United States or Panama ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We shall leave a covering force here at Gumbinnen or perhaps all our troops here will stay, but on the defensive, while others are rushed up from Grodno to outflank them, not on their right, as they hoped, but on their extreme left!" He was silent for a moment. "I need one man here," he said. "One man, to keep the engine running for the dynamo. Everyone else must leave this house.
If he recognized a veteran by the grizzled hair straggling out of the rags in which all faces were enveloped, or perceived some remnant of a Garde uniform, he searched more carefully. "There may be salt," he said. And sometimes he found a little. They had been on foot since Gumbinnen, because no horse would be allowed by starving men to live a day.
When Murat reached Gumbinnen, he was exceedingly surprised to find Ney already there, and to find, that since it had left Kowno, the army was marching without a rear-guard. Fortunately, the pursuit of the Russians, after they had reconquered their own territory, became slackened. They seemed to hesitate on the Prussian frontier, not knowing whether they should enter it as allies or as enemies.
From Königsberg to Gumbinnen, he reviewed several of his armies; conversing with the soldiers in a gay, frank, and often abrupt style; well aware that, with such unsophisticated and hardy characters, abruptness is looked upon as frankness, rudeness as force, haughtiness as true nobility; and that the delicacy and graces which some officers bring with them from the salons are in their eyes no better than weakness and pusillanimity; that these appear to them like a foreign language, which they do not understand, and the accents of which strike them as ridiculous.
By Gumbinnen, by Trakehnen, the Stud of Trakehnen: that also his Majesty saw, and made review of; not without emotion, we can fancy, as the sleek colts were trotted out on those new terms! At Trakehnen, Katte and the Colonel would be his Majesty's guests, for the night they stayed. This is their extreme point eastward; Konigsberg now lies a good way west of them.
We were now in Prussia, an allied country... Marshal Ney, worn out and ill, regarding the campaign as finished left us and went to Gumbinnen, where there was a gathering of all the marshals. From that moment the army had no overall commander and each regiment made its own way into Prussia.
My uncle sent me to Insterberg and then I found I could not go back by train. Soldiers have made me turn around so many times that it has taken me all this time to get here. Why can I not go to Gumbinnen?" The officer took the paper and, when he had read it, told the soldier. They seemed to find Fred's explanation plausible, and his writing had passed muster.
On the east Gumbinnen was captured after a battle on the 20th, and the important junction of Insterburg occupied by Rennenkampf, while on the south Samsonov on the 21st turned the German right, threatened Allenstein and drove the fugitives, as Rennenkampf had done, into the lines of Königsberg. East Prussia lay at Russia's feet, and something like a panic alarmed Berlin.
He moved to a table, and with pens and pencils made a rough diagram of the position. "They gave up Gumbinnen without a fight, and formed in a half circle behind. They had so few men there that it was an invitation to us to try to outflank them. Our right could sweep out and draw in behind their left so.
"Here is a fine mess!" said the lieutenant. "Poor boy! I feel sorry for one with such an affliction! And is he not between the devil and the deep blue sea? In Gumbinnen there will be Russian cavalry by to-morrow and at Insterberg, I suppose, the first real battle will be fought!" Fred caught his breath. He was getting what he wanted now, certainly! If only he did not betray himself!
Word Of The Day