THE RED PRINCE IN THE BATTLE-FIELD.

Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 58, 5 September 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE RED PRINCE IN THE BATTLE-FIELD.

The Daily News publishes an un signed article, which is unmistakeabl) from the pen of the most brilliant oi living war correspondents (Mr. Archi bald Forbes), giving his remiiiisence* of fhe Eed Prince in the FrancoGerman War. Mr. Forbes says : — " "Were I called on to define Prince Frederick Charles •in two words, 1 should style him a disciplined thunderbolt. The first time I ever saw Prince Frederick Charles was on the afternoon of the battle of Afars la Tour. About noon on that bloody day Bazaine, out there in front of the a«,iberge of Gravelotte, had bidden adieu to his master, the Emperor, and had ridden torward to the great plain on whose face lie the villages of Flavigny, Vionville, Mars la Tour, and Kezonville, to find that the Prussians were standing athwart the plateau, blocking- the outward march of his army towards Verdun, that indeed, hours before Alvensleben had bidden Reinhabein commence the offensive with his Brandenburger horsemen. For five hours a desperate battle had been raging furiously. Alvensleben had been indeed true to his duty. With his single army corps, during those dreadful hours of fighting and slaughter he had been barring the progress of the whole French army. Five and twenty thousand Germans, out there mostly on the bare ])lain, had given pause to a hundred thousand Frenchmen. But at what a cost ! Alvensleben's two divisions, StulpnageVs and Buddenbrock's, had lost one-third of their strength. The infantry had been so pressed that he had been forced to adopt the terrible expedient of hurling cavalry at the muzzles of the chassepots. From Bredom's gallant horsemen he had not asked too much ; they had achieved their mission ; they had pierced line after line of French infantry, and had sabred the gunners of the batteries behind ; but they had ridden back into their position short by one, half of the strength with which they had commenced their heroic j charge. The village of Flavigny was a shambles, its gutters running blood. The plain around it was strewn thick with dead and wounded. Well might Alvensleben with anxious eyes scan the verge of the plateau for reinforcements, for he was engaged up to the hilt — not a man stood in reserve. He was holding on grimly, but it was with the grip almost of despair. At the head of the ravino up which the road winds from Gorze down in the rolley on to Flavigny up there on the plateau, I lay among the brushwood watching the lurid scene. Sudlenly behind me on the steep asjent of the road I heard the clatter af many troops. A cavalcade was ipproaching at a hand gallop. Out to the front, alone, rode a squareshouldered chief in a red tunic, sitting bis big bay with a firm, easy seat. Bis strong-lined face was intent, yet 3alm ; he spoke over his shoulder to the man riding on his flank. It was Prince Frederick Charles, at the head jf his staff, who had ridden up from Pont-a-Mousson, following his own maxim of moving direct upon the mtmon thunder. Out on to the bare plateau he rode, among the whistling bullets and bursting shells, and, as if by instinct, galloped straight for the knoll behind Flavignj', where Alvenileben stood in the fire surrounded by what remained of his staff* It was strange, but, as if by the advent of ;his one man, the face of the battle Magically changed. Broken troops :ell into order and began to push forward. The batteries massed and conjentrated their fire on points where it told. Reinforcements he had ordered is he had ridden forward came hurrying on to the plateau, and joined in the fight, cheering as they deployed md opened fire. De Boeuf had been pressing down from the northward, md threatened Ansleben's flank ; but now KraatzKoschlan's battalions were available to confront him, and when they had been too severely punished to maintain their position, a heavy, headlong cavalry charge crumpled up the head of Le Bceuf's attack. The sun went down on a Geld retrieved for the Germans by the cool, skilful generalship of Princo Frederick Charles. In the twilight he swept his front clear by the charge of a cavalry division in line, and then the wearied soldiers were able to take up their bivouacs. I saw the Prince that night ride into Gorze, where his quarters were for the night. The little place was a pandemonium. Only in the centre of the, narrow street was there a clear thoroughfare. Along the house fronts were ranged a double row of wounded men, lying there on the rugged pavement. Tho blaze of torches, as the surgeons and the krankertrager moved about, shed a lurid light on a Bcene of singular yet awful picturesqueness. As the Prince rode along the poor wounded fellows recognised their chief, and a feeble cheer ran along the lines of the maimed. The stern soldier was moved. To right and to left he threw his words of kindly commiseration and encouragement. He told his " kinder " that the day had been won by the Prussian arms, and bade them be of good cheer, for they had done their duty as good soldiers of the Fatherland. Two days later, on the 18th of August, was fought the battle of Gravelotte, a less bloody but more momentous combat than Mars la Tour. On that morning Prince Frederick Charles was stirring early in his quarter at Buxieres, to keep the five o'clock rendezvous he had given to his corps' commanders that they might receive his instructions as to the 'setting of the battle in order. What a subject for a painter, that morning gathering of the German leaders under the poplar trees on the chaussee between Vionville and Mars la Tour, with the Red Prince in the centre, brusque, curt, and emphatic ! Around the group, conning over a new slaughter, lay the ghastly evidences of a past in the groups of dead that yet awaited burial. Keen eyed, handsomefaced Prince of t-axony ; stolid-looking August of Wurtemberg ; Alvehsleben, the aristocrat, witih thin, clear cut features and bright hawk eye ; Voights-Rhetz, with the shrewd, keen look of a Lowland hcot; Manstein, grim, grey, and determined ; these stood in a roughly denned semi-circle, with their horses' heads turned inward, and there addressed them, in a few short, crisp sentences, the square, upwrigbt man on the powerful bay, The Red Prince let his hand fall or his thigh with an audible blow, foi he was heavy handed in every sens< — this stalwart man, with the mas sive hair-clad jaw, the strong, wid< mouth, cruel in its set resolutenes when the features were at rest, tl*

well opened, piercing eye under the arching forehead, broad, square and knotted. A man, this in the tight red tunic, cast surely by Nature in her special mould for a great military leader You mightthinkwith yourself as you looked at him that you could scarcely fancy him as a friend ; if you looked again you would surely not fancy him as an enemy. One of them afterwards gave me his laconic parting words, " Your duty is to march forward, find the enemy, prevent his escape, and light him whenever you find him" ; and, Alvenslebeu added in a quiet tone, ''In the name of God," as the genejals wheeled their horses' heads outwards, and the little council scattered. Almost from the beginning of the battle Prince Frederick Charles was under fire, with his fiuger on its pulse. On this eventful day no man in the Prussian Army underwent greater (and that justifiable) risk than the leader on whom the chief responsibility rested. Mars la Tour and Gravelotte were both essentially Prince Frederick Charles' battles. j