Battle of Oriskany

“ Five flags and much baggage fell into the hands of the party from the fort. On hearing the cannon behind them, the Tories and Indians feared lest they should be taken between two fires. They made off, taking some prisoners with them to undergo the horrors of Indian torture, but leaving many dead upon the field. What remained of the militia retreated to Fort Schuyler, where now the city of Utica stands. This sanguinary affair is called the Battle of Oriskany. It settled the fate of St. Leger's expedition, and contributed, with Bennington, to determine that of Burgoyne and of the Brunswickers. ”

“ Then, as soon as the shower was over, Colonel Willett made his sally from the fort, attacking Johnson's [102] camp, and the battle at Oriskany was renewed.
"It is said to have been the bloodiest of the war in proportion to the numbers engaged. It is stated that about one-third of the militia fell on the battle ground, and as many more were mortally wounded or carried into captivity. About fifty wounded were carried from the field on litters, General Herkimer among them. He was taken to his own home, where he died ten days afterward."
"But who gained the victory, papa?" asked Lulu. ”

“ No hope for the footman if savage or Tory.
The heart shuts on pity when vengeance is portress;
And husbands and fathers came forth from the fortress.
As the wails of our wives and our babes we remember,
The bright fire of mercy goes out—the last ember.
They meant but a visit, we forced them to tarry;
But few of the foemen went back from Schoharie.
[Pg 70]
THE BATTLE-GROUND OF ORISKANY.
ORISKANY.
The battle at Oriskany is one of the many instances during the Revolutionary contest where disaster resulted through the rashness and insubordination of inferior officers. ”

“ Oriskany.—While Burgoyne was advancing, St. Leger was invading the Mohawk Valley. On August 3 his army of British regulars, Hessians, Canadians, Tories, and Indians invested Ft. Stanwix. Colonel Herkimer gathered the Tryon County militia and went to the relief of the fort, but at Oriskany, which was only six miles from the fort, he was surprised. In the desperate battle the losses were higher in proportion to men engaged than in any other battle of the war. Herkimer was killed and so badly cut up were the militia that the expedition was unable to proceed. ”

“ Hot-breathed and horrible!
The roar, the smoke, like mist on stormy seas,
Sweep through thy splintered trees,—
Hard-fought Oriskany.
Heroes are born in such a chosen hour;
From common men they rise, and tower,
Like thee, brave Herkimer!
Who wounded, steedless, still beside the beech
Cheered on thy men, with sword and speech,
In grim Oriskany.
But ere the sun went toward the tardy night,
The valley then beheld the light
Of freedom's victory;
And wooded Tryon snatched from British arms
The empire of a million farms—
On bright Oriskany.
The guns of Stanwix thunder to the skies ”

“ That night we buried our dead; one hundred on the field where they had fallen, two hundred and fifty in the burial trenches at Oriskany--thirty-five wagon-loads in all. Scarcely an officer of rank remained to lead the funeral march when the muffled drums of the Palatines rolled at midnight, and the smoky torches moved, and the dead-wagons rumbled on through the suffocating darkness of a starless night. We had few wounded; we took no prisoners; Oriskany meant death. We counted only thirty men disabled and some score missing. ”

“ On that very day General Herkimer was coming to its aid with more than eight hundred men of the militia of Tryon County. He was near Oriskany, a little village eight miles eastward from the fort; from there he sent a messenger to tell Colonel Gansevoort that he was approaching, and asking to be informed of the man's arrival by the firing of three guns in quick succession, knowing that they could be heard at Oriskany. ”

“ But the voice which led these same men to victory at Moskowa has lost its potency and its magic. The men cry "Vive Ney!" but they do not stand. The stampede has become general. In the valley below the infantry has started to run up the slope of La Belle Alliance: after it the cavalry with reins hanging loose, stirrups lost, casques, sabretaches, muskets—anything that impedes—thrown into the fields to right and left. La Haye Sainte is evacuated, Hougoumont is abandoned; Papelotte, Plancenoit, the woods, the plains are only filled with running men and the thunder of galloping chargers. ”

“ Can you not picture my wretchedness and distress to know that my darling brother is slain, that my husband is at this moment facing the terrible rifle-fire of your infuriated soldiery, that many of my intimate friends are dead or wounded at this terrible Oriskany where they say your maddened soldiers flung aside their muskets and leaped upon our Greens and Rangers with knife and hatchet, and tore their very souls out with naked hands. ”

“ Through either breast rushed the spears; nor yet lay the foes on earth! A rock received their fall; half-reclined they lay in death. Each held the lock of his foe; each grimly seemed to roll his eyes. The stream of the rock leapt on their shields, and mixed below with blood.
"The battle ceased in I-thorno. The strangers met in peace: Cathmor from Atha of streams, and Ossian, king of harps. We placed the dead in earth. ”

“ There were the battle of Sha Ho, the unsuccessful operations of Grippenberg, the requests of Kuropatkin for the formation of the third army and the loss of this at Moukden, the capitulation of the powerful fortress of Port Arthur and finally the mad voyage of Admirals Rozhestvensky and Niebogatoff with a fleet of old and weak men-o'-war from the Baltic to the fatal Straits of Tsushima—all these stirred up terror and awe in the more thoughtful elements of Russian society. ”

“ Orcha will become the pivot of the army. Every thing leads me to believe that there will be a great battle at Smolensk; hospitals will, therefore, be requisite; they will be necessary at Orcha, Dombrowna, Mohilef, Kochanowo, Bobr, Borizof, and Minsk."
It was then particularly that he manifested extreme anxiety about the provisioning of Orcha. It was on the 10th of August, at the very moment when he was dictating this letter, that he gave his order of march. In four days, all his army would be assembled on the left bank of the Boristhenes, and in the direction of Liady. ”

“ The Russians had expected the attack on the north side, and had made it almost impregnable. When, by their flank march, the Allies came round to the south, the town was absolutely open and unprotected, the streets running up into the open country. Before the Allies could gird up their loins for a spring, earthworks and forts had sprung up in front of them as though by magic, and the only means of approach was by the slow, hard way of parallels, trenches, and zigzags. ”

“ One evening, as the last rays of the sun glinted from its roof, it stood solid and strong,—ready to do battle with the elements for many centuries more, but while the city lay quiet in the cold moonlight of an August night, the sound of purring motors broke the silence from above. The contre-avions crashed, and the yellow shrapnel broke in the sky often a mile from its invisible target, and never near enough to arrest the advance of the raiders, who suddenly shut off their motors and, as often before, swooped silently down on their motionless prey, and dropped their bombs. ”

“ Ostrolenka was full of troops, but I did not learn to what corps they belonged. The forts which defend it would require a considerable number of men to man them properly; and I do not think the place could hold out many hours before such artillery as the Germans use in their siege operations. The old "carronades" of Nelson's days were sometimes called "smashers"; much more appropriate is such a name to the monster howitzers which the Germans use to smash up their opponent's defensive works; and yet I am not one of those who are appalled by the destruction effected by huge guns. ”

“ Neither army was broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its force.
The Russians retreated eighty miles–to beyond Moscow–and the French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks after that there was not a single battle. ”

“ At last, in truth, the Russian hold on Inkerman hill was shaken to the core.
Victory at last was in our grasp, and, but for the old and fatal drawback of insufficient numbers, the battle must have ended in a complete disaster for the Russian arms. A vigorous offensive, undertaken by fresh troops, must have ended in the speedy overthrow, possibly annihilation, of the enemy.
But the only troops available for the purpose were the French. Bosquet had now come up with his brigade, and D'Autemarre, released by Gortschakoff's retreat, had followed with a second. ”

“ There are two thousand men up here, twenty guns, ammunition in plenty. Out there only peasants and a heterogeneous band of some fifteen hundred men. One shot from a gun perhaps would send all that crowd flying, the first fusillade might scatter "the band of brigands," but Marchand cannot, dare not give the positive order to fire; he knows that rank insubordination, positive refusal to obey would follow.
He talks to the men, he harangues, he begs them to defend their city against this "horde of Corsican pirates."
To every word he says, the men but oppose the one cry: "Vive l'Empereur!" ”

“ But now close behind them Blücher's guns begin to thunder and Zieten's columns are rapidly gaining ground: all round their fur bonnets a hailstorm of grape-shot is raging whilst Adam's artillery is in action within fifty paces at their flank. But the old growlers who had suffered death with silent fortitude in the snows of Russia, who had been as grand in their defeat at Moscow and at Leipzic as they had been in the triumphs of Auerstadt or of Friedland—they neither staggered nor paused in their advance. ”

“ Near Olyka in the region of the three Volhynian fortresses of Rovno, Dubno, and Lutsk, the Russian gunfire was especially intense along a front of about seventeen miles. That this unusually strong artillery activity increased the alarm of the Austro-Hungarian commanders may readily be seen from the concluding sentence of that day's official Austrian statement, which read: "Everywhere there are signs of an impending infantry attack." ”

“ And the grotesque cavalcade of mummers stood about in fantastic groups, like an army eager to fight, but disorganised and leaderless; while the ladies, forgetting their masculine attire, added to the confusion by sobs of terror, anxious questionings, and loud, wailing prayers.
“My lord,” suddenly said a voice close to Bideskúty’s elbow, “we shall have to organise, and very quickly too, a chain of buckets from the nearest well to those further stables. Any flying spark may now set them ablaze; the poor beasts, in that quarter are cut off from the plain by the fire. ”

“ These factors practically decided the battle. The district around Allenstein and Osterode is of the worst possible description for an invading force. It is a mass of lakes, swamps and forests, and an intimate knowledge of the locality is essential for the success of any military operations there. There are almost insuperable difficulties in the way of transport alone.
Utilising his advantages to the full, von Hindenburg lured the Russians towards Tannenberg to the south-east of Osterode. The Russians, realising that a successful offensive was their only chance, blundered forward. ”

“ They advance behind the cavalry! and after every volley from the British guns they shout loudly: "Vive l'Empereur!"
And anon the tidal wave—despite the ebb, despite the constant breaking of its surf—has by sheer force of weight hurled itself upon the crest of the plateau.
The Brunswickers on the left are scattered. Cleeves and Lloyd have been forced to abandon their guns: the British artillery is silenced and the chasseurs of Michel hold the extreme edge of the upland, and turn a deadly fusillade upon Colin Halkett's brigade already attacked by Milhaud and his guards and now severely shaken. ”

“ Army in Southern Poland is now being attacked with unsparing energy. Its situation is rendered desperate by the destruction of the Second Army at Lemberg, which lays open its right wing to assault by the victorious troops of General Russky. Should the great battle now raging end in another such defeat as has already been inflicted there will be nothing remaining in the field that can stay the Russian march to Berlin. The rapidity of the Russian mobilisation and of the movement of the Russian forces to the attack is one of the several absolutely vital things with which Germany did not reckon. ”

“ Napoleon could then rally the two marshals, whose forces still amounted to 25,000 men; he should attack and recover Minsk, send for Schwartzenberg, and when thus master of all the scattered remnants of his army, make a crushing attack upon the Russian troops, and gain a victory before returning to Poland. With this hope, Orscha was evacuated on the 20th November, under a cold rain, which penetrated the soldiers' clothes, and then froze on their bodies. The emperor ordered the greater part of the convoys to be sacrificed. The leaders of divisions alone kept carriages. ”

“ Ostermann proved a very poor tactician. Against infantry and artillery in position the French cavalry could do nothing, and until the head of Delzons’ division, the two battalions of the 8th Léger, arrived the action was confined to some spectacular but useless cavalry skirmishing. When the 8th Léger came up it was attacked by three Russian battalions, which moved forward against it, but they were charged in flank by two cavalry regiments and driven back. They should not have been exposed alone in front of the position. ”