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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 the German investment lasted for five months. Versailles became thus the scene of the most important part of Moltke’s life work.

      This extract from the extensive obituary of Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke published in The Times on 25th and 27th April 1891 deals with the key points of his career, in particular those during the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars.

      Moltke was a general who fought the next war with his every breath. Recognising that the railways could cut the time for national mobilization to provide a decisive strategic advantage over France, he studied the system in immense detail. His mobilization plan worked perfectly in 1870 but when his nephew, Moltke the Younger, as Chief of Staff in 1914, was asked by Kaiser Wilhelm II whether the plan could be changed to deliver the bulk of the German Army to face Russia in the east, rather than to face France in the west, Moltke said the complexity of the railway schedules made it impossible. In fact, it could have been done, as was later conceded, as an alternative plan for that contingency had been prepared in 1913.

      Moltke’s grasp of the importance of co-ordination and communication, using the telegraph, gave his armies another decisive advantage once they reached the battlefield and, like Napoleon, he instinctively anticipated his enemy’s intentions and interpreted his movements.

       MACMAHON

       Descendant of a distinguished Irish family in the service of France.

      18 OCTOBER 1893

      

      MARIE EDMÉ PATRICE MAURICE DE MACMAHON, Marshal of France, Duc de Magenta, was descended from an Irish family of distinction. In the time of James II its representatives ruined themselves in his service and went with him into exile.

      The late Marshal was born in the Château of Sully, near Autun, July 13, 1808. He entered the army and plunged with ardour into the campaign of conquest undertaken by the French in Algeria. He exhibited such talent and bravery that he speedily won renown. As a lieutenant he acquired fame and the Cross of the Legion of Honour by fighting the Kabyles along the slope of the Atlas.

      The Crimea furnished the great field for the display of his indomitable courage. In 1855, when General Canrobert left the scene of war, MacMahon was selected by the Emperor to succeed him in the command of a division. When the chiefs of the Allied Armies resolved on assaulting Sebastopol, September 8, he was assigned the most perilous position in the grand final attack on the Malakoff Redoubt. MacMahon said to Marshal Niel, ‘I will enter it, and you may be certain that I shall not be removed from it living!’ Then ensued a colossal and terrible struggle, which will redound for ever to the military credit of the French.

      In the Italian campaign of 1859 MacMahon greatly distinguished himself. At the battle of Magenta his conduct was particularly bold and sagacious. When Europe was startled in 1870 by the news of the declaration of war between France and Prussia, Marshal MacMahon was appointed to the command of the First Army Corps. His mission was the defence of Alsace. Although the declaration СКАЧАТЬ