Von Rummelsburg, who was sent forward with his Hussars to feel the ground in front of our infantry, had just gained the brow of the acclivity in question when he perceived the Cossacks making for the same vantage-ground from the opposite side, and at once charged down upon them in the gallantest style, emptying a few Russian saddles even before the shock, for his regiment was one of those that had been experimentally armed with the new combination lance-rifle—the invention of an ingenious locksmith at Potsdam—of which the Emperor became enamoured last year, and several of the brave Cossacks had thus succumbed to the impact of lead before they could come within stabbing distance of the equally fatal German spear—a notable feature this in _fin de siècle_ warfare, and one that is likely to impress itself still more vividly in the course of the present campaign.
The Cossacks being thus flung back on their infantry, whose movements were of an unaccountably slow and confused kind, our guns dashed up to the top of the bluff, which had formed the bone of contention between us and the Muscovites, and, unlimbering like lightning, began to blaze away at the retreating horsemen with shrapnel which seemed to do further execution amongst them. Then, laying their pieces at long range and loading with percussion-fuse shells, Donnerkeil’s gunners hastened to rain a terrific torrent of destructive projectiles on the railway station of Alexandrovo, behind which Grodnovodsky’s infantry had retired for temporary shelter. His guns planted on a rising bit of orchard ground on his left, were energetically enough worked against our batteries, but did us little or no harm, as the Prussian artillerists, always very careful in their selection of a firing position even in the tumult of action, showed little more than the mere muzzles of their guns over the crest of the land-wave, in the rear dip of which the infantry of the 6th Division were lying prone and scatheless in eager readiness to rush on as soon as the cannon of the Russians should be reduced to silence.
Nor had they long to wait for this result, for the furious artillery duel had barely lasted an hour when Grodnovodsky’s guns were seen to limber up—such of them as had escaped dismounting—and lumber off; and then our impatient battalions, throwing out their first fighting line, fanlike, in skirmishing order, with supports behind and reserves following, all in as machine-like and magnificent order as at a field-day on the Tempelhof Common, began to push forward, the guns firing over their heads all the while as they swarmed down the Russian-ward slope of our eminence and across the rye and potato fields, still rather wet and cloggy from last night’s rain, in front of Alexandrovo. The Russian infantry attempted to debouch from their shell-shattered position behind the railway station and other adjacent buildings, and deploy in line of purpose to stem our steadily advancing tide; but our guns, which were still able to pound away over the heads of our own battalions, played dreadful havoc with their shrapnel charges among Grodnovodsky’s out-manœuvred troops, who were also mown down in great numbers by the fearful fire of our magazine-rifles, of which the murderous volleys appeared to inspire our opponents with a feeling of panic as unfamiliar to them as the effects of smokeless powder; and, for the first time probably in all the military history of Russia, the soldiers of the Czar positively turned tail and fled before superior numbers and unaccustomed terrors.