railway communication between Olmütz and Vienna.

  On the 10th, a long march of twenty-five miles brought the headquarters of the First Army to the little town of Neustadt, which lies about fifty miles to the northwest of Brünn. It was a wet morning; the clouds hung low, and a drizzling rain made the soft country road deep for the infantry and heavy for the artillery and baggage waggons, for this day the army did not move on one of the main chausses, but by one of the lesser roads which lead through the highland country dividing Bohemia from Moravia. As the road ascended, the scenery became more and more bleak and cold; the corn was in the higher parts quite short and green, and in some places not in ear; cultivation was only on patches of ground, and where the land was not tilled the grass grew short and bare. Cold, hard-looking rocks projected everywhere from the soil; the surface of the ground was thickly strewn with large stones, among which a few stunted larch-trees looked as though they had to struggle hard to obtain soil sufficient for even their roots.

  Above the road on the hill-sides grow dense forests of spruce and silver fir, the tops of which were for the most part shrouded in a thick mist The dwellings along the line of march were in keeping with the aspect of the country—low, dirty, and untidy, without any gardens, and, generally standing alone on the bleak hill-side, they seemed fitting habitations for the squalid and starved-looking inhabitants who lounged in their doorways, watching with a lazy curiosity the soldiers marching on the road. The men, thin and with sharply-drawn features, seemed to have no work to do, but leant lazily against the doorposts smoking long black pipes; the women, with feet bare and garments scanty, shivered beside them, holding in their arms a dirty infant, or combing out their tangled hair.

  The foot-soldiers trudged sullenly along; the march was long for them, and the road bad, but they kept up a good pace the whole way, and there were no stragglers. But they had had enough of wet, though, in defiance of the rain, they marched with their cloaks rolled up, mainly to keep them dry for the night bivouac, and longed for dry weather or a harder road. The horses of the artillery laboured heavily, but got the guns and ponderous waggons, weighty with ammunition and corn-sacks full of forage piled up on them, up the quickly-recurring bits of steep ascent in the road. At every sharp rise the drivers flogged and spurred, the gunners pushed behind, and, though the horses stumbled and often nearly fell, and the traces were stretched so tight that they looked as if they must break, no accident occurred, and every artillery carriage arrived safely, at its destination. The baggage-waggons did not fare so well. Less strongly horsed and not so well driven, they all dropped far behind the troops, and a few remained stranded on the side of the way with a broken axle-tree or
a shivered wheel.

  Near the little town of Swratka the frontier of Moravia was passed, but the road that descends from it still ran along the hill country of the frontier, and only came down into a valley near Neustadt to rise again at the beginning of the morrow’s march. Within Moravia the country, though perhaps even less fertile, was more pleasing. All pretence of cultivation had been given up, for trees grew down close to the road, and where there was not wood the ground was wet and marshy, and showed no signs of ever having been drained; and the horses of the cavalry who scouted in front of the columns floundered along, sinking in it above their fetlocks.

  The monotony of the march was relieved by a spirited cavalry skirmish in the little town of Saar, which is about six miles to the west of Neustadt. On the previous night the Austrian hussars of the regiment of Hesse-Cassel held Saar. The Prussian cavalry was to proceed on the 10th to Gammy, about a mile in front of Saar, and the 9th regiment of Uhlans formed its advanced guard on the march. The Austrians intended to march the same day to the rear towards Brünn, and the hussars were actually assembling for parade previous to the march when the first patrols of the Prussian Uhlans came rattling into the town. The Austrians were collecting together from all the different houses and farmyards; mounted men, filing out of barns and straw-houses, were riding slowly towards their rendezvous in the market-place; men who had not yet mounted were leading their horses, strolling carelessly alongside them, when, by some fault of their sentinels, they were surprised by the Prussians.

  The Uhlans were much inferior in number at first, but their supports were coming up behind them, and this disadvantage was compensated for by the Austrians being taken unawares. The Uhlans quickly advanced, but did not charge before one Austrian squadron had time to form, and only while most of the men of the remaining divisions were quickly falling into their ranks, though some were cut off from the rendezvous by the Prussians advancing beyond the doors from which they were issuing, and were afterwards made prisoners.

  In the market-place an exciting contest at once began. The celebrated cavalry of Austria were attacked by the rather depreciated horsemen of Prussia, and the lance, the “queen of weapons,” as its admirers love to term it, was being engaged in real battle against the sword. The first Prussian soldiers who rode into the town were very few in number, and they could not attack before some more came up. This delay of a few minutes gave the hussars a short time to hurry together from the other parts of the town, and by the time the Uhlans received their reinforcements the Austrians were nearly formed.

  As soon as their supports came up the lancers formed a line across the street, advanced a few yards at a walk, then trotted for a short distance, their horses’ feet pattering on the stones, the men’s swords jingling, their accoutrements rattling, and their lances borne upright, with the black and white flags streaming over their heads; but when near the opening into the broader street, which is called the Marketplace, a short, sharp word of command, a quick, stern note from the trumpet, the lance-points came down and were sticking out in front of the horses’ shoulders, the horses broke into a steady gallop, and the lance-flags fluttered rapidly from the motion through the air, as the horsemen, with bridle-hands low and bodies bent forward, lightly gripped the staves, and drove the points straight to the front.

  But when the Prussians began to gallop, the Austrians were also in motion. With a looser formation and a greater speed they came on, their blue pelisses, trimmed with fur and embroidered with yellow, flowing freely from their left shoulders, leaving their sword-arms disencumbered. Their heads, well up, carried the single eagle’s feather in every cap straight in the air; their swords were raised, bright and sharp, ready to strike, as their wiry little horses, pressed tight by the knees of the riders, came bounding along, and dashed against the Prussian ranks as if they would leap over the points of the lances. The Uhlans swayed heavily under the shock of the collision; but, recovering again, pressed on, though only at a walk.

  In front of them were mounted men, striking with their swords, parrying the lance-thrusts, but unable to reach the lancer; but the ground was also covered with men and horses, struggling together to rise; loose horses were galloping away; dismounted hussars in their blue uniforms and long boots were hurrying off to try to catch their chargers or to avoid the lance-points. The Uhlan line appeared unbroken, but the hussars were almost dispersed. They had dashed up against the firmer Prussian ranks, and they had recoiled, shivered, scattered, and broken as a wave is broken that dashes against a cliff. In the few moments that the ranks were locked together, it seems that the horsemen were so closely jammed against each other that lance or sword was hardly used. The hussars escaped the points in rushing in, but their speed took them so close to the lancers’ breasts that they had not even room to use their swords. Then the Prussians, stouter and taller men, mounted on heavier horses, mostly bred from English sires, pressed hard on the light frames and the smaller horses of the hussars, and by mere weight and physical strength bore them back, and forced them from their seats to the ground; or sometimes, so rude was the shock, sent horse and man bounding backwards, to come down with a clatter on the pavement.

  The few Austrians who remained mounted fought for a short time to stop the Prussian advance, but they could make no impression on the lancers. Wherever a hussar made a dash to close three points bristled couched against his chest or his horse’s breast, for the Austrians were now in inferior numbers in the streets to the Prussians, and the narrowness of the way would not allow them to retire for their reserves to charge. So the Prussians pressed steadily forward in an invulnerable line, and the Austrians, impotent to stop them, had to fall back before them. Before they had gone far through the town, fighting this irregular combat more Prussian cavalry came up behind the Uhlans, and the Austrians began to draw off. The lancers pushed after them, but the hussars got away, and at the end of the town the pursuit ceased. One officer and twenty-two non-commissioned officers and privates taken prisoners, with nearly forty captured horses, fell into the hands of the Uhlans, as the trophies of this skirmish. Some of the prisoners were wounded; a few hussars killed, and two or three Prussians were left dead upon the ground.

  One or two of the privates taken prisoners were Germans, but by far the greater number were Hungarians—smart, soldier-like looking fellows, of a wiry build; they looked the very perfection of light horsemen, but were no match in a mêlée for the tall, strong cavalry soldiers of Prussia, who seemed with one hand to be able to wring them from their saddles, and hurl them to the ground.

  The inhabitants of Neustadt reported that there was an Austrian cavalry division of four regiments at Ostrau, a village about six miles south of Saar, and it seemed clear from the reports of the prisoners that there was a strong cavalry force in front of the advancing Prussians. On the 10th July five hundred Italians, deserters from the Austrian service, surrendered themselves to General von Bittenfeld, the commander of the Army of the Elbe, and volunteered to serve during the war in the Prussian army; but the king had no need of foreign troops, and very naturally declined the proffered services of men who had been faithless to one cause, and ordered that they should be sent to Italy, where they might perhaps have an opportunity of proving their patriotism on the Mincio.

  The same day all the Saxon prisoners who had been taken during the campaign were released and sent to their homes, on condition of taking an oath not to serve against Prussia during the war. They all took the oath, and went to Saxony; but many seemed to quit their prisons with regret, for they had no money, and they feared that there would be no work to be found in their own country; but this fear ought not to have been well-grounded, for the harvest in Saxony was close at hand, and the crops there had not been trampled down by battles or bivouacs.

  The weather on the 11th was better than that of the previous day. The sun shone out warm, and lighted up the dark groves of fir-wood which hung above the road, and shining on the trunks of the silver firs relieved the monotonous dark
green of the foliage. The road was very hilly, and in some places bad, but it was drying quickly under the influence of the sun, and the soldiers marched cheerfully, careless of the depressing weather which had lately been the rule. The way still lay through the Moravian highlands, but the increased heat of the sun, the presence of oak and ash among the firs, the yellower crops and more abundant grass showed that the army was gradually working down towards the valley of the Schwarzawa: but the country did not become more plain, nor did the rivulets tumble down alongside the road in less frequent miniature cataracts; on the contrary, the ground was more broken up in hills and valleys.

  The former were not high, nor did they run in any chain, or in any order; sometimes they rose as huge, isolated, rounded masses, the tops of which were shrouded in fir plantations, while abutting mica rocks projecting from their sides reflected brightly the rays of the sun; sometimes they ran in tortuous ridges, breaking suddenly into a steep ravine, to allow the passage of a watercourse; or throwing up some huge masses of rock which, sparkling in the sunlight, contrasted strongly with the dark leaves of the surrounding trees, seemed to form natural castles to defend the road. In such a country a few riflemen might have delayed seriously the march of the army, but the advanced guard had patrolled the paths through all the woods, had sent scouts to the top of every hill, had looked down into every ravine, and, though the Austrian cavalry was known to be between them and Brünn, they marched on to Tischnowitz without finding an Austrian Jäger, or meeting with any opposition to their progress.