Engines of War

by Christian Wolmar

  The operation of the railways after the initial mobilization of Prussian troops hardly paints Moltke in a good light. Van Creveld points out that within a few days of the start of the war, on 15 June 1866, the railways were virtually paralysed: ‘it was estimated that no less than 17,920 [the precision is admirable] tons of supplies were trapped on the lines, unable to move either forward or backward, while hundreds upon hundreds of railway wagons were serving as temporary magazines and could not therefore have been used for the traffic, even if the lines had been free to carry them’. All Haupt’s rules were being broken and the consequence was a reversion to the type of pre-railway war that would have been familiar to Napoleon. As bread went stale, fodder rotted and cattle died of malnutrition, field commanders sent off their troops to forage in the countryside and supply themselves by requisitioning. While these efforts met with success since it was summer and the area was fertile, had the war been prolonged Moltke would have struggled to feed the soldiers and the horses.

  Despite all the experience gleaned from the Americans, the Prussians ‘made relatively poor use of military transportation by trains and only very marginally owed victory to them’,8 while the Austrians had no equivalent organization, believing that it was up to the railways to ensure that the lines were functioning and in good condition. While some Austrian officers had pressed for the creation of a special railway unit, the war ministry showed no interest, arguing that repairing the track, even in wartime, was a matter for the railway company. This is not to suggest that the Prussians, or the other combatants, did not realize that railways were now a crucial instrument of war, but rather that they failed to understand their limitations and the need to ensure their optimal operation through disciplined management.

  Fortunately for Moltke, the war was effectively won at Königgrätz, 9 the first battle, where the Prussian strategy of a dispersed army worked well. The Austrians had mobilized first but too slowly to mount a frontal attack on the Prussians, who then, arriving on their five lines, were able to overwhelm the enemy. The consensus among historians, however, is that ‘in retrospect, Moltke’s decisive victory at Königgrätz appeared to be more the product of calculated strategy and superior tactics than was actually the case’.10 Both commands were blundering around, unaware of the precise location of the others’ troops, and the decisive engagement resulted from one of the Prussian armies fortuitously stumbling upon the bulk of the Austrian force and then being saved by the unplanned but timely arrival of reinforcements. The Prussians had superior weaponry, too, in the form of a new type of gun, and therefore, far from Moltke’s genius being the decisive factor, ‘the conflict was decided by horses, infantrymen, and the needle gun’.11

  After the victory at Königgrätz, which earned Moltke his reputation as a brilliant strategist, the Austrians had no stomach for a long fight and the war was quickly brought to an end, with the railways playing little further part. The Prussians tried to pursue the retreating Austrians by rail, using the line from Dresden to Prague, but found it was blocked and guarded by fortresses. Moltke’s exhortations to clear the line because it was ‘essential to our very difficult supply situation’12 fell on deaf ears. The fortresses proved impossible to overcome and building emergency lines around them would have taken too long. The Prussians therefore simply continued their pursuit southwards by circumventing the fortresses, leaving van Creveld to conclude that during the second part of the campaign ‘the railways were unable to exercise the slightest influence on the course of operations’.13

  In fact, this is a slight exaggeration since the railways were still for the most part usable owing to the failure of the retreating Austrians to destroy them effectively, partly because they were unwilling to damage structures which were a source of national pride. What damage they did cause was pretty haphazard. Bridges were at times only partly blown, leaving several spans intact, or packed with explosives which were then unaccountably not detonated. The delay in blowing up a particular bridge – over the Elbe at Lobkowitz – proved very useful to the invading Prussians, as it left them the use of the line for a crucial ten-day period at the end of July. The bridge was eventually brought down on 27 July but earlier destruction would have delayed the Prussians by six weeks according to their own strategists, greatly prolonging the war. The Austrians also failed to understand the importance of removing rolling stock, leaving many carriages and wagons in Prague for the Prussians to use. According to Westwood, the explanation for these failings lies in a combination of ‘lack of engineering experience, underestimation of the ease of restoring partially damaged structures and emotional reluctance to destroy what were regarded as the technical achievements of the age’.14

  As the conflict, with its outcome clear, was coming to an end in August 1866, Moltke, in a letter to Bismarck, stressed the point about how remarkably easy it was to repair minor damage to the railways and that ‘the only obstruction of any duration’15 had been caused by the fortresses. He recommended, therefore, that wherever possible Prussia’s railways should be made to pass through the perimeters of existing fortresses, a remarkably feudal view, but he did not suggest that more fortresses should be built. Instead, Moltke appreciated that ‘it was with rails, rather than brickwork, that the future lay’.16 Moltke skated over the difficulties resulting from his own mismanagement of the railway system but stressed that these errors would not be repeated in the coming war with France. This time, neither side had any doubt as to the railways’ importance in the supply chain and their ability to deliver massive numbers of troops and matériel. The large scale of the Franco-Prussian War, in comparison with the two previous conflicts, made it, according to Allan Mitchell, the author of a comparative study of the French and German railway systems, ‘the first and only major railway war of nineteenth century Europe’,17 which put to the test the planning for military use of the railways carried out in anticipation of the conflict by both countries. In comparison, he argued, the previous European battles involving the railways had been mere skirmishes. However, the role of the railways, while undoubtedly important, was not as crucial as some historians have suggested, since for a major part of the conflict many lines were effectively unusable.

  Indeed, despite considerable preparations, mistakes were made on both sides, and, except in the first crucial phase of the war, Moltke’s actions again do not seem to have been sufficiently informed by the logic of his own emphasis on the strategic importance of the railways. As we saw in Chapter Two, the structure of the railways in the two countries was very different. Those in France emanated, fan-like, from Paris, while the Prussian/German lines ran mostly on a north-south or east-west axis. In terms of density, the railways were about equal, with Prussia having the fourth most dense in the world and France the fifth. Both types of railway, too, could be harnessed to military objectives, but the east-west lines in Germany proved to be the most important. After the war, both sides accused the other of having constructed their railways with the aim of facilitating war. They were both right to some extent. In neither country did military objectives determine the shape of the network but in both they played a significant part in their development, through negotiation, lobbying and, ultimately, money.

  In France, where half a dozen large railway companies had emerged in the 1850s, the railways were privately operated but their construction was supported at times with substantial state investment. The routing of new lines was governed by commissions mixtes consisting of both public and private interests but there were several instances where the Army determined the route of a railway. However, military interests were by no means always paramount as three-way rows developed between the companies, eager solely for profit, the Ministry of War, pushing for the most militarily strategic route, and the Ministry of Finance, worried about the cost of deviating from the commercial solution sought by the private sector.

  The same considerations were being assessed over the border in Prussia, by the same players. Military advisers wanted rail lines bu
ilt under the protection of fortresses, at a safe distance from frontiers and on the ‘opposite’ side of waterways – in other words, the bank furthest from the likely enemy, whose identity was known to both sides long before the start of the war. Money, too, was often a deciding factor, though the military clearly won the argument over the construction of several lines, notably the Ostbahn, which could take troops to and from the north-east.

  The Prussians, in fact, were at a disadvantage because they had a far greater number of railway companies, under different state administrations, and there was therefore far less uniformity in the system. The Minister of Railways in Saxony complained rather wittily that it would be ‘to the general good in peacetime, and of benefit to the military man in wartime, if the superintendent met at Cologne was dressed like the superintendent at Köninsberg, and if there was no danger of a Hamburg station inspector being taken for a superintendent of the line by somebody from Frankfurt’.18 Rather more alarmingly, he added that there were parts of the network on which a white light meant ‘stop’ and others where it signified ‘all clear’, a real risk to the safety of people travelling on the system.

  In the run-up to the war, there was widespread feeling in Prussia that the French had the better railways. That was backed up by compelling evidence in a pamphlet, published as late as 1868, by an anonymous Prussian officer who concluded that ‘the overall French [railway] performance exceeds the Prussian by far’.19 He cited the fact that only a quarter of Prussian lines were double-tracked, compared with over two thirds in France, creating far greater capacity. Moreover, he found that French stations were roomier, allowing faster loading and unloading and that the French had more rolling stock. He also suggested that the domination of the system by half a dozen large companies made it more unified with greater standardization of equipment.

  Meanwhile, in France, senior officers who were eager to stir up hostile opinion against Prussia were warning that the French railways were inadequate to the task of defending la Patrie and that the Prussians had the better system. In fact, neutral observers such as van Creveld, the logistics expert, suggest that the French system was better: ‘On practically every account, the French railway system in 1870 was actually better than the German one.’20 Nevertheless, even though the anonymous Prussian officer was right, the difference in the two systems would not prove decisive because the French were ultimately let down by their administrative arrangements.

  In the late 1860s, as war drew closer, both sides attempted to tailor their railways to the needs of the coming conflict. Moltke was, again, lucky. He had a counterpart in France, Maréchal Adolphe Niel, the Minister of War, whose ‘intentions were quite similar and his vision no less lucid’.21 Niel, like Moltke, attempted to reorganize the railways to ensure that in the event of war, they would be under central military planning. In this he was supported by his sovereign, Napoleon III, but his reforms stalled in the face of resistance from conservative elements within the government. However, before that opposition could be overcome, Niel died. It was to prove a most untimely death which left a series of half-introduced reforms that would only add to the chaotic situation on the French side after war was declared. Without a man of Niel’s drive to push through change, the central commission he created, which was essential to the military’s ability to take control of the railways in wartime, was more or less forgotten and consequently was not in a position to be activated when war commenced.

  In Prussia, the whole approach to war was more scientific and thorough. Moltke had reorganized the Prussian general staff, taking on highly trained military personnel drawn from the cream of army officers. Nothing was left to chance. There was endless analysis and planning, with railway and logistical issues being accorded high priority, and the whole approach was completely unlike the military organization of any other European nation. Nowhere else was there this emphasis on a scientific approach to warfare. This resulted in a bizarre political structure with an army that held a place of almost feudal status in society being supported by a highly technocratic and effective machinery.

  As part of this process, Moltke quietly introduced a key reform affecting the railways. The translation of the report written by McCallum on his experience of running the railways for the North in the American Civil War was influential in convincing the Prussians that they must adopt the same structure. On this basis, Moltke was able to push through a reform enabling the military to strengthen its control over the railways, in particular those running on an east-west axis. He created a central committee of civil and military officials attached to the main railway office in Berlin to co-ordinate mobilization in the event of war. Even more crucially, for every major east-west railway across the territory of the North German Confederation – the area effectively controlled by Prussia after the 1866 war – he created individual line commissions controlled by the military which reported to the general staff of the central committee in Berlin. According to Allan Mitchell, the concept was crucial to the war effort because ‘this arrangement removed the principal obstacle to rapid troop movement: the necessity of crossing several state borders or of using the tracks of private companies’.22 Once war was declared and these commissions took control, it became possible to move soldiers long distances without changing engines or personnel, effectively giving the military control of the railways.

  The line commissions remained inactive until the outbreak of war, when their first task was to issue emergency schedules to the key stations along the line. These schedules, which had been prepared in advance, were far more detailed and sophisticated than a simple timetable, setting out precisely the composition of each train, the number of men to be moved and even refreshment stops: ‘The execution of these schedules was to be so precise that many trains would be able to make connections en route, dropping and attaching cars to ensure that units would be complete, in their order of battle, when their trains arrived at the concentration areas.’23

  The war was actually declared by the French, the culmination of years of tension between the two sides over a variety of issues. The actual casus belli was obscure in the extreme, the candidacy of Leopold, a prince belonging to the Hohenzollern family, the rulers of Prussia, for the throne of Spain, which had been rendered vacant by the Spanish revolution of 1868. Under pressure from Napoleon III, who did not want France to be encircled by a Spanish-Prussian alliance, the candidacy was withdrawn but then the French emperor overplayed his hand, by trying to extract a promise from the Prussians that a Hohenzollern would never sit on the throne of Spain. Bismarck, who had put forward Leopold’s candidacy in the first place, then manipulated the situation by publishing the French demands in an edited form to inflame passions on both sides of the border. Bismarck’s intentions were clear. He felt he needed a war to guarantee the unification of Germany under Prussian control and had long worked towards this outcome. Napoleon, a foolhardy emperor with none of the nous of his illustrious namesake and uncle, was rash enough to declare war on 19 July 1870 despite the thinness of his cause and the fact that Prussian forces were likely to be at least as strong, if not stronger, than the French. He had sprung the trap set by Bismarck, who later, in his memoirs, wrote: ‘I knew a Franco-Prussian war must take place before a united Germany was formed.’

  Napoleon’s cause was imperilled right from the outset by the chaotic mobilization of the troops on the French side. It was not the fault of the railway companies. Already, four days before the official outbreak of war, the five big main-line companies – Est, Nord, Ouest, Orléans and Paris-Lyon – had been effectively taken over by the military as they were ordered to place all their equipment and personnel at the disposal of the war ministry. All freight and most passenger services were cancelled, the number of telegraph operators doubled and military timetables distributed. Having already made contingency plans, by the next day the Est company had prepared the first troop train, which was ready for despatch by 5.45 p.m., but the chaos that was to dog the whole French mobilization was
already evident. The troops, who were accompanied by the same sort of enthusiastic crowds who were to greet their successors heading for war in 1914, with cries of ‘À Berlin’, had arrived at 2 p.m. only to find that the train was not due to depart for several hours. As a result, they did what such groups of men invariably do: drank their way around the local bars and caused mayhem. By the time the besotted soldiers arrived back at the station, many were collapsing from the effects of alcohol and, more seriously, had lost or given away their ammunition often as ‘souvenirs’, though much of it was later claimed to have supplied the revolutionaries in the following year’s Paris Commune (although that sounds like fanciful military propaganda).

  This was a portent of things to come. Sure, nearly a thousand trains were despatched from Paris over the next three weeks, carrying 300,000 men and 65,000 horses, as well as countless guns, ammunition and supplies. Moreover, the French got to the frontier first. After a mere ten days, 86,000 men had reached the border, while hardly any Prussian soldiers were there to face them on the other side of the Rhine. However, the bare statistics mask an incompetent and ill-organized process that would seriously handicap the entire French war effort. Instead of the tightly planned schedule prepared by the Germans, French regiments were split up because they arrived piecemeal at the stations and men separated from their own commanders were often reluctant to take orders from officers on the train from another regiment. Some trains were despatched half-full, because of the non-arrival of a company,24 while others were overloaded as men who had missed their regimental train piled onto the next one. The unwillingness of officers to take control of the boarding and detraining of their men, as required by the regulations, and leaving it to the poor overworked railway officials, added to the confusion and delays. Systems to unload trains might not have been worked out properly, but measures to ensure the provision of coffee to the men at stations with the help of the steam from the locomotive as a kind of improvised espresso machine had been set out in great detail: ‘A receptacle of at least 150 litres is to be taken, in which sugar, coffee and water are placed, with each ration of 24 grams of coffee and 31.05 grams of sugar [it is not explained how such precise measurement can be made!] being allowed 42 centilitres of water. By means of a copper tube of diameter 0.012 metres fitted to a locomotive pressure gauge, a jet of steam is directed into the receptacle, with the tube deep in the water so as to agitate all the liquid. The operation is finished when the steam no longer dissolves…’25