Sedan 1870- The Eclipse of France

by Douglas Fermer

  MacMahon thought his army could not make a stand in its miserable state. Attempts to reorganize at Saverne had very limited success. Yet the state of the troops owed much to command failures. The men needed time to rest and eat properly, but they were not allowed it. So pervasive were fears of close German pursuit and ambushes that units were ordered to make night marches. Staff work had broken down badly, leading to ill-planned marches, crossing of routes and wrong turnings, often on roads shared by dejected families fleeing with their possessions on carts. Major David wrote that on 7 August,

  I passed a frightful night full of bitter reflections on the war and the train of horrors and sufferings that accompany it! And then, I was denied any sleep. I kept marching like a drunken man, stumbling at every step and bumping into men who were as benumbed as me. In my rare lucid moments I saw squads of soldiers, unable to endure the lack of sleep any longer, lay down … [by the roadside] to slumber. I would have done the same, had I been a private.41

  Yet at 1 a.m. they were allowed only one hour’s rest before marching on. MacMahon continued the illogical practice of keeping his infantry between his cavalry and the enemy, instead of sending his horsemen to find out what the Germans were doing and to drive off their scouts, whose presence was the source of so many alarms.

  From this time Louis de Narcy saw ‘indiscipline spread rapidly and badly damage our military spirit and respect for authority’.42 The Germans were taken aback by the bitterness of French prisoners against their officers, hearing them denounce MacMahon as ‘a pig’ and Napoleon as ‘an old woman’.43 Major David saw his men as ‘Poor peasants without education or training, amongst whom the concept of patriotism struck little chord! They were conscious of having done their duty. They were ready to fight again if someone would just feed them, and they thought no further than that. Such are the vices of a recruitment system which is not borne equally by all classes of society.’44

  On 9 August the demoralized troops learned that theirs had not been the only defeat on the 6th. On the Lorraine frontier General Frossard’s 2 Corps had been attacked on the Spicheren heights, overlooking Saarbrücken. The Germans had made a series of clumsy frontal assaults on French positions and paid with 4,871 casualties. By evening though, fearing that his isolated corps was being flanked after losing 4,078 men, Frossard had pulled back, and the French army in Lorraine retreated on Metz.

  MacMahon’s men reached the railway at Neufchâtel on 14 August and boarded trains which transported them to Châlons over succeeding days. An anonymous staff officer of 1 Corps, who had become bitterly disillusioned at MacMahon’s lack of grip on his army, recalled spending two nights and a day on a train:

  And why were we crawling along at the speed of a freight train in a siding? Here’s why. At Joinville we received a telegram, a telegram from a high public official, a booking clerk, no less, telling us that the line had been cut at Saint-Dizier. You would have thought that someone would have telegraphed to Saint-Dizier to find out whether this was true or not. No such thing! It was much simpler to return to Chaumont. Once there, someone thought of sending a telegram, and found out that the track had never been cut at Saint-Dizier, from which the Prussians were still far distant. It was then decided to set forth again. In sum, it was a day lost because of a stubborn reluctance to find out information. One officer sent forward the day before to ride over our route would have avoided these marches and counter-marches that tire out the men, antagonize them, and make them laugh at their leaders and regard them as pitiful.45

  Nevertheless, the movement of 1 Corps, consisting of only 22,000 infantry, 5,500 horses and 500 artillery pieces or wagons, was completed by 17 August, twenty-four hours before the Germans really did reach the railway.46

  General de Failly’s 5 Corps had joined the retreat. During the day of 6 August his soldiers had expected to be led towards the sound of gunfire, but Failly had hesitated. When word came that MacMahon had been defeated and that the Germans were at Niederbronn, he ordered a headlong retreat across the Vosges at night, needlessly abandoning supplies and equipment. Some of his units covered 120 kilometres in thirty-eight hours. Failly’s precipitate withdrawal to avoid being cut off invited bitter comparisons with the sloth of his divisions in coming to MacMahon’s aid when needed. His men, good troops who mostly had not seen the enemy or fired a shot, became disaffected and surly in retreat, particularly when they came into contact with 1 Corps units and like them suffered hunger. The Emperor, having quickly forgotten that he had put 5 Corps under MacMahon’s orders, sent it confusing and contradictory instructions which led to zigzagging and counter-marches. Failly, as ever, tried to set his own strategic agenda and separated himself again from 1 Corps until headquarters gave him peremptory orders to entrain for Châlons. A staff officer wondered acerbically, ‘Have our generals sworn an oath to fight alone and not to support the others? Does each of them aim to win a battle all by himself, so that he can be made a duke or a marshal? That’s how it seems.’47

  It was an understandable reflection on the French conduct of the campaign so far, though Failly’s movements had always been away from the enemy. His corps reached Châlons between 17 and 19 August.

  Meanwhile, after the news of Frœschwiller, the rest of Félix Douay’s 7 Corps had been withdrawn from Mulhouse in southern Alsace to Belfort. Here too, retreat had occasioned ‘shameful acts of indiscipline. There were soldiers who did not flinch from scattering their cartridges and throwing their rifles away along the road.’48 At Belfort the corps at last completed its organization and readied the defences of the fortress ‘in profound ignorance’ of events elsewhere.49 Finally, on 16 August, came orders from Paris to join MacMahon. By 20 August all Douay’s men were on trains heading north for Châlons.

  Thus the French had all but abandoned Alsace and a significant portion of Lorraine to the advancing Germans. In their wake only a few fortresses held out under siege, notably Bitche, Phalsbourg and Toul. Most important of all was Strasbourg. Only three weeks earlier the capital of Alsace had been regarded as a base for the invasion of Germany. By the second week of August it was cut off from the rest of France, its inadequate garrison supplemented by 4,000 demoralized fugitives from Frœschwiller. The Baden Field Division under General von Werder began a siege, and on the night of 14 August the first German shells landed inside the city. With the departure of 7 Corps northwards, there was no prospect of any French force coming to Strasbourg’s relief.

  Chapter 7

  The Empire Totters

  Power Changes Hands

  Paris lived on rumours and its nerves. After hopes raised by Saarbrücken and the dejection of Wissembourg, a rumour hatched in the Stock Exchange of a great victory won by MacMahon swept the city on 6 August. Edmond de Goncourt had never witnessed such enthusiasm; men pale with emotion waving their hats in the air, children leaping for joy, famous singers leading crowds in the Marseillaise.1 Flags and illuminations appeared in windows.

  The truth arrived during the night in a telegram from the Emperor to the distraught Empress: ‘We are in full retreat. A state of siege must be declared and preparations made for defence of the capital.’2 On 7 August, a Sunday Parisians would long remember, official bulletins announcing the double defeats of Frœschwiller and Spicheren produced stupefaction. ‘The silence was frightful,’ wrote Goncourt. ‘On the boulevards, not a carriage moved; in suburban houses, not even the noise of children playing; all across Paris, sound had died.’3 Alfred Darimon, a Deputy who had spent recent nights in sleepless anxiety, sought news from contacts at the Interior Ministry and his wide political circle of dining companions. Those close to the imperial government betrayed ‘the most complete despondency. They didn’t believe the Empire could survive [another] defeat.’ That evening on the boulevards, ‘the surging crowds were tempestuous. You felt it would have taken only a word to push them to anger and revolt.’4

  For two decades Napoleon III had drawn upon his uncle’s legend to pose as the man who could best protect Fr
ance. When the ageing nephew showed himself incapable of doing so, his political capital drained away. The Legislature, prorogued on 21 July, demanded to be recalled immediately, and the Empress did so without even seeking the Emperor’s authority.

  A stormy session opened on 9 August. Republican Jules Favre boldly demanded that the Emperor return from the front and that the Legislature form a Defence Committee as the new national executive. Evoking the potent legend of the levée en masse during the Prussian invasion of 1792, republicans called for the arming of the Paris National Guard. In revolutionary myth, this citizen militia was invincible, and would incidentally provide republicans with armed support in the capital. However, republicans were not yet strong enough to impose their will. The authorities took steps to prevent the Chamber being disrupted by large crowds of demonstrators outside calling loudly for arms and the overthrow of the Empire.

  It was the men of the Right, the authoritarian Bonapartists, who, with the support of the Centre, dealt the death blow to the Ollivier ministry. Baron Jerome David, the Emperor’s cousin and a grandson of the revolutionary painter Jacques-Louis David, delivered a crisp and effective attack: ‘Prussia was ready but we were not.’ The Legislature brusquely dismissed the Ollivier Cabinet, including Gramont, by voting a motion by Clément Duvernois: ‘This House, resolved to support a Cabinet capable of providing for the defence of the country, passes to the order of the day.’5

  There were ironies in Ollivier’s fall. Believing himself a principled Liberal, he had contemplated having leaders of the Left arrested and imprisoned. His Cabinet was the first in the Empire’s history to be voted out by a parliamentary majority; but one led by diehard opponents of the Liberal Empire who despised parliamentarianism and savoured their revenge. Moreover, these were the very men who had goaded the government into war only three weeks earlier. Ollivier might plead that he was hardly responsible for the errors of the high command, but there could be no political hereafter for men who had plunged France headlong into a war in which her military unreadiness had been so cruelly exposed.

  Heading the new ministry as both President of the Council and War Minister was veteran cavalryman General Charles Cousin de Montauban, Count Palikao. Montauban had led the French expedition to China in 1860, but his victory over the Chinese at Palikao had been marred by his troops burning the fabulous Summer Palace. The disapproving Legislature had first shown its independence by refusing him the financial reward proposed by the Emperor. Now the vigorous 74-year-old Palikao would have to spend a disproportionate amount of time managing the Chamber while he tried to direct the war against the Germans. David was made Minister of Public Works and Clément Duvernois Minister of Commerce. Both did creditable jobs preparing Paris for a siege.

  Presiding over this reactionary Cabinet, which was much more congenial to her than the old, was the Empress Eugénie. She had been Regent twice before, during the Italian war and again during Napoleon’s 1865 tour of Algeria. She had long aspired to the role of co-sovereign rather than consort, urging the chronically sick Emperor in 1866 to abdicate in favour of their son and make her Regent.6 Now the Cabinet debated whether the Emperor should return to Paris. For the sake of the dynasty and, it was believed, for the perpetuation of her own powers, Eugénie adamantly opposed his return to the capital, which would be seen as a defeat and might well spark revolution.

  However, the army wanted to be rid of Napoleon. In his tormented state of health, his inept, vacillating and fatalistic leadership had been a gift to the Germans, and his presence was demoralizing the troops. On 7 August General Lebrun tactfully put it to him that he should return to Paris, leaving command of the army to one of his marshals. Napoleon took no offence but asked, ‘Having left Paris at the head of the army, how do you think I could go back there today alone?’7 So he stayed at the front another ten days, his intentions oscillating between concentrating the army at Metz or Châlons, where he imagined it would have a breathing space to complete its organization. Châlons was familiar ground and covered the capital, but offered no good defensive position. Retreating there meant yielding the lines of the Moselle and Meuse, and indeed most of eastern France, without fighting. The great military city of Metz on the Moselle at least had strong forts, and seemed to offer refuge against an advancing enemy who had already gained psychological dominance over the French high command. Lack of an effective intelligence service to analyze rumours about German numbers and intentions deepened anxiety at headquarters. Any determination to manoeuvre, or to launch a surprise stroke against one of the enemy’s columns before they could unite, was conspicuously absent.

  Although Napoleon had given Marshal Achille Bazaine command of the corps in Lorraine now withdrawing to Metz, he continued to issue orders to them directly. A combination of the Emperor’s vagueness and General de Failly’s wilfulness lost the chance to bring 5 Corps directly to Metz. Similarly, Napoleon’s indecision as to where he wanted Canrobert’s 6 Corps led to much wasteful counter-marching for its still incomplete divisions, and the consequent tying up of the railways. Precious days passed without any clear strategy being formulated or put energetically into action. The Empress and Cabinet were doing no more than representing strong and widespread public concern when they pressed Napoleon to pass command to Bazaine, who enjoyed an inflated reputation in the country and the army. This popular enthusiasm was based on little more than Bazaine’s having risen from the ranks and having been out of favour at the imperial court after his command of the ill-fated Mexican expedition. Napoleon put Bazaine in command on 12 August, commiserating with Le Bœuf that ‘We are both sacked.’8

  Next day, watched by silent crowds, the Emperor set off from Metz with his luxurious convoy of wagons; but he lingered in the vicinity, still trying to act as commander-in-chief and embarrassing Bazaine with his ‘wishes’ for military movements.

  Meanwhile, the German First and Second Armies were approaching the Moselle, sending cavalry patrols across it that created alarm that the French army’s flanks were being turned. Napoleon became anxious to continue the retreat of the ‘Army of the Rhine’ westwards towards Verdun and Châlons without further loss of time. Yet, due to poor planning and staff work, enormous traffic jams developed at the river crossings and in the narrow streets of Metz. It took the army more than two days to file through the city. On 14 August two French corps were still east of the Moselle when an aggressive German brigadier attacked, bringing on a bloody slugging match in the late afternoon and twilight that would be called the Battle of Borny. The French had numerical superiority on the battlefield and might have punished German boldness. Yet Bazaine, for all his personal bravery under fire, could think only of continuing the retreat as soon as possible, in obedience to the Emperor’s injunctions. The French suffered 3,409 casualties, the Germans 4,906. Both sides claimed victory.

  That night, Napoleon congratulated Bazaine on having ‘broken the spell’ and spoke to him of the need to keep the army intact while there was still hope of bringing Austria and Italy into the war. When they talked again next day Bazaine noticed that the contents of the Emperor’s chamberpot were red with blood.9

  Finally, at dawn on 16 August, a dejected Napoleon, his face drawn with pain, took leave of Bazaine at the village of Gravelotte, west of Metz, urging him to bring the army westwards on the Verdun road. Then the carriage bearing the Emperor and the Prince Imperial drove north-west, taking a road that would avoid reported German cavalry patrols. General Margueritte’s Chasseurs d’Afrique would act as an escort. As Napoleon disappeared, Bazaine ‘could not refrain from immediately expressing his satisfaction in no uncertain terms’.10

  The Châlons Conference

  If Bazaine’s taciturnity had won him a reputation as a great general, it was General Jules Trochu’s eloquence that made him a favourite of the opposition. After the first defeats, Trochu’s pre-war criticisms of the army’s weaknesses lent him the prestige of a prophet, and his readily expressed ideas caused Paris politicians of the Left and C
entre to turn to him as a man with all the answers in a crisis. They favoured his appointment as War Minister, but the intellectual Breton’s conscience would not allow him to serve the imperial regime unless he were allowed to denounce its past mistakes to the Legislature. With German armies advancing towards Paris, it was small wonder the Cabinet found this proposal unappealing. Still, some use had to be made of the popular general, who had been sidelined at the start of the war with command of an observation corps on the Spanish border. He had then been designated to lead a seaborne expedition to Denmark, until that plan was aborted. Now he was given command of a corps hurriedly being assembled to swell the numbers of the Army of Châlons. To impress the Germans this was designated 12 Corps, though corps numbered 8–11 did not exist.

  As he set off from the Gare de l’Est in Paris on the night of 15 August, the bald, dapper Trochu had other responsibilities in mind. A week earlier he had written a powerful memorandum to a friend in the imperial entourage, who made sure it was seen by the Emperor, warning of the dangers of allowing the army to stay at Metz, where it would inevitably be encircled. Instead, Trochu urged, it should be pulled back to operate in front of Paris, where its supplies were assured and it would be sufficiently strong to prevent the Germans laying a siege.

  What he saw at Châlons station on 16 August affronted his strict Catholic sensibilities and confirmed his view that MacMahon’s troops were in no state to be led into battle: