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"It must be admitted that the Guard Corps has retained that reputation for courage and contempt of death which it earned in 1870, when Emperor William I, after the battle of Gravelotte, wrote: 'My Guard has formed its grave in front of St.

"That a vast army which had given ample proof of military worth in the two great battles of Gravelotte, and which moreover possessed the support of the most important stronghold in France, should have permitted a scarcely superior enemy to hem it in and to detain it for weeks, making no earnest attempt to escape, and finally, at the conqueror's bidding, should have laid down its arms without striking a blow, would before the event," says an English military authority, "have seemed impossible.

As I have previously stated, the first of these blunders was the acceptance of battle by MacMahon at Worth; the second in attaching too much importance to the fortified position of Metz, resulting in three battles Colombey, Mars-la-Tour, and Gravelotte all of which were lost; and the third, the absurd movement of MacMahon along the Belgian frontier to relieve Metz, the responsibility for which, I am glad to say, does not belong to him.

It gave them at first a rhetorical advantage over the Catholic and other older schools. They could boast that their Creator was still creating; that he was in Man and Nature, and was not hedged round in a Paradise or imprisoned in a pyx. They could say their God had not grown too old for war: that He was present at Gettysburg and Gravelotte as much as at Gibeon and Gilboa.

The days rushed on. David read the English papers in town, then walked up late to Barbier's lodgings to read a French batch and talk. Gravelotte was over, the siege was approaching.

It was by this road that the Pomeranians, numbering about 30,000 men, had been ordered to march to Gravelotte, and after proceeding a short distance we overtook the column.

There, too, was Von Zastrow, destined to make his error at Gravelotte, there was Steinmetz, and the handsome Saxon prince, and great, flabby August of Würtemberg, talking with Alvensleben, dainty, pious, aristocratic. Behind, in the shadow, stood Manstein and Goben, a grim, gray pair, with menacing eyes.

With this the battle on the right had now assumed a most serious aspect, and the indications were that the French would attack the heights of Gravelotte; but the Pomeranian corps coming on the field at this crisis, was led into action by Von Moltke, himself, and shortly after the day was decided in favor of the Germans.

Breakfast over, the Chancellor invited me to accompany him in a ride to the battle-field, and I gladly accepted, as I very much desired to pass over the ground in front of Gravelotte, particularly so to see whether the Krupp guns had really done the execution that was claimed for them by the German artillery officers.

By the middle of the afternoon the steady progress of the German left and centre had driven the French from their more advanced positions from behind stone walls and hedges, through valleys and hamlets, in the direction of Metz, but as yet the German right had accomplished little except to get possession of the village of Gravelotte, forcing the French across the deep ravine I have mentioned, which runs north and south a little distance east of ihe town.