The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill
which their hasty declaration of war should have given. Their army, instead of having been ready before the declaration of war, was unprepared to advance, and instead of dashing boldly into Germany lay inactive on the frontier. Thus the German army was able unhindered to assume the offensive with superior numbers.
Moltle’s plan of the campaign was that the army of the Crown Prince should advance on the east of the Vosges Mountains, on the German left, that of Prince Frederick Charles in the centre, and that of Steinmetz on the right, to the west of the Vosges. Moltke expected to find the united French army on the Moselle between Nancy and Metz, but his cavalry soon informed him that they were not even concentrated, but in scattered corps. On the 4th of August the French corps which occupied St. Avold, a small town on the road from Metz to the frontier line of the Saar at Saarbruck, made a movement towards the latter place. The Emperor and 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 French did not even cross the frontier in force, but occupied the strong heights of Spicheren.
Meanwhile the German troops had drawn swiftly and silently down to the frontier. In the early morning of the 6th of August, the Crown Prince had massed his forces behind the dark woods which lie north of Weissemburg. Thence, soon after day-break, he sprang upon the unsuspecting advanced guard of the corps of Marshal MacMahon, and drove them back with great loss on Wörth. The same day Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz stormed the heights of Spicheren and drove the French occupants of that position in full retreat towards Metz. On the 8th the Crown Prince came upon Marshal MacMahon at Wörth, and after a severe battle, in which the French leader showed much tactical resource, overthrew him completely, and the Marshal retreated in great confusion on Nancy. The future Emperor Frederick, at Wörth, tore from the brows of tho French army the laurels which a too credulous world had uncritically accorded to it, and proved that the army of France, however much animated by enthusiasm and gallantry, was unable to withstand the stern onset of the German soldiery directed with judgment and conducted with skill.
Reports soon came in which showed that the whole French army contemplated a retreat from the line of the Moselle towards Châlons. Then Moltke conceived the daring plan of throwing the German force between Bazaine and Châlons and cutting off the French retreat. Prince Frederick Charles crossed the Moselle and engaged Bazaine’s retreating columns in the bloody battle of Mars-la-Tour. Here he held the French General, who had 180,000 men, with his 90,000, and although he lost heavily he gripped him tight and prevented his further retreat. Other German corps hurried up in support; and on the 18th the main German army, with its rear to Paris, engaged Bazaine at Gravelotte and, after a severe fight, drove him back into Metz, where his force was quickly surrounded by Prince Frederick Charles was shut up from all further participation in the war, and was finally compelled to capitulate in the latter part of October.
While the German cavalry hurried forward in front of the armies of the two Crown Princes to gather news of the French movements, the Chief of the Staff joined the head-quarters of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the 24th of August at Ligny. A council of war was held. It was known that the French army was near Rheims, and rumours gathered by the cavalry from the country people told that MacMahon contemplated a march to Metz. It was then determined to continue the march towards Châlons. On his arrival at Bar-le-Duc General Moltke went to walk on the ancient walls of that once fortified town. He meditated on the state of the campaign, and then for the first time the thought struck him of what MacMahon really was doing, and he saw that it was possible that the French leader might endeavour to throw himself into Metz behind the advancing German armies and at the same time threaten their lines of communication. He went to his quarters and there studied the possibility of such a movement and the measures to be taken to counteract it. He found that the proposed French march could be carried out, and that to defeat it the enemy’s columns must at the latest be stopped on the right bank of the Meuse and attacked, and that the position of the German armies allowed them to be attacked there by the fourth army in front and the third army on their right flank with overwhelming force. In the course of the evening, reports from the advanced cavalry showed that the enemy was moving from Rheims in an easterly direction towards Metz. Moltke studied the reports by aid of his maps, in which each detachment of troops was marked with a pin, and soon concluded that there could be no doubt that the French General was marching on Metz. He at once laid his views before the King, and obtained his permission that the march on Paris should be given up, and that the third and fourth armies, wheeled to the right, should march towards the north.
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 advance at Mouzon; for the French army, instead of making forced marches of about 20 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 of Prussia also engaged the heads of Marshal MacMahon’s columns at Beaumont and Donchery and drove them in. On the 1st of September the two armies, under the eyes of the King of Prussia, attacked the position which the French had taken up at Sedan. The Crown Prince threw his left completely round the French army. 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 the fortress, while their adversaries gained a firm footing on all the heights which command and overlook the basin in which Sedan is situate. 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.
After the halt of a few days necessary for the completion of arrangements at Sedan, the armies of the Crown Princes marched direct for Paris, where alone the war could be ended. There was no French army worthy of mention now in the field. Bazaine, with the Army of the Rhine, was invested in Metz, the Emperor and MacMahon were prisoners on the road to Germany. The few troops that 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. The German movements were, in Moltke’s fashion, at once rapid and deliberate. On the 19th of September the investment of Paris was, in a sense, completed, though much had to be done to fix the grasp securely on the doomed victim.
Here opened a second stage of the war, which for several months was directed from Moltke’s quarters at Versailles. There can be little question that, in the first instance, the Germans were led away by a miscalculation, and for a time, undoubtedly, Moltke’s schemes had to embrace, not only offensive operations against the enemy, but a safe retreat in case of disaster. The resources of Paris, the strength of the fortifications, and the spirit of the people had been underrated. If the Germans had not reckoned on the immediate surrender of the city, as in 1814 and 1815, they would hardly have risked an advance while Bazaine’s army was still safe in Metz and while the fortresses of Alsace and Lorraine threatened their main lines of communication. When Moltke saw that Paris was not to be captured by a coup de main, but that it must be regularly invested, he must have passed some uneasy days and nights until Toul and Strasburg fell; nor could his anxieties have been greatly relieved before Metz capitulated on the 28th of October. Then the problem became a comparatively simple one, for even if the German armies had been compelled to raise the siege they could have retired in perfect order and kept their hold upon the occupied departments. But, at the very outset, Moltke stood firm, and, even while the security of his communications was doubtful, a vast double line of intrenchments, thrown up by the spade, hemmed in the Parisians.
Thenceforward the issue of the siege was only a matter of time. Paris fell by the pressure of hunger. Even Moltke had not truly estimated the strength of the fortifications, which remained unbroken when the gates were opened to the investing armies; and the struggle might have been prolonged for months if there had been any means of getting supplies of food. Perhaps no part of Moltke’s work was more remarkable than the complete success with which he solved a problem only one degree less difficult than that of victualling Paris – the provision of supplies during the winter for the investing armies, in a country to a great extent stripped of its resources and where a prolonged siege had not been contemplated. It is curious that those who planned the fortifications had calculated that no investing army could subsist outside the walls for more than two months, whereas