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Thus, with the assistance of Aulic Councillor Meyer, the history of the plastic arts and of painting is now being written on the margin of Bredow's Tabellen, and thus in a very large number of cases your linguistic map will help to refresh my memory and serve as a guide in much of my reading.
It had become necessary to demand a sacrifice from the cavalry for the good of the army, to enable Prince Frederick Charles, with only 24,000 infantry, to hold in check Bazaine's army of 180,000 until his own main body came up. Bredow's cavalry brigade consisted of six squadrons of the 7th Cuirassiers and the 16th Uhlans.
Still stronger against my argument was Bredow's memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons he charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering nine batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the French army, and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his strength.
Prince Kraft in his letters on cavalry says: "The battle of Mars-la-Tour, won by the bold employment of cavalry, made possible the blockade of Metz, and afterward the surrender of the whole of Bazaine's army. So it may be said, without exaggeration, that the charge of Bredow's six squadrons on that day was the turning point of the Franco-German campaign."
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.
During the following night, May 25, 1915, an Austrian division was moving from the line of advance of General Bredow's troops along the Lagow-Opatow road where it is separated by a spur of the Lysa Gora, the highest mountain group in Russian Poland.
But never more will French infantry shoot from the hip as Lafont's conscripts at Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of Bredow's squadrons. French cavalry never got within yards of German infantry even in loose order; and the magazine or repeating rifle held reasonably straight will stop the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard the "charge" sound.
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 Todtenritt, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful exploit, a second Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was this distinction that it had a purpose and that that purpose was achieved. For Bredow's charge in effect wrecked France.
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