198 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
sufficient ascent in it to moderate tlie pace of any assailant; a small 
breastwork was made all along its exterior crest, and it received some 
flanking defence from guns on either, but principally on the left or 
retiring, side. 
The German forces on the opposite side of the Saar, on finding 
Saarbriick evacuated, crossed at once in pursuit, and coming upon 
the French position before noon, immediately attacked, and, as their 
forces gradually arrived, assailed it about 2 or 3 p.m. along its whole 
front; they advanced with a thick line of skirmishers supported by 
company columns, and lost very heavily whilst crossing the plain, so 
that the first columns that got up on to the slopes of the hill, being 
too shattered to go on, lay down waiting for reinforcements and 
breath, the fire of the defenders passing over their heads ; and with 
reinforcements which arrived they tried and tried again to get to the 
top, being always stopped with heavy loss but not driven back : until 
at last, pushing persistently everywhere, getting always more and 
more men to the work, and a Prussian field battery having, with the 
loss of more than half its men and horses, got into a kind of flanking 
position amongst the wooded hills on the left and begun to make 
itself felt, the columns finally rushed over the crest and cleared the 
whole hill-top with the bayonet. The ground in rear was very 
defensible by the French, and they did, assisted by the approach of 
evening, make fight enough on their retreat to get all their guns 
away; but their pace was continually quickened by the German 
pressure, and before nightfall the whole of them had become dis¬ 
ordered fugitives, who, falling precipitately back on Forbach, found 
there, instead of succour, a fresh German attack mastering the whole 
of that strong position. As this was on their left flank and rear, 
the complete rout of everything French in that connection was the 
immediate result: night and the fatigue of the victors saved the 
whole force from being taken. 
It is probable that at Spicheren the assailants lost many more 
men than the defenders, but the success was well worth buying 
dearly, as it rendered practicable, and also utterly decisive, the 
isolated yet concentric attack delivered by the neighbouring German 
corps upon Forbach. This corps was called, during the action, from 
a day’s march distance, and measures concerted with it, by field 
telegraph. 
The storming of such a bold height with the bayonet in broad day¬ 
light is, in these days of improved musketry, a remarkable feat. How 
much the credit is due to mere perseverance and courage, how much 
to the arrival of the battery on the enemy’s ground, (one of the aides- 
de-camp engaged told me that the French began to give ground 
directly that the shells from their own level began to flash amongst 
them), and how much to the gradually increasing development of 
the German right, I could not precisely learn; but as I looked from 
the commanding crest to the bare slopes below I was convinced that 
English infantry, of the present kind, would never have been stormed 
away from it as long as they had a cartridge remaining. 
