by H M Hozier
During the twenty days which the German armies required to mobilise the French lost all advantage which the hasty declaration of war ought to have given. The army, instead of having been ready before the declaration of war, was unprepared to advance, and instead of dashing boldly into Germany, disturbing the mobilisation of the various corps, and, perhaps, subduing the South before the North could come to its aid, lay inactive on the frontier, with detachments scattered from Thionville and Sierk to Belfort, with strong reserves at Metz. Had the war between France and Germany taken place before the events of 1866, their remissness might have not cost the French so dear; but the consolidation of the North German Confederation and the command-in-chief of the other German armies, which was vested in the King of Prussia, allowed the mobilisation of the whole German armies to be immediately undertaken without any of the diplomatic negotiations which would have been necessary before 1866.
In the first week of July the German armies concentrated On the right was General Steinmetz with the 1st Army in the direction of Birkenfeld: this army was composed of the 1st, 7th, and 8th Prussian corps. In the centre was Prince Frederick Charles with the 2nd Army, composed of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 9th, 10th corps, and the corps of the Prussian Guards, in the neighbourhood of Kaiserslautern. This prince had also under his command the 12th, or Saxon corps. On the left was the crown prince with the two Bavarian corps, the Würtemburg division, the Baden division, and the 5th and 11th Prussian corps in the neighbourhood of Speyer. The 6th corps was also moving up from Silesia to join the 3rd Army. It showed excellent taste and tact on the part of the advisers of the King of Prussia to counsel the commander-in-chief of the whole German forces to place the amiable, popular, and competent crown prince in command of the army in which the South German troops were enrolled.
The Prussian plan of the campaign was that the three armies should advance simultaneously in a south-easterly direction; the crown prince marching to the east of the Vosges mountains, the other two armies to the west of them. If the French army concentrated to hold the Vosges against the crown prince, the 1st and 2nd Armies would threaten its position in flank and rear; if, on the other hand, it concentrated against the 1st and 2nd Armies, the crown prince, bearing to his right, and pushing through the Vosges, would in his turn threaten his flank and rear. As the crown prince was to be engaged in a difficult and mountainous country, his army was accompanied only by one cavalry division in addition to the regiments of cavalry attached to infantry divisions. The other divisions of cavalry were attached to Prince Frederic Charles and General Steinmetz.
On the 3rd July, the general Prussian advance commenced. On the 4th, the French corps which occupied St. Avoid, a small town on the road from Metz to the frontier line of the Saar at Saarbrück, made a movement towards the latter place. The emperor and the Prince Imperial were present, and the French soldiery thought that the advance had at last really begun, and that they were upon the high road to Berlin. The movement was not, however, pushed; the supplies and provisions necessary for a campaign were not yet even collected in the rear of the army, and no proper system of issuing them to the troops, if the latter advanced, was yet in working order; the most necessary articles of field equipment were in some cases wanting, for the centralised system of military administration, which was the bane of the French army, prevented any rapid distribution of stores at the outbreak of a war. The French corps which advanced from St Avoid did not even cross the frontier in force, but confined itself to throwing some shells into the town of Saarbrück, and occupying the strong position of the heights of Spicheren, in front of Forbach.
Meanwhile, the German troops were swiftly, though silently, drawing down to the frontier, and in the early morning of the 6th the crown prince had massed his forces which he had marched from Landau by way of Schweighofen behind the dark woods that lie north of Weissenburg. Thence, soon after daybreak, he sprang upon the unsuspecting troops of General Douay, which formed the advanced guard of the corps of Marshal Macmahon, and drove them back with great loss on the main body at Worth. The same day the right division of the army of Prince Frederick Charles, who advanced by Homburg and Zweibrücken, together with the left division of General Steinmetz, stormed the heights of Spicheren, and drove the French occupants of that position in full retreat towards Metz.
On the 8th July, the crown prince, having marched by way of Sulz sous Forêts, came upon Marshal Macmahon at Worth, and after a severe battle there, in which the French leader showed great tactical resource, overthrew him completely, and the marshal retreated in great disorder on Nancy.
The Battle of Worth virtually decided the campaign. The heir to the crown of Prussia there tore from the brows of the French Army those laurels which a too credulous world had too uncritically accorded to it, and proved beyond doubt, that the army of France, however much animated with enthusiasm and gallantry, was unable to withstand the stem onset of the soldiery of Germany, directed with judgment and conducted with skill.
Three days after the Battle of Worth, the general advance of the German armies was continued. General Steinmetz moved by St Avoid, Prince Frederick Charles by way of Saar Union, and the crown prince by Merzweiler, Ingweiler, and Saarburg. At this place the right of the army of the crown prince united with the left of that of Prince Frederick Charles, and the strategical junction of the German armies on French soil was assured.
General Steinmetz then moved upon Metz, Prince Frederick Charles on Pont-à-Mousson, and the crown prince on Nancy, On the 14th, General Steinmetz came up with the French rearguard at Courcelles, and after a sharp action at that place forced it to seek shelter under the guns and within the outworks of the fortress of Metz. At the same time, Prince Frederick Charles threw bridges over the Moselle at Pont-à-Mousson, Novéant, and Corny.
On the 15th, he crossed the Moselle, and, with the heads of the 3rd (Alvensleben) and 10th (Voigt Rhetz) corps, occupied Gorze and Novéant.
On the 16th, the crown prince reached Nancy, and halted there, having detached a force to invest and besiege the fortress of Strasburg. (The Baden Division, and the division of Landwehr of the Guard). General Steinmetz was in front of Metz, on the eastern side. Marshal Bazaine, who commanded the whole French army which had been assembled, partly by design, partly by force of circumstance, within the forts of Metz, designed to move from that fortress with all his available strength towards Châlons. It was believed in the German camp that the French retreat had commenced on the previous day, and that some of the French Army had already got beyond the striking distance of Prince Frederick Charles. On the morning of the 16th, however, when the head of the 3rd Prussian corps debouched from the defile of Gorze on the elevated plateau, which to the west of Metz rises above the valley of the Moselle, with the intention of pursuing or attacking in flank the retreating French, it found the whole of Marshal Bazaine’s army marching in retreat from Metz towards Vionville, and that the heads of its columns had not yet reached that place.
General Stulpnagel, who commanded the leading Prussian division, immediately engaged the army of Marshal Bazaine; he was supported by the 6th division, which was following him, and these two divisions checked the whole French army, until Prince Frederick Charles brought up the 10th corps to their aid. The Prince threw the 10th corps across the road by which the French sought to retreat, and all through the long summer day a terrific battle was fought near Vionville. The French leader made one desperate attempt after another to break through; but the Prussian soldiers, though suffering frightful loss, sternly stood their ground, and at nightfall the Germans still held the road from Metz to Mars-la-Tour, and the French marshal was forced to fall back on Gravelotte. The remaining corps of Prince Frederick Charles were too far to the south to allow of their taking part in the battle of the 16th; but two German corps, with two divisions of cavalry, which were aided late in the evening by one division from General Steinmetz, held their ground against the 180,000 men that were marching under Marshal Bazaine.
On the 17th
, the whole of the army of Prince Frederick Charles came up, and the bulk of the army of Steinmetz. The German troops took up a position extending from the head of the Gorze defile to St Marie aux Chênes, and the King of Prussia arrived upon the field. Marshal Bazaine, after falling back on Gravelotte on the 16th, took up a strong position there, which on the 17th he partly entrenched. Here on the 18th he was attacked by the German Army, and after a bloody battle was wholly cut off from the northern road to Verdun, and driven into Metz.
The army of Prince Frederick Charles, under whose orders General Steinmetz was now placed, immediately invested the fortress and the army within it; and in spite of bad weather, sickness, hardship, and numerous sorties, prevented the enemy from breaking out until the fortress and army capitulated on the 28th October.
After the Battle of Worth, the disorganised remains of the French troops which had been there defeated retreated in confusion to Châlons. Here they were reorganised as rapidly as possible by Marshal Macmahon, and were reinforced by all the levies which could be hurried up to their aid. The emperor in person, after leaving Metz, also retired to Châlons by way of Verdun. Counsel was then taken in the French camp, and it seems to have been decided that for military reasons the army should retreat upon Paris. But political circumstances would not permit the adoption of this course. On the departure of the Emperor Napoleon for the war, the empress had been nominated Regent, and after the first disasters of the campaign a cabinet had been formed, of which Count de Palikao was president. This cabinet did not venture to allow the emperor to return to Paris except as victorious; for popular feeling was running high, and a revolution might at any moment be provoked.
It was, therefore, under pressure of political circumstances, determined that the army at Châlons should make a movement by way of Rheims, Mézières, and Sedan, with the object of reaching Metz by way of Thionville, and of aiding the escape of Marshal Bazaine from the toils cast around him by Prince Frederick Charles. With many raw troops, and an improvised transport, this was a desperate cast; but the tardiness of French movements was not then appreciated, the rapidity of Prussian marching not yet thoroughly recognized, and the stake to be won by success possibly justified the hazard of the venture.
On the other side, as soon as the army of Marshal Bazaine was securely invested in Metz by the army of Prince Frederick Charles, the crown prince advanced in pursuit of Macmahon towards Châlons, from Nancy, by way of Vaucoureurs and Ligny. Avoiding the fortress of Toul, he left a force to besiege it. When the crown prince reached Ligny, the king arrived at Bar-le-Duc. Here it was ascertained by the advanced cavalry of the crown prince, chiefly through the medium of captured letters, that Marshal Macmahon was making a movement from Châlons and Rheims, to gain the northern line of railway by Mézières and Sedan in order to relieve Marshal Bazaine.
The direction of march which had been ordered for St. Dizier was immediately altered, and the crown prince began to move by St. Ménéhould and Grand Pré on Sedan, with the view of there falling upon the flank of the marching columns of the French marshal.
When Metz was invested, the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th divisions of cavalry were detached from the army of Prince Frederick Charles, and attached to that of the crown prince. Now the Guards, the Saxon corps, and the 4th corps were also detached from the 2nd army, and formed into a fourth army, which was placed under the command of the crown prince on Saxony, and ordered to move from Metz by way of Verdun on Sedan, in order to head the French columns and check their advance into Lorraine.
These movements brought on the Battle of Sedan. On the 30th of August the Crown Prince of Saxony, moving down the right bank of the Meuse, surprised the French at Mouzon and drove them back; for the French Army, instead of making forced marches of about twenty miles a day, on account of want of discipline among the new levies and the failure of transport arrangements, was only able to make about six. On the same day the crown prince also engaged the heads of Marshal Macmahon’s columns at Beaumont and Donchery, and drove them in.
The French retired upon Sedan, and took up a position resting on that fortress, with their front upon the Meuse, and their flanks refused towards the Belgian frontier. It was anticipated in the German camp that they might possibly retreat into Belgian territory. Accordingly, Count von Bismarck sent a communication to the Belgian government to say, that if the French crossed the frontier and were not disarmed, the German troops would be forced to follow; but the Belgian Army had been already placed on a war footing, and with detachments was watching the frontier. These disarmed and made prisoner any isolated bodies which either purposely or accidentally entered armed upon Belgian soil.
On the 1st September the armies of the Crown Princes of Prussia and Saxony attacked, under the eyes of the King of Prussia, the position which the French had taken up at Sedan. The army of the Crown Prince of Saxony, crossing the Meuse by bridges which it threw during the previous night, extended its right towards the Belgian frontier, and drove in the French left The Bavarian corps of the army of the crown prince of Prussia assailed the French centre at Bazeilles, while the crown prince, pushing the 5th and 11th corps across the Meuse lower down the stream, not only drove in the French right, but extended his own flank so far as to touch the flank of the Guards who formed the right of the Saxon battle, surrounded the French completely, and entirely cut off their retreat from Belgium.
At the very commencement of the battle Marshal Macmahon was severely wounded, and the command devolved upon General Wimpfen, who had only just arrived on the theatre of war. All day the battle raged, the French fought gallantly—even desperately; but, pressed upon by the better-disciplined legions of Germany, they were pushed closer and closer to the ramparts of Sedan, while their adversaries gained a firm footing on all the heights which command and overlook the basin in which the fortress is situated. At last, hemmed in, surrounded, and exposed to the commanding fire of a numerous and superior artillery, no resource was left to the French army but capitulation.
A general of the emperor’s staff was sent to the King of Prussia to propose terms for the army, and at the same time the emperor wrote a letter to the king, and proposed to surrender his sword. The terms announced were the unconditional surrender of the army and the fortress; but the officers were allowed to retain their swords, and to give their parole not to serve against Germany during the war. These terms were agreed to next day, and the whole French Army was marched prisoner to Germany.
On the 2nd September the emperor had an interview with the King of Prussia and the crown prince, after which he went by way of Belgium to the château of Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel, where he remained a prisoner on parole until the termination of the war.
After the halt of a few days, necessary for the completion of arrangements at Sedan, the armies of the crown princes, that of Prussia on the left and of Saxony on the right, marched for Paris by way of Attigny, Reims, Montmirail, and Coulommiers. There was no French Army worthy of mention now in the field. Bazaine was invested with the bulk of the army of the Rhine in Metz; the emperor and Macmahon were prisoners on the road to Germany. The few troops who escaped from the general catastrophe at Sedan, or had been on the way to reinforce Marshal Macmahon, were hurried back to Paris to man the defences of the capital, which the cabinet had already taken vigorous measures to provision.
As soon as the news of the capture of the emperor and his army became known at Paris, revolution broke out. It might have been more prudent had the French nation deferred a change of government which must necessarily delay the progress of public business. It was not so. The change was made in the very face of the enemy. M. Gambetta and M. Jules Favre proclaimed the Republic in the Corps Législatif. The excited population, as if eager to drown the sense of national calamity in the storm of domestic politics, shouted rapturous applause. The imperial government was dissolved: the members of the cabinet fled the country, and the empress, hastily escaping from the palace of the Tuileries into which the mob broke, reached a seaport,
and was conveyed to England in the yacht of an English private gentleman.
As there was no foe in the field to encounter, the German armies marched straight upon the capital At Coulommiers they separated, that of the crown prince of Saxony moving towards the north-east of Paris, that of the prince of Prussia towards the south-west The latter approached Versailles on the 19th September, encountered the garrison of the city that day at the strengthened posts of Villejuif, Chatillon, Plessis-Piquet, and Clamart, and after a tolerably sharp action drove it under the forts which surround the enceinte.
The 3rd and 4th armies then invested Paris, and encircled the city of luxury and light within a band of iron and of fire, which was not relaxed until the forts and guns of the defenders were surrendered to Prussian custody.
On the instalment of the Republic in Paris, M. Gambetta was appointed Minister of War, and General Trochu governor of the city. Every exertion was made to raise armies to resist the invader, and if possible to drive him from French soil, and the republican leaders were not lacking in energy. A large force was raised within the city, which at the termination of the siege mustered over 350,000 combatants. Conscripts were raised, arms and ammunition imported from abroad, clothing and stores purchased, and an army rapidly collected in the south-west, which obtained the name of the Army of the Loire. On the 19th of October the army in Paris was so far equipped and organised that General Trochu attempted to make a sortie and sally out of Paris; but the troops of the crown prince drove him back, and the siege continued. The Prussians at first did not attempt any active operations, but were content with strongly entrenching themselves, and trusting to hunger to enforce the capitulation of the place.
Early in November the French Army of the Loire had gained some consistency, and on the 9th of that month its vanguard drove the Bavarians, who had been sent to observe it, out of the city of Orleans. These fell back and took up a position in the vicinity of Toury; but had General d’Aurelles de Paladine, who commanded the French army, been in a position to immediately follow up his success, he might have raised the siege of Paris, as the crown prince would have had to call his troops together in order to oppose a French advance from the south. But the troops of the French general were too raw, and he was forced to wait in Orleans, where he threw up strong entrenchments, to organise them. He thus lost his opportunity.