Instead of confused details, and wearisome enumeration of particulars, which nobody would listen to or understand, we will give one intelligent young gentleman's experience, our friend Tempelhof's, who stood in this part of the Prussian Line;experience distinct and indubitable to us; and which was pretty accurately symbolical, I otherwise see, of what befell on all points thereabouts. Faithfully copied, and in the essential parts not even abridged, here it is:--Tempelhof, at that time a subaltern of artillery, was stationed with a couple of 24-pounders in attendance on the Battalion Plothow, which with three others and some cavalry lay to the south side of Hochkirch, forming a kind of fore-arm or POTENCE there to right of the big Battery, with their rear to Hochkirch; and keeping vedettes and Free-corps parties spread out into the woods and Devil's Hills ahead. Tempelhof had risen about three, as usual;had his guns and gunners ready; and was standing by the watch-fire, "expecting the customary Pandourade," and what form it would take this morning. "Close on five o'clock; and not a mouse stirring!
We are not to have our Pandourade, then?" On a sudden, noise bursts out; noise enough, sharp fire among the Free-corps people;fire growing ever sharper, noisier, for the next half-hour, but nothing whatever to be seen. "Battalion Plothow had soon got its clothes on, all to the spatterdashes; and took rank to right and left of the FLECHE, and of my two guns, in front of its post:
but on account of the thick fog everything was totally dark.
I fired off my cannons [shall we say straight southward?] to learn whether there was anything in front of us. No answer: 'Nothing there--Pshaw, a mere crackery (GEKNACKER) of Pandours and our Free-corps people, after all!' But the noise grew louder, and came ever nearer; I turned my guns towards it [southward, southeastward, or perhaps a gun each way?]--and here we had a salvo in response, from some battalions who seemed to be two hundred yards or so ahead.
The Battalion Plothow hereupon gave fire; I too plied my cannons what I could,--and had perhaps delivered fifteen double shots from them, when at once I tumbled to the ground, and lost all consciousness" for some minutes or moments.
Awakening with the blood running down his face, poor Tempelhof concluded it had been a musket-shot in the head; but on getting to his hands and knees, he found the place "full of Austrian grenadiers, who had crept in through our tents to rear; and that it had been a knock with the butt of the musket from one of those fellows, and not a bullet" that had struck him down.
Battalion Plothow, assailed on all sides, resisted on all sides;and Tempelhof saw from the ground,--I suppose, by the embers of watch-fires, and by rare flashes of musketry, for they did not fire much, having no room, but smashed and stabbed and cut,--"an infantry fight which in murderous intensity surpasses imagination.
I was taken prisoner at this turn; but soon after got delivered by our cavalry again." [Tempelhof, ii. 324 n.]
This latter circumstance, of being delivered by the Cavalry, I find to be of frequent occurrence in that first act of the business there: the Prussian Battalion, surprised on front and rear, always makes murderous fight for itself: is at last overwhelmed, obliged to retire, perhaps opening its way by bayonet charge;--upon which our Cavalry (Ziethen's, and others that gathered to him) cutting in upon the disordered surprisers, cut them into flight, rescue the prisoners, and for a time reinstate matters. The Prussian battalions do not run (nobody runs); but when repulsed by the endless odds, rally again. The big Battery is not to be had of them without fierce and dogged struggle; and is retaken more than once or twice. Still fiercer, more dogged, was the struggle in Hochkirch Village; especially in Hochkirch Church and Churchyard,--whither the Battalion Margraf-Karl had flung themselves; the poor Village soon taking fire about them. Soon taking fire, and continuing to be a scene of capture and recapture, by the flame-light;while Battalion Margraf-Karl stood with invincible stubbornness, pouring death from it; not to be compulsed by the raging tide of Austrian grenadiers; not by "six Austrian battalions," by "eight,"or by never so many. Stood at bay there; levelling whole masses of them,--till its cartridges were spent, all to one or two per man;and Major Lange, the heroic Captain of it, said, "We shall have to go, then, my men; let us cut ourselves through!"--and did so, in an honorably invincible manner; some brave remnant actually getting through, with Lange himself wounded to death.
I think it was not till towards six o'clock that the right wing generally became aware what the case was: "More than a Pandourade, yes;"--though what it might be, in the thick fog which had fallen, blotting out all vestiges of daylight, nobody could well say.
Rallied Battalions, reinforced by this or the other Battalion hurrying up from leftward, always charge in upon the enemy, in Hochkirch or wherever he is busy; generally push him back into the Night; but are then fallen upon on both flanks by endless new strength, and obliged to draw back in turn. And Ziethen's Horse, in the mean while, do execution; breaking in on the tumultuous victors; new Cuirassiers, Gens-d'Armes dashing up to help, so soon as saddled, and charging with a will: so that, on the whole, the enemy, variously attempting, could make nothing of us on that western, or rearward side,--thanks mainly to Ziethen and the Horse.
"Had we but waited till three or four of our Battalions had got up!" say the Prussian narrators. But it is thick mist; few yards ahead you cannot see at all, unless it be flame; and close at hand, all things and figures waver indistinct,--hairy outlines of blacker shadows on a ground of black.