THE E0YAL AETILLEEY INSTITUTION. 
195 
of Metz, extends from south to north about eight miles, and 
dominates, by 100 feet more or less, the nearest approaching 
hill-tops on the west, from 2,000 to 3,000 yards away. On this 
ridge the French were in position on the 18th of August, having 
been pushed back from their line of westerly retreat by the battles 
of Yionville and Rezonville on the 16th; their left flank, almost 
in contact with the Prussian advance, was protected by a deep 
wide and wooded ravine, and by the Moselle, which united it to 
Metz; the greater part of the front was covered by the same 
difficult ravine; and the right, which might be considered to 
be much refused from their former east and west line of battle, 
rested on the strong village and ground of St. Privat. In rear, 
some hundred yards from the crest, the ground fell away steeply 
into ravines and woods, with a good road from each flank into 
.Metz. 
The French had slightly intrenched themselves along most of the 
ridge; and in front of their intrenchments, descending at gentle 
slopes to the difficulties in front, lay an unbroken tract of bare and 
even ground, 1,000 yards wide on the left, 2,000 on the right: this 
arrangement, appropriate to the action of the Chassepot, turned out 
to be the real strength of the position. 
. At noon the German right (being the 7th corps), which 
perations. j ia( j ]^ een feeling its way and the enemy since the 17th, 
having first occupied the village of Gravelotte with some hussars, 
and massed supports in the neighbourhood, threw up on to the 
adjoining plateau, 2,000 yards from the French left, and 100 feet 
lower than it, battery by battery as fast as they could get up from 
the head of the ravine at a gallop, the whole of their 84 guns, into 
action against the French artillery, which in somewhat similar 
numbers was in position opposite. The German batteries weTe not 
exactly in line, but rather, alternately, 100 yards in advance or rear 
of one another; the pieces were also somewhat crowded together, in 
order to avoid extending in front of Gravelotte and drawing the 
enemy’s fire that way, as it was intended to use the village as a field 
hospital; (the design was successful; I saw Gravelotte quite uninjured, 
whilst the farm buildings on the opposite French position were cut 
down nearly even with the ground by the Prussian fire). As the bat¬ 
teries gallopped up, vast numbers of French shells burst short in the 
air, or on the ground in rear, but struck nobody; a continuous rain of 
mitrailleuse bullets also fell into one particular hollow behind them 
where nothing was; but the German commander of the first three 
batteries in action directed their whole fire to be given together on 
the first French mitrailleuse on the right; thereupon a confused 
storm of explosions was seen to spring all over where that mitrailleuse 
had stood, succeeded only by a vacant space with some wreck on the 
ground: the same treatment was adopted with the second and third 
mitrailleuses, on which the fourth vanished of its own accord, and 
the process of successive concentrations of fire was carried on upon 
the guns: with such effect that by 2 p.m. the French artillery of 
