While the Germans were making their bold flanking march around the loop of the Meuse and fanning out from Saint-Menges, Douay’s 7 Corps remained passively on the ridge above Floing, facing north-west. Douay had learned of MacMahon’s wounding, but if Ducrot sent him an order to withdraw it never arrived. Logically, Ducrot’s regrouping plan should have required 7 Corps to move first. It was perhaps as well it did not, for it might have been struck by the Germans while in motion.
At about 10.30 a.m. Wimpffen wrote assuring Douay that he was facing only a demonstration, and urged him to send whatever troops he could spare to help Lebrun. Then Wimpffen arrived in person, and Douay rode with him along his line to show him how matters really stood. The accuracy of German shellfire, Wimpffen admitted, was such as ‘I would have been the first to admire in other circumstances.’ Douay hoped to maintain his position provided that his vulnerable right, at the northern apex of the French line, could be supported. Wimpffen promised to send ample troops from 1 and 5 Corps to bolster that point and rode off, exhorting Douay to ‘Cheer up now! We must have a victory!’34
In some places Douay’s men had the shelter of light field entrenchments, and at first held firm under bombardment. Only in one infantry unit was there brief panic when two French batteries withdrew 50 metres, but once these guns resumed firing the men steadied. As the Germans extended their gun-line southwards some well-screened mitrailleuses inflicted considerable losses on their crews. Meanwhile, as the Germans were deploying north-eastwards the French cavalry thought it saw its chance.
General Jean Margueritte was marked by his superiors as a potential future leader of all French cavalry. His regiments of Chasseurs d’Afrique, in their distinctive sky-blue jackets and tall caps, had sailed from Algeria in the first week of August. On the 12th Margueritte had demonstrated his and their fighting spirit by surrounding a party of German dragoons who had boldly crossed the Moselle at Pont-à-Mousson south of Metz. In the ensuing fight the visor of his cap was cleft by an enemy sabre, but the Germans lost eight killed and twenty-seven captured. Thereafter his brigade had been detailed to escort the Emperor to Châlons, and Margueritte was appointed to command the Light Division of the new army’s cavalry reserve. Campaigning in the rain and mud of northern France had brought the Chasseurs little opportunity to shine, and no doubt, like Louis de Narcy, they pined for ‘our beautiful African skies where one so easily forgets all that is sad and painful’.35 Today they stood in rear of the right wing of Douay’s 7 Corps at the Calvaire d’Illy. Soon after 10 a.m., Margueritte ordered the Marquis de Gallifet, commanding his 1st Brigade, to charge westwards against the German left which was advancing towards the village of Illy, then to attack their guns east of Saint-Menges.
Gallifet, whose counter-guerrilla operations in Mexico had earned him a reputation for ruthlessness, lined up his three regiments of Chasseurs one behind the other and started forward. The German infantry, commanded at this point by Major Count Schlieffen, saw the charge coming and made ready. They opened fire at 50 metres, causing the leading French regiment to veer off to left and right, only to come under fire from riflemen concealed in brushwood and then to be plastered with artillery shells. Having lost ninety-seven men, the regiment returned to its starting point. The two behind it fared no better. A little later Margueritte saw the guns of V Corps appearing north of those of XI Corps, but their infantry supports arrived so quickly that he abandoned plans for another charge.
Too late also was an isolated French infantry counter-attack at Floing, after the Germans had occupied it in force. The attack, a determined initiative led by Colonel Formy de La Blanchetée, remained unsupported. For an hour there was a see-saw fight in the village and cemetery until the Germans brought up reinforcements and finally ejected the French. As this combat was dying down, at about 12.30 p.m., the Germans suffered their highest ranking casualty of the day. As he directed operations from a park north of Floing General von Gersdorff, commanding XI Corps, was mortally wounded by a bullet in the chest.
By that time German rifle companies pushing north-eastwards had moved beyond Fleigneux, capturing a French wagon-train and some guns, and had pressed on through woods that were already full of French soldiers heading for Belgium. It was at about noon, near the hamlet of Olly, that infantrymen of Third Army made contact with a squadron of Hussars of the Guard from Fourth Army. The German left had joined hands with the right. The French were surrounded.
The Ring of Fire
The circle of steel guns now forged around the French was a more immediate and deadly peril than the infantry cordon. Even before the junction of Third and Fourth Armies, the converging fire of their guns from east and west was grinding down the French capacity to resist. French units found themselves shelled from front and rear, with no safe refuge. Fugitives from 1 Corps running into the Bois de la Garenne from the east ran into men from 7 Corps running the other way. Even when shells claimed relatively few victims or buried themselves in the soft earth, ‘they had an enormous psychological influence’.36
The northern sector of the French position in particular became so shell swept that cavalry could not stay there. Margueritte managed to hold most of his units together and pulled them back into the wood, one of his brigadiers being cut in half by a shell during the withdrawal. The divisional cavalry of 1 Corps (Michel) and 5 Corps (Brahaut), after vainly seeking safety, made their separate ways northwards through the woods before the German pincers closed. Michel passed through Olly before the Germans arrived, and after dipping across the Belgian frontier reached Charleville and eventually Versailles. Brahaut was not so fortunate, being captured in an encounter with the Germans which dispersed many of his men. Most of 12 Corps’ cavalry found its way barred by Prussian infantry and returned to the Bois de la Garenne, save for one regiment which found its way north. Probably a third of French cavalry had left the field before the envelopment was complete, either to fight another day (about 3,000 troopers) or to be disarmed and interned in Belgium. In all, between 8,000 and 10,000 ‘completely demoralized’ French troops of all arms reached Mézières by woods roads during the day.37
On the roads to the frontier there was chaos and terror. Dr Sarazin, who had become separated from Ducrot after halting to tend an artillery officer with a smashed thigh, found them ‘jammed with carriages, caissons, wagons, fugitives and riders’ together with local people: ‘These poor folk were dragging their weeping children along with them and were carrying off, on carts or wheelbarrows, everything they had been able to throw together in haste.’ Panic spread as German cavalry attacked, riding down or sabring all who did not scatter. Escaping into brushwood, Sarazin reflected, ‘What is a man once he has lost his courage! On this road, within my sight, there were at least two or three hundred infantrymen armed with Chassepots and supplied with cartridges’ who might easily have defended themselves, but ‘Our men, who would have fought bravely in other circumstances, fired not a single shot against the horsemen who were sabring them! How strange!’ Further on, he encountered a ‘wild cavalcade’ of French cavalrymen from different units heading for Belgium in ‘wild disorder’, trailed by wounded and riderless horses. Behind them the roll of gunfire was unceasing.38
Between noon and 2 p.m., French infantry and artillery strove to defend the plateau at the Calvaire d’Illy. Ducrot sought out Wimpffen and, after claiming credit as a prophet, told him, ‘You must hurry and send reinforcements if you want to keep hold of that position.’ ‘You take care of that,’ replied Wimpffen, ‘gather all the troops you can … while I look after 12 Corps.’39 Ducrot gave orders to send men and guns towards the Calvaire, but they were driven back by the weight of fire. When General Douay came to inspect his right at 12.30 p.m. he was horrified to discover that the plateau had been evacuated by 1 Corps.
During the morning Douay had sent away all the troops he could spare in response to Wimpffen’s repeated requests to aid Lebrun. The brigade from 5 Corps designated to anchor his right had been despatched, and he h
ad pulled his strongest division, Dumont’s, out of line to follow it. Yet one of Dumont’s brigades, Bordas’s, largely disintegrated under shellfire as it emerged from the southern boundary of the Bois de la Garenne, and fled back under the trees. The other brigade, that of Bittard des Portes, was moved back and forth within the woods more than half a dozen times in obedience to successive orders and counter-orders from Dumont, Douay and Wimpffen, all the time suffering serious losses. So many men straggled as a result that the brigade had dwindled to the strength of two battalions before it was ordered into action.
Douay and his generals performed prodigies trying to rally fugitives from Dumont’s Division and other units in the woods and to funnel them towards the crest of the Calvaire, using the cover of a thick hedge to shield them from German observation. Under the direction of General Doutrelaine, Douay’s Chief Engineer, the infantry tried to cling on to the crest. Three of Dumont’s batteries supported them and for a short while prevented the Germans from debouching from the village of Illy in the valley below, but Prussian guns soon zeroed in on them. Within half an hour they had lost over thirty men, sixty horses and three ammunition caissons. Douay sent up two batteries from the reserve to replace them. The first lasted only a few minutes before two guns were dismounted, one caisson was destroyed and sixteen men and twenty-seven horses were out of action. It was forced to abandon the position and two guns. Douay ordered the second battery to withdraw. It was all too typical of the fate of French gunners who fought against ever lengthening odds until either their guns were wrecked or their ammunition gave out. In Douay’s Corps alone, forty artillery caissons were hit by enemy fire during the day, each explosion leaving a shambles of human and horse flesh. French reports groped to describe the ‘rain’, ‘hail’, ‘hurricane’ or ‘avalanche’ of enemy shells falling on and all around them. French fire was audibly slackening.
At about 2 p.m. the improvised defence of the Calvaire collapsed as German shelling drove the last defenders back into the Bois de la Garenne. Soon German infantry appeared at the Calvaire and pressed on into the woods, only to be driven out by a French counter-attack. The prisoners the Germans had taken during their foray were so dazed that they made no attempt to escape. A fire-fight developed along the northern edge of the Bois de la Garenne.
In the southern sector of the battlefield too German pressure was building. During the morning Hartmann’s II Bavarian Corps had come up from Raucourt. Crown Prince Friedrich ordered one of its divisions to cross the Meuse to support Tann’s men west of Bazeilles. From 11 a.m. it became embroiled in an obstinate struggle with French troops in the chateau park outside Balan. The other division of II Bavarian faced Sedan from the south, occupying the villages of Frénois and Wadelincourt, sending patrols into the Iges peninsula, and trading shots with the garrison of Sedan. On 30 August the French had closed a weir, causing the Meuse to inundate the meadows south of the town, ‘so that Sedan seemed to be placed in a lake, its ancient bastions and battlements, spires and steeples, reflected in the placid waters’, reminding William Howard Russell of one of Turner’s views of Venice.40 With the approaches to the town thus restricted, the real work in this sector was for the divisional and corps artillery, which opened fire from the hills to the south from 9 a.m. Finding their range with deliberation, the Bavarian gunners directed only part of their fire against the rampart guns of Sedan, which replied steadily. They also aimed at Douay’s men, visible on the hills beyond, and at Lebrun’s troops around Balan. The French were being tormented from all sides.
Behind the Bavarian guns, on the La Marfée heights, stood King Wilhelm and his entourage, including princes from the German states, foreign dignitaries, staff men and newspaper correspondents. From here they had a grandstand view under a hot sun. ‘It was a battle panorama such as nobody will ever see again,’ thought one of Moltke’s officers, and Moritz Busch likened the noise to ‘half-a-dozen thunderstorms’.41 The day was now so clear that through his glass Russell could see people in the streets of Sedan, and beyond the town dark masses of advancing Prussian infantry, sunlight playing on their bayonets and the spikes of their helmets, puffs of bluish-white smoke continually spurting from hundreds of cannon, and vast clouds of black smoke rising above the trees from the direction of Bazeilles. Russell noticed that Wilhelm spoke little save for an occasional word to Moltke or Roon, but pulled his moustache frequently. Bismarck, in his white cuirassier’s uniform and cap, stood slightly apart, smoking cigars a great deal and chatting with the stocky little Yankee general Phil Sheridan, erstwhile scourge of the Confederates and latterly of the Red Indians. Sheridan’s policy in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 of leaving his enemies ‘nothing but their eyes to weep with’ chimed with Bismarck’s increasingly splenetic view of the French.42 Moltke gave no orders. His gaze alternated between his telescope and his map as he stood musing, his right hand pressed to his face.43
Under the eyes of these august spectators a crisis unfolded between 1 and 2 p.m. on the hills north-west of Sedan. On their left Douay’s men were holding on doggedly to the slopes above Floing, but XI Corps was now fully deployed against them. Using dead ground, a brigade worked around the French left flank, between Floing and the Meuse. If it reached the heights above Gaulier, it could roll up the French line from the south. As it advanced, the Germans pushed forward from Floing. Liébert’s division, defending this sector, made a supreme effort to throw back assaults on its front and flank. Struggling with steep terrain, the Germans gave ground to these counterattacks in places, but soon came on again, supported by their own guns and those of the Bavarians across the Meuse, which together smothered the French positions with shell. At about 2 p.m., as the French were losing the Calvaire d’Illy to the north, intermingled German units by common impulse started pushing up the hillside above Floing and gained a foothold on the crest of the hills to its south. Desperate measures were required if the French were to stop them.
The Cavalry Charges
General Ducrot’s orderly found General Margueritte in a ravine north of the La Garenne Farm and explained his orders to him. ‘You know that what you’re asking of me is a serious matter?’ Margueritte queried, and asked for his instructions to be repeated before leading his division towards the ridge above Floing.44 Ducrot came in person and ordered him to charge westwards downhill to breach the German lines, then to turn right against their flank. Ducrot then went back to bring up some of his infantry to follow the cavalry.
Margueritte went forward to reconnoitre the terrain while his regiments deployed behind the crest. He sent back word that they should prepare to charge squadron by squadron in an effort to break through. It was near 2 p.m. and the air was full of bullets. As Margueritte rode back up the ridge one passed through his cheeks, breaking his jaw and partially severing his tongue. His orderlies got him back on his horse and over the crest, where his men beheld a frightful sight. A stream of blood pouring down his beard and uniform, the general gestured with his arm towards the enemy. There were cries of ‘Forward!’ from the nearest squadrons, which were growing restive under galling fire and were restrained from starting immediately only with difficulty. Margueritte’s successor, General Gallifet, was issuing orders for the charge when an impatient Ducrot rode up, insisting that the situation was increasingly critical.
So the bugles sounded, and off went Margueritte’s 1,800 men: three regiments of Chasseurs d’Afrique (including the 4th, which had charged superbly to disengage the British Light Brigade at Balaklava sixteen years earlier), one of Chasseurs de France and one of hussars. They were joined by some squadrons of lancers and cuirassiers. As the division poured over the crest and thundered down the slope, nobody suspected that this was the last time an old-style cavalry charge would be seen on a Western European battlefield. The barrage of fire that greeted them from front and flank was withering, and was not the only hazard. The ground was steep and uneven, pitted with sudden depressions, and to the left above Gaulier there were hidden quarries. Many a horse and
rider died of a broken neck. Nor did German infantrymen give way. Taking cover where they could in ditches or behind hedges, they worked the bolts of their needle guns. Where there was no cover they formed knots to defend themselves. Their volleys continued ‘like the rattling of a Catherine wheel’, inflicting devastating losses on the French within minutes and covering the hillside with heaps of dying white and grey horses and their masters.45 Although most survivors veered to right or left, some pressed their charges home. The German official account conceded that ‘a comparatively large number’ of German riflemen received slash or stab wounds.46 In a mêlée that extended from Cazal to north of Floing amid smoke and wild confusion, a few horsemen forced their way through the first German line. Some penetrated the streets of Floing, some sabred German gunners in a battery to its south, while some even got in among German convoys near Saint-Albert. Such exceptional local successes were short-lived, however, for German support troops soon shot down or captured those who had got through. The remainder retreated back up the hill to reform in the Bois de la Garenne, causing ‘considerable disorder’ among Douay’s remaining infantry as they galloped through them.47
Ducrot meanwhile had brought up his only available infantry brigade, Gandil’s, and demanded another charge to clear a way for it. Gallifet objected that the ground was unsuitable, so Ducrot directed him more to the north-west. This took the cavalry obliquely across the front of French infantry who, mistaking them for enemies, opened fire on them until Ducrot rode over to intervene. Gallifet and his men attacked with an élan and courage that won the respect of their enemies but which could not prevail against modern artillery and rifles steadily handled. The cavalry action was over in half an hour. The charge was brilliant, Bismarck conceded, but flouted the principles of war: against unbroken troops it was ‘folly, but a heroic folly’.48 Margueritte’s troopers paid dearly for their ride into immortality. At daybreak the division had been 2,408 strong; next morning 1,327 answered roll call.49
Sedan 1870- The Eclipse of France Page 23