Sedan 1870- The Eclipse of France

by Douglas Fermer

  This corpse, like others, had been plundered. Russell saw a man using the cover of a Red Cross armband to fill an enormous bag with watches, purses, gold and silver taken from the dead and dying.13 The battlefield was littered with debris: weapons of all sorts, knapsacks, caps, helmets, belts, plumes, shakos, spurs, boots, brushes, letters, sheet-music, whips and bridles, which all in all ‘would furnish an immense bazaar’. On the outskirts of Sedan gardens and cemeteries were in ruins. Many horses lay writhing in agony from wounds or trapped beneath upturned wagons, ‘until either a friendly revolver or death from exhaustion put an end to their torment’.14 Many unceremonious interments of men and horses were in graves that were too shallow, giving rise to a nauseating stench that hung over Sedan for weeks.15

  Care of the wounded was better organized than at Waterloo a generation earlier, thanks to the railways and improved medical services. The Hanoverian Dr Georg Stromeyer, the German Surgeon General, established a large, well-ventilated and clean hospital at Floing. Belgium and Luxembourg gave effective aid. Under the direction of Dr Merchie, the Belgian hospital service treated 1,800 French and 1,150 Germans. Although the Germans only belatedly informed the Belgian government, during September and October they evacuated 6,500 wounded from the battles of Beaumont and Sedan by rail to Aachen across Belgian territory.16

  Flawed organization made French efforts less effective. During August the French Society for Aid to the Wounded used the donations that poured in to equip eighteen large ‘Ambulances’, that is, mobile field hospitals staffed by civilian volunteers, and despatched them from Paris to the front. But the lavish supplies they carried were sometimes ill-considered. Ambulance No. 5, for instance, carried copious cucumber pomade but little chloroform, and its surgeons had to beg a carpentry saw to perform amputations. The ambulances were overstaffed with largely unvetted and untrained crews: too often hospital orderlies were pilferers looking for opportunities. Moreover, when the volunteer ambulances reached the front the army sometimes proved hostile or indifferent, and they were left to fend for themselves. Nevertheless, Ambulance No. 5 treated six hundred patients during the campaign.17

  One of the best run ambulances was the Anglo-American, headed by Dr Marion Sims, who like several of his American colleagues was a veteran of the Confederate medical service. Based at the Asfeld Barracks at Sedan, they treated two thousand patients. The war had also provided the stimulus for the formation of the British Red Cross, which organized relief and sent trained nurses to Sedan.

  Impressive as were these international efforts to relieve suffering and save life, they could not transcend the limits of the medical science of the day. Skilled civilian surgeons tried to save limbs using the best ‘conservative’ techniques known, but William MacCormac, for one, regretted having yielded so often to the temptation of trying to save seriously damaged limbs.18 Where immediate amputation might have saved a man, it was too late once infection set in. Subsequent amputations were rarely successful, and doctors found patients who had been doing well succumbing. Even when antiseptic dressings were applied, they were of little value once the surgeon’s probing fingers or instruments, or fragments of cloth driven into the wound, had introduced infection.

  Disease began to spread. Even the Germans found that typhus and dysentery were wreaking havoc among patients who had not been evacuated.19 In the Anglo-American Ambulance, staff and patients began falling sick. One cause, the half-decomposed body of a Zouave who had fallen into the well, was removed; but still patients died by the dozen daily from fever, secondary haemorrhage, dysentery and hospital gangrene. Charles Ryan, a young Irish surgeon, lamented that for all their efforts, their hospital had become ‘a centre of the plague, and threatened to be a death-trap’ to all admitted. Often comfort was the best treatment that could be offered. When a wounded Chasseur officer asked plaintively, ‘Tell me, Doctor, is it possible that Christ suffered as much as I am suffering now?’ Ryan could only console him with the thought that ‘Your pain is as nothing to his.’20

  In Sedan on 2 September the French army prepared for imprisonment: ‘Everything and everybody looked utterly wretched and miserable. At each corner were the bloody skeletons and entrails of horses, from which every scrap of flesh had been cut, but bread was not to be had for love or money.’21 Men lay in the street or cooked horsemeat. Most smashed and flung down their weapons and burned their flags rather than surrender them. Discipline was at a low ebb: ‘the common soldiers felt and expressed the heartiest contempt for their officers.’22 General Lebrun struck across the face with his cane a man who was loudly denouncing generals. A cavalry colonel was put under arrest for his outburst during his brigadier’s farewell speech: ‘You want to say goodbye to us? Do we know you? Since we’ve been under your command you haven’t once come to see your regiments. You never enquired about their needs. You never did anything for them.’23

  Yet there was also relief at being out of danger, particularly among French troops who had crossed the frontier and were on their way to internment at Beverloo Camp in Belgium. A despondent Dr Sarazin was shocked to see them laughing and joking, seemingly completely carefree. No doubt cheerfulness was a strength in a soldier, but this struck him as ‘a little premature’.24

  On 3 September the French army was marched from Sedan through Torcy to Glaire, the only entrance to the Iges peninsula, which had been designated as a giant holding pen. Bounded by the Meuse on three sides and by the canal to its south, the camp was easy for the Germans to guard. The few prisoners who attempted to escape by swimming the polluted waters of the Meuse were shot. Many of the French arrived drunk, having been too generously plied with wine and spirits by the people of Sedan. With few tents for shelter, few cooking utensils and little firewood or fresh water, the exhausted prisoners had to sleep in torrential rain and cold mud. The desolate, sodden, stinking Iges peninsula was remembered by survivors as ‘Camp Misery’. Rations were at first quite inadequate. Men scrambled for what was available, or cut hunks off rotten horse carcasses that lay about. Groups of horses that had been turned loose frantically chewed tree bark or each other’s manes, and became a hazard at night as they stampeded, trampling sleepers. Gangs of marauders preyed on the village of Iges, the only habitation, or on fellow soldiers. Dysentery became rife among thousands of men suffering from exposure.25

  Food got through to the prisoners all too slowly and was badly distributed. The Germans were caught unawares by the numbers they had to cope with and the railways were overburdened with the needs of their own troops. After General Lebrun and others made representations on behalf of their men, the situation began to improve, and General Bernhardi, the German commandant, made efforts to get supplies in. Over the next fortnight, as prisoners were loaded onto trains for Germany in batches of 2,000, the situation eased until Camp Misery was empty. French officers, distributed between several German cities, enjoyed relative liberty of movement after signing an oath not to escape. Their men were kept occupied with manual work in camps, or were hired out to local employers.26 A few weeks later, another 173,000 prisoners arrived from Metz. Thus by November virtually all the survivors of the army France had put on her frontier at the beginning of August – over a quarter of a million men – were in captivity. Over 17,200 Frenchmen died there of wounds or disease during an exceptionally hard winter.27 Repatriation began in March 1871 following the armistice, and was completed after the signing of peace between France and Germany in May.

  Departures

  Napoleon III’s departure from the Château de Bellevue on 3 September resembled a funeral cortège. Escorted by a troop of Prussian Black Hussars, the imperial convoy trundled through Donchery under dark skies as the heavens opened and thunder rolled. Bystanders caught a glimpse of Napoleon wistfully twisting the end of his waxed moustache. Bismarck and Moltke watched from a window, and it was Moltke who said, ‘There is a dynasty on its way out.’28

  Napoleon skirted the battlefield to the north, passing through Saint-Menges and Fleigneux, e
vidently wishing to avoid contact with his own troops. When he passed within sight of prisoners there were occasional shaken fists, cries of treason, and a shout of ‘You sold us to save your baggage!’29 For many, however, his departure was a matter of ‘icy and disdainful indifference’.30 At La Chapelle he sent money to the wounded, then crossed into Belgium, leaving France forever.

  He had already wired Eugénie that he had been defeated and captured, and in a letter confided, ‘it is impossible for me to tell you what I have suffered and am suffering. We have conducted a campaign contrary to all military principles and common sense. It was bound to lead to catastrophe; it is complete. I would rather have died than witness such a disastrous capitulation, and yet in the circumstances it was the only way of avoiding a slaughter.’31

  When the Empress received news of the disaster on the afternoon of the 3rd she refused to believe it. Her features distorted with anger, she loosed a hysterical tirade in front of her terrified attendants: ‘No, the Emperor hasn’t capitulated! A Napoleon doesn’t capitulate. He’s dead! … Do you hear me: I tell you he’s dead and they want to hide it from me! … Why didn’t he get himself killed? Why isn’t he buried under the walls of Sedan? … Didn’t he think that he was dishonouring himself? What name will he leave his son?’32

  Next day, 4 September, a beautiful Sunday in Paris, crowds formed calling for a Republic and chanting ‘Down with the Empire!’ As they threatened to break into the Tuileries, Eugénie fled to England with the help of her American dentist. The mob had already invaded the Legislature, where Gambetta declared the Empire deposed. He and Jules Favre led the jubilant crowds to the Hôtel de Ville, where the Republic was proclaimed. General Trochu, who had made no move to defend an Empress who mistrusted him, became President of a new Government of National Defence. The revolution in Paris was bloodless. A regime that had lived on prestige could not survive its catastrophic loss. One republican took satisfaction in the irony that the survival of the Emperor ensured the death of the Empire.33

  In March 1871, at the end of his captivity, Napoleon rejoined Eugénie in exile in England. He was planning a return to French politics when in January 1873 he died following an operation for removal of the large bladder-stone that had tormented him. His last coherent words were ‘We weren’t cowards at Sedan, were we?’34 Hopes for a revival of Bonapartism rested on the Prince Imperial until he was killed in 1879 seeking a military reputation as a British army officer in South Africa. Thus the Bonaparte dynasty was felled by Krupp’s steel guns and despatched by Zulu assegais.

  On 2 September Wimpffen addressed a farewell proclamation to the army that scarcely knew him, saluting it for fighting ‘to the last cartridge’.35 Two days later he abandoned it, having sought special permission from Moltke to spend his internment with relatives in Stuttgart. His corps commanders had a stricter sense of duty and remained with their men in the Iges peninsula. In Ducrot’s case this was not for long. Like other officers, he was trusted to make his own way across country to Pont-à-Mousson and to surrender himself for embarkation to Germany. Officers taking this route found themselves abused and reviled for their failure by peasants in Lorraine.36 When Ducrot reached Pont-à-Mousson he hid a set of peasant’s clothes in the mayor’s house before duly surrendering himself to the German authorities. While waiting under guard on the station to embark he and his staff were insulted by French troops.37 Amidst the crowds, Ducrot slipped through the station buffet, retrieved his disguise, and made his way to Paris, where he would command an army.

  Lebrun considered that his word of honour did not allow him to take such opportunities to escape, and like Douay he went into captivity. Among the prisoners too was General de Failly, who would never hold another military command. Popular feeling against him remained so strong that the police feared disturbances at his funeral in 1892. Marshal MacMahon recuperated slowly from his wound at Pouru-aux-Bois, but once well enough insisted on going into captivity. He left for Wiesbaden in late November, distancing himself from the intrigues of the imperial court and avoiding all polemics about the battle.

  The most momentous departure from the disease-stricken town of Sedan in the first week of September 1870 was that of the German army. Orders for an advance on Paris via Rheims were issued on the 3rd. Bismarck initially had reservations. He would have preferred to make peace with the imperial regime on the basis of French cession of Alsace and Lorraine and payment of a large indemnity.38 But Moltke saw no sense in allowing the enemy a breathing space: he intended to retain the initiative and to force a military decision. Besides, the war had started in Paris, and Paris must be punished. In the spirit of Protestant crusaders against the modern Babylon, the Germans advanced on the French capital, chalking ‘On to Paris’ on doors and fences as they marched. As one of Moltke’s officers wrote, ‘most of us believed that we had now only to push on rapidly to Paris and there dictate peace.’39 The prospect of a victory parade down the Champs-Élysées beckoned.

  The news of Sedan had caused rejoicing throughout Germany and astonishment in Europe. Final French submission and the consummation of German unity appeared imminent. Yet both were to prove more elusive than anyone expected in the heady days following the victory, as a sequel to this volume will tell.

  Recrimination and Memory in France

  No French leader wished to be held responsible for a disaster of the magnitude of Sedan, and the arguments begun on the day of the battle were developed afterwards with great bitterness. From captivity, Wimpffen inspired or ghostwrote newspaper articles and anonymous pamphlet attacks on Napoleon, MacMahon and Ducrot. His withering indictment of MacMahon’s competence in his 1871 book about the battle shocked fellow officers. He also argued that Ducrot’s attempted withdrawal, and subsequent failure to support him in a breakout to the south-east, had robbed him of the chance for victory, and that Napoleon had shown cowardice in not coming to lead his offensive: ‘Whilst I, the commanding general, was on the battlefield, believing that my lieutenants were there too and ready to execute my orders, they were with the Emperor in Sedan deciding to capitulate!’40

  General Ducrot proved an equally ferocious paper warrior. Since his youth in Algeria he had displayed a facility for embellishing his own exploits, and he was stung into responding to ‘this wretch de Wimpffen’.41 In his own 1871 account of Sedan, Ducrot figures as a commander of Napoleonic prescience and decision who might have saved the army by an early retreat to Mézières had it not been for Wimpffen’s purblind obstinacy in halting it, and he belittled Wimpffen’s offensive at Balan.

  If Wimpffen’s insistence on the chances of a breakout to the south-east rested heavily on wishful thinking, so did Ducrot’s championship of a breakout westwards. Underestimating German strength in that direction, he argued that it would have been possible to brush them aside and open the road to Mézières.42 In reality, the hazards of a withdrawal under heavy attack pointed out by Lebrun and Ducrot’s chief of staff were weightier than Ducrot admitted, and the road west was barred by 8 a.m. One critic wondered acidly which would most astonish history, ‘the prodigious nerve of General Ducrot or the wonderful naivety of a portion of his contemporaries, listening all agape to his grotesque justification of his plan of retreat!’43 Competent military analysts subsequently concluded that Ducrot’s orders would at best have led to a vulnerable pile-up of French troops around Illy, or at worst to a rout. The chance for his plan to work had already passed by the time he took command.44

  From exile, Napoleon defended himself against Wimpffen’s charges through articles and pamphlets written by his aides, which emphasized his suffering during the campaign and his humanity. They portrayed him as a martyr, pushed into war against his will, betrayed by the Chamber which had thwarted his military reforms and by indiscipline stirred by republicans in the army. Napoleon took responsibility for raising the white flag, but maintained that it had been done after consultation with senior generals, whereas his corps commanders all stated that it was flying before they spoke wi
th him.

  These controversies shaped the writing of the history of Sedan from the French side. Yet supporting documentation amassed by the protagonists illustrated that there was little agreement on the timing or sequence of events or the exact words spoken during the mayhem of battle. Post-war arguments over responsibilities also had political overtones. Napoleon’s dynastic motives were obvious. Ducrot, whose book on Sedan ended with a paean to ‘Honour and Country … Work and Discipline’45 notoriously became a man of the ultra-Catholic Right, earmarked by the Legitimist pretender to the French throne, the Count de Chambord, to lead a coup d’état if circumstances required.46 The Protestant Wimpffen, by contrast, became a staunch republican, whose criticisms of Napoleon resonated with all those inclined to blame defeat on a ‘corrupt’ authoritarian regime. Thus the claim of both generals to be the man who had almost saved France on 1 September 1870 merged personal vanity into the political struggle of the 1870s over the country’s future.

  In 1872 a Court of Inquiry into the capitulation of Sedan deplored the consequences of the successive changes in the French high command. Noting that Wimpffen either ‘was unable, or did not know how, to make himself obeyed completely’, it blamed his faulty strategic conception for aggravating his army’s plight. Conceding that Ducrot’s plan was improvised and would have been difficult to execute, it judged it rational to the extent that it might have allowed more of the army to escape into Belgium, so avoiding the shame of capitulation.47 Wimpffen left the army soon afterwards.