OCCUPATION OF ALEXANDEOVO BY THE GEEMANS.
ALEXANDROVO, May 3.
IT is not yet twenty-four hours since the victorious 6th Division
of the German Army occupied this place, and already it is bristling
on the Warsaw, or south-eastern side, with a most formidable line
of earthworks, thanks chiefly to the marvellous exertions of the
Engineer Battalion of the 3d Corps, which was quick to arrive
here by rail yesterday, within an hour of our triumph the first of
the campaign. But, indeed, the spades of all our infantry have
also been incessantly at work since they piled their rifles here, it
being thought certain that the Eussians will endeavour to get a
double amount of work out of their cranky, creaking mobilisation
machine, and hasten to deliver a desperate counter-attack, with
the view of repairing the disastrous error they have committed
an error that has placed us in possession of a railway base of
operations of incalculable price. Among other spoils we captured
123 railway waggons of various kinds, and nine locomotives, which,
added to the rolling stock that is hourly pouring in from the
direction of Thorn, with the remainder of the German Army of the
Vistula, now rapidly massing here, render us certain of the means
of transport in the event of our deciding to carry the torch of
invasion deeper into the heart of Kussia.
It is true that the railway from here to Warsaw consists of
only a single track, but the gauge, unlike that of all Russian lines
on the right bank of the Vistula, is of the ordinary European size,
and that in itself is a tremendous advantage for us. Our Army of
the Baltic, under Count Waldersee, will be hampered in its forward
movements into Eussia, if it decides to push across the frontier
also, by the fact that the line from Eydtkuhnen is a broad-gauge
one, though, indeed, it is understood that the General Staff-
prescient in all things has also made provision for adapting the
axles of German lines to the broader gauge of Eussian ; but, on the
other hand, the Army of Silesia, under Prince George of Saxony,
will enjoy the same transport facilities as ourselves, if it can only
manage to effect, like us, a pied a terre on the Warsaw and Vienna
line, and we are anxiously awaiting news of its movements.
PRINCE ALEXANDER OF BATTENBERG A PRISONER.
(By Telegraph from our Special Correspondent, Mr. Charles Lowe.)
ALEXANDROVO, May 4.
THERE is great jubilation among the troops here, for, following
hard on the telegram announcing the Emperor's departure from
Berlin to the Rhine amid an unparalleled scene of excitement and
enthusiasm, came a despatch reporting that Prince George of
Saxony, by dint of forced marches of immense difficulty through
the devious moors and marsh-grounds east of Rosenberg and
Tarnowitz on the Kreuzburg-Tarnowitz line, had also succeeded in
surprising the Russians at Czenstochau, on the Warsaw- Vienna
Railway, and, capturing that important place, after a desperate but
unavailing resistance on the part of its defenders, who, incredible
to relate, consisted of not much more than its usual garrison a
brigade of infantry and two brigades of cavalry. But the German
losses here were much more serious than with us yesterday, one
infantry regiment in particular the 22d Silesian being more
than decimated in its desperate, yet successful, endeavours to drive
the enemy from a clump of wood, surmounted by a battery a
proof that it still continues to be animated by the heroic spirit of
its name-chief, Field-Marshal James Keith, whilom of Inverugie
and Dunnottar, in the Kingdom of Scotland, who, at its head, met
his own death, under the eye of Frederick the Great, when saving
the surprised right flank of the Prussian Army from utter annihila-
tion by the Austrians at Hochkirch in the Lausitz.
These two engagements, then, though on a smaller scale, have
been the Worth and Spichern of the present war ; and it now only
remains to be seen whether we shall be able to improve upon
these initial successes which were due to a great extent, I repeat,
to the exceeding swiftness and daring of our own movements, as
compared with the incredible slowness of our foes, and the faulti-
ness of their mobilisation process, no less than to the fact that
the Russians, imagining the Germans would never dare invade
Poland, but remain upon their guard and form a flanking reserve
support in Silesia to their Austrian allies, directed the main stream
of their mobilisation further to the east, towards Dragomiroff's
line of hostile advance upon Lemberg and the Carpathian Passes
to the south thereof at Stryj.
How Gourko, who is known to be still at Warsaw, though the
bulk of his forces must now be well in front of him, will endeavour
to cope with the situation thus so suddenly created for him, is
naturally the question which occupies all minds here, and it
cannot be very long before his intentions are made manifest.
Meanwhile the telegrams from Galicia, where our Austrian
allies have concentrated the bulk of their forces, are not quite so
encouraging, indicating, as they do, less initiative and promptitude
of action on their part, as well as considerable difference of
opinion in the minds of the Corps and Army Commanders as to
whether they ought to remain on the defensive, or espouse an
audacious policy of invasion like ourselves, and essay to beard the
lion, or rather the bear, in his den.
Count von Schlieffen, who proves to be as amiable a man as
he is an able Chief of the Staff, tells me that news reached the
German Headquarters this afternoon of a tremendous conflict
between no fewer than five Cavalry Divisions, three on the
Russian side and two on the Austrian, somewhere near Brod, on
the Volhynian frontier a conflict which resulted, as it could
scarcely otherwise have done from the relative proportion of
numbers, in the total defeat of the Austro-Hungarian horsemen.
The latter, it seems, were covering the movements of the 3d
Austrian Corps, which had been appointed to head an advance in
the direction of Dubno ; and when they had been overthrown in
a metie which, in its colossal magnitude, recalled the mounted
conflicts of the Crusaders, the victorious Russians, rallying and
reforming line, swept down upon a detached portion of the
Austrian infantry, regardless of the smokeless volleys from the
Maimlicher repeating rifle, and made awful havoc among; the
sturdy men from the Steiermark, taking one whole battalion
prisoners, including, it is rumoured/the colonel of the regiment,
the 27th, who is none other than Count Hartenati, better .known
as Prince Alexander or Battenberg, ex-Prince of Bulgaria a
wonderful piece of luck, indeed, for the "Russians, if the rumour
proves true.
LATER.
Later despatches confirm the rumour of Prince Alexander's
capture by the Russians, and add that, when the news became
known at DragomirofFs headquarters which are said to be at
Dubno there was almost as much jubilation as when the in-
telligence of Napoleon's surrender flew like wildfire around the
German lines at Sedan.
The ex-Bulgarian Prince is to be sent to St. Petersburg, where
rooms are being already prepared for him at the Katherinenhof ,
and meanwhile he has been allowed to retain his sword in order
that his unforgiving and exultant cousin, the Czar, may have the
satisfaction of receiving it from the humiliated captive's own
hands a picture that will eclipse in interest all the romantic in-
cidents which have already marked the Prince's strangely chequered
career.
FIGHTING BY THE ELECTRIC LIGHT ROUT OF GENERAL GOURKO
RETREAT UPON WARSAW.
(By Telegraph from our Special Correspondent, Mr. Charles Lowe.)
ALEXANDROVO, May 7, 5 A.M.
THE German Army of the Vistula has just inflicted on the
Eussians another Plevna, and they are now in full retreat towards
Warsaw. Such, in brief, is the result of the sanguinary night
battle of which I have just been a witness. The Russians were
the first to practise night attacks as a means of obviating the
dreadful losses certain to result from magazine-rifle fire during the
day, but they will long have cause to remember their first serious
application of the nocturnal principle of modern warfare.
By seven o'clock last night the 3d and 4th German Corps
had completed their concentration at and near this place, and,
after extending the lines of entrenchment begun by the 6th
Division on capturing Alexandrovo, had gone into fireless bivouac
on both sides of the railway line, their tents extending for about a
couple of miles in either direction. Several reconnaissances
executed by us during the day had elicited that the Russians
were marshalling in great force at a place called Waganiek, and
were receiving reinforcements from the right bank of the Vistula,
by means of a pontoon bridge which had been thrown across the
stream a little higher up, at Dobrowniki; but, owing to the dense
masses of cavalry which hovered on their front, concealing their
movements as a stage curtain hides from view the shifting of the
scenes in a theatre, it was impossible for our scouts to bring back
more definite information. One item, however, of their intelli-
gence, gathered from a captured Cossack, had a special interest for
us, to wit, that the Russian forces immediately in front of us con-
sisted mainly of the 5th and 6th Corps, with part of the 4th
(including the relics of Grodnovodsky's Brigade), and were under
the personal command of General Gourko, the hero of the Balkans.
On the strength of this information it was decided to attack
Gourko before he got his preparations complete, and for this pur-
pose to break bivouac, and start in quest of him at the dawn of
day, as Prince Frederick Charles had done with Benedek at
Sadowa.
I had spent the evening with a particular friend of mine,
Captain von Jagdkonig, of Stulpnagel's Brandenburg Infantry
Regiment, and was just on the point of setting out with him on a
visit of inspection among the foreposts, when a Uhlan dashed up
with the intelligence that there were signs of a mysterious com-
jnotion.in front, and that something was audible in the otherwise
noiseless night like the distant rumbling of waggon and cannon
wheels. Anon other messengers from the front came spurring in
with similar news, and as the general purport of all these ' Mel-
dungcn ' could no longer be doubted, the bugles were at once set to
work, and presently all the silent bivouacs, taking up the shrilling
war-note one after the other, like the multiplication of a distant
echo, were resonant with the thrilling call to arms ; and thanks to
the severe training in the discipline of ' alarms ' which the German
army has been put through by the present Emperor since his
accession to the throne, the army of the Vistula had all started
from its sleep and was standing in perfect battle array, with its
face to the suspected foe, within ten minutes of the first trumpet
summons.
The night was intensely dark, the moon having just gone
down behind an impenetrable bank of pitchy clouds, and all
fighting seemed to be utterly out of the question. Presently,
however, the inky darkness all around us was pierced, one may
almost say scattered, by a sudden blaze of light, which, appearing
to possess all the illuminating power of the mid-day sun, flashed
lightning-like upon us its blinding beams from the murky fore-
head of the midnight sky. * The electric light ! ' ran from mouth
to mouth, after a moment's bewildered pause, while every one
instinctively shaded his eyes from the glare of this all-irradiating
and all-penetrating lamp which modern Science had thus hung up
to facilitate the work of slaughter, as if the very sun refused to
look any longer upon human carnage. For some moments the
more than mile-long rays of this blinding ball of light, this
detective bull's-eye of modern science, swept round the horizon in
front of it, as if uncertain where to fix its focus now shooting
beyond, now falling short of us. and anon settling on us and
suffusing us with a sea of dazzling light. Presently another, and
yet another such luminary burst forth from elevations of pretty
equal distances in front of us, and the process of their groping
about for our lines revealed to us dense masses of grey and dark-
green coated battalions picking their cautious way down the
distant slopes in front of us. For the electric light has this dis-
advantage, that in flinging its beams about to discover the locality
of foes, it frequently at the same time unveils the whereabouts of
friends. This was the case here, but our gunners were on the
alert, and next time the focus of the light, in its jerky search-
movement, fell on the Russian troops in the course of their
stealthy advance towards us, we opened the concert with a scream-
ing chorus of shells, accompanied by a rattling orchestration of
small-arms. Nor had we long to wait for the antiphone; for next
time the search-light managed to flood us with its blinding
effulgence, the Eussian batteries, which had been planted on the
same elevations, gave lusty voice, and bellowed away at us in
most leonine fashion, though their projectiles, being aimed at
much too long a range, flew high over our heads and left us scathe-
less. Not so, however, the rifle-rain of our enemies, which, first
in intermittent showers, and then in a steady downpour, began to
fall among our ranks with deadly effect ; and the word was passed
from flank to flank for all the infantry to lie down and court the
shelter of our field intrenchments, which crested the ridge of our
line of battle.
Between us and the Eussian infantry there intervened a de-
pression in the ground, a little deeper than that which separates
Mont St. Jean from Belle Alliance ; but what enhanced the value
of this ground to our foes was the fact that their batteries in the
rear, planted as they were on the electric light elevations over-
looking the terrain, could fire over the heads of their infantry till
the latter was pretty well within storming distance of our posi-
tion, much in the same way as the guns of the 6th Division had
been able to do the other day on the occasion of our first engage-
ment, which resulted in the capture of Alexandrovo.