MINUTES OE PKOCEEDINGS OF 
244 
that direction. Owing to the delay, it was getting late in the afternoon. 
The Austrian General, getting his troops together, made a determined attack 
on the Prussian line, and drove it back over the ground so far that it got 
into confusion; it was too late in the day to alter the result, and it ended in 
a decided retreat. 
In speaking of this event, the lecturer remarked as a notable fact in the 
Prussian system, that the General who suffered this defeat was now high in 
command in the Prussian service, and that the march before the disaster 
of Trautenau was taken by Yon Yerdy as a special object of study; showing 
that the Prussians were neither ashamed to acknowledge being beaten, nor 
above turning the lesson to their own advantage. It should be remarked 
also of Trautenau that the loss of the Austrians was immense, notwith¬ 
standing their victory, showing the immense superiority of the Prussian 
weapon; and the action led to nothing, because on the next day its result 
was decisively reversed by Benedek's inferiority elsewhere. 
That these two defeats were due to special causes the lecturer said was 
evident from the different results of the same tactics in the rest of the short 
campaign, and he instanced the battle of Kissingen as a striking illustration 
to show how readily the Prussians developed their tactical plans. The town 
was defended by a brigade of Bavarians, with some cavalry, when the main 
force of the Prussians came upon them. A bridge across the river in a 
pleasure garden outside the town had been destroyed by the defenders, but 
the piles were left, and in a few minutes the engineers broke up the floor of 
a house and laid the planks across the piles, so as practically to rebuild the 
bridge. The infantry, profiting by their company formation, were able to 
cross the bridge and deploy beyond it rapidly, though they were shot down 
in numbers; and as soon as they got over they took ground by companies to 
the right, and with overwhelming force turned and drove the Bavarians out. 
When the war was at an end, everyone in Prussia was well pleased with 
the new system. They'thought they had got to perfection until the well- 
known work the “ Tactical Retrospect” appeared, criticising freely the 
various events of 1866, and pointing out especially that there was still a 
great deal wanting in Prussian infantry tactics to accommodate them to the 
increased elasticity of the company formation. It was only natural that the 
anonymous author should be challenged to give his remedy for the defects 
he had indicated, and to state what he would substitute for the system which 
he had derided and condemned; and at length another pamphlet, also anony¬ 
mous, under the title of the “ Prussian Infantry in 1869,” appeared from 
the same pen; and a translation by Colonel H. Aime Ouvry, C.B., had 
recently been published in England. The author, the lecturer said, was plainly 
a man of really great talent, but he did not the least believe it was Prince 
Erederick Charles, as some asserted, for the internal evidence was entirely 
opposed to such a conclusion. The pamphlets certainly made the Prussian 
military authorities very angry, and an elaborate reply was published only 
last April by Colonel Yon Bronsart—the tactical ideas of which, it was well 
understood, were those of Yon Moltke himself—in which the writer made 
distinct proposals of his own in opposition to the plans of the anonymous 
author. The lecturer proceeded to explain, by two diagrams, the two 
systems; on the one hand that advocated by the author of the “Tactical 
Retrospect,” and on the ether that of Yon Moltke. The plans of the 
former appeared (for they were not shown by any sketch of his own) 
