The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill

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СКАЧАТЬ organization. Moltke well knew this. His system of intelligence from France was excellent; every change in armament and every movement of battalions was known to him. The war which he had long foreseen broke out, indeed, suddenly, but found him prepared. In England it caused great surprise, although in the spring of 1870 French agents were abroad in all our southern counties buying corn and forage. The excuses for enormous purchases of this description were that the season had been so dry that no harvest was expected in France. But these excuses were transparent, for had forage been so very scarce in France French dealers would not have cared, simultaneously with an enormous rise in the price of forage, to largely export horses to France.

      At the same time, a flotilla was secretly collected in the northern French ports, capable of transporting 40,000 men and 12,000 horses. These things were carefully noted by Moltke’s agents, but the British Government, against which the arrangements might have been equally directed, remained in happy ignorance of any danger of war, and within a few hours of the outbreak of hostilities our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as he himself stated in Parliament, ‘believed that there was not a cloud on the political horizon of Europe.’

      Careful precautions were taken on the Prussian side, and already in December, 1867, Moltke worked out and laid before the King a plan for the railway transport of the armies of Germany to the Rhine and a plan of campaign against France. So carefully were the details of the transport arranged that when war broke out more than two years afterwards they had hardly to be altered. The key of Moltke’s plan of campaign as exposed in his history of this war which was published from the office of the German staff in 1874, was ‘to find the main body of the enemy and to attack it wherever found.’ The mobilization of the army was prepared in every detail, and Moltke, with a keen but bold strategy, fixed the point of concentration in the Bavarian palatinate, between the Rhine and the Moselle. The assembly of the whole German force here protected the upper as well as the lower Rhine, and allowed for an offensive movement into France which would probably prevent any invasion of German territory.

      It might appear hazardous to concentrate the armies on the French side of the Rhine, where they might be attacked before they were united, but his calculations were so perfect and his arrangements so complete, that under his magician’s hand this danger disappeared. For every detachment, the day and hour of its departure from its garrison and arrival near the frontier was laid down. On the 10th day after mobilization was ordered, the first troops would descend from their railway carriages close by the French frontier, and on the 13th day 60,000 combatants would be there in position and on the 18th day this force would be swelled to 300,000 men. He calculated that only on the eighth day, in most favourable circumstances, could the French cross the frontier with 150,000 men, when there was time for the Prussian staff to stop their railway transport at the Rhine and there disembark their forces. To move from the frontier at Saarlouis to the Rhine the French would require at least six marches, and could only reach the river on the 14th day to find the passages occupied by overwhelming German forces. For on the German side there were ready to take the field, as soon as their rapid mobilization was complete, the 12 corps of the North German Confederation, mustering at least 360,000 men; and the armies of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Darmstadt, Saxony and Baden, which were under the supreme command of the King of Prussia in virtue of the treaties concluded after the campaign of 1866, raised the field forces of that Sovereign to over 500,000 combatants.

      The German soldier was more suitably equipped for European war than the French. Discarding the cumbrous equipage necessary for the formation of camps or the refinements of cooking, the German troops were prepared during a campaign to trust to the shelter which villages nearly always afford in Western Europe, or, in case of necessity, to bivouac in the open air, while a small mess-tin carried by each soldier sufficed for his culinary wants. The French soldier, on the contrary, was weighed down with tentes d’abri, heavy cooking apparatus, and an enormous kit. These were generally useless, frequently lost, always incumbrances; but an army accustomed to African or Asiatic war clings pertinaciously to the idea of canvas covering, fails to realize the different conditions under which campaigns must be conducted in Europe, and shudders at the idea of an exposure in war to which every true sportsman will willingly consent for pleasure.

      The plans matured in peace by Moltke were now to be tested. They were not found wanting. Late at night, on the 15th of July, the King of Prussia ordered the mobilization of the whole German army. The 16th was the first day of mobilization; on the 26th the mobilization was complete; and on the 3d of August three army corps stood formed in order of battle south of the Moselle, between the Saar and the Rhine, and ready to advance into France. While the German army was being mobilized the French lost all advantage 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 СКАЧАТЬ