by H M Hozier
The 17th was a fearfully hot, burning summer day, not a bit of shade was to be found on the road by which the army marched, except where sometimes the way ran close by the side of the Thaya, and a few pollard willows which fringed the edges afforded a moment’s relief from the scorching rays of the sun, but not from the dust which rose in a thick, heavy cloud from the soft deep powder on the road every time a man stepped on it, or a horse, restive from the attacks of innumerable flies, stamped savagely upon the ground. The bright, thick groves of poplars, intermingled with oak, springing from beautifully soft and velvety turf which fringed the further bank of the river, tantalized the troops by their proximity.
At Lundenburg the midday sun was pouring down on the wide, unpaved, dusty streets, and glaring while houses. Von Tümpling’s division lay here that day, and the soldiers wandered about slowly, seeking for anything to drink, or for shade from the rays of the sun. Every house was a billet, and the atmosphere of the close, small rooms was stifling, while the sun poured hotly in through the small windows, and made the insides of the houses almost as hot and more disagreeable than the open. Several of the houses had no roofs, the thatch bore signs of having been recently torn off, and was thrown away to some distance; the bare timbers stood out against the cloudless sky, and some rough, rugged openings made in the walls, which looked as if an unskilful mason had been trying to break down the walls, were in reality loop-holes; for in the evening of the 15th the Austrians held Lundenburg, and meant to fight to keep it.
Here that day were collected Mondel’s infantry brigade, consisting of the 12th battalion of Jägers, the 10th regiment of Foot (Mazuchelli’s), and the 24th regiment of Foot (Duke of Parma’s), with some artillery and some of the cavalry of General Edelsheim’s division. They had orders to hold the town to the last extremity, and they began to make some of the houses into temporary fortresses. The inhabitants, afraid of coming involuntarily under fire, mostly fled, and left their town, expecting never to return and see its houses standing; but before the preparations for defence were concluded the Prussian cavalry had broken up the line at Göding, and the railway junction of Lundenburg had lost its military value.
Before, however, the Austrians evacuated the town, Lieutenant von Radowitz, who had been sent by Prince Frederick Charles to take M. Benedetti, the French ambassador, as far as the Austrian outposts, arrived with the minister at Lundenburg. The Austrians would not allow the Prussian officer to return at once to his headquarters, for fear that he might carry back with him intelligence that the place was being given up, but thought it necessary that he should follow the ambassador to Weibendorf; so he was put into the railway and taken to that station. As soon as he arrived there he got leave to return, but, only able to come by road and in a country waggon, he did not reach Pawlowitz, the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles, till the evening of the 16th. So far the Austrians were successful, for they managed to detain the staff-officer; but long before his arrival at Pawlowitz, Prince Frederick Charles knew of the evacuation of Lundenburg; and the staff-officer, by being taken south among the Austrian troops, saw a great deal which could never have been known at the Prussian headquarters, had he not been forced to make his involuntary railway journey in the direction of Vienna.
General von Manstein had occupied Nikolsburg with his division, after crossing the muddy Thaya by a pontoon bridge, which he had to throw across the stream to replace one that had been destroyed by the retreating Austrians. It was anticipated that the boggy banks and unsound sides of the river would cause a good deal of difficulty in throwing the bridge; but if there were difficulties Manstein overcame them, and said nothing about them. But this is no proof that his passage, although unopposed by the enemy, was an easy one, as he was renowned in the army for a quiet determination combined with a high daring, and gave many proofs of both as well in the war with Denmark as in the Bohemian campaign.
A short halt in the hot, bare town of Lundenburg, and then the march was continued to Feldsberg, through the beautifully wooded park of the Prince of Lichtenstein. The cavalry corps moved forward in the evening, and there were no troops in Feldsberg, on the evening of the 17th, except the headquarter staff, for whom the Prince’s large castle afforded plenty of accommodation, and a few battalions who were billeted in the town for the night The little town nestles round the foot of the castle in a dip in the ground, beyond it to the south rises a gentle rounded elevation, and beyond that lay nothing but flat plains as far as the Danube.
Nothing, on the evening of the 17th, was known of the direction of the morrow’s march; at nine o’clock at night, no orders had yet come from the king, and it was all uncertain whether the First Army was to move on Florisdorf or Hungary. There was a general impression that there would be fighting in a few days. The troops looked forward to the possibility of meeting the enemy with the most perfect confidence of success, and they had every reason to do so on account of both their generals and their arms. It cannot, however, be denied that the army had a most difficult, and perhaps even dangerous, operation before it if it meant to go to Vienna, had the Austrians held fast by Florisdorf and the Bisamberg.
The passage of a river is always a dangerous undertaking, and as the Austrian army from Italy was in Vienna, and garrisoned the entrenchments in front of the Danube, while a strong force of troops brought from Hungary, whither Benedek was also hurrying, was at Preszburg, the Prussian generals had a piece of work before them difficult of execution.
On the morning of the 18th the sun shone bright and warm on the schloss and town of Feldsberg. The day seemed likely to be as hot as the previous, and consequently the march was ordered for the evening. But about two o’clock a sudden change occurred in the weather. The sky became in a few moments covered with clouds, and an extraordinary darkness set in. Up to windward a thick, dense black cloud could be seen bearing down steadily towards the castle; but not on the sky alone, for like a great volume of heavy smoke it seemed rising from the earth, and filled the air for miles. Nearer and nearer it came. When it got within a quarter of a mile a sudden tempest of wind, which seemed bearing this cloud behind it, burst upon the place.
The trees swayed about, rocked by the strong continuous gust, branches were torn off, sheaves of corn were torn up, and taken through the air, the Indian corn and standing crops in the fields were swept down almost level with the ground, and the heavy cloud of dust, which looked in the distance like smoke, was driven about by the wind and whirled up and down in a most fantastic manner. For a few minutes only this tornado lasted, and then was followed by a tremendous downpour of rain, which fell for about half an hour; but so dry and parched was the ground that though the water came down in torrents it was sucked in in a moment, and when the rain ceased not a puddle stood upon the surface of the thirsty earth.
But the rain laid the dust, and the march was more agreeable than it had been for some days past. The way lay down the valley of the March, which divides the Crown lands of Austria from Hungary. Flat wide-stretching plains lay on the right, in parts covered with standing barley or Indian corn; in parts black and bleak where the soil had already been turned up and prepared to take the seed for the second crop; and here and there, where the corn had been cut, the sheaves, which had been carried hither and thither by the afternoon’s tempest, were strewn about in confusion.
On the left the sluggish March twisted about in many channels through numerous marshy islets, on which short willows grew densely springing up from sedgy ground, which is covered with beds of tall bulrushes or tangled water plants. Further on the left the blue ridge of the Carpathians stood out against the sombre sky, lighted up here and there by some rays from the watery sun, which, sinking rapidly, had before going down lighted up in the west one small portion of the cloudy sky.
The road lay close along the railway, upon which the officials of the field telegraph division, the principal instrument of the success of the campaign, were riding, carefully inspecting the wires. Every post was looked at, ever
y joint inspected with a careful scrutiny; but as long as the diligent inspectors could be seen, no break was found which called for the assistance of their workmen, who followed alongside with their waggons filled with tools and materials to repair a flaw, and that night telegraphic communication was open between Prince Frederick Charles at Hohenau and the King at Nikolsburg. And it was required, for the approach to the Danube required new combinations, and again the whole forces of the field were about to be removed in unison by orders flashed from the headquarters of the king.
When the staff reached Radensburg, a little village about two miles from Hohenau, a Vienna droschky was seen drawn up on one side of the road, with two gentlemen in plain clothes and wide-awake hats standing beside it, chatting quietly with a group of Prussian officers who had their billets in a roadside public-house. A little flag beside the coachmen showed that the travellers who had come by the carriage were engaged in some neutral duty, and a footman dressed in livery, with a broad lace band round his cap, who stood with the handle of the carriage door in his hand, showed by his dress that he was the servant of some high official.
A nearer approach showed that the travellers were M. Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, and his secretary, who had gone to Vienna after the unsuccessful attempts to procure an armistice at Brünn, and were now on their way back to the king’s headquarters, which had been established on the 17th at Nikolsburg, in the old castle of Prince Dietrichstein. The King of Prussia during his stay here slept in the same room which Napoleon had occupied in 1805 after the battle of Austerlitz, and before his entry into Vienna on the 9th December.
Prince Frederick Charles dismounted from his horse, and in the middle of the road held a long conversation with the Ambassador. Perhaps they were discussing on that rainy evening, in the middle of the country road, questions which might affect the destinies of Europe—perhaps they were only having a friendly chat Numbers of suppositions were broached by the officers of the staff, but no one except the two who engaged in that conversation know what passed, for all others drew out of earshot as soon as the ambassador approached the prince.
The officers of the staff were not so delighted to see the bearer of news which might possibly lead to an armistice as they would have been to receive him if he had come in a private capacity, for they feared that negotiations might stop the campaign before it found its just conclusion in the occupation of Vienna, and with the feelings of true soldiers they had little sympathy with the diplomacy which might arrest the progress of their armies.
The marches of the 18th were short, for the armies were drawing together, perhaps for the attack of the Austrian entrenched position at Florisdorf, perhaps to force the passage of the Danube at some other point, and the army had to move slowly in order to give General Herwarth time to close towards it from the right, and to let the Army of Silesia come up into line. On the 19th Prince Frederick Charles’s headquarters were established at Duernkruth; his advanced guard, with part of the seventh division, that afternoon reached and occupied the railway junction at Gänserndorf, where the lines of Preszburg and Vienna unite. Another portion of the seventh division occupied the passage of the March at Marchegg. The cavalry corps under the command of Prince Albrecht was round the little town of Anger, about five miles north of Gänserndorf. The light infantry division was across the March, and on the road which leads from Holitsch down the left bank of that river billeted in and about St. Johann and Malarzka, while the rest of the army was clustered round the headquarters of its commander-in-chief.
The crown prince in person this day reached Brünn, but his army was pushing rapidly forward, and the Guards had already arrived at Lundenburg; he had left a force to mask Olmütz, but the garrison of that place was not watched by this detachment alone, for Knobelsdorf ’s troops from Silesia were being pushed on to aid in preventing the occupants of the great fortress of Moravia from making any demonstration against the Prussian line of communications.
It was quite evident from the movements of the Prussian troops that some great operation was meditated, and it was but natural to suppose that the present combinations were being made with the design of striking a heavy blow against the capital of the Austrian empire.
The Prussian cavalry was being collected together into one mass, and when united formed an enormous number of sabres, of which it was expected that some use would be made within the next few days; for from Gänserndorf to the Danube stretches the wide flat plain of the Marchfeld, on which the Austrian cavalry might have a fair field for action, and where it might strive to regain the world-wide reputation which was so rudely shaken by the charges of the Prussian squadrons in the earlier parts of the war.
The Austrians had, in retreating, destroyed the bridges across the March, in order to prevent communication between the Prussian columns which might advance on either bank of the stream. That of Anger had been burnt, and a few charred piles peeping above the water were all that showed where the bridge stood; but the Prussian engineers had already replaced it by another bridge, made out of such materials as came readily to hand, and had thrown another, supported upon trestles, at Duernkruth, so that by these means infantry and artillery could cross from one side of the river to the other, and many fords had been found of which the cavalry could make use.
On the morning of the 19th, Count Hasler, an officer of the staff, rode forward beyond the outposts on the northern bank of the Danube to destroy the telegraph which communicates between Vienna and Preszburg. At Gänserndorf he found two cuirassiers, who formed his working party, and picked up a hatchet near a roadside house, which formed the whole of the tools required. When the point at which the wires were to be broken was reached, the chief difficulty of the undertaking was found, for the lines ran along the tops of a succession of bare slippery poles, up which it was very difficult to climb. Several attempts were made to ascend up the pole, but just as the piece of bent iron which supported the porcelain knob round which the lowest wire was turned for a support was reached, arms and legs gave way and the man came sliding down the dry polished wood.
At last one of the cuirassiers, making use of his comrade’s shoulders as a starting point, began on better terms than before, and got his hand upon the bent iron; then to haul himself up to the top was comparatively easy; and as he had got the hatchet between his teeth he began to deliver some smart, quick blows upon the uppermost wire. A few strokes severed it, and the two portions of the broken line, parting from each other, came surging down to the ground. The same process was repeated with the others, and in a few minutes, all the wires being broken, the man threw his hatchet to the ground, saying, “There, they won’t be able now to telegraph from Vienna to Preszburg,” and came sliding down the post. There was no need to break up the railway, for the Austrians had already blown up the bridge over the March; and if they had not, the Prussian advanced guard had arrived at Gänserndorf, and their outposts were pushed in advance of the railway junction.
Rumours of peace were flying about the camp all the 19th; some people asserted that a three days’ armistice had been agreed upon, and that this was the reason that the marches were so short, but that M. Benedetti had terms to propose from the Kaiser. Nothing certain with regard to a cessation of hostilities was yet decided upon, and the shortness of the marches can be accounted for by the necessity of allowing time for the Army of the Elbe to make its lateral movement, and for that of the crown prince to come up close to the First Army.
In the army, at this time, no one except those in high command had any idea of whither the next advance would lead: some supposed that the whole Prussian force was to be dashed against the parapets and heavily-armed embrasures of Florisdorf; others that a sudden raid was to be made by a large force into Hungary to beat up the quarters of the Kaiser at Pesth, whither the Imperial family had retired from Vienna. But all feared the results of M. Benedetti’s mission, and were much afraid that diplomacy would stand in the way of an entry into the capital of Austria, and would de
prive the army of what they considered would be only a just and fitting termination to their rapid but glorious campaign.
A welcome capture had been made by the commissariat of the First Army by the occupation of Göding, the place near which the cavalry of the advanced guard broke up the railway between Olmütz and Lundenburg on the 15th. Immense magazines of Austrian stores had been found there, and among other valuable commodities about 50,000l. worth of cigars, intended for issue to the Austrian troops, which were confiscated for the use of the Prussians, and, in consequence, the soldiers received liberal supplies. They were most grateful, for in the German armies tobacco is considered almost necessary to existence, and in importance as a ration ranks only second to bread or meat.
Headquarters were established on the 19th at Duernkruth, in a small white schloss, which afforded the most limited accommodation even for the small number of officers who comprised the headquarter staff. Few, very few, indeed, had beds; colonels and subalterns lay side by side on mattresses or trusses of straw upon the floor; a few specially favoured had sofas. Among these was Count Stölberg, the President of the Prussian House of Lords, who was with the army as a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem. But all were very cheerful and happy, and would have been perfectly well pleased with everything, except that the younger officers expressed loud wishes that M. Benedetti was anywhere except in the king’s headquarters, for they feared that his presence meant peace, and they wanted more fighting, more promotion, and more glory, and were extremely anxious to march into Vienna. And, although their elders did not express their opinions, it was tolerably evident that in their eyes also the prospect of an immediate peace was looked upon as anything but a blessing.