struggle it went back foiled, to the accompaniments which had marked
its advance. But, heavy as were its losses, it was not “annihilated.”
Pickett’s division survived to be once and again a thorn in the Federal
side before the final day of fate came to it at Appomatox Court-House.
At Mars-la-Tour, Alvensleben’s two infantry divisions, numbering
certainly not over 18,000 men (for they had already lost heavily at
the Spicheren Berg), sacrificed within a few of 7000 during the long
summer hours while they stood all but unsupported athwart the course of
the French army retreating from Metz. But so far were they from being
annihilated, that forty-eight hours later they made their presence
acutely felt on the afternoon of Gravelotte. In the July attack on
Plevna, of the 28,000 men with whom Krüdener and Schahofskoy went
in, they took out under 21,000. One regiment of the latter’s command
lost 725 killed and 1200 wounded--about 75 per cent of its whole
number--yet the Russian retirement was not disorderly; and next day
the troops were in resolute cohesion awaiting what might befall them.
In the September attack on Plevna, of 74,000 Russo-Roumanian infantry
engaged, the losses reached 18,000. Skobeleff commanded 18,000 men, and
at the end of his two days’ desperate fighting, not 10,000 of these
were left standing. But there was no annihilation, either literally or
conventionally, if one may use the term. The survivors who had fought
on the 11th and 12th September were ready at the word to go in again on
the 13th; and how they marched across the Balkans later is one of the
marvels of modern military history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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