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The Great War of 189-: A Forecast

Chapter 12: FIRST COLLISION OF RUSSIAN AND GERMAN TROOPS.
By P. H. Colomb
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About This Book

A speculative forecast of a large-scale European war describes a chain of diplomatic crises, mobilisations and coordinated campaigns that spread from the Balkans across Central Europe and into colonial and naval theatres. Episodes include an attempted assassination, declarations of war, manoeuvres and pitched battles between Russia, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Britain, combined naval engagements, landings, sieges and distant operations in Asia and Africa. The work interleaves battlefield reportage, strategic councils and political reactions at home, and concludes with reflections on imperial defence and the war's general effects, accompanied by illustrative sketches and appendix interviews on defence policy.

FIRST COLLISION OF RUSSIAN AND GERMAN TROOPS.

SKIRMISH AT ALEXANDROVO.
(By Telegraph from our Special Correspondent, Mr. Charles Lowe.)
Thorn, April 30.

I have just returned from a reconnoitring ride with two squadrons of the Zieten Hussars, who pushed across the Russian frontier to within sight of Alexandrovo, the scene of the meeting (of which I had the good fortune to be an eye-witness) between the old German Emperor and the late Czar Alexander II., in September 1879, shortly before the signature of the Austro-German Treaty of Alliance.

It is a curious coincidence that the first blood in the present campaign should have been drawn within view of the spot to which the old Emperor—greatly against the advice of his irate Chancellor, Bismarck—then hastened to conjure the Czar to desist from his warlike operations, and assure him, on the other hand, of his own unalterable determination to keep the peace.

When we had advanced by the road skirting the railway to within about a mile of Alexandrovo, a gun attached to a body of Cossacks (they were of the Don, as I could make out through my glass, from their blue tunics faced with red) opened fire on us; and the shell, bursting right in front of our leading troop, killed two horses and seriously wounded one man (a Wachtmeister). So having thus caused the enemy to give tongue, we turned bridle and trotted back, carrying with us the intelligence—the rich fruit of our reconnaissance—that Alexandrovo was strongly occupied by troops of all arms. Four sotnias of Cossacks came pelting after us, but we were quick to outrun these rampaging gentry, to whom a gun from one of our horse-batteries sent hurtling over a few shells as a parting souvenir of our hasty yet successful visit.