Battle of Spottsylvania

“ Lee is prosecuting the defensive policy effectively. Couriers to the press, considered quite reliable, give some details of a most terrific battle in Spottsylvania County day before yesterday, 12th inst. Our men (with extra muskets) fought behind their breastworks. The host of assailants came on, stimulated by whisky rations, ten deep, and fearful was the slaughter. Their loss is estimated at 20,000; ours, 2000. The enemy were still in front. Grant says he will not recross the Rappahannock as long as he has a man left. Lee seems determined to kill his last man. ”

“ During the morning, a little desultory firing was heard in front, and then all was quiet and still. We knew enough to [Pg 94] know that Grant’s push was over at this point. Some of us had gone up to look at the ground over which Longstreet had driven the enemy yesterday. We knew that the Federal troops could never be gotten back over that awful, corpse-covered ground to attack the men who had driven them. We knew we had to fight somewhere else, but where? By and by, talk began to circulate among the men that Spottsylvania, or around near Fredericksburg, might be the place. ”

“ During the battle of Spotsylvania she met a number of soldiers retreating, and when imploring them to turn back had no effect, she offered to lead them herself, and shamed into doing their duty, by a woman's courage, they turned, and led by the dauntless girl, went back into the thick of the fight, under heavy fire from the enemy. ”

“ There, about six hundred yards from us were the Federals, seeming to cover the fields. There were lines of infantry, batteries, wagons, ambulances, ordnance trains massed all across the open ground. This was part of Warren’s Corps, which had been pushing for the Spottsylvania line. They thought they had left the “Army of Northern Virginia” back yonder at the “Wilderness,” and had nothing before them but cavalry, and they were halted, now, resting or eating, intending afterwards to advance, and occupy the line, which was back up behind us, where we had left the cavalry and our other guns. ”

“ It was just ten o’clock and each man was looking around for the dryest spot to spread his blanket on, when a courier rode up, with pressing orders for us to get instantly on the march. In a few moments, we were tramping rapidly through the darkness, on a road that led, we knew not whither. We were, as we found out afterwards, leading the great race, that General Lee was making for Spottsylvania Court House to head off Grant in his efforts to get out of the Wilderness in his “push for Richmond.” ”

“ We noticed the army in motion again, but we still held our lines until night, when we silently left our breastworks, never to return. We passed the hospital, where were two thousand of our wounded, some waiting to have their wounds dressed. What a horrible sight to behold, men mangled in every form! The line having moved to the left, we reached Spottsylvania. We marched to the left until we arrived at Laurel Hill, where we were again in action, and where artillery was used. ”

“ While he was doing this, with my other men I gathered the muskets and [p. 362] accoutrements left by the wounded. Laying the muskets with the muzzle on a stump, one heavy stamp of the foot bent the barrel, broke the stock, and made the piece useless. The accoutrements we heaped together and threw on the fire, and with hasty steps sought the regiment."
The National losses in the fighting around Spottsylvania, from the 8th to the 21st of May, were thirteen thousand six hundred—killed, wounded, and missing. Somewhat over half of this loss occurred on the 12th. ”

“ Artillery is very useful when it can be brought into action, but it is a very burdensome luxury where it cannot be used. Before leaving Spottsylvania, therefore, I sent back to the defences of Washington over one hundred pieces of artillery, with the horses and caissons. ”

“ In this contest, unparalleled in its continuous fury, and swelling to the proportions of a campaign, language is inadequate to convey an impression of the labours, fatigues, and sufferings of the troops, who fought by day, only to march by night, from point to point of the long line, and renew the fight on the morrow. Above forty thousand men had already fallen in the bloody encounters of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, and the exhausted army began to lose its spirits. ”

“ Their army believed this. It produced a morale which could only be overcome by desperate and continuous hard fighting. The battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor, bloody and terrible as they were on our side, were even more damaging to the enemy, and so crippled him as to make him wary ever after of taking the offensive. His losses in men were probably not so great, owing to the fact that we were, save in the Wilderness, almost invariably the attacking party; and when he did attack, it was in the open field. ”

“ THE FIELD OF SPOTTSYLVANIA. I walked on to the tavern where Richard H. Hicks was baiting his horse. The landlord took me to a lumber-room where he kept, carefully locked up, a very remarkable curiosity. It was the stump of a tree, eleven inches in diameter, which had been cut off by bullets—not by cannon-shot, but by leaden bullets—in the Spottsylvania fight. It looked like a colossal scrub-broom. “I had a stump twice as big as this, cut off by bullets in the same way, only much smoother; but some Federal officers took it from me and sent it to the War Department at Washington.” ”

“ EVER STRIKE THE SAME SPOT?
incident at Spottsylvania, will easily be recalled to memory. In some movement, in which our regiment participated, our flank was brought in range with a rebel battery, when a 20 pound shot came whizzing along. Fortunately, it was poorly aimed, and exploded as it struck the ground.
The shell tore a hole in the ground, about ten feet from our line, immediately in front of our company, sufficiently deep to bury a team of mules. Several of the boys said, "No two shots, ever strike the same spot," as they jumped into the cavity, considering it a safe place. ”

“ But Lee, by accident, beat us to Spottsylvania. Our wagon trains had been ordered easterly of the roads the troops were to march upon before the movement commenced. Lee interpreted this as a semi-retreat of the Army of the Potomac to Fredericksburg, and so informed his government. Accordingly he ordered Longstreet's corps—now commanded by Anderson—to move in the morning (the 8th) to Spottsylvania. But the woods being still on fire, Anderson could not go into bivouac, and marched directly on to his destination that night. By this accident Lee got possession of Spottsylvania. ”

“ By September 10, Russian troops were massed in great force in southeastern Rumania, and engaged the Bulgarians on the whole seventy-mile front from the Danube to the Black Sea, fighting fiercely to wrest the offensive from the enemy invading Rumania. In Transylvania the Rumanians were advancing rapidly, having captured the important town of Orsova, on the Danube, which gave them a grip on the Austrian second line of defense behind the mountains dividing Transylvania from Hungary. ”

“ Well! these blood-curdlers came crashing into us, from the rear, knocking up clouds of dirt, digging great holes, bursting, and raining fragments around us in the field. We were not firing, and had leisure [Pg 153] to realize the fix we were in. With the enemy hotly shelling us from the front, and our friends from the rear, obliged to stay by our guns, expecting an infantry assault every minute, we certainly were in a pretty tight fix, “’Tween the devil and the deep sea.” ”

“ The long hours crept on until three o’clock,—when the warming up of the Federal artillery fire warned us of another attack. Soon came another stubborn assault by Warren’s Corps. Same result. Line after line pushed out from the woods, only to be hurled back, bleeding and torn, leaving on the field large additions to the sad load of dead, and wounded, with which it was already encumbered. They effected nothing! Very little loss to us, heavy loss to them. We were using double shot of canister nearly every time, on masses of men at short range; the infantry fire was rapid and deadly. ”

“ Flames, in a few hours, will consume a city which centuries alone have reared. A squadron of cavalry will, in a few moments, trample fields of grain which have been slowly growing and ripening for months. In less than a fortnight nearly the whole of the Ukraine was a depopulated waste, the troops of the tzar being shut up in narrow fortresses. The King of Poland, apprehensive that this vast Turkish army would soon turn with all their energies of destruction upon his own territories, resolved to march, with all the forces of his kingdom, to the aid of the Russians. ”

“ Disintegrating forces were at work among the enemy troops; they were the product of social and political conditions and, whatever might be their later repercussion, from an immediate and practical point of view, they were more powerful aids to victory for the Allies than any offensive on this front. A premature Russo-Rumanian offensive, with unwilling Russian soldiers, could have but one effect—its futility was evident to the humblest combatants in the opposing ranks; it could only serve to rally doubters and, thereby, postpone another revolution. ”

“ Here, and within fifteen miles of this city, in Spotsylvania county, more great armies manoeuvred, more great battles were fought, more men were engaged in mortal combat and more officers and privates were killed and wounded than in any similar territory in the world. ”

“ Shall Russia settle down to a war of position in her vast fortifications around Warsaw, or shall she continue to barter space against time, withdrawing from the line of the Vistula and points on it of both strategic and political importance, in order to gain the time which Germany has already stored in the form of inexhaustible gun munitions? ”

“ The Russian offensive was shifted September 21 from the Lemberg sector to the east of Kovel and a few days after a fresh offensive began along the entire eastern front, heavy fighting being reported west of Lutsk and in the Carpathians. Turkish troops at this time appeared on the Riga front, with German equipment and led by German and Austrian officers. The great 300-mile battle continued unabated to the end of October, with fighting all along the line from the Pinsk marshes on the north to the Roumanian frontier on the south. ”

“ And the conflict will not be evenly matched in regard to strength. For not only are the enemy greatly surpassed by us in numbers, but they will come against us without the least enthusiasm, for I think that they are praying for a share of this our freedom." Such was the speech of Stotzas.
As the armies entered the combat, a wind both violent and exceedingly troublesome began to blow in the faces of the mutineers of Stotzas. ”

“ But the Russian spirit was not broken, for at this critical moment General Polodchenko rode out with three regiments of cavalry—the Don Cossacks, the Chernigov Hussars, and the Kimburn Dragoons. They dashed into the unbroken lines of the triumphant German infantry like a living hurricane, sabered the enemy, and put thousands on the run. Swerving aside, they next charged deep into the German rear, mauled the reserves into confusion, hacked their way out again and captured several machine guns. ”

“ The official communiqué upon the defence of the Vistula and the complete defeat of the invasion of Russian Poland [110] closed with these impressive words: “We owe thanks for our victory to the unfailing grace which God has shown to the superhuman heroism of our warriors, of whom Russia may be justly proud. The victory which has been achieved makes it possible for our troops to set about the solution of fresh problems, the grappling with which commences a new period of the war.” ”

“ The fear of invasion, which has taken hold of every mind in the Principalities, appears to be not without foundation; in fact, a Russian army, more numerous than that of 1848, consisting of three corps, and bringing with it formidable munitions of war, is daily advancing its posts towards the frontiers of Moldavia ; while the concentration of Austrian troops on the Turkish frontiers, is sufficient to justify the belief that war is imminent ”

“ The Russian worker and peasant soldiers, practically unarmed, half-starved, and often betrayed by their own officers, were thrown against the splendidly equipped German and Austrian armies and slaughtered by millions—Russia lost more men in the war than all the other powers, allied and enemy, combined. ”

“ As a military power it has never achieved by itself a single great thing. It has been indeed able to repel an ill-considered invasion, but only by having recourse to the extreme methods of desperation. In its attacks upon its specially selected victim this giant always struck as if with a withered right hand. All the campaigns against Turkey prove this, from Potemkin's time to the last Eastern war in 1878, entered upon with every advantage of a well-nursed prestige and a carefully fostered fanaticism. ”

“ If Washington held it a mistake to rely on untrained, undisciplined men in time of war, who can differ with him today, when not only bravery and discipline are required, but also a knowledge of the complicated enginery of warfare?
It is obvious to any one that ten men armed with the modern magazine shoulder-rifle, with a range of more than two miles, would easily be able to defeat a thousand men—a hundred times their number—armed with slings and bows and arrows, short-swords and spears, as was the army of Hannibal. ”