A glance at the map will show that the junction-point for Gourko and the Grand Duke Vladimir could only have been Skierniwiçe, where the railways from Alexandrovo and Czenstochau converge; and it appears that, though the Grand Duke’s line of retreat to the common rendezvous was considerably the longer of the two, nevertheless the bulk of his forces had reached it first, by reason of the fact that he enjoyed a double line of rails, whereas Gourko had to move as best he could along a single track.
The German Army of the Vistula, with which I had thrown in my lot as a witness of the war, was not slow to gather itself together after the battle of Alexandrovo, and start in pursuit of Gourko’s shattered forces, but much precious time was lost by us in repairing bridges which our retreating foes had blown up; and though at last, by dint of great exertions on our part, the railway proved not altogether unavailable to us for transport purposes, still the earlier stages of our advance on Warsaw simply assumed the form of an ordinary march along, and parallel with, the line, the engineers pontooning or planking any bridgeless stream or ravine which obstructed our progress.
At Vlokavek, which our advanced guard reached on the fifth day after the battle of Alexandrovo, though the distance is only about thirty miles, we were considerably hampered, and even hurt, by the flanking fire of a Russian battery, which had established itself in a safe position on the right bank of the Vistula—a battery, strange to say, which was unsupported by any body of infantry of which we could discover trace; and the King of Saxony, who, in spite of his sixty-four summers, is still almost as vigorous and alert as when he commanded on the Meuse, determined to imitate, though, of course, on a very much smaller scale, the celebrated passage of the Douro by Wellington (of which, by the way, this was, curiously enough, the anniversary, the 12th May). Accordingly, the 3d battalion of the ‘Old Dessauers’ Magdeburg regiment, under Major von Wusterhausen, was stealthily ferried over the Vistula, which is here both broad and deep, at the dead of night; and, performing a silent and circuitous march to the rear of the Russian battery, it opened a heavy fire on the bewildered Muscovites, just as the latter, profiting by the breaking dawn, were about to begin their usual day’s work of pounding away at our advancing columns; and, charging with a cheer up to the emplacements, before the pieces could be reversed, the ‘Old Dessauers’ killed or captured every one of the gunners. For this smart and effective feat of arms Major von Wusterhausen will doubtless receive the Iron Cross of the first class and the rank of colonel.