While this renewed concentration in the Russian centre was going on, a curious incident happened, which puzzled us not a little at first. This was the sudden emerging from the wood of what appeared in the distance to be several squadrons of cavalry, which headed straight for our lines, and came careering down right on the rye-field where the Jäger Battalion before-mentioned, from its concealed position, was playing such sore havoc among the Russian gunners with their long range and invisible fire, and we doubted not that their whereabouts had at last been discovered. Accordingly, while our guns loaded with shrapnel, word was passed to the Stendal Hussars, who, acting as cavalry of the 7th Division, were standing ensconced in a hollow on the rear flank of our batteries, to prepare for hurling themselves upon these presumptuous horsemen. But this counter attack proved to be unnecessary; for presently we could discern that the Russian steeds were riderless, and, on coming nearer, they turned out to be only a huge herd of very fine deer, which had been scared out of their leafy haunts in the forest of Skierniwiçe by the infernal pother going on there. It may be remembered that, in his narrative of the battle of Königgrätz, the late Count Moltke referred to a similar incident.
Meanwhile, our real object, which was the delivery of our main attack on the right flank of the Russians, was being successfully attained. It can scarcely be expected that I, or any other single eye-witness, should be able to detail the incidents and development of a battle which extended along a line of more than six miles, as the reasons which preclude a General from exercising anything like unity of command over so vast an area form an equal restraint upon the War Correspondent’s power of all-embracing observation. Even of conflicts like Königgrätz and Sedan, a pretty complete description of a general kind could always be given by one pen by reason of the smoke which betrayed the whereabouts of friend and foe and the fluctuations of the fight; but now that science has robbed war of one of its most picturesque appendages, a modern battle by day is a most bewildering spectacle. You hear the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry, but this incessant thunder is accompanied by no lightning-flash. You see men flinging up their arms and falling around you, but know not whence they received their death-wounds any more than if they had been stricken down by the invisible arrows of the Sun-God Apollo.