Soon afterwards, Bismarck received Abeken’s telegram, saw his opportunity, and took it with gusto. His abbreviation of the ‘Ems Telegram’ gave the impression that King Wilhelm had curtly snubbed the French ambassador’s demands, sending an aide-de-camp to inform him that he had nothing further to say to him. While this was not, as some French writers later alleged, a forgery, it put a brutal gloss on the facts, and was intended to ‘have the effect of a red rag upon the Gallic bull’.36 To maximize the provocation, Bismarck communicated it to the press and German representatives abroad. For it was not the French alone he sought to inflame. In Germany too crowds were soon in the streets, furious at the insult to the king and as determined as Bismarck that their new nation would no longer tolerate dictation from the French. In Berlin, hurrahs for the king were mixed with shouts of ‘To the Rhine!’ in an explosion of pent-up anger.
In Paris, the momentum for war was building even before the ‘Ems Telegram’ became known, and would have been difficult to stop. On 13 July the Cabinet agreed not to treat the demand for guarantees as an ultimatum, but in the Chamber Jerome David launched a stinging attack on the ‘derisory slowness’ of the government’s negotiations with Prussia and its failure to gain satisfaction. To declare itself satisfied with Karl Anton’s renunciation would quite probably have prompted the overthrow of what Cassagnac’s Le Pays dubbed ‘The Ministry of Shame’.
This onslaught by the Right was encouraged by the Empress, who, mindful of the security of her son’s future throne, was all for a showdown with Prussia. The Austrian ambassador thought Eugénie looked ten years younger at the prospect of a political triumph or a war. One of her attendants wrote that ‘everyone here, the Empress foremost, desires war so much that it seems to me impossible that we shall not have it.’37 Some ascribed to Eugénie the Emperor’s crucial stiffening of attitude in backing the Gramont declaration and the demand for guarantees. Could a Bonapartist regime survive if it failed to take the lead in a popular foreign war? Eugénie’s undoubted bellicosity, like Gramont’s, was in tune with the popular mood in the capital at this point. Both took it for granted, as did the entire Cabinet, that France was militarily ready and, with her Chassepots and mitrailleuses, had a good chance of winning.
Marshal Le Bœuf had given that advice on 5 July, and repeated it when the Cabinet met on 14 July (which was not at that time the national holiday).38 Gramont had learned of the ‘Ems Telegram’ that morning, exclaiming to Ollivier, ‘My friend, you are looking at a man who has just been slapped in the face.’ Driving through the violently excited crowds and entering the Cabinet room, he slammed his despatch case on the table and said, ‘After what has just happened, a Foreign Minister who cannot make up his mind for war is not fit to retain his office.’39 During the afternoon the decision was taken to call up the reserves: by now both governments were alarmed at the other’s military precautions. Le Bœuf was anxious that France was losing precious time by delaying mobilization, and left to attend to it. Still there were hesitations and even talk – ten days too late – of calling a European congress: but finally the decision to mobilize was upheld.
That evening, as late editions carried news of the ‘Ems Telegram’, demonstrations reached fever pitch on the boulevards. A mob had to be turned away from the Prussian embassy. Crowds chanted ‘À Berlin!’ and sang the Marseillaise, hitherto banned as a republican and revolutionary song. Smaller counter-demonstrations were overwhelmed. Next morning, Friday 15 July, as excitement grew, the Cabinet resolved unanimously on war, and went to the Chamber that afternoon for approval. During the debate Ollivier let slip the unfortunate phrase that he went to war ‘with a light heart’, and would spend the next four decades insisting that he had meant ‘with a clear conscience’. Throughout the crisis Ollivier had proved excitable. He had neither the power nor personality to keep Gramont under control, and had shown little capacity to shape or lead opinion. It was left to Thiers to make the most coherent protest that a mistake was being made and that the occasion was ill-chosen: ‘Do you want all Europe to say that the substance was gained, but that you have decided to shed torrents of blood over a question of form?’ He pointed out that the Prussians would have appeared the aggressors had they ever attempted to renew the candidacy, and no time had been given for Europe to work for a peaceful settlement. To Gramont he said, ‘You began things badly and you have ended them badly.’40 But Thiers was out of step with the ebullient mood of the Chamber. Hastily interrogated during an adjournment, Le Bœuf insisted that the army was ‘absolutely ready’ and that time was essential to forestall the Germans. Backed by Ollivier, he asserted that France had eight to ten days’ lead over the enemy, and that there was nothing to fear.41 Le Bœuf believed that, if war was inevitable, it was better to fight before the Germans adopted an improved rifle, and before the Legislature ruined the army by further budget cuts.
After eleven hours of debate, the Legislature voted overwhelmingly, by 245 to 10, for initial war credits of 50 million francs. In the end both Thiers and Gambetta swallowed their mistrust of the regime and voted for war. Only a handful of republicans voted against, fearing that military victory would entrench the authoritarian Empire for another generation.
On that same 15 July in Germany the king’s return from Ems to Berlin became a triumphal procession, with cheering, waving crowds giving him an ovation at every station. Bismarck and Moltke travelled out to Brandenburg to intercept him, carrying the mobilization order. They were joined by the Crown Prince, and assured him that the strength and condition of the French army were ‘in reality far less imposing than was hitherto imagined, making our prospects more favourable than has been supposed’. When they joined Wilhelm on the train all three urged him that not a moment must be lost in decreeing full mobilization. At Potsdam station news came through that the French had decided on war, overcoming the king’s last reservations. He gave the order for mobilization from the waiting room; the Crown Prince went out and made the announcement to the jubilant crowd on the platform, and father and son embraced. The ride to the Royal Palace was ‘one unbroken storm of cheers’ as they moved with difficulty through the singing multitude. Wilhelm had to show himself on the balcony again and again as the crowd with one voice chanted ‘The Watch on the Rhine’.42
The Declaration of War
France declared war upon Prussia formally on 17 July, almost as an afterthought: the Navy Minister insisted that he must have legal clarity before enemy shipping could be seized. The declaration was delivered in Berlin on 19 July, the day the Reichstag met to vote war credits. His voice trembling with emotion, Wilhelm addressed it on the theme of German unity. In past centuries, he reflected, Germany had suffered many wounds because her divisions prevented her from being strong, but today ‘the bond of moral and legal union, a bond which our wars of independence began to establish, binds together all members of the German family with a unity that will be as close as it will be enduring. Today Germany’s armaments leave no door open to the enemy; Germany has the will and the strength to defend herself against this fresh violence from France.’ Enthusiastically echoing his appeal to the God of battles, the Reichstag expressed the hope that ‘The German people will find at last, in a territory respected by all nations, a free and peaceful unity.’43
Bismarck had already called on the southern states to fulfil their military treaty obligations. Bavaria and Baden duly mobilized on 16 July, Württemberg on the 17th. French hopes of finding allies in the South simply evaporated. The French assumed that the South German states would be the battlefield in the coming campaign, so would not offer them neutrality. On the same assumption, the South prepared to defend itself with Prussian help. By taking the role of aggressor, France had consummated German unity at the popular, emotional level even before a shot was fired. ‘This is the way I always hoped and wished to see it,’ said Bismarck.44 Most South Germans now saw Prussia as the champion of the national cause. Her critics found themselves heavily outvoted in their legislatures and their
newspapers dwindled in circulation.
Thus a Franco-Prussian War became immediately a Franco-German War, waged by the Germans in a spirit of national self-defence, national independence and cultural self-assertion against the old oppressor. Symbolically, Wilhelm revived the Order of the Iron Cross, instituted in the War of Liberation against Napoleon I, and visited the tomb of his mother, Queen Louise, whose spirit in the face of French invasion had been indomitable.
On the French side, the war was begun in hot blood for ‘national honour’. In his proclamation of 23 July Napoleon blamed Prussia for her disdain of French goodwill after 1866: ‘Launched on an aggressive path, she has awakened widespread mistrust, has necessitated excessive armaments everywhere, and has made Europe an armed camp where uncertainty and fear of the future reign.’ The latest incident had been too much to bear, and now France sought a peace that would guarantee her security.45
Neither side announced territorial objectives, though there had been much newspaper talk in France of the left bank of the Rhine, and in Germany of Alsace and Lorraine. Such aspirations would be elaborated as the fighting progressed. The first aim in each case was the military defeat of the enemy in order for the victor to impose his will. In one sense this war between 38 million French and 40 million Germans would be but another episode in what Alfred Cobban called ‘the millennial struggle of the West and East Franks’.46 At its rawest it was a struggle for primacy in Europe. The new German contender had challenged the incumbent, France, and France had chosen to fight rather than accept relegation. Bismarck embraced war as a means of breaking the deadlock over German unity. In France Gramont was bent on the humiliation of Prussia. The crisis gave the Right the chance to reassert its strength by revenging itself on the Ollivier ministry, and the Empress and her camarilla the chance to strengthen the dynasty. In both countries the war party won over the sovereign. War was welcome to the officer class on both sides as their raison d’être and as a chance to win distinction. Mutual popular antipathies by no means made war inevitable (otherwise France and England might have fought as readily as France and Prussia), but they provided ever ready tinder for unscrupulous or short-sighted leaders in pursuit of their goals. Gramont and Bismarck must bear the heaviest responsibility in equal measure.
France and Germany would fight out their quarrel alone. The French declaration of war left the other nations of Europe amazed and indignant. The Russians had interceded with Wilhelm to persuade him to drop the Hohenzollern candidature, and to calm French anxieties they were planning a European guarantee that it would never be renewed. It was too late. When Alexander II heard of the French demand for guarantees he raged at the French ambassador: ‘I have taken much trouble to avert war; do you want it then?’ When the French ambassador spoke of French honour, the Czar snapped, ‘Your honour! What about others’ honour?’47
Unwilling to see a French victory over Prussia, Russia warned the Danes to stay neutral. With German forces near their frontier, the Danes needed little persuading, and anyway France failed to follow through on plans for a landing in Denmark. Russia also, as she had promised Bismarck, advised Austria-Hungary that she would mobilize if Austria attacked Prussia. But there was no appetite among either Austria’s German or Hungarian populations for a war of revenge. France had declared war on an issue of no concern to Austria, and Chancellor Beust complained to his ambassador in Pais that Gramont ‘without consulting us or giving warning, rushes boldly ahead on the question of war …presuming, as if it were already agreed, that it suffices merely to inform us for us to mobilize …’48 Austria declared her neutrality on 19 July, assuring France that she would review the situation as events unfolded. Italy did likewise. Although Napoleon and Gramont clung to the waning illusion of a grand alliance against Prussia, after the first French defeats they received only expressions of sympathy from Austrian and Italian diplomats.
The British government had used its influence for the withdrawal of Leopold’s candidacy, believing that would satisfy France and end the crisis. Exasperated by Gramont’s demand for guarantees, it concluded that France was bent on provoking war after all. The Times savaged Napoleon for wantonly and wickedly starting a war ‘of which no man can see the end’.49 British anger at Napoleon as the major disturber of the peace was redoubled when Bismarck sent The Times Benedetti’s draft treaty from 1866 for the French annexation of Belgium, giving the impression that it was more recent and claiming that Prussia had been duly horrified. Although Gramont had already promised to respect Belgian neutrality, Britain now asked both combatants to sign a treaty pledging to uphold it during hostilities. Prussia signed on 9 August, France on 11 August. By that time, the opening battles of the war had been fought.
Chapter 5
The Armies Mobilize
German Mobilization
In Germany transition to a war footing progressed in a well-ordered sequence: mobilization, transportation of men to the front and the concentration of the armies. Reservists received notices to join their unit and reported to their district depot where they were equipped and armed. Some regiments were ready by 21 July, most by 24 July. Roon thought this period while units organized the quietest he could ever remember at the War Ministry. Then began the great railway operation, so long and well prepared. Moving at precisely regulated intervals, an average seventy trains a day began moving complete units southwestwards towards the region adjoining the French frontier.
Enthusiasm for the war, the Crown Prince noted, was ‘positively indescribable’: but, from prince to private, as men said emotional farewells to their families many privately wondered ‘Which of us will come back?’1 Wherever the trains stopped bands played, crowds cheered, and troops were regaled with cigars, food and wine, which came as a welcome relief from the stifling heat of late July. Meanwhile volunteering was brisk. Ferries from Dover to Ostend were crammed with Germans who had been working in England returning to fight for the fatherland, even as English tourists on the Continent scurried back in the opposite direction. From the USA came telegrams of encouragement from German-Americans, and even volunteers.
The euphoria was not quite universal. There was some discontent in areas conquered by Prussia in 1864 and 1866. The Crown Prince admitted that ‘highly treasonable expressions’ were being uttered in Hanover.2 Nor was the process of concentration by any means as flawless as the German official history would later suggest. Nevertheless, the immense operation was a staggeringly successful feat. By 1 August 384,000 fighting men, plus non-combatant personnel, 152,000 horses and 1,206 field guns had been assembled in three armies on a hundred-mile front broadly from Trier near the Luxembourg border to Karlsruhe. From north to south, these forces were:
First Army, consisting of two army corps and one cavalry division, with a combat strength of 60,000 men commanded by General von Steinmetz, a brave but bull-headed veteran;
Second Army, consisting of six army corps and two cavalry divisions, with a combat strength of 194,000 men commanded by the king’s competent nephew, Prince Friedrich Karl;
Third Army, consisting of four army corps, the Baden and Württemberg Divisions, and one cavalry division, with a combat strength of 130,000 men. It was commanded by Crown Prince Friedrich who, being an enthusiast for German unity and the revival of the Reich, mixed satisfaction at his command of South German troops with pessimism as to how they would perform by Prussian standards.
First and Second Armies faced Lorraine, while Third Army covered the northeastern border of Alsace.
On 31 July the Royal Headquarters train left Berlin. Ironically, there was a hitch at the station. Colonel Karl von Brandenstein, who had planned and supervised all troop movements by rail so efficiently, found that his allocation of the General Staff to carriages according to their military function had been overturned by an official of the royal household, who had reseated everyone in order of social precedence. Brandenstein having made clear in no uncertain terms that ancien régime etiquette must make way for the demands of war directi
on in the railway age, matters were rectified. The train reached Mainz on 2 August, accompanied by Bismarck and a great gaggle of German and foreign dignitaries and newspaper correspondents.
Moltke would write in his history of the war that no plan of campaign survives the first collision with the enemy.3 In 1870 he actually modified his plan even before the enemy was sighted. It was known that the French were hurrying mobilization, sending units forward without waiting for their reservists to join them. This, and the hasty declaration of war, suggested that they must be preparing a sudden thrust across the frontier to disrupt the concentration of the German armies. While Moltke was confident, and more so with every passing day, that he could deal with such a threat, he was sufficiently cautious to disembark Second Army much further back from the frontier than he had planned, and he strengthened the perilously thin cordon of cavalry whose job was to screen the German deployment until everything was ready for the advance.
Apprehensions of a French thrust persisted for a few days. On the first day of the war the Baden authorities disabled the main bridge across the Rhine at Strasbourg, and all ferries and boats were brought to the German side. The railway bridge to the city was blown up on 22 July, and barges were sunk in the Rhine to deter French gunboats. Plans were in place for German railways to be dynamited if the French invaded. Third Army Headquarters remained cautious on 30 July, when Moltke impatiently ordered it to begin the advance. The reply came that it would not have all its troops and supplies ready until 3 August. Meanwhile the men of Second Army, laden with heavy packs and eighty rounds of ammunition each, had to march the final miles towards the frontier in intense heat down narrow roads that wound through the forested mountains of the Palatinate.
Sedan 1870- The Eclipse of France Page 11