Conta had already begun responding to the new threat by swinging his division south. The 2nd Division also rallied and pushed forward, without one battalion that was pursuing its own as yet unnoticed odyssey to the German rear. François’s coordinating orders, issued at 3:45 p.m., proposed to secure by nightfall a position from which I Corps could on the 28th cut off the Russian line of retreat entirely by a wide flanking move. The 1st Division was to take Fylitz. The detachment from XX Corps, called Schmettau’s Force after its commander, was to advance south of Klentzkau. The 2nd Division would occupy the heights south of Gross-Tauersee. All available cavalry would pursue as opportunity offered.10
The Russians were not there to be attacked. I Corps had begun falling back immediately after routing the 3rd Brigade. Its presence on the field surprised the Russians even more than the Russians surprised the Germans. A series of contradictory orders from Artamonov’s headquarters combined with the increasingly heavy fire of the German artillery around Usdau to turn what began as an orderly withdrawal into a rout. Instead of retreating eastward toward Samsonov’s main body, the Russians followed their original line of advance, now become the line of least resistance, and fell back beyond Soldau. By nightfall all of I Corps that remained in the battle zone was a weak rear guard, fragments of a half-dozen regiments, strung out along the railway north of Soldau. Not only had the Russians lost any contact with the rest of the 2nd Army; they seemed to have small chance of stopping the Germans should they choose to push south instead of east the next day.11
In XX Corps’s sector Scholtz’s preparations were influenced by experience. On the 26th he had received verbal orders to delay his attack until I Corps’s movements were well under way. Given the course of events that day, Scholtz felt he had been put in a potentially dangerous position operationally and professionally by I Corps’s failure to advance. He was determined to avoid a repetition of the situation. When the army order of 9:00 p.m., August 26, specified an attack “with the greatest energy,” Scholtz and his staff turned to the telephone. A brief conversation with army headquarters settled the matter. Scholtz issued his corps orders at 11:00 p.m. The 3rd Reserve Division, now definitely committed to Scholtz’s left, was to make a feint to draw Russian strength from the south. In the center the garrison and Landwehr troops would hold their positions along the Drewenz River. The XX Corps’s two active divisions were to attack south, but Scholtz’s orders conveyed the impression of an advance in support of I Corps, rather than of a vigorous attack pursued independently. François’s reputation as a general who went his own way did nothing to encourage Scholtz to take extreme risks in aiding his hard-headed associate.
This was also the case for the 41st Division on the right of Scholtz’s line. Its riflemen were reluctant to repeat the dashing advances of their first day’s combat, despite an almost complete initial lack of opposition. One company even captured the abandoned instruments of a Russian regimental band, but the division commander became unnerved by his very success. Though gunfire was audible from the direction of Usdau, there were no other signs of I Corps. Nor was there any word from the 37th Division on his left. Rather than risk isolation, Brigadier-General Sontag ordered a halt to await developments.
Staabs’s 37th Division was having its own troubles. Its four strongest battalions had been sent south with Schmettau’s Force. Its commander was, if anything, more concerned than Scholtz about the possibility of a Russian breakthrough on the corps’s left flank—particularly since no one in Staabs’s headquarters was sure whether the 3rd Reserve Division had received or obeyed XX Corps’ orders to support the threatened northern sector. Staabs therefore hedged his bet. He left his 73rd Brigade in position to cover his rear and attacked only with the 75th. That formation made good progress against little opposition until around 9:00 a.m. Then Brigadier-General Bockmann ordered a thirty-minute halt to rest his forward elements and give stragglers time to rejoin.12
Had anyone at any of the responsible headquarters known it, Sontag’s and Staabs’s three brigades initially encountered only what remained of the Russian 2nd Division. These were the same units that had been so roughly handled the previous day. A Russian staff officer later reported them as “exhausted, with only a few rounds left, three days without bread or sugar.” They broke as soon as the Germans attacked. One brigade streamed back to Neidenburg, where it was reformed around noon by the army staff. The other held its position a bit longer, until the division commander ordered a retreat, which turned into a rout. The brigade fled even further to the rear than its sister unit. It could only be rallied at Frankenau.13
The scattering of the 2nd Division temporarily exposed both the flank of XV Corps and the rear of 2nd Army. But the woods were too thick for German cavalry patrols or German air reconnaissance to discover and report the opportunity. Scholtz, moreover, had other worries. At 4:30 a.m. Russian artillery had begun shelling Mühlen—a systematic, heavy barrage, in sharp contrast to the more or less ineffective bombardments of the last two days. Scholtz also received a radio intercept ordering XV Corps to attack around Mühlen. The thick woods in front of the German position in that sector offered the opportunity to deploy a strong force with little danger of observation, and Scholtz had a healthy respect for the Russians’ ability to utilize terrain. No matter what success his active divisions gained on the right, Scholtz by midmorning was far more concerned with his left flank, held by second-line troops and supported by a division whose commander had demonstrated a Françoislike capacity to turn a blind eye to orders he considered inappropriate.14 On a smaller and more immediate scale than army headquarters, he feared being caught in a revolving door, with Russians smashing into his rear while he tried to find theirs.
Scholtz’s problems were compounded when Hindenburg and Ludendorff established a forward command post just south of the Gross-Damerau Lake. Just before the staff left Löbau a report arrived that Usdau had fallen to I Corps. This seemed to fulfill everyone’s highest hopes. Even Ludendorff said that on learning this news he considered the battle won. Once in the field, however, it soon became apparent that a mistake had been made—Hindenburg was able to see through a stereo-telescope that German artillery was still firing on Usdau. When Hindenburg and Ludendorff learned that XX Corps’s attack south had also halted they were even less pleased, though the overall situation still did not seem to require direct interference with Scholtz’s orders.
This opinion changed around 11:00 a.m., when confirmed reports of Usdau’s capture arrived simultaneously with news of the Russian advance on Muühlen. It seemed clear that François no longer needed support from XX Corps. It seemed equally clear—at least on a map—that the Russian attack on Mühlen offered a chance to envelop the attackers with a short right hook. This was the kind of opportunity that had made reputations in 1866 and 1870. At 11:30 a.m. Scholtz was directed to switch the axis of advance of his active divisions almost 180 degrees from due south to north and east, in order to roll up the flank of the Russians engaged at Mühlen.15
The corps staff was still assimilating the new orders when around noon it received an excited telephone call. A lieutenant commanding a telephone platoon in the Mühlen sector declared that the German line had broken and Russians were pouring into the gap. Scholtz promptly directed Staabs’s 75th Brigade to turn in its tracks and march towards Mühlen “as rapidly as possible” to restore the front. This left only the 41st Division to continue the enveloping maneuver ordered by Hindenburg and Ludendorff. At 12:15 p.m. Sontag was ordered by telephone to advance at once on the village of Waplitz. About the same time Colonel Grünert arrived at his headquarters, sent by Hindenburg to make sure the division moved in the new direction.