By 3 p.m. the Germans were firmly astride the Frœschwiller ridge and had eighty guns targeting French resistance around the blazing hamlet of Elsasshausen. More and more German troops came up, and those who had become detached from their units in the heat of the fighting simply joined in the great semicircle of fire around the French.
Retreat was MacMahon’s only option, but he needed to stem the German tide if he was to save his army. He turned to Bonnemains’s heavy cavalry division. In their religiously burnished breastplates these socially elite riders held it as an article of faith that theirs was the decisive, battle-winning arm, and that nothing could withstand their shock. Yet the ground over which these cuirassiers had to charge was even worse than that encountered by Michel’s men two hours earlier, cut with ditches and cultivated with orchards, hedges, vineyards and hop-fields with wooden posts and wire trellises that could bring horses and riders crashing to earth. MacMahon was dismissive of such obstacles, and sent the units of Bonnemains’s Division hurtling down the slopes towards Wœrth in a series of charges.
Some regiments were caught by German artillery even before they set off: one colonel was decapitated by a shell in the act of raising his sabre to order the charge. Cuirassier Georges de Moussac, having crossed himself as he started down the slope, was gathering speed when he realized that a comrade had collided with a tree. Then he felt a blow to his head: ‘We had come to a hop-field, from which came a very heavy fire; it was impossible to get at the enemy. The Germans were almost invisible amidst all these poles and foliage.’ Men were falling all around him. Similarly Firmin Guillouet was halted at a ditch when beneath some trees he saw masses of men ‘who from their cover fired at us almost point-blank. The bullets flew past our ears, making a sound like a swarm of flies. All our officers save one were toppled.’ Withdrawing, his unit charged again. Guillouet sabred a German who had bayoneted him through the thigh, but despite supporting mitrailleuse fire he and his comrades were forced back by shelling and the fire of oncoming German columns. Their unit was in tatters. From the debris of another squadron the only man to get close to the German line was a bugler whose eye had been shot out and who was carried forward, blinded and screaming, by his maddened horse. When a comrade galloped forward and grabbed the horse’s reins to turn it around, the Germans refrained from shooting. As the pair withdrew, the wounded man begged to be finished off.23 Five hundred of Bonnemains’s men had been shot down or captured. The Germans pressed forward doggedly.
Next MacMahon ordered up his reserve artillery to bombard the Germans who had taken Elsasshausen, but the gunners were felled by rifle fire within minutes. Then he sent in the 1st Algerian Sharpshooters (popularly known as Turcos), still a formidable unit despite their loss of 500 men at Wissembourg. They ran forward into clouds of smoke. Louis de Narcy could make out only spiked helmets ahead of him and a wall of dark uniforms beyond that. Converging fire wrought havoc in the Turcos’ closely packed ranks, and they paused to re-form behind a crest. Fixing bayonets, they charged ahead with ‘long, savage cries’ in Arabic, and for a moment they looked unstoppable as they retook Elsasshausen. Beyond it they were caught in a crossfire, and could find no one to bayonet: ‘Our soldiers were packed together, forming visible groups and standing upright, heads high, looking for the enemy columns. But the Prussians lay under cover and laid us low without showing themselves.’24 After a further vigorous effort to charge the German guns that were decimating them, the Algerians were finally halted by a hail of shells. As they fought to hold their position, Narcy watched one of his men use his knife to cut off his smashed thumb, which was hanging by a shred. Eventually, the Turcos were forced to retreat to avoid encirclement, leaving 800 men behind them, half the regiment’s strength.
On the French northern flank Ducrot had held his ground all day against the relatively timid Bavarians, and had been able to send units to reinforce threatened points to the south. However, another Bavarian corps had come into line and his left flank was being turned, forcing him back. By 4 p.m. the Germans occupied three sides of a box around the French, to the north, east and south, and were massing men and guns for a final assault. MacMahon organized a last-ditch defence around the village of Frœschwiller to protect the westward retreat.
There was pandemonium in the village as shells fell. The larger buildings – the chateau, the church, the town hall – were all being used as hospitals. The church caught fire and the wounded had to be rapidly evacuated. In the town hall Dr Charles Sarazin, an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Strasbourg before the war, had been operating since morning. Sarazin had volunteered as chief surgeon of Ducrot’s division, but had found medical supplies so short that he had had to beg chloroform from the civilian hospital. On 27 July he had ridden out of Strasbourg with all the equipment he could find in a hackney cab, thinking that ‘if it weren’t so sad, it would have been quite laughable!’25 Finally his wagons and orderlies had arrived, and he and his team were working at full stretch in Frœschwiller. Sarazin had had the foresight to have buckets filled with water early in the day, which was just as well as a German shell soon destroyed the pump in the street. Others occasionally penetrated the building, killing patients and starting fires that had to be quickly extinguished. As the wounded poured in Sarazin learned that stories of performing major operations under fire were myth. Amid the noise, ‘when I asked for forceps or a knife they passed me a sponge or a thread for ligature.’26 As he bent down to tend his patients he suffered acute back pain and fatigue as the sound of battle raged outside.
All of a sudden the bombardment ceased. I was occupied in staunching the bleeding from the forearm of an infantry lieutenant whom I had anaesthetized. I was on my own, without help, on my knees in the straw. Next to me a major who had been shot through the chest gave a low groan and suffocated. Further off, an officer whose forehead had been opened by a shell fragment died in convulsions. With that ability peculiar to people under stress, I developed a dual personality: the surgeon was entirely absorbed in the delicate operation he was performing, while the man was thinking of his wife and child who – would you believe – was exactly seven weeks old at that hour. In this Hell I held on to that little corner of Heaven, and dreamed that I would be lucky enough to see them again.
Just as he was tying up an artery,
a long, doleful, unfamiliar bugle call broke the silence that several minutes ago had succeeded the din of the bombardment. Oh, that accursed bugle! Better a hundred times to endure the crackle of bullets and the hissing and bursting of shells! Everyone stopped. The wounded raised themselves up. We looked at each other without saying a word. Some covered their faces; everybody understood. Oh how hard is the first defeat!
Outside there were frenzied hurrahs, commands in German, a few shots, and thousands of German soldiers rushed headlong into Frœschwiller, surrounding the hospital. They looked wild-eyed, suspicious, fierce, and were black with powder.27
MacMahon, having had one horse shot beneath him during the day and his clothing nicked by bullets, was among the last French troops to leave Frœschwiller before the victorious Germans swept in at about 5 p.m. Ducrot conducted a fighting retreat as the defeated and disorganized French crowded down the forest road to Reichshoffen and then on to the town of Niederbronn. There, at last, they met the leading division of Failly’s Corps, which was able to beat off German cavalry whose slashing attacks had provoked panic among desperately fleeing troops and teamsters. As night fell MacMahon fainted and fell from his horse, but after being revived with brandy wired the Emperor from Niederbronn, ‘I have lost the battle.’28
Frœschwiller had been a bloodbath for both sides. French losses were approximately 19,600, of whom 9,200 were captured. The loss of 630 officers was a particular blow to the army’s organization. Among the dead were a division commander, General Raoult, and MacMahon’s chief of staff. As befitted the marshal’s style of warfare, French accounts of the heroism and sacrifice of individual units would read almost like modern variants
of Froissart’s chronicles of chivalry. Yet fighting the battle with a single corps in isolation proved a costly mistake. The strength of some of the best units in the French army had been squandered. MacMahon’s personal bravery and determination had been conspicuous, but his strategic and tactical judgement had proved questionable. French counter-attacks had been piecemeal and prodigal in lives, whereas earlier coordinated attacks by all arms might have had more effect and have allowed a less costly retreat.
For the Germans, who cheered the Crown Prince as he entered the village, Frœschwiller was a hard-fought and bruising victory, costing 1,589 dead, 7,680 wounded and 1,373 missing, for a total of 10,642. Of these, officer casualties totalled 489, including the wounded General von Bose. The improvised nature of the battle amply demonstrated German initiative and determination to win, but the premature offensive had increased losses, and opportunities to cut off the French retreat were lost. The Crown Prince had been exasperated by the slowness of the Bavarians in the north. The lead units of the Württemberg Division which he had ordered to cut off the French retreat had instead been diverted into the fighting for Elsasshausen. Still, the enemy was in full retreat and the Germans were masters of Alsace.
The terrified citizens of the area where the battle had been fought had sought refuge in cellars or the forest. A few who stayed in their villages were killed by stray shells or bullets. A handful lost their minds permanently from their experiences during those August days. Others met a brutal fate. From their entry into Alsace German troops had mixed anger at the French declaration of war with suspicion of the population. Fearful of poison, they customarily accompanied demands for drink with insistence that the donor first drink some himself. There was paranoia concerning French civilians firing at German troops. A few instances did occur, magnifying German fears, but any shot fired from an unseen source too often was attributed to civilians rather than to French troops firing from cover. During the heat of battle on 6 August a rumour took hold among the Germans that their wounded had been mutilated in the village of Gunstett. Enraged soldiers shot or beat to death at least five inhabitants. In other villages citizens who emerged too early from their cellars risked being shot as francs-tireurs. Others were arrested, beaten and maltreated for days on suspicion of sniping. As passions cooled, however, and as local dignitaries interceded with senior German officers, most of these hapless people were released. Appeals to the Crown Prince seldom failed to meet with a merciful response.29
Once the battle ended, famished and thirsty German troops, having risked their lives in combat all day, pillaged Frœschwiller for every morsel of food and wine, sometimes threatening anyone in their way with death. Within hours, however, German officers restored discipline more effectively than their French counterparts had done before the battle.
The day of battle was only the beginning of the local people’s ordeal. Besides shortages of food and water and ruined or damaged buildings, the dead had to be interred. Villagers were drafted to dig burial pits in which French and German corpses were laid indiscriminately, by the dozen or the hundred. The gruelling work took days, and though the weather turned cold and wet the smell became nauseating. As it proved almost impossible to move the hundreds of dead horses littering the field, most were dug into the earth where they lay. German military police also supervised the clearance of battlefield debris, and heaps of spiked helmets, breastplates and bayonets were piled up for collection. The emptied pockets and slit haversacks of the dead and wounded testified that battlefield marauders had already done their work.30
Every effort was made to bring the wounded under cover, but for some this took two or three days while they lay exposed to heat and rain. For many, help came too late, and months after the battle bodies were found in undergrowth and gullies. Even those brought inside were often packed into buildings with roofs holed by shells. Many died for lack of attention because there were too few doctors. ‘My heart was close to breaking,’ confessed Pastor Klein, ‘at hearing the screams and lamentations of these poor victims of the battle, whose haggard faces and eyes burning with fever seemed sinister and terrifying in the half-light.’31
Every building in the area became a hospital as exhausted doctors worked for days performing operations. On the French side anaesthetic had run out. Sarazin, for instance, could give some amputees only spirits. He grudgingly acknowledged that help given by German doctors and their well-organized stretcher teams was invaluable. A French volunteer admitted, ‘Our wounded lived by the generosity of our enemy.’32 If battle and its aftermath showed the worst of human nature, it also brought out the best. Within days help and desperately needed supplies flowed in from Germany, France and Switzerland, and cartloads of food were sent by villages in the region that had suffered less severely.
With the help of the International Society (the ‘Red Cross’), most wounded were evacuated to Haguenau, the nearest large town, by 10 August. In the overcrowded conditions of field hospitals many wounds had become foul. Sarazin observed:
Often, because the wounded were unable to raise themselves up and did not get timely help from hospital orderlies who were too few in number, their evacuations of every sort were mixed with the damp and bloody straw on which they lay.
For transport we had only the peasants’ carts. They were very uncomfortable and … exposed the wounded to new tortures. Imagine if you will a man suffering from broken bones as a result of a gunshot to the lower limbs, or even an amputee. Every jarring, even a light one, provokes the sharpest pain. What will a journey of three hours be like for him, with hard and continual jolts from a vehicle without suspension, on an uneven road rendered almost impassable by the passage of an entire army with much artillery? Nevertheless, it was in just these conditions that the evacuation of the field hospitals from Frœschwiller to Haguenau was carried out.33
Despite better facilities in Haguenau, infections spread rapidly. French surgeons were more reluctant than their German colleagues to accept antiseptic practices, and their amputees had a mortality rate of about 80 per cent. The stench of putrefaction became unbearable. Such conditions convinced Doctor Henri Beaunis that it was ‘better for a seriously wounded man to be treated in a village by a mediocre surgeon than by a prince of the art in a large hospital’.34
Meanwhile, the war went on. A French aid worker in Frœschwiller watched seemingly endless enemy columns tramp by: ‘The onward march of the German invasion continued for three days without interruption. All the roads were black with troops, like a busy, fast-flowing swarm of ants.’35
The Retreat
The retreat from Frœschwiller on the evening of 6 August was ‘a dream, a frightful nightmare’, a French staff officer recalled.36 Men’s heads ached and their ears rang from the concussion of gunfire. Amid the chaos of men, horses and wagons, wrote an infantry major, ‘All the units jumbled up and in confusion formed an indescribable mob. Shells whistled into the midst of this throng, ploughing bloody gaps.’ Haunted by the pitiful sights of the corpsestrewn road and the pleas of the wounded not to be abandoned, the beaten army marched through the night.37
From Niederbronn most of the retreating French headed south-west to Saverne, though enough turned north-west towards Bitche to produce the accidental benefit of throwing the Germans onto the wrong scent. The Germans assumed that MacMahon would attempt to rejoin the rest of the Army of the Rhine directly, just as they were anxious to regain contact with the left wing of their Second Army in Lorraine. Although they captured great quantities of men, equipment and guns amid scenes that reminded one cavalryman of the aftermath of Königgrätz,38 they failed to pursue the French hard enough to turn a disordered retreat into rout. In fact, they soon lost contact with the enemy altogether.
MacMahon might have attempted to defend the pass through the Vosges Mountains at Saverne, or have continued into southern Alsace to join the rest of 7 Corps and threaten the flank of the advancing Germans. He might have moved north via Nancy to rejoin the Emperor at Metz, or have halte
d at the line of the Meuse. But he, with Napoleon’s concurrence, had but one thought: to get the battered remnant of his force far to the rear, to Châlons Camp on the River Marne, where it could both regroup and cover Paris. So he passed through the Vosges into Lorraine. When engineers asked for orders to blow up the railway tunnel through the mountains, MacMahon said no: the French might need it if they returned to the offensive. When the Germans reached Saverne they were surprised and relieved to find the tunnel intact. It would be of great service to them.
The French retreated through eleven days and 350 kilometres, the last 170 kilometres to Châlons being by rail. The conditions of the march deepened the demoralization begun by defeat. The troops were utterly exhausted and hungry, most of them having had to leave their knapsacks behind on the battlefield. The Intendance seemed incapable of organizing enough bread to feed them all, either at Saverne or any of the other towns they passed through. In some places the inhabitants were generous, but often the men lived by begging, foraging in orchards and potato fields, or pillaging the farms and villages they passed through. Many got drunk on wine, fell out of ranks and became insubordinate. One officer of MacMahon’s staff was grossly insulted by drunken soldiers who proceeded to hurl abuse at officers who could afford to sit in cafés eating and drinking.39 Another had to draw his revolver on two Zouaves who tried to rob him of his purse.40 On top of this, from 9 August it rained heavily for days, soaking men to the skin and condemning them to sleep in fields of liquid mud.
Sedan 1870- The Eclipse of France Page 14