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Thus technically, Gravelotte was a "Schlacht," i.e., "battle," but Spicheren, Woerth, Borny, even Vionville were only "Treffen." WHAT is a battle?
While criticising it, we have to think of the feelings of a half-defeated army about to bivouac being attacked by unknown forces in the dark. In this case, at Vionville, the enemy did not wait for a second, but withdrew, and abandoned the whole field of battle. Prince Kraft quotes the attack of Blücher at Gross-Gorchen and a cavalry attack at Loon.
Whenever he was inclined to think over a life that might have been better, an income that might have been larger, and a soul that might have been considerably cleaner, the Nilghai would comfort himself with the thought, 'I rode with Bredow's brigade at Vionville, and take heart for any lesser battle the next day might bring. 'I know, he said very gravely.
The Commander-in-Chief decided that the First Army should not engage in serious assault until the Second stood close to the enemy; but when the day was half-spent and brisk firing was heard about noon from Vionville, it was to be supposed that the time for action had arrived; still, for the present permission was only given to send forward the artillery in preparation for the fight.
As the afternoon sun waned, the whole weight of the German 10th corps was thrown into the fight about Vionville, and the vanguards of the 8th and 9th came up from Gorze to threaten the French left.
At 2 o'clock, when the advance of Canrobert's 6th corps towards Vionville threatened to sweep away the wearied Brandenburgers, six squadrons of the 7th regiment of Cuirassiers with a few Uhlans flung themselves on the new lines of foemen, not to overpower them that was impossible but to delay their advance and weaken their impact.
This was the invasion of France. Before it Frossard recoiled, leaving the Spicheren a smoking hell; before it Douay fell above the flames of Wissembourg; and yet Gravelotte had not been, and Vionville was a peaceful name, and Mars-la-Tour lay in the sunshine, mellow with harvests, gay with the scarlet of the Garde Impériale.
Now there was one blank page in the book given over to the sketch that Dick had not drawn of the crowning exploit in the Nilghai's life; when that man, being young and forgetting that his body and bones belonged to the paper that employed him, had ridden over sunburned slippery grass in the rear of Bredow's brigade on the day that the troopers flung themselves at Caurobert's artillery, and for aught they knew twenty battalions in front, to save the battered 24th German Infantry, to give time to decide the fate of Vionville, and to learn ere their remnant came back to Flavigay that cavalry can attack and crumple and break unshaken infantry.
The battle of Courcelles or Pange, on August 14, was followed two days later by that of Vionville or Mars-la-Tour, and, after yet another two days, came the great struggle of Gravelotte, and Bazaine was thrown back on Metz. At the Chalons conference it had been decided that the Emperor should return to Paris and that MacMahon's army also should retreat towards the capital.
The result was the battle of August 16, variously known as Vionville, Rezonville, or Mars-la-Tour a battle that defies brief description, inasmuch as it represented the effort of the Third, or Brandenburg, corps, with little help at first from others, to hold its ground against the onsets of two French corps.
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