fatally, it was decided that Bourbaki, whom nothing could move towards Orleans, should depart for the south-east, with a view to relieving Belfort and striking perpendicularly against the long line of the Germans’ communications. This movement, bold to the point of extreme rashness judged by any theoretical rules of strategy, seems to have been suggested by de Freycinet. As the execution of it fell actually into incapable hands, it is difficult to judge what would have been the result had a Chanzy or a Faidherbe been in command of the French. At any rate it was vicious in so far as immediate advantages were sacrificed to hopes of ultimate success which Gambetta and de Freycinet did wrong to base on Bourbaki’s powers of generalship. Late in December, for good or evil, Bourbaki marched off into Franche-Comté and ceased to be a factor in the Loire campaign. A mere calculation of time and space sufficed to show the German headquarters that the moment had arrived to demolish the stubborn Chanzy.
Prince Frederick Charles resumed the interrupted offensive, pushing westward with four corps and four cavalry divisions which converged on Le Mans. There on the 10th, 11th and 12th of January 1871 a stubbornly contested battle ended with the retreat of the French, who owed their Le Mans.defeat solely to the misbehaviour of the Breton mobiles. These, after deserting their post on the battlefield at a mere threat of the enemy’s infantry, fled in disorder and infected with their terrors the men in the reserve camps of instruction, which broke up in turn. But Chanzy, resolute as ever, drew off his field army intact towards Laval, where a freshly raised corps joined him. The prince’s army was far too exhausted to deliver another effective blow, and the main body of it gradually drew back into better quarters, while the grand duke departed for the north to aid in opposing Faidherbe. Some idea of the strain to which the invaders had been subjected may be gathered from the fact that army corps, originally 30,000 strong, were in some cases reduced to 10,000 and even fewer bayonets. And at this moment Bourbaki was at the head of 120,000 men! Indeed, so threatening seemed the situation on the Loire, though the French south of that river between Gien and Blois were mere isolated brigades, that the prince hurried back from Le Mans to Orleans to take personal command. A fresh French corps, bearing the number 25, and being the twenty-first actually raised during the war, appeared in the field towards Blois. Chanzy was again at the head of 156,000 men. He was about to take the offensive against the 40,000 Germans left near Le Mans when to his bitter disappointment he received the news of the armistice. “We have still France,” he had said to his staff, undeterred by the news of the capitulation of Paris, but now he had to submit, for even if his improvised army was still cheerful, there were many significant tokens that the people at large had sunk into apathy and hoped to avoid worse terms of peace by discontinuing the contest at once.
So ended the critical period of the “Défense nationale.” It may be taken to have lasted from the day of Coulmiers to the last day of Le Mans, and its central point was the battle of Beaune-la-Rolande. Its characteristics were, on the German side, inadequacy of the system of strategy practised, which became palpable as soon as the organs of reconnaissance met with serious resistance, misjudgment of and indeed contempt for the fighting powers of “new formations,” and the rise of a spirit of ferocity in the man in the ranks, born of his resentment at the continuance of the war and the ceaseless sniping of the franc-tireur’s rifle and the peasant’s shot-gun. On the French side the continual efforts of the statesmen to stimulate the generals to decisive efforts, coupled with actual suggestions as to the plans of the campaign to be followed (in default, be it said, of the generals themselves producing such plans), and the professional soldiers’ distrust of half-trained troops, acted and reacted upon one another in such a way as to neutralize the powerful, if disconnected and erratic, forces that the war and the Republic had unchained. As for the soldiers themselves, their most conspicuous qualities were their uncomplaining endurance of fatigues and wet bivouacs, and in action their capacity for a single great effort and no more. But they were unreliable in the hands of the veteran regular general, because they were heterogeneous in recruiting, and unequal in experience and military qualities, and the French staff in those days was wholly incapable of moving masses of troops with the rapidity demanded by the enemy’s methods of war, so that on the whole it is difficult to know whether to wonder more at their missing success or at their so nearly achieving it.
The decision, as we have said, was fought out on the Loire and the Sarthe. Nevertheless the glorious story of the “Défense nationale” includes two other important campaigns—that of Faidherbe in the north and that of Bourbaki in the east.
In the north the organization of the new formations was begun by Dr Testelin and General Farre. Bourbaki held the command for a short time in November before proceeding to Tours, but the active command in field operations came into the hands of Faidherbe, a general Faidherbe’s campaign.whose natural powers, so far from being cramped by years of peace routine and court repression, had been developed by a career of pioneer warfare and colonial administration. General Farre was his capable chief of staff. Troops were raised from fugitives from Metz and Sedan, as well as from depot troops and the Garde Mobile, and several minor successes were won by the national troops in the Seine valley, for here, as on the side of the Loire, mere detachments of the investing army round Paris were almost powerless. But the capitulation of Metz came too soon for the full development of these sources of military strength, and the German I. army under Manteuffel, released from duty at Metz, marched north-eastward, capturing the minor fortresses on its way. Before Faidherbe assumed command, Farre had fought several severe actions near Amiens, but, greatly outnumbered, had been defeated and forced to retire behind the Somme. Another French general, Briand, had also engaged the enemy without success near Rouen. Faidherbe assumed the command on the 3rd of December, and promptly moved forward. A general engagement on the little river Hallue (December 23), east-north-east of Amiens, was fought with no decisive results, but Faidherbe, feeling that his troops were only capable of winning victories in the first rush, drew them off on the 24th. His next effort, at Bapaûme (January 2-3, 1871), was more successful, but its effects were counterbalanced by the surrender of the fortress of Péronne (January 9) and the consequent establishment of the Germans on the line of the Somme. Meanwhile the Rouen troops had been contained by a strong German detachment, and there was no further chance of succouring Paris from the north. But Faidherbe, like Chanzy, was far from despair, and in spite of the deficiencies of his troops in equipment (50,000 pairs of shoes, supplied by English contractors, proved to have paper soles), he risked a third great battle at St Quentin (January 19). This time he was severely defeated, though his loss in killed and wounded was about equal to that of the Germans, who were commanded by Goeben. Still the attempt of the Germans to surround him failed and he drew off his forces with his artillery and trains unharmed. The Germans, who had been greatly impressed by the solidity of his army, did not pursue him far, and Faidherbe was preparing for a fresh effort when he received orders to suspend hostilities.
The last episode is Bourbaki’s campaign in the east, with its mournful close at Pontarlier. Before the crisis of the last week of November, the French forces under General Crémer, Cambriels’ successor, had been so far successful in minor enterprises that, as mentioned above, the right wing of the Loire army, severed from the left by the battle of Orleans and subsequently held inactive at Bourges and Nevers, was ordered to Franche Comté to take the offensive against the XIV. corps and other German troops there, to relieve Belfort and to strike a blow across the invaders’ line of communications. But there were many delays in execution. The staff work, which was at no time satisfactory in the French armies of 1870, was complicated by the snow, the bad state of the roads, and the mountainous nature of the country, and Bourbaki, a brave general of division in action,
