Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
Enid had pleaded a headache, but as soon as the car had driven away she roused herself, and, ascending to her room, put on strong country boots and a leather-hemmed golf skirt, and, taking a stick, set forth down the high road lined with poplars in the direction of Mars-la-Tour.
Or shall we refuse the name of heroic to those three German cavalry regiments who, in the battle of Mars-la-Tour, were bidden to hurl themselves upon the chassepots and mitrailleuses of the unbroken French infantry, and went to almost certain death, over the corpses of their comrades, on and in and through, reeling man over horse, horse over man, and clung like bull-dogs to their work, and would hardly leave, even at the bugle-call, till in one regiment thirteen officers out of nineteen were killed or wounded?
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.
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.
The Guards and XIIth Corps moved in a northerly direction. A serious delay occurred when the XIIth Corps of the Second Army, which was stationed on the right, was commanded to form the left wing, by the crossing of the two on the march. The Saxon troops did not get through Mars-la-Tour until nine o'clock, and till then the Guards could not follow.
THERE is in the far north-west of France a broad, white highway which runs from Châlons, crosses the green Meuse valley, mounts the steep, high, tree-fringed lands of the Côtes Lorraines, and goes almost straight as an arrow across what was, before the war, the German frontier at Mars-la-Tour into quaint old Metz, that town with ancient streets, musical chimes, and sad monument to Frenchmen who fell in the disastrous never-to-be-forgotten war of '70.
Mack with 84,000 Austrian soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the expected Russian army of co-operation and meantime covering the valley of the Danube. Napoleon crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as in 1870 the Germans on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between Bazaine and the rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to the Tyrol stood between him and Austria.
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."
Speaking of Mars-la-Tour, Prince Kraft says: "During the battle a German infantry brigade was forced to retire with heavy loss, and ran some danger of being annihilated by the pursuing enemy. But the First Dragoons of the Guards threw themselves on the pursuers.
Prince Kraft says: "The action of the masses of German cavalry at Mars-la-Tour excited wonder and admiration; they surprised the enemy's cavalry when in bivouac, they met and surrounded the hostile infantry in a threatening manner, and thus 8,000 cavalry occupied 65,000 infantry, until the Prussian infantry came up.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking