So unexpected was this move and so uncertain the information which called attention to it, that Moltke did not venture to change at once the direction of march of the whole army, but he directed the Army of the Meuse northward on Damvillers and ordered Prince Frederick Charles to detach two corps from the forces investing Metz to reinforce it. For the moment, therefore, MacMahon’s move had succeeded, and the opportunity existed for Bazaine to break out. But at the critical moment the hopeless want of real efficiency in MacMahon’s army compelled the latter so to delay his advance that it became evident to the Germans that there was no longer any necessity for the III. army to maintain the direction towards Paris, and that the probable point of contact between the Meuse army and the French lay nearer to the right wing of the III. army than to Prince Frederick Charles’s investing force before Metz.
The detachment from the II. army was therefore countermanded, and the whole III. army changed front to the north, while the Meuse army headed the French off from the east. The latter came into contact with the head of the French columns, during the 29th, about Nouart, and on the 30th at Buzancy (battle of Beaumont); and the French, yielding to the force of numbers combined with superior moral, were driven northwestward upon Sedan (q.v.), right across the front of the III. army, which was now rapidly coming up from the south.
During the 31st the retreat practically became a rout, and the morning of the 1st of September found the French crowded around the little fortress of Sedan, with only one line of retreat to the north-west still open. By 11 A.M. the XI. corps (III. army) had already closed that line, and about noon the Saxons (Army of the Meuse) moving round between the town and the Belgian frontier joined hands with the XI., and the circle of investment was complete. The battle of Sedan was closed about 4.15 P.M. by the hoisting of the white flag. Terms were agreed upon during the night, and the whole French army, with the emperor, passed into captivity. (F. N. M.)
Thus in five weeks one of the French field armies was imprisoned in Metz, the other destroyed, and the Germans were free to march upon Paris. This seemed easy. There could be no organized opposition to their progress,[1] and Paris, if not so defenceless as in 1814, was more populous. Later operations.Starvation was the best method of attacking an overcrowded fortress, and the Parisians were not thought to be proof against the deprivation of their accustomed luxuries. Even Moltke hoped that by the end of October he would be “shooting hares at Creisau,” and with this confidence the German III. and IV. armies left the vicinity of Sedan on the 4th of September. The march called for no more than good staff arrangements, and the two armies arrived before Paris a fortnight later and gradually encircled the place—the III. army on the south, the IV. on the north side—in the last days of September. Headquarters were established at Versailles. Meanwhile the Third Empire had fallen, giving place on the 4th of September to a republican Government of National Defence, which made its appeal to, and evoked, the spirit of 1792. Henceforward the French nation, which had left the conduct of the war to the regular army and had been little more than an excited spectator, took the burden upon itself.
The regular army, indeed, still contained more than 500,000 men (chiefly recruits and reservists), and 50,000 sailors, marines, douaniers, &c., were also available. But the Garde Mobile, framed by Marshal Niel in 1868, doubled this figure, and the addition of the Garde Nationale, called into existence on the 15th of September, and including all able-bodied men of from 31 to 60 years of age, more than trebled it. The German staff had of course to reckon on the Garde Mobile, and did so beforehand, but they wholly underestimated both its effective members and its willingness, while, possessing themselves a system in which all the military elements of the German nation stood close behind the troops of the active army, they ignored the potentialities of the Garde Nationale.
Meanwhile, both as a contrast to the events that centred on Paris and because in point of time they were decided for the most part in the weeks immediately following Sedan, we must briefly allude to the sieges conducted by the Germans—Paris (q.v.), Metz (q.v.) and Belfort (q.v.) excepted. Old and ruined as many of them were, the French fortresses possessed considerable importance in the eyes of the Germans. Strassburg, in particular, the key of Alsace, the standing menace to South Germany and the most conspicuous of the spoils of Louis XIV.’s Raubkriege, was an obvious target. Operations were begun on the 9th of August, three days after Wörth, General v. Werder’s corps (Baden troops and Prussian Landwehr) making the siege. The French commandant, General Uhrich, surrendered after a stubborn resistance on the 28th of September. Of the smaller fortresses many, being practically unarmed and without garrisons, capitulated at once. Toul, defended by Major Huck with 2000 mobiles, resisted for forty days, and drew upon itself the efforts of 13,000 men and 100 guns. Verdun, commanded by General Guerin de Waldersbach, held out till after the fall of Metz. Some of the fortresses lying to the north of the Prussian line of advance on Paris, e.g. Mézières, resisted up to January 1871, though of course this was very largely due to the diminution of pressure caused by the appearance of new French field armies in October. On the 9th of September a strange incident took place at the surrender of Laon. A powder magazine was blown up by the soldiers in charge and 300 French and a few German soldiers were killed by the explosion. But as the Germans advanced, their lines of communication were thoroughly organized, and the belt of country between Paris and the Prussian frontier subdued and garrisoned. Most of these fortresses were small town enceintes, dating from Vauban’s time, and open, under the new conditions of warfare, to concentric bombardment from positions formerly out of range, upon which the besieger could place as many guns as he chose to employ. In addition they were usually deficient in armament and stores and garrisoned by newly-raised troops. Belfort, where the defenders strained every nerve to keep the besiegers out of bombarding range, and Paris formed the only exceptions to this general rule.
The policy of the new French government was defined by Jules Favre on the 6th of September. “It is for the king of Prussia, who has declared that he is making war on the Empire and not on France, to stay his hand; we shall not cede an inch of our territory or a stone of our The “Défense Nationale.”fortresses.” These proud words, so often ridiculed as empty bombast, were the prelude of a national effort which re-established France in the eyes of Europe as a great power, even though provinces and fortresses were ceded in the peace that that effort proved unable to avert. They were translated into action by Leon Gambetta, who escaped from Paris in a balloon on the 7th of October, and established the headquarters of the defence at Tours, where already the “Delegation” of the central government—which had decided to remain in Paris—had concentrated the machinery of government. Thenceforward Gambetta and his principal assistant de Freycinet directed the whole war in the open country, coordinating it, as best they could with the precarious means of communication at their disposal, with Trochu’s military operations in and round the capital. His critics—Gambetta’s personality was such as to ensure him numerous enemies among the higher civil and military officials, over whom, in the interests of La Patrie, he rode rough-shod—have acknowledged the fact, which is patent enough in any case, that nothing but Gambetta’s driving energy enabled France in a few weeks to create and to equip twelve army corps, representing thirty-six divisions (600,000 rifles and 1400 guns), after all her organized regular field troops had been destroyed or neutralized. But it is claimed that by undue interference with the generals at the front, by presuming to dictate their plans of campaign, and by forcing them to act when the troops were unready, Gambetta and de Freycinet nullified the efforts of themselves and the rest of the nation and subjected France
- ↑ The 13th corps (Vinoy), which had followed MacMahon’s army at some distance, was not involved in the catastrophe of Sedan, and by good luck as well as good management evaded the German pursuit and returned safely to Paris.
