Begun in the early morning by a series of skirmishes on the river front, the action had developed into a battle at mid-day. The resolute Von Kirchbach, acting on his own responsibility, had thrown the entire 5th Corps into the fight; yet so strong was the position occupied by the defenders, that a successful issue depended upon the rapidity and energy with which the assaults on both flanks were conducted by brigades and divisions only then entering one after the other upon a fiercely contested field. At mid-day, the French line of battle had been nowhere broken or imperilled. Hartmann’s Bavarians on one side had been checked; the advance brigade of the 11th Corps, on the other, had been driven back over the Sauer, and Lartigue’s troops were actually pressing upon the bridges near the mill in the marsh, which, however, they could not pass. The enormous line of German guns restrained and punished the French infantry, when not engaged in silencing the inferior artillery of the defender. But no impression had been made upon the wooded heights filled with the soldiers of Ducrot, upon Raoult’s men in the centre above Woerth, or on Lartigue’s troops, who, backed by Conseil-Dumesnil, stood fast about Morsbronn, Eberbach, and Elsasshausen. So it was at noon, when the hardihood of Von Kirchbach forced on a decisive issue. Passing his men through, and on both sides of Woerth, he began a series of sustained attacks upon Raoult, who stiffly contested every foot of woodland, and even repelled the assailants, who, nevertheless, fighting with perseverance, and undismayed by the slaughter, gradually gained a little ground on both sides of the road to Froeschwiller. By comparatively slow degrees, they crept up the slopes, and established a front of battle; but the regiments, battalions, companies, were all mixed together, and, as the officers fell fast, the men had often to depend upon themselves. While these alternately advancing, receding, and yet again advancing troops were grappling with the centre, Hartmann renewed his onsets, part of Von der Tann’s Corps dashed over the Sauer, filling up the gap in the line, and joining his right to Hartmann’s left; and the leading brigades of a fresh division of the 11th Corps, moving steadily and swiftly over the river below Gunstett, backed by all the cannon which the nature of the ground permitted the gunners to use, assailed the French right with measured and sustained fury, and, indeed, decided the battle. _Attack on the French right._