CHAPTER X.

MOLTKE.

I feel it difficult to attempt a sketch which must be inadequate, and

perhaps partial. Moltke is a living man, though in extreme old age;

flattery and envy have obscured his real image; and his place among

great commanders is still a problem. Yet the General who triumphed

in 1866–70, and whose name history links with Sadowa and Sedan, is

assuredly a master of modern war; and I shall try to disengage his

personality from the facts accumulated around it and still imperfectly

known. Helmuth Charles von Moltke was born in 1800, a scion of a noble

Danish house, of ancient descent but shattered fortunes. The family had

produced more than one good soldier. It appears in the Thirty Years’

War; the father of Moltke attained the rank of General in his country’s

service, and was, perhaps, an officer in the Prussian army; and one of

his uncles perished amidst the wreck of the Grand Army in the retreat

from Moscow. Little is known about him in early boyhood, except that

he grew up under the cold shade of poverty; his first recollection

was of the sack of Lübeck, where Blücher succumbed after the ruin of

Jena; in his case, the strong impressions of youth were formed by the

events of the gigantic strife which marked the beginning of the present

century; he saw the Continent at the feet of Napoleon; he was a witness

of the great rising of Germany; he may be said to have watched Leipsic,

Montmirail, and Waterloo. The image of war, therefore, in its grandest

aspects, and with consequences akin to a world-wide earthquake,

was stamped on his mind when it was most ductile; and these

associations, doubtless, had much to do with the distrust of France as

the disturber of Europe, and the blended scorn and dislike of all that

is French which were to be characteristic of the future warrior. Moltke

became a cadet at the Military School of Copenhagen at an early age;

and some years afterwards, having meanwhile obtained a commission in

the Prussian service, he was a pupil at the Staff College of Berlin, an

institution which may be traced to Frederick, and which has always been

of very high repute. The youth made his mark at both these seminaries;

privation had steeled his strong nature; his intelligence was superior,

and his industry intense; he had a special faculty for mastering facts,

and a fine taste in Letters and Science, resembling Frederick in all

these respects; and it is no mere tradition that his promise was great,

when he received his first appointment on the Prussian staff. Moltke

passed some years at a desk in Berlin, doing the routine duties of the

War Office; and as he had fallen on the days of the Long Peace, which

followed the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the prospect was faint

that the accomplished soldier would ever become an illustrious warrior.

[Illustration: MOLTKE AND HIS MASTER.]

When he was past thirty, however, he found an opening for the display

of some of his eminent parts; when travelling through the East, he

attracted the notice of Sultan Mahmoud, lately engaged in the task of

transforming the Turkish army; and Moltke gave him valuable advice,

especially on the defence of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Like

Eugene of Savoy, it was his fortune also to see war for the first time,

as it was carried on by the arms of Islam. In company with a small

party of Prussian officers, he was present at the decisive fight of

Nisib, which made Mehemet Ali an independent ruler; and it has been

said that he recommended a movement which might have made the result of

the battle different. Moltke has left a record of these experiences in

a series of letters, still of value; but a history from his pen of the

Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1828–29 is the most important

monument of this part of his career. The book reveals the nature of the

man; it wants imagination and the charm of genius; but it is thoroughly

well-informed and full of good criticism; and while it does justice

to the powers of Diebitsch, its peculiar characteristic is the minute

attention bestowed by the writer on all that relates to the mechanism

and organization of the contending armies, and to the geography of

the theatre of war. The reputation of Moltke grew by degrees; in the

fine words of the Roman poet, it was like the silent growth of a tree;

he rose slowly to the rank of general, and he was for some time the

first aide-de-camp of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the late Emperor

Frederick of no inglorious memory. He made several visits of state with

his chief, and has left an interesting account of all that he saw; but

his mind was engrossed by what belongs to war; and it is curious to

observe that he has far more praise for the steadiness and obedience

of the Russian infantry than for the agility and intelligence of the

French soldiery, associated in his mind with carelessness and want of

discipline.

In 1857 Moltke received the office of Chief of the Staff of the

Prussian army. The position was one of the highest eminence; it had

been filled by distinguished men; but the names of these are of no

significance compared to that of the renowned soldier who has made it

famous in all lands. Moltke was in his fifty-eighth year when he was

raised to the post; he had never commanded troops in the field, nay,

had taken no part in European warfare; and yet he possessed qualities

which made his selection for the place a great day in Prussian history,

for scarcely a living man so thoroughly understood what were to be the

true conditions of war in our time, what its characteristics, and its

coming development. We shall perceive this better if we glance at the

state of the art during the long period of almost unbroken peace which

succeeded Waterloo. For more than thirty years after 1815, every Power

in Europe felt the exhaustion caused by the gigantic strife at the

first part of the century; and though “the war drum was not hushed,” in

the poet’s language, their energies were mainly directed to the great

problems, political and social, which had come into question. In this

state of affairs they generally reduced their armies; what was more

important, they took little heed of all that concerns the military art,

and their war offices were, without exception, directed by men whose

minds had been formed on the battle-fields of the preceding age. When

the Revolution of 1848 passed over the Continent, the Russian army was

far the most powerful in Europe; the armies of France, of Austria, of

Prussia, of England, had largely declined from their old standards; and

the great names of Wellington, of Soult, of Paskiévitch, were typical

of the system of unchanging routine, which, in every service, prevailed

in high places.

This strong conservatism was not much shaken by the memorable events

of the next few years. The military operations of 1848–49 resembled

those of 1805–14, except that they displayed less genius; and even

the experience of the Crimean War did not produce a wide-spread

conviction that a new era in the art was about to open. Nevertheless,

throughout those long years since the Peace, forces of all kinds had

been steadily at work, which were to affect greatly the phenomena

of war, and if not to change the essential truths it teaches, to

modify it profoundly in some of its aspects. The population of every

State had continued to increase, especially in Central and Eastern

Europe; and the rude material, therefore, of military power had been

augmented, and was still growing. The resources of most nations had

been doubled and trebled; agriculture had made enormous strides; roads

and communications had become more numerous; and while this progress,

dating from centuries before, had been going on with accelerated speed,

a new element of mighty force had appeared in the railway system,

which, spreading over Europe, had made the means of transport and of

locomotion infinitely more easy, more vast, and more rapid than ever

had been known before in history. Though the truth had not dawned on

ordinary minds, it had become certain, thirty years ago, that in any

great European contest armies would be larger than they had ever been;

and the facilities of moving huge bodies of troops, and of munitions

and supplies on a prodigious scale, it is now perceived, were to have

these results; that the efficacy of fortresses was still further to

decline, and that military operations might be more ample, have more

celerity, and be more decisive than had been the case even in the age

of Napoleon. Other influences, too, had made themselves felt, to

be attended with great results in war. The age was one of material

inventions; the weapons of destruction used by armies had been almost

transformed within a brief period; and appliances of a different kind

had, to a certain extent, been turned to account. Rifled cannon and

the breech-loading musket had been manufactured and partly employed;

these mechanical improvements, it is now apparent, have necessarily

led to changed formations and tactics; and the discovery of the field

telegraph has, in some measure perhaps, affected strategy. Education,

moreover, after the Peace had been generally diffused through Europe,

especially in Prussia and Northern Germany; this had greatly increased

the self-reliance and the intelligence of the individual soldier; and

the result, we can now see, has had a potent influence in the conduct

of armies and the arrangements of war.

It was the distinctive merit, I have said, of Moltke, that he

appreciated these facts, and all that resulted from them, with perfect

judgment and the most sagacious insight. He was deeply versed in

the history of war; like every true student of it, he had seen that

Napoleon was, by many degrees, the first of captains, and he had

the capacity to perceive that the new conditions, especially the

development of the railway system, favoured the grand and daring

Napoleonic strategy. He grasped the truth, too, that the immense

size of the armies in coming European conflicts would lead to more

independence in separate commands, and would require a larger number

of able chiefs than ever had been the case before; and he saw that

preparation was more than ever necessary, the operations of modern

war being so quick and decisive. The superiority of a rapid and bold

offensive, the advantage of the diffusion of skill in the high ranks

of an army, and the value of careful organization and well-planned

arrangement, formed, so to speak, his military faith; and, coming to

other details, he distinctly declared that the new arms would make the

efficacy of fire the greatest element of success, that the importance

of mere charges would largely decline, that formations in the field

would become more flexible, and less dense than they had been formerly,

and that real culture and mental training made a man an infinitely

better soldier.

Moltke impressed these principles, which thirty years ago were not

generally accepted or understood, on the Prussian army from the first

moment, and with what results is now well known. The first great

event in this part of his life was the reorganization of the military

strength of Prussia, a reform completed in 1860. This vast work was

probably due more to the king and Roon than to anyone else; but Moltke,

we may be sure, approved of the measures by which the numbers of the

army were largely increased and its real efficiency was, perhaps,

quadrupled. The new arrangements did not change the bases on which

the military power of Prussia rested, the general duty of the subject

to serve, and the organization of the army on the local system; but

the yearly contingent of recruits was augmented a third, the time for

service in the reserve was doubled, and the army, which had become too

like a militia by a large admixture of landwehr, was made a completely

distinct force, the landwehr forming only its last reserve. The hand of

Moltke may be distinctly seen in almost every improvement thenceforward

made in this great force, composed, after 1860, of fully half a million

of trained fighting-men. Holding fast to the principle that offensive

strategy would more than ever succeed in modern war, he directed his

efforts to have the Prussian army ready to take the field as quickly

as possible, and to be prepared to attack at once; with this object

in view, the local arrangement of the national forces was steadily

retained, for it assured the rapid assembly of masses of troops; but it

was subjected to minute and careful central direction; and elaborate

preparations of all kinds were made to secure speedy “mobilization,”

and the regular transport of whatever is required for the conduct of

a campaign by turning railways and other communications to account.

Another great object of Moltke was to provide for general efficiency

through all commands, from the highest down to the lowest grades. He

had excellent materials for this at hand, in the practised officers

who abound in Prussia; and steadily applying himself to his task, he

succeeded by degrees in placing the army under the control of capable

men, from top to bottom, producing in this way that hierarchy of good

leaders which Thucydides declared, two thousand years ago, was one of

the secrets of Spartan success; and creating that division of skilful

labour which has become a necessity in modern war. Moltke addressed

himself, also, to the reforms in tactics which he had foreseen were

to be essential; but here his exertions were less successful; he was

steadily obstructed by routine and tradition; his own views, probably,

were not fully formed, and years were to elapse before the Prussian

army was to attain its present excellence in this sphere of the

art. The greatest reform, however, effected by Moltke remains to be

stated, and had immense results. The Prussian Staff stood high since

the days of Frederick; but under the care of its greatest chief, it

gradually reached a state of extreme perfection. Divided mainly into

two branches, it supplied the commanders of corps with able advisers,

trained in strategy, in tactics, in the direction of troops, and in

providing for their needs in the field; and it has accumulated stores

of knowledge in all that relates to military history, to the geography

of war, to the resources and armies of civilized states, which have

proved to be of the greatest practical value. Moltke, it should be

added, like all true leaders, inspired the army generally with his high

aims and spirit; he encouraged the mental training of soldiers and

officers, but he paid special attention to order, discipline, and to

everything that secures obedience to command.

[Illustration: Theatre, of the

CAMPAIGN

of 1866.]

Moltke could never have accomplished these tasks had he not had the

all-powerful support of the King, a really able and far-sighted ruler,

and a soldier of no ordinary gifts. Within seven years from the time

when he was raised to his post, the Prussian army, which since 1848 had

fallen low in universal repute, had, under Moltke’s care, become, we

know now, unquestionably the first of European armies, as superior to

those of every other State as the army of Frederick was to the armies

of his day. The time was at hand when the strength and worth of this

mighty instrument was to be proved in the field. I pass over the petty

Danish war, and proceed to the great conflict of 1866, fought with

memorable and lasting results for the Continent. Prussia instantly took

a bold offensive attitude, and the celerity with which her main forces

were “mobilized” and directed towards the Bohemian frontier, with

every requirement to begin a campaign, surprised all who understood the

subject. The invasion, too, of the Northern German States was admirably

planned and well carried out; and the ability with which a small

Prussian army held in check and baffled the whole of South Germany

remains a specimen of fine generalship. The distribution, however,

of the principal army on the theatre of war to oppose Austria can be

praised by the courtiers of fortune only, and is certainly open to

grave objections.

On the 15th of June 1866 this huge array, about 250,000 strong, and

divided into three great masses, was disseminated along an immense

front, extending from the Elbe almost to the Oder, and not far from

the main Bohemian range; the right, the Army of the Elbe, being near

Torgau, the centre, or First Army, being around Sorau, the Second Army,

the left, holding the tract round Neisse. At this moment the chief

Austrian army, nearly equal in numbers, reckoning its Saxon allies,

was in Moravia, spreading about Olmütz; it held a central position

between scattered foes, and it is now acknowledged that it was ready

to advance, and could have assumed a decided offensive. It is vain to

deny that in this state of affairs it already possessed an immense

advantage; and, whatever the cause, the Prussian strategy which gave

it this grand chance must be deemed faulty. All the apologies that

have been made on this subject will not mislead the true student of

war. It has been urged that the dislocation of the Prussian armies was

necessary “to cover Berlin and Breslau”; but this argument is of no

avail. You should never risk a whole army for such objects, and if you

try to defend everything, you run all hazards. It has been said, again,

that it was not possible to assemble the Prussian forces in any other

way, regard being had to the lines of railways; but that is no reason

why the three armies should have been distant from each other near

the Bohemian frontier. Lastly, it has been alleged that the superior

quality of the Prussian troops, if considered, excuses their chiefs;

but this superiority had yet to be proved; and any operation, however

defective, may be justified by this kind of reasoning. The examples set

by really great captains show what Benedek--a good soldier, but unfit

to command a large army--might have accomplished at this conjuncture.

Napoleon, in the place of the Austrian chief, would have made for

the salient of the Bohemian hills--would have debouched through the

passes into the Saxon plains, and holding the army of the Elbe by a

detachment in check, would have fallen in superior force on the First

Army, and then would have turned victoriously against the Second

Army, which, thrown forward into Upper Silesia, might have been cut

off from its base and destroyed. Turenne, less daring but more safe,

would have advanced to the southern verge of the Bohemian range, and,

occupying the position he always sought to gain, would have invited the

attack of his divided enemies, and interposing between them would have

beaten them in detail. In either case, the Prussians should have been

defeated; and, indeed, why they were placed in this way on the theatre

has never yet been really explained.

On the 16th of June the Army of the Elbe entered Saxony, and had soon

seized Dresden; and about the 20th it had nearly joined hands with

the First Army which, under Prince Frederick Charles, had been moved

close to the Bohemian frontier. The Prussian right and centre were thus

almost united; but the left, commanded by the Crown Prince, which had

advanced from Neisse towards the passes near Glatz, was isolated from

its supports, and at a great distance; and if the invaders were not in

immediate danger--for Benedek had only begun to move--their strategic

position remained critical. In this situation the Prussian armies, now

practically two, not three masses, were directed to pass through the

range, and, approaching each other, to effect their junction around

Gitschin, a point considerably to the south of the hills, not far from

where Benedek had some troops, and where he might have had five-sixths

of his army. This strategy was exactly the same in kind as that which

had proved fatal in 1796, when attempted against the chief of Rivoli;

and the excuses that have been made for it are weak and baseless. Two

large armies, such as those of Prussia were, though far from each

other, are no doubt in less peril if they invite the attack of a single

army equal to both in strength, than two small armies would be under

like conditions, and this would specially be the case where, as in

the present instance, the field of manœuvre was somewhat contracted.

All this, however, proves no more than that the converging movement

of 1866 was less to be blamed than that of Würmser; it does not show

that it can be justified, and the experience of ages clearly condemns

it. Benedek, who broke up from Olmütz on the 17th of June, might have

reached Gitschin with the mass of his forces before the Prussian armies

could have come into line; and in that event he would have had at least

an opportunity to fall on his divided enemies, and to achieve success,

more or less important. Unfortunately for himself, however, the

Austrian chief was unable to seize the occasion before him; instead of

turning his central position to account, and advancing northward with

all his corps in hand, he adopted half-measures of extreme feebleness.

He sent a detachment only, comparatively small, to hold the Prussian

right and centre in check. He struck at the Prussian left with inferior

forces, and he hung back himself with the mass of his army, irresolute,

hesitating, and, at best, inactive.

The result was what might have been expected. Clam Gallas and the Saxon

contingent were overpowered by Prince Frederick Charles, who attacked

with largely superior forces; the Crown Prince, as he emerged from

the defiles, defeated with ease the three hostile corps opposed to

his much more powerful army, and though the issue was partly due to

the excellence of the Prussian infantry, and to the efficacy of the

arms they wielded, it is chiefly to be ascribed to the grave faults

and the shortcomings of the Austrian leader. The victorious armies,

though still far apart, now advanced along the heads of the Iser and

the Elbe. The Austrians, beaten and demoralized, slowly fell back; and

yet such was the inherent advantage of the central position still held

by Benedek, that had he known how to make a true use of it he might

even yet have turned the tide of ill-fortune. By the 29th of June he

had his army nearly united; the two Prussian armies were leagues from

each other, and part of the First Army was dangerously exposed; and

it has been justly remarked that had Benedek boldly attacked Prince

Frederick Charles on this day, he ought to have won a real victory,

and, in that event, he would still have had a chance to strike and

defeat the Crown Prince of Prussia. As is well known, however, the

ill-fated chief did not attempt an offensive return, and continued his

retreat until he had passed the Bistritz; here, like Daun, he took a

position of defence, and he passively awaited the onset of his foes,

anticipating already impending ruin. Yet even at this moment, had he

been a general of a high order, he might perhaps have triumphed. I

have no space to describe the great day of Sadowa; it was, no doubt,

a splendid and decisive victory; but the operations of the Prussians

once more gave their enemy an advantage which he might have seized, and

turned to account with immense results. The First and Second Armies

remained still divided; for many hours on that eventful forenoon, an

almost insignificant force was opposed to the mass of the Austrian

army; and it was only when the Crown Prince reached the field, at about

2 P.M., and was able to attack, that the chances of the battle

became equal, and that success was made even possible. Had Benedek at

any previous moment fallen in full force on Prince Frederick Charles,

it is difficult to suppose that the Austrian chief might not have, at

least, averted defeat.

The campaign of Sadowa is a striking instance how generals who steadily

carry out ably a plan essentially faulty in itself may defeat a

commander who waits on his foe, and cannot take the initiative or seize

the occasion. In justice, however, to a departed veteran, let us say

that the Prussian army was, in most respects, very superior to that

arrayed against it; the Austrian army was crowded with discontented

levies; the Prussians, too, possessed a breech-loading rifle, the fire

of which had great effect, though it is idle to contend that it decided

the war; and these facts told in the final issue. As for the Prussian

strategy, it was not good. We can imagine the shades of Turenne and

Napoleon indignant that a violation of their art should have been

followed by ill-deserved success; and if Moltke really directed these

operations of 1866, his first essays in war are not admirable. The

movements, however, which led to Sadowa are almost identical with those

of Frederick in Bohemia in 1756–57; and I cannot help conjecturing

that King William--his reverence for his ancestor was a kind of

worship--was in a great measure their true author, though those of

Frederick have been condemned by Napoleon with no uncertain censure.

After the events of 1866, it became apparent that Prussia and France

would ere long quarrel; and I must say a word on the preparations made

by the two Powers before the impending conflict, and on their military

resources when it at last broke out. Northern Germany was practically

added to Prussia; treaties were made with the Southern German States;

the unity of Germany for war was well-nigh accomplished; and the German

armies which could be brought into the field, more or less organized

on the Prussian model, reached the enormous number of a million of

men, 500,000 forming the first fighting line. Extraordinary attention,

moreover, was given to the improvement of the instrument of war which

had crushed the power of Austria in three weeks, and to the removal of

every defect which had been discovered in it. The “mobilization” was

made more effective; the experience of 1866 was turned to account to

make the evolutions of foot more quick and exact, and to adapt infantry

tactics to modern arms. Great pains were taken to reform the cavalry,

which had been scarcely equal to the fine squadrons of Austria, led

by the brilliant Edelsheim, and to give it celerity and strength in

the field; and the artillery, it may be said, was transformed, old

smooth-bore guns being finally condemned, and artillery tactics being

greatly changed by abandoning the system of huge reserves of guns--a

tradition of the Napoleonic era, but obsolete under the new conditions

of war--and by directing every battery that could be made available as

quickly as possible to the front of battle. By these means the Prussian

army of 1866 was expanded into the vast German army which overran

France from the Rhine to the Loire; and the hosts which triumphed at

Metz and Sedan were infinitely more formidable in all respects than

that which had overwhelmed Benedek.

Let us now turn to the attitude of France, in view of the contest

known to be imminent. Napoleon III. and one or two French chiefs had

not failed to observe the immense increase of the military power

of Prussia and Germany; and they perceived how enormous was the

importance of the great trained reserve of the German system, which

had nothing corresponding to it in their own. The Emperor and Marshal

Niel accordingly proposed that the nominal reserves of the French

army--masses of men on paper--should be in some degree disciplined,

and that the Garde Mobile, a new force, should be formed; and had this

been effected the military power of France would have been largely

augmented, though it would have been still very inferior to that of

Germany. Tradition and faction, however, prevailed; a reform, of which

Napoleon had laid down the lines at St. Helena fifty years before, was

disregarded and not carried out; and the strength of France for war was

left as it was, that is, miserably weak compared to that of Germany.

This difference was in itself immense, but there were other differences

of perhaps equal moment. France was not prepared for a great modern

war; her military organization was out of joint; she had not had a good

Minister of War since Soult; her chiefs, formed for the most part in

Africa, had little strategic or scientific knowledge; she had nothing

resembling the Prussian Staff, the brain of the army, as it has well

been called; she had not in her service the perfect gradation of united

commands which was one secret of the success of Prussia in 1866. Her

whole military hierarchy, and all that depends on it was, therefore,

in far from a good state; her chiefs had no settled convictions in

war, and were divided upon the great question whether the offensive or

defensive was the better strategy; and, besides that it was weak and

without a real reserve, the condition of her army was very defective.

It was, no doubt, a fine professional army; but it had been injured by

the system of commuting service; it had many bad and worn-out soldiers;

it had not been practised in manœuvres in the field; it had not

anything like fixed rules of tactics; and though its infantry possessed

an excellent rifle, much better than the needle-gun of Prussia, and

its cavalry was a noble arm, its artillery was very inferior to that

of the Germans. The most marked distinction, however, between the two

nations in their capacity for a campaign has yet to be noted. The

railway system of Germany was designed for war; that of France was

formed on no such principle; the local system of Prussia made it quite

certain that the German army would be placed in the field more quickly

than that of France could be under her centralized and ill-arranged

system; and these two circumstances, little perceived at the time, were

of extreme if not of decisive importance.

The general result of this state of things was that Germany could

“mobilize” and send into the field half a million of men, backed by

enormous reserves, well organized, disciplined, trained, and commanded,

within three weeks after a declaration of war; that France could hardly

assemble three hundred thousand soldiers, unsupported by any solid

reserve, ill-prepared, and under inefficient chiefs; and that, in point

of time, she would be far behind her enemy. There was no comparison,

therefore, between the two powers, and France had scarcely a chance of

success, though if her military strength had been well directed, she

need never have signed the Treaty of Frankfort. The conflict began in

July 1870. Napoleon III., the mere shadow of a mighty name, assumed

the command of the French armies, and his plan was to advance from

behind Metz and Strasbourg, to cross the Rhine between Spires and

Landau, and to interpose between the South and North German forces,

which, it was assumed, would not be ready in time, and divided. The

project, the Emperor has told us himself, was founded on that of his

uncle in 1815; but Moltke had foreseen and provided against it, and

it is useless to examine a mere scheme on paper, which was no sooner

conceived than it proved abortive. Napoleon III. calculated that he

would have 250,000 men round Metz and Strasbourg ready to march, with

50,000 in immediate reserve; but he had little administrative power

or resource; the existing system of France proved inefficient; her

organization for war broke down, the “mobilization” of her troops was

slow and partial, and when the Emperor reached Metz in the third week

of July, he had not assembled 200,000 soldiers, and these were hardly

in a state to take the field. This was very different from that prodigy

of skill, the concentration on the Sambre before Waterloo; and in these

circumstances, the unhappy sovereign ought to have renounced a hopeless

offensive, and to have placed his army on the line of the Moselle,

in order to defend the Vosges and Alsace, a course which Moltke

believed he would take. But the Emperor thought he had no choice. He

was goaded on by opinion in France; the folly of allowing politics to

master strategy, one main cause of the disasters that followed, had

already begun to produce its results; and he advanced to the frontier

with forces, compared to those of the Germans, pitiably weak, and but

ill-provided with all kinds of requirements. When he had attained

Alsace and the Sarre he paused, afraid to strike, but he felt that he

was not in nearly sufficient strength, and, waiting on his enemy, he

allowed his army to be disseminated upon a vast arc, extending from

Thionville to the gap of Belfort, and dangerously exposed along its

front.

The conduct of Germany and of the German chiefs contrasted most

strikingly with this exhibition of maladministration, feebleness,

and incapacity for war. The contest, Frenchmen thought, was a mere

affair of “glory”; in Germany it caused a great national rising for

unity and independence, and to avenge Jena. The Teutonic race sprang

fiercely to arms; the feuds between North and South Germany ceased; the

orders for the “mobilization” of the German armies were carried out

with wonderful skill and precision, and more than 300,000 men, with

great reserves behind, were in a few days arrayed on the frontier,

an astonishing result of patriotism and organization for war, partly

due to a well-planned railway system. Three great armies were now

quickly formed. This time Moltke certainly had the general direction

of operations in the field, and he instantly assumed a determined

offensive. The situation dictated his plan; there was nothing original

in it, as has been said by flatterers. In fact, it was that of

Marlborough in 1705, and it had been actually laid down by Gneisenau;

it consisted, simply, in invading France from the Palatinate, along

her most exposed frontier, but it was executed in the main ably, and

with conspicuous forethought and vigour. The First Army, led by the

veteran Steinmetz, advanced from Treves towards the Lower Sarre; the

Second, under Prince Frederick Charles, moved from Mayence through the

German Vosges; and the Third, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia,

marched across the Rhine and attained the Lauter, the three masses

acting well in concert. The poor affair of Sarrebruck only quickened

the movement; and, in the first week of August, a great tempest of war

burst over the verge of Lorraine and Alsace. The first efforts of the

Germans were, no doubt, premature; Frossard might have gained some

success at Spicheren had he been seconded by the corps in his rear,

and the impatience of the invaders, and of one or two of their chiefs,

precipitated the well-fought battle of Wörth. Moltke, however, is not

to be blamed for this; he was far away from those scenes of action, and

his strategy completely attained his object, though his subordinates

made more than one mistake. As for Wörth, it does honour to the arms

of France; on that day 45,000 Frenchmen held double their number, for

hours, at bay; and the issue might have been very different had De

Failly come into line, as was possible. Macmahon, however, a soldier

but no chief, cannot escape blame for not having drawn off his troops

while retreat was still open and safe, especially when the great

superiority of the enemy in force and in artillery had become clearly

manifest.

[Illustration: Theatre of the

CAMPAIGNS

of 1870–71.]

Spicheren shattered the front of the French army--it had been named the

Army of the Rhine; and Wörth forced its right wing in confusion and

rout far to the south, in eccentric retreat, laying bare the defeated

centre and left. Napoleon III. fell back with his beaten forces; and

the next few days, big with the fate of France, witnessed a wretched

succession of divided counsels. It was proposed to attempt a stand on

the Nied, in Lorraine, to join Macmahon, or to call him up to Metz;

but all that was done was to retreat on the fortress, to cause a weak

reserve to advance from Châlons, and to impair the moral worth of the

French soldiery, when ill-led, never great in misfortune. Meanwhile,

the hosts of the invaders, largely reinforced, were moving slowly

through the passes of the Vosges; the First and Second Armies filling

the tracts between the Sarre, the Nied, and the Seille, the Third Army

far to the south, round Nancy; and, whatever may be said, ample time

was given to their enemy to make good a retreat westward. This movement

was not arranged until the 12th of August, a precious week having been

thrown away; and the Emperor handed over his command to Bazaine, a

chief, whose antecedents had, at best, been doubtful, with a general

direction to fall back on the Meuse. Moltke’s plan of operations became

now developed; the First Army was moved towards Metz, in order to

detain the retreating enemy; part of the Second Army was pushed across

the Moselle, its march screened with remarkable skill; and the Third

Army made a step westward, the object being to force the Army of the

Rhine into the north of France, and to cut it off from Paris.

Steinmetz attacked Bazaine on the 14th of August. The battle was stern

and well contested; but it kept the French back for a whole day, and

it facilitated, as was intended, the forward movement of the Second

and Third Armies, which was Moltke’s object. A great mistake, however,

was here made; the German chief believed that the Army of the Rhine

was already far to the north of Metz; but Bazaine was moving directly

westward, and on the evening of the 15th he had his whole army, at

least 140,000 strong, concentrated along the roads that lead from Metz

to Verdun, by Mars La Tour and Etain. One German corps only was on

the spot; Prince Frederick Charles, no doubt unaware of the immense

superiority of his enemy in force, attacked on the morning of the

16th; and had Bazaine had any skill in war, he ought to have swept his

assailant from his path. The Marshal, however, could not handle an

army; he kept the Imperial Guard inactive near Metz, he made little

use of two of his corps; the hard pressed Germans were reinforced by

degrees; a magnificent effort of the German cavalry had a marked effect

on the fortunes of the day; and evening fell on a scene of carnage,

in which neither side could lay a claim to victory. The result proved

the ascendency won by the Germans, and was for them a splendid passage

of arms; but the effects of Moltke’s error were not yet got over--it

was like that of Napoleon before Auerstadt--for, as I have remarked,

the campaign of 1870 resembles that of Jena in many respects; he had

not 80,000 men in hand, and Bazaine had still a strategic advantage,

from which a real chief would have at least plucked safety. As Prince

Frederick Charles has said, he should have attacked on the 17th; and in

that event he ought to have won a battle, or, at all events, have made

good his way to Verdun, a result which would have given a new turn to

the war. A much grander game, however, was open to him; and a German

commentator--Moltke, I suspect--has remarked that Napoleon would have

played it, and have perhaps gained important success. On this day, a

decisive moment in the campaign, the First Army was still east of Metz;

the Second Army was partly west of the Moselle; the Third Army was

leagues away to the south; and the communications of the invaders would

be dangerously exposed, could an enemy descend from Metz on Nancy. Had

Bazaine, therefore, fallen back on the fortress, and issued from it in

force on the 18th, advancing between the Moselle and the Seille, he

ought to have been able to seize and hold the line of operations of

the hostile armies, and the consequences must have been very great.

He might have stopped the invasion, perhaps for weeks; he would have

certainly saved himself and his army, and the situation would have been

wholly changed.

Unhappily for France, she had not a captain who could seize the one

great occasion given by Fortune in the first part of the war of

1870–71. Bazaine, a soldier fit to command a division, but utterly

unable to direct large masses, had experience of the power of modern

arms, and he had a fixed belief that mere defensive tactics were the

means to assure success in battle. He resolved, therefore, to stand

and to fight; and he arranged his forces, still 120,000 strong, along

a range of uplands, from near Metz on the left to St. Privat and

Roncourt on the right, which formed a fine position for a passive

defence, the system on which the Marshal relied. Moltke, on the 17th,

drew together the greater part of the First and Second Armies across

the Moselle; the huge masses, probably 210,000 men, were west of Metz

on the morning of the 18th, intercepting, a retreat to the Meuse and

Verdun; but, strange as it may appear, the German commander was still

ill-informed of his enemy’s movements; he believed that Bazaine was

falling back northwards, and when he discovered where the French were,

he was convinced, for some hours, that the positions they held did not

extend nearly as far as Roncourt. This and other mistakes dispose of

the theory that Moltke is a kind of Providence on the field, gravely

asserted by certain worshippers of success, and tend to show that

German reconnoitring may be less perfect than has been said; but fools

only can claim omniscience for chiefs; and, in fact, under the new

conditions of war, with its vast operations and its immense battles,

the ablest captains will fall into error more frequently than has been

the case formerly.

Partly owing to the miscalculations of the German leader, and partly

to tactics essentially false, the tremendous battle of the 18th of

August--known to history by the name of Gravelotte--was undecided up

to the last moment, large as was the superiority of Moltke’s forces.

The assailants, thinking they were turning the French right, fell

in front on the centre strongly entrenched, and failed to make the

slightest impression on it; Steinmetz, on the German right, made

repeated charges, in the close columns of the days of his youth, and

the First Army suffered enormous losses. The Prussian Guard, too, were

cruelly stricken in an attempt to carry St. Privat by storm; indeed,

until near nightfall, the Army of the Rhine had a marked advantage

along the whole line of battle; and had it been able to make a grand

counter-attack, especially when the right of its foe was shattered,

it not improbably would have achieved success. At last, however, the

inherent vices of a passive defence became manifest; the German chiefs,

given the offensive all through, and allowed to search the positions

of the French everywhere, brought their masses to bear against the

extreme French right; Roncourt was carried by a great turning movement;

the whole position became untenable, and the French army gradually

fell back on Metz. Yet no doubt can now exist that had Bazaine been

a capable chief on that terrible day, the battle would have been at

least drawn, inferior as were his troops in numbers, and, in some

degree, disheartened by defeat. Had the Imperial Guard, as was quite

possible, been moved to the aid of the French right, the last effort of

the Germans must have failed; and in that event the contending armies

would have retained their places on the field unchanged. The Marshal,

however, unequal to his task, and thinking only of merely holding his

ground, kept this noble reserve near Metz unengaged; and 20,000 men

were left out of the struggle who could have turned the balance in the

scales of Fortune. Gravelotte, in truth, is a notable instance how a

resolute offensive, even though ill-conducted, may, notwithstanding the

arms of the age, prevail over passive tactics of defence; the attack

on the French right, made at the last moment, after many mistakes,

gained decisive success; and all the efforts of an army which had not

the means to attempt at any time a counter-attack, and simply waited

in position on its foes, proved ultimately fruitless, though for

hours hopeful. The battle, the student of war will note, has a strong

resemblance to that of Malplaquet; but the operations of the Germans

are not to be compared in skill to those of Marlborough and Eugene;

and the tricolour was defended by a very different chief from the

illustrious warrior who upheld the lilies.

Within two or three days after Gravelotte, the German armies had closed

around Metz and the army of Bazaine, which had clung to the fortress.

The left wing and centre of the whole French army were thus, so to

speak, removed from the theatre, at least for active operations in

the field; and, notwithstanding mistakes and shortcomings, the plan

of Moltke, if not realised, had been attended with more than expected

success. The right wing, half destroyed at Wörth, remained, and we turn

to the movements of this force, on which the fortune of France for the

time depended. Macmahon had been joined by De Failly and his troops,

by the corps which had been placed at Belfort, and by a new corps

despatched from the capital; and by the 20th of August the collected

array, numbering from 120,000 to 130,000 men, was assembled around the

great camp of Châlons. The Marshal was in supreme command; he properly

resolved to keep the only army now left to France to defend Paris; but

as Bazaine conceivably might be not distant, he marched on the 21st

to Rheims, holding a position on the flank of the German invasion,

and in the hope that his brother chief might approach, but with the

determination to fall back on the capital. This was in conformity with

the principles of war; and had Macmahon kept firm to his purpose, the

catastrophe that followed would not have happened, and France would not

have mourned for the extreme of disaster. Unfortunately, however, the

Duke of Magenta, a hero in the field but a weak man--the character is

by no means uncommon--was led astray by pernicious counsels; Palikao,

a new Minister of War, whose chief thought was for the tottering

Empire, and to satisfy the desires of Paris, insisted that Metz must

be relieved; and he urged Macmahon to advance to the Meuse, to slip

outside the flank of the hostile armies, and descending from Montmédy

on the beleaguered fortresses, to join hands with and to extricate

Bazaine, and to strike a bold stroke for a decisive victory. In an evil

hour for France and himself, the marshal gave ear to a fatal project,

as reckless as ever was made in war; for the march to the Meuse, and

thence as far as Metz, would be a flank march of the most hazardous

kind, the enemy holding the chord of the arc; it would be a march

perilously near the Belgian frontier, where a lost battle would mean

ruin; it was a march to be made by an enfeebled army in the midst of

the victorious Germans, threefold in numbers; above all, it was a march

which would draw away from Paris, the centre and vital point of the

national defence, the only organized force that remained to protect

it. Macmahon, it is said, was still doubting--he knew that the course

proposed was insensate, not strategy, but the throw of a gambler--when

an ambiguous message sent by Bazaine, and implying that he was on

his way from Metz northwards, at last caused the luckless commander

to yield. Once more the plainest military rules were sacrificed to

political ends; and once more Bellona, who brooks no rival, was, so to

speak, challenged and wildly provoked. The army of Châlons broke up

from Rheims on the 23rd, and it was on the Upper Aisne on the 25th,

approaching the region of defiles and forests, which extends from the

Ardennes to the Meuse. Macmahon spared no effort to make the movement

rapid, for celerity he knew was his only chance; but the march of his

army became slow, and by the 27th it was still far from the Meuse, in

the tract between Tourteron, Le Chêne, and Buzancy. It had already

begun to shows signs of weakness; it was ill-provided and badly

organized; the soldiers were discontented and ill-disciplined, and the

mind of its chief was full of misgivings.

I proceed to the operations of the German armies, very different

from those of their ill-directed enemies. The main body of the First

and Second Armies was required for the investment of Metz; but three

corps, called the Army of the Meuse, were detached to co-operate with

the Third Army, by this time west of the Moselle, in the borderlands

of Lorraine and Champagne; and the converging masses, 230,000 strong,

advanced steadily upon a broad front towards the heads of the Marne and

the great roads to Paris. By the 24th of August, the cavalry outposts

which preceded the movement had ascertained that the Army of Châlons

had left Rheims, and was on its way to the Aisne eastward; but Moltke

refused for some time to credit the rumour that it was making for

Metz, for this, he rightly thought, would be the height of folly. He

learned the truth, however, positively on the 25th, and his resolution

was formed with that prompt decision which is a characteristic of real

chiefs, and has been exhibited by him at grave crises. The measures he

took to baffle Palikao’s scheme were not wonders of genius, as has been

said by flatterers, but they show true insight, and most comprehensive

judgment; and they were carried out with consummate skill. The Army of

the Meuse was directed to recross the river; two corps were detached

from Metz to join it, and to stop Macmahon should he get near the

fortress; and the Third Army was ordered to advance northwards through

the district of the Argonnes and the Ardennes--the scene of the

campaign of Valmy--and to gather on the flank and rear of the Army of

Châlons, which would thus be placed in a difficult strait at least.

The execution of this fine strategic movement was admirable in the

highest degree; the great invading hosts, ruled by one master’s will,

well-led, supplied, and trained for the field, marched with speed and

precision through an intricate country, and the careful preparation,

the organization for war, the perfect unity and gradation of command,

and the intelligence of the individual soldier, which are distinctive

marks of the army of Prussia, were made fully and grandly manifest.

By the 27th of August the German squadrons were gathering rapidly upon

their foes; Macmahon, though without the least notion of the enormous

force that was closing round him, perceived that his army was in grave

peril, and he gave orders for a retreat on Mézières, hoping to attain

Paris by a march from the frontier. For the second time, however, the

incapable chief succumbed to the temptation he should have spurned. A

message, that “revolution would break out should Bazaine be abandoned

at Metz,” induced him to continue the advance to the Meuse, and to

court the ruin which he knew was probable; and it is but just to

observe that Napoleon III.--he accompanied the Marshal since he had

left Châlons--protested against conduct which was almost criminal.[31]

Macmahon now tried to make a forced march; his army was divided into

two great columns, in order to make its movements rapid, and the

first column reached the river safely, and had crossed it by the 29th

of August. The second column, however, was far to the south, and

separated by a full march from the first; it was largely composed of

beaten troops, already desponding, nay, half-mutinous; it was charged

with _impedimenta_ of all kinds, and it toiled slowly through

the passes and thickets it had to traverse on its way to the Meuse.

This gave Moltke the opportunity to strike; the Army of the Meuse was

recalled to the west of the stream, the two corps from Metz having

been sent back; a part of the Third Army was pushed forward, and the

Germans fell with terrible effect on their enemies, caught in flank

and surprised, at Beaumont and other places in their march. The second

column was routed with immense loss; it reached the Meuse a mere

shattered wreck, pursued by the indefatigable Prussian horsemen; and

its ruin involved a part of the first column, which crossed the river

to give it support. By the evening of the 30th the Army of Châlons, one

corps of it as far as Carignan, was on the eastern bank of the Meuse,

but half of the French troops were a demoralized mass; and the German

advanced guards were already at hand, in close communication with the

hosts in their rear.

Macmahon, at this time, was at Carignan; he confidently expected that

he would reach Metz; he boasted, it is said, that victory was at hand.

The news of the events of the 30th dispelled these dreams; he hurriedly

fell back with his one intact corps, and by the morning of the 31st

he had assembled the still large, but beaten, Army of Châlons in the

tract that surrounds the fortress and town of Sedan. The state of the

French troops was of the worst omen; but an occasion was still open

to a great chief, to extricate them from impending ruin. Mézières was

not distant, and a French corps had reached the place to support the

Marshal; the Meuse spread between his army and the foe, and had he

left his _impedimenta_ behind, and made a rapid march, without

the loss of an hour, he would certainly have escaped with the great

mass of his forces. It is this circumstance which makes the strategy

of Moltke inferior, fine as it was, to that which shut up Mack in

Ulm; and the Grand Army, it will be borne in mind, had been saved on

the Beresina when in far worse straits. Macmahon, however, would not

stir from Sedan; there is reason to believe he never knew the immense

strength of the hostile force, and he arrayed his army, “ready,” he

said, “to fight,” along the uplands, encircled by streams and villages,

which overlook Sedan and the valley below. The evening of the 31st had

come; the German horsemen made the situation known; and Moltke, who up

to this time had only hoped that he might succeed in forcing his enemy

across the frontier, saw that he could reckon on a decisive triumph.

Orders were issued for an immediate night march; the great German

divisions, perfectly led, and the men scenting approaching victory,

moved rapidly over the space between, and preparations were made to

assail and surround the feeble and shattered Army of Châlons.

It is unnecessary to retrace the scenes of Sedan, the just retribution

of foolishness in command, a battle decreed by Fate, in its irony,

to be fought around the birthplace of Turenne. The French were first

attacked, on that fatal morning, on their southern and eastern front

towards the Chiers; and they made for a time a gallant resistance,

though the fall of Macmahon and a squabble between two of his

lieutenants had a bad effect on the troops. By degrees, however, the

overwhelming pressure of forces immensely superior told; the line

of defence on the Givonne was carried; and the French were driven

back, on Sedan, routed, and huddled around the walls of the fortress.

Meanwhile a tremendous attack had been made on the northern and

western fronts of the defence; the Germans advancing to the heights

of Illy, and moving from the opposite side round the bend of the

Meuse, which half encircles the outskirts of Sedan, closed gradually

round their doomed foes; and though the French cavalry made heroic

efforts, and one corps nobly struggled to the last, it was impossible

to withstand overpowering numbers. The last remains of the Army of

Châlons were forced, like the first, against the fortress; the German

artillery--throughout the campaign it had proved an arm of enormous

strength--was brought to bear in masses on the perishing wreck; the

fire of 500 pieces searched the scene of carnage; and a white flag soon

announced that resistance, no longer possible, had completely ceased.

Within a few hours 85,000 men, the survivors of more than 120,000, the

victims of worse than insensate leading, were a collection of helpless

prisoners of war; and their cries of impotent fury and despair--this

was the attitude of by far the greater part--only provoked the pitying

scorn of the victors.

This immense disaster, added to that of Metz, all but destroyed the

military power of Imperial France on the theatre of war. Moltke had

acted harshly at the capitulation of Sedan; he had no respect for the

French character; like Hannibal and Napoleon, he treated the force of

patriotic passion with contempt; and, leaving a considerable detachment

behind, he directed an immediate advance on Paris. The German armies

rolled steadily onward, through the valleys of the Aisne, the Oise,

and the Marne, masking fortresses and occupying points on their way;

and they appeared before the capital on the 19th of September, the

chiefs convinced they would meet no resistance. Their expectations

seemed about to be realised; an attempt to assail the invaders in

flank, as they gathered upon the uplands south of the Seine, was

easily defeated, and had bad results; and the Germans were permitted,

without a further effort, to surround and invest the beleaguered

city. Their lines, constructed with skill and forethought, spread on

a circumference of great extent, from the confluence of the Seine and

the Marne, by St. Denis, round through Versailles to Bonneuil; and

though the besieging forces were at this moment not 150,000 strong, no

doubt existed in the German camp--it was, indeed, the general belief of

Europe--that a few days would see the surrender of Paris.

Weeks, however, passed, and it became apparent that this calculation

was a complete error. The Empire had fallen on the 4th of September; a

Government of national defence had been formed; and this Revolution,

in the main caused by the passionate wrath of the great mass of the

citizens, quickened the general resolve that the capital should hold

out, and confront the power of the German armies. Preparations had been

made to stand a siege; immense supplies of provisions had been stored;

the _enceinte_ and the forts which protect the city had been

hastily manned and armed; enormous bodies of men had been assembled to

take part in the defence of the place; these were supported by a corps

of trained soldiers, and by the corps which had appeared at Mézières,

and had been brought back after a skilful retreat; and though these

arrangements were rude and imperfect, the strength of the city to

resist attack was infinitely greater than Moltke had supposed. Sorties

began to be made by degrees; these, though always repulsed, were not

contemptible; the armament of the forts was completed; redoubts and

entrenchments rose at many points to strengthen and to perfect the

zone of defence; the citizens, warlike in all ages, though in peace

addicted to pleasure and ease, acquired gradually something like

discipline; the materials at least of armies were formed, and Paris

assumed the aspect of a huge fortified camp, with a garrison certainly

immense in numbers. Moltke took pains to secure his position; he

tacitly admitted that he had made a mistake in marching on the capital

without having his communications or his base assured, and with forces

comparatively small; but he held his ground with determined constancy;

he summoned reinforcements to head-quarters, and several corps were

employed in besieging Strasbourg and other strongholds on the way

from the frontier, and in overrunning Burgundy and Franche Comté. The

front and lines of the invasion were thus strengthened; and, though

time had passed, the submission of France was held to be a fact of

the immediate future. The German chief was to be again deceived, as

many warriors had been before, in his estimate of a people, great and

heroic, despite of many national faults and failings. It is all very

well for the Prussian Staff to sneer at Gambetta, as it has done in its

book; but he was a man of great powers, if of real shortcomings; and

he was but the most striking figure of millions of Frenchmen. A great

and sudden national rising took place; it was more spontaneous than

that of 1793; in an incredibly short time 250,000 men were in arms to

resist the German hosts; and by making use of the resources of France

for war--old soldiers, troops in depôts, and reserves--vast arrays were

mustered, which at least contained the elements of real military power.

These levies, of course, were bad soldiers, but they were formidable

in numbers and in aptitude for war; and, whatever may be said, the

position of Moltke had become critical as October was closing; the

German armies were, for the most part, engaged on the investment of

Paris and to the east of Metz; they were conquerors, and had all the

power of success; but they were exposed to attack from within and

without at the centres to which they were, as it were, bound; and they

were in the midst of an immense insurrection spreading all round.

At this conjuncture, a great disaster showed that Fortune was still

most adverse to France. Bazaine had been shut up since Gravelotte

at Metz; he had kept his army almost inactive, and he had made no

real effort to break the investment. I cannot examine the crooked

intrigues in which he played an ignoble part; but he surrendered the

great fortress on the 28th of October, and the world beheld the most

disgraceful capitulation ever known in war. Even on his pitiful system

of passive defence, the Marshal did not nearly do his duty; the place

could have held out a fortnight longer, and the respite would have

been of extreme importance. The First and Second Armies were now set

free to take part in the great invasion; several corps were sent to

the north, to crush levies formed in Normandy and other provinces. One

was despatched to support the siege; and the remainder, under Prince

Frederick Charles, held the tract between the heads of the Seine

and Burgundy. The grasp of the Germans on France was thus greatly

strengthened; yet the position of Moltke was so unsafe that it was

endangered by a single trifling reverse. An army, partly composed of

good troops, but in the main of improvised levies, had been assembled

south of the Loire; it had been placed in the hands of D’Aurelle,

a veteran of real organizing skill, and in a few weeks it numbered

60,000 men, and had acquired something like military worth and power.

A Bavarian detachment, perhaps 20,000 strong, and a division under the

Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg, sent off to put down insurrection in the

west, were the only hostile forces between this large mass of Frenchmen

and the lines round Paris; and D’Aurelle, aided by a young chief,

Chanzy, who was to prove that France had yet real captains, resolved

to attack the Bavarians and to retake Orleans, which had fallen into

the enemy’s hands. The Army of the Loire broke up from its camps,

and crossed the river in the first days in November; it fell on the

Bavarians near the little town of Coulmiers. Had the orders of Chanzy

been well carried out, and a turning movement been completed in time,

the invaders must have been utterly routed; but, as it was, they were

beaten with loss; and they were compelled to fall back on the roads to

Paris, abandoning Orleans and the adjoining region.

When this intelligence arrived, unfeigned alarm prevailed at the

German head-quarters at Versailles; the besiegers were threatened

by an army of relief, and by the unknown multitudes of armed men in

Paris; and disseminated as they were on an immense circumference,

they were in a situation of no common peril. Moltke made up his mind,

as became a true chief; he despatched pressing orders to Prince

Frederick Charles to hasten to the capital by forced marches; and, like

Bonaparte before Mantua--a Journal, said to be his, alludes to this--he

resolved, whatever the result, to raise the siege should the Army of

the Loire appear from the south. This single circumstance shows how

precarious the position of the Germans had become; and had D’Aurelle

boldly followed up his success the consequences to France might have

been momentous. Chanzy, it is known, was for the more daring course;

Napoleon would have taken it, I cannot doubt; and though it is idle to

speculate now, the siege would certainly have been given up and the

war would have taken a different turn. D’Aurelle, however, refused

to advance; he constructed a great entrenched camp near Orleans; and

here he increased and trained his levies, hoping before long to resume

the offensive. This, probably, was too great caution; but there were

reasons for the step of real weight. Prince Frederick Charles was but

a few marches off, and should he reach the flank of the Army of the

Loire, on its way to the capital, he would perhaps destroy the best

organized force possessed by France. This clearly shows that had Metz

resisted, and detained the Prince only a few days longer, the French

chief would have had, and perhaps would have seized, an admirable

occasion offered by Fortune; and, indeed, a German writer has drily

remarked that “the capitulation came in the very nick of time.”

The victory of Coulmiers sent a thrill through France, enormously

increased the power of Gambetta, and caused levies to flock to the war

in thousands. Notwithstanding the fall of Metz, and all that followed

from it, the situation of the Germans was still critical; and owing to

the undoubted strategic mistake of marching on Paris with too weak a

force, their movements had been incoherent, and far from masterly. By

the close of November the Great City had formed three armies out of

her armed multitudes; and two of them, probably 150,000 strong, had

acquired a certain degree of efficiency; the third, perhaps 200,000

men, being only fit to defend the ramparts. I cannot describe the

great sortie which followed; Ducrot crossed the Marne and carried

two villages, which had been made part of the besiegers’ lines; but

ultimately he was compelled to retreat; and, in fact, the effort was

doomed to failure, for the zone of investment and the zone of defence

had by this time become all but impregnable, or could be mastered only

by the art of the engineer. The sortie from Paris was contemporaneous

with an advance of the army of D’Aurelle’s northwards; but here

Gambetta unhappily intervened, and his meddling and presumption did

enormous mischief. The young civilian had done, no doubt, great things,

but since Coulmiers, he had become a kind of Dictator--the history

of France has too many examples how foolish hero-worship has such

results--he insisted that the Army of the Loire should make for the

capital, whatever the risk, though Prince Frederick Charles was near

at hand; and, as he had made that army 150,000 strong, he refused to

believe that there was serious danger. D’Aurelle and Chanzy protested

in vain; two detached corps of the Army of the Loire were directed

against Prince Frederick Charles, and were easily defeated by an

inferior force; and the Prince, a chief of a very high order, made

immediate preparations for a great counter-stroke. The Grand Duke and

the Bavarians had been approaching; he quickly united these forces to

his own, and he bore down in irresistible strength on the army, mainly

of recruits, opposed to him. The centre of the Army of the Loire was

broken; its wings fell off in eccentric retreat; one part was driven

across the river, and the triumphant invaders re-entered Orleans,

having gained rapid and complete success. By the first days of December

it had become apparent that Paris could not burst the chain cast around

her; and the army had been shattered which had been employed, unwisely

at the moment, as an army of relief.

The prospect for France was dark and mournful; but light shone at

one point on the gloomy scene. D’Aurelle had been unjustly dismissed

by Gambetta; and the part of his defeated army which had crossed the

Loire had been placed in the hands of Bourbaki, the chief of the late

Imperial Guard. Chanzy, however, commanded the remaining part; and a

series of operations followed which show that he had real genius in

war. He was attacked by the Grand Duke in all the flush of victory; but

he had been reinforced by Gambetta’s orders; he took a strong position,

covering both his flanks; and then with true insight he assumed the

offensive, essential in the case of French soldiers; and, on the whole,

he obtained some success. Prince Frederick Charles now fiercely turned

against him; he concentrated all his available forces; but Chanzy

made a magnificent stand; and his conduct deserves the very highest

praise. Perceiving that the relief of Paris should be the true object

of the French armies in the field, he fell back from the Loire to the

Sarthe, drawing toward the capital with great skill; and in this he

showed that he was a real strategist. Nor was he less admirable as a

tactician; he continually, in retreat, took an offensive attitude; he

turned defensive positions to the best account, and he contrived that

the superiority of the French rifle should tell with full effect on

the advancing enemy. Prince Frederick Charles pursued in vain; Chanzy

made good his way to Le Mans; he was nearer to Paris than when he had

left the Loire; his army had not been once beaten; and the Germans

were not only worn out, but showed signs of demoralization and fear,

for thousands had perished to no purpose; the hardships of the winter

campaign had been frightful; and it seemed impossible to overcome the

enemy.[32]

A pause in the conflict now occurred, to the astonishment of Europe,

still doubtful--a war of races, in which colossal force was confronted

by a national rising. The Germans were still, for the most part,

victorious; their armies surrounded imprisoned Paris; they had mastered

most of the fortresses of France, proved to be of little use in the

struggle; and they had made their lines of operations secure, and

had overrun a full third of the country. But Chanzy was in the field

unconquered; Faidherbe, a commander of real gifts, had admirably

conducted a campaign in the north, attacking the invaders when he

saw a chance, and falling back on the strongholds of the Somme;

Bourbaki was at the head of a great force, continually increasing,

on the Middle Loire; and France had realised her proud boast that

she had but “to stamp her foot, and legions would spring from the

earth at her bidding.” Grave[33] anxiety was felt at head-quarters at

Versailles, spite of noisy boasting of German triumphs; and Moltke,

reading the facts with a true general’s eye, insisted on having large

reinforcements to strengthen the wearied and thinned invaders. Troops

in tens of thousands from the trained reserves of Germany were called

into the field; shrunken regiments and corps were restored in numbers;

new corps entered the east of France, and preparations were made on

an immense scale to quicken, by a bombardment, the fall of Paris. The

organization of the German armies, though strained to the utmost, bore

the test; and if the trials of the war had told heavily on the young

soldiers who crowded the ranks, a fierce national passion still upheld

the invasion. Moltke made excellent use of these new forces. Up to this

time, his movements had suffered from the effects of the premature

advance on Paris; but the error was now completely rectified, and his

dispositions were able in the extreme. Keeping his grasp on the capital

with stern tenacity, he so distributed his corps on the theatre of

war that a far-spreading external zone of resistance protected the

inner zone of investment; and should an attempt, therefore, be made

to relieve Paris, he would have a double set of armies to oppose the

French and interior lines on the whole circumference. Secure within

this circle, he defied the enemy, but he was ready at all points to

take a bold offensive, and he eschewed the whole system of mere passive

defence. The exertions of France were also prodigious. Independently

of the Parisian forces, she had placed 500,000 men in the field, with

from 1,300 to 1,400 guns, and history, despite the Prussian staff, will

pronounce this a gigantic effort. These levies, however, were most

inferior troops. They were no match for their trained adversaries; they

were not equal to long marches, and at this supreme moment they were

wrongly directed. Chanzy, the master-spirit of the national defence,

saw what the situation was, and what it required; he appreciated the

ability of Moltke’s strategy; but even now he did not despair of

success, and in a despatch, marked with true insight in war, he urged

that all the provincial armies should endeavour to combine and march

on the capital, which, in turn, should fiercely attack the besiegers.

This last effort would, I believe, have failed; but it was the true

course and perfectly conceived; and it was that which Moltke expected

and feared. Unhappily for France, Gambetta rejected the counsels of

her most distinguished soldier, and, giving ear to a silly theorist,

he adopted a plan for the operations at hand, false in principle and,

as facts stood, ruinous. At this moment Werder, in the east of France,

was engaged with his corps in the siege of Belfort; the garrison was

making a firm stand; Bourbaki, in command of his large army, was in

the Nivernais, on the verge of Burgundy; Garibaldi had a motley array

near Dijon, and a large army was ready to march from the south. In this

state of affairs, instead of directing all the forces of France in a

march on Paris, Gambetta resolved to make a great effect to relieve

Belfort and to enter Alsace. For this purpose the collective forces of

Bourbaki, Garibaldi, and the south were to join, and the result, it

was hoped, would place the French armies on the communications of the

invaders from the Rhine, and would have great and glorious results.

This plan, strikingly resembling those of Carnot in 1793–1794, was,

even in the abstract, misconceived; the detachment to the east of the

French armies would expose and isolate Chanzy on the west, and even

were the communications of the Germans reached, this would be at a

point too remote to relieve Paris, or seriously to affect the issue

of the campaign. But, in the actual state of affairs, the project was

little less than foolishness; the armies intended to relieve Belfort

and to attain Alsace were not equal to a great operation of real

danger, and the scheme in truth was of much the same kind as that which

had led to the catastrophe of Sedan.

In the last days of December, Bourbaki’s army set off from the

Nivernais to reach Franche Comté. The march of the columns was pitiably

slow; the troops suffered terribly from cold and disease; and signs of

evil omen had become manifest long before Belfort had been approached.

This eccentric movement set the Grand Duke and Prince Frederick Charles

completely free to attack Chanzy upon the Sarthe; and the German

chiefs, who had had their forces recruited to a very large extent,

broke up from Chartres, Nogent le Rotrou, and Orleans, and bore down

on the French commander, advancing on an ever narrowing front. Chanzy

had detached flying columns to observe the enemy; these fell back as

the assailants drew near; and the French army, by the 10th of January,

was concentrated within its lines at Le Mans, which had been fortified

with skill and care. A fierce and protracted struggle followed;

Chanzy, very different from the incapable Bazaine, really did wonders

with his raw young troops; but, at nightfall on the 11th, his extreme

right was turned by a desperate effort of Prince Frederick Charles.

He evacuated Le Mans, and lost thousands of prisoners; but he made

good his way to the Mayenne; and here he still kept his foes at bay,

having in his retreat drawn nearer Paris. He was still full of hope,

and wrote in that sense; but before long a tremendous disaster befell

the ill-fated forces of France in the east. Bourbaki was joined by a

part of Garibaldi’s troops, and by the army moving from the south; and

with this force, fully 130,000 strong, he crossed the Ognon, and almost

reached Belfort. He was, however, defeated with ease by Werder, with a

force very inferior in numbers; and, after one or two fruitless efforts

to outmanœuvre his victorious enemy, he fell back baffled, and made for

Besançon. Here he gave up his command, and tried to commit suicide; his

ruined army continued to retreat, but Moltke saw that his opportunity

had come and he turned it to account, with great skill and decision.

Three corps were detached from the external zone; Manteuffel, at the

head of them, bore down on the enemy; Werder, with part of his corps,

pressed forward from Belfort; and Bourbaki’s whole army, under its new

chief, Clinchant, was surrounded and driven across the Swiss frontier.

This was the end of Gambetta’s ambitious enterprise, which alike had

caused the defeat of Chanzy and had ruined the last hope of success for

the provincial armies.

It fared almost as ill with France in the north, on the theatre where

Faidherbe conducted the war. That skilful officer had continued the

game of harassing the enemy, and falling back; and he had even fought

a battle at Bapaume, which he had some right to describe as a victory.

But about the middle of January he advanced towards St. Quentin, in the

hope, it is supposed, of either relieving Paris, or of making eastward

towards Bourbaki’s army. Moltke sent off a corps from the zone of

investment, and defeated him with considerable loss; and, though he

effected his retreat to Lille, his forces were for the time paralyzed.

The military strength of France outside Paris was thus rendered almost

powerless; Moltke had made the best use of his interior lines, on a

great and complex field of manœuvre; and the false direction given to

Bourbaki’s army had practically decided the contest in the field. The

proud capital alone remained; and invincible famine was already at

hand. In the first days of January the bombardment began; for fully

three weeks shot and shell crashed through all parts of the beleaguered

city; but no impression was made on the _enceinte_ or the forts,

and still less on the great mass of the citizens. The attack, in fact,

altogether failed; it does no credit to the German Engineers, and it

attests Moltke’s dislike of Frenchmen; and it must be condemned as

barbarous warfare, for it was known that Paris must ere long surrender.

Towards the end of the month the end came; a last sortie for the honour

of arms was easily repulsed with great slaughter; and on the 28th of

January 1871 the capitulation was signed. German horsemen defiled under

the Arch of the Star, a monument to the Grand Army, as the Guards of

Napoleon had passed through Berlin; the tricolour has been plucked

down from Metz and Strasbourg; and France mourns the calamitous Peace

of Frankfort. Yet the defence of Paris, and the efforts made by the

improvised armies of Chanzy and Faidherbe, were exploits worthy of a

great nation; in the hour of misfortune France may say, like her king,

that she has not lost honour; the resistance she made, all things

considered, was grander than that of 1793, and it has redeemed the

ignominy of Metz and Sedan.

The success of the conquerors in this gigantic war is the greatest,

perhaps, recorded in history. The Imperial Army of France was carried

away captive; her improvised armies were nearly half destroyed; her

fortresses yielded one after another; her capital held out, but

succumbed to famine. The theme is a fine idol for the worshippers of

success; and Moltke has been held up to the admiration of mankind as

the greatest military genius in the annals of war. Yet, if we calmly

examine the course of the contest, we perceive that the operations of

the German chief do not reveal one grand strategic conception, and are

characterized by several grave errors; they exhibit science, decision,

and strength of character, and perfect execution of the thoughts of

others, not originality, or “the faultlessness” claimed for them.

Moltke--and this does not detract from his fame--owed much to his

foes, and much to fortune; Bazaine and MacMahon, in different ways,

sink to the level of the Soubises and Clermonts; the fall of Metz was

a godsend to Germany; but Chanzy was a warrior of real powers; he kept

the issue of the struggle long doubtful, and had he had the supreme

control of the forces of France, it is impossible to say what might not

have happened. Some of the lessons taught by the war are commonplace;

well-organized armies, of overwhelming strength, defeat armies inferior

in every respect; trained and disciplined troops beat raw levies;

disaster is all but certain to follow when the simplest rules of the

military art are disregarded for supposed reasons of State. Two great

facts, however, require special notice; the German armies are the most

formidable which have ever appeared in the modern world; there is an

element of weakness in their young soldiers, but they represent a

mighty race in arms, ready at any moment to march on to conquest; and

this has been the result of years of training. On the other hand, the

national rising of France, after Metz and Sedan, was a noble movement;

it was marked by heroic courage and self-sacrifice; and yet it failed,

and probably was doomed to fail, though the resources of France for war

are enormous, and the French are a people of born soldiers.

I have come to the last of my Great Commanders; what is Moltke’s place

in that august succession? It is difficult to catch a true likeness

of a figure not in the perspective of Time, and whose career belongs

to the history of the day. Moltke has many, I think, of the gifts

of Frederick; he is a thoroughly accomplished and educated man; he

has extraordinary force of application and thought; his perseverance

deserves the highest praise; and though he has not been tried by the

test of ill-fortune, he has evidently the tenacity and firmness of the

Prussian king. Like Frederick, however, he wants supreme genius and the

imaginative power of the greatest chiefs; but he is far superior to

Frederick in all that relates to the large combinations and movements

of war, though probably his inferior on the field of battle. It is his

special characteristic that he was one of the first to see what are the

new conditions of war in this age, and that he turned them to the very

best account; the Prussian Army and that of the lesser German States

have been, in a great measure, created by him; and Moltke, I conceive,

has “organized victory” more thoroughly than has ever before been seen.

His place as a strategist is more doubtful; his countrymen have called

him “the great strategist,” but this is the exaggeration of national

sympathy; and in this sphere of the art, I certainly think he holds an

inferior rank to Turenne, and he has not even approached the height of

Napoleon. We miss originality in his conceptions of war. If he really

directed the converging movement into Bohemia, in 1866, whatever have

been the modifications of the art, this was inconsistent with its true

principles; his advance on Paris was a distinct mistake; and in his

operations at Metz we see many errors which Bazaine possibly might have

made disastrous. His peculiar strategic merit is that he can work out

to perfection accepted views, and improve upon the ideas of others;

but in this there is not the masterly power seen in the campaigns of

1674 and 1675, of 1796 and of 1800. Still Moltke is a real chief of the

grand school of Napoleon; he can move large armies on a wide theatre

with remarkable forethought and scientific skill; his marches against

the army of Châlons, and the army of Bourbaki, are very fine, and he

made the best use of his interior lines in the final operations around

Paris. His merits as a tactician are less easy to estimate; in the case

of the immense battles of the present day, the real head of an army

can do no more than make arrangements of a general kind; but if he

directed Gravelotte, it was ill-directed, though it is well known he

condemned Steinmetz; and in theory he is a master of modern tactics.

Moltke seems to have a cold and passionless nature; like Wellington, he

has commanded the respect of officers and men but not their devotion;

Prince Frederick Charles was the real hero, in the eyes of the German

soldiery in 1870–71; and this remarkable chief possessed in a high

degree the peculiar gifts of his greatest ancestor. It is astonishing,

however, if we bear in mind that Moltke was in his sixty-seventh year

when he first commanded an army in the field, that he should have

achieved what he has achieved. He is a great commander, beyond dispute,

and as an administrator in war he has never been excelled.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Map of BELGIUM.]

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1815.

CHAPTER I.

I purpose, in this and a subsequent chapter, to describe the main

features of the Campaign of 1815, and to endeavour to pronounce a

fair judgment upon it. Of the interest of the subject it is needless

to speak; this grand passage of arms will attract the attention of

history to it in the same degree as the contest decided on the field

of Zama, or the last struggle between Pompey and Cæsar. Yet this is

not my chief reason for attempting this sketch; I venture to think,

though a large literature has grown up round the theme of Waterloo,

that there is still room for an impartial study, brief though it be,

of the leading incidents of this ever-memorable and most decisive

conflict. Many causes, in fact, have concurred to obscure the truth

respecting the Campaign of 1815, and to prevent a just estimate being

formed of it. On some points our knowledge is still imperfect; passion

and prejudice have distorted the facts, on several others of the first

importance; and commentators on Waterloo, even including the chief

actors in the drama, have, in most instances, either made palpable and

grave mistakes, or have applied a kind of criticism to the course of

events, essentially, and from the nature of the case, fallacious. The

narratives of Napoleon, in some of their parts, bear the ineffaceable

marks of his genius, but they abound in serious errors of detail, and

in places they are far from just or honest. The apology of Wellington,

though the most truthful of men, written as it was in far advanced

age, is not trustworthy in many respects; and all that has emanated

from the Prussian staff is by no means accurate, or even always candid.

As for historians, Thiers has composed a romance confuted by the

evidence in most important points; and the same may be said of the

host of Frenchmen who, like him, have slavishly followed Napoleon. We

have had a like class of writers in England; from Siborne to Hooper

it has been the fashion to describe the Duke as faultless in 1815, in

plain defiance of unquestionable facts; and Dutch, Belgian, and German

authors have equally erred in claiming praise for chiefs of their races

beyond their merits. Then we have commentators, of whom Charras is by

far the ablest and most perfect specimen, partisans who test operations

of war by an impossible standard of mere theory, and who, in this way,

have succeeded in making the greatest chiefs seem inferior men; and

Chesney’s _Essay_, though in parts excellent, is by no means free

from this most unsound criticism. Passing by General Hamley’s valuable

sketch, I believe Jomini’s account of Waterloo to be, even now, the

best extant narrative; but it is necessarily wanting in many respects,

in the information obtained since his day. I shall try to follow, in

these chapters, the method which, in an inquiry of this kind, will most

probably lead to just conclusions; that is, I shall rely[34] only on

contemporaneous documents, the genuineness of which is not doubtful;

and I shall endeavour to judge of events as they happened, from the

point of view of those who took part in them, and not by the mere

abstract rules of strategy.

I have no space to discuss the arrangements made beforehand by Napoleon

to meet the League of Europe in 1815; but they were most able and

even wonderful, and the detraction of Charras is false and unjust.

The memories of an immortal campaign would have caused the Emperor

to defend France on the Marne and the Seine, with fortified Paris a

pivot for his operations and a vast entrenched camp; but the state of

opinion made this plan impossible, and he resolved to assume a daring

offensive. His design, resembling in its main features the strategy

which led to Ulm and Austerlitz, may be left with confidence to judges

of the art, and bears the clear stamp of his transcendent genius. A

million of armed men were advancing on France from the Scheldt, the

Rhine, the Oder, and the Po; but the hosts of the Allies were widely

apart, and at unequal distances from the points of attack; and the

extreme right of the vast front of invasion, composed of the armies of

Blücher and Wellington, was isolated, and close to the French frontier.

It was possible, therefore, to make a sudden spring on this detached

part of the Coalition’s forces, to surprise and to overthrow it in

detail; and if decisive success were achieved, there were reasons to

believe that Napoleon’s triumph might bring the war at once to a close.

The situation, besides, of the menaced armies in Belgium invited a

daring attack, even though made with an inferiority of force. They were

disseminated along a wide front, from Ghent to Liège, a hundred miles

in length, and from thirty-five to fifty miles in depth, from Brussels

to the edge of French territory; they were scattered in divisions,

covering the roads that led, in many lines, from the frontier of

France; and two days, at least, were required before they could

even nearly concentrate on a given field of battle. They were thus

vulnerable at all points, and the strategy which placed them in such

positions has long ago been condemned as false; but many and decisive

reasons concurred to induce Napoleon to select their centre, and the

space where their inner flanks met, as the first spot on which to

direct his efforts.

Were he to assail the Allies on either wing, he would press their

armies against each other, and favour rather than retard their

junction, the very event to be most avoided; and, besides, they were in

greater strength on these lines than at those points of their centre

at which their separate forces came in contact. Again, Wellington

was based on the sea, from Brussels and Ghent to Ostend and Antwerp;

the base of Blücher was the Rhine and Cologne. Were their centre,

therefore, fiercely attacked, and their armies compelled to diverge

from each other, the probability was that each chief would fall back

on his proper base, as happened in the campaign of 1794, and that

the Emperor would be able to interpose and, perhaps, to overwhelm

their recoiling forces. Other considerations combined to determine

the purpose of the most profound of generals. Blücher was known to be

hasty and bold to a fault; the genius of Wellington was circumspect and

cautious; and Napoleon calculated--rightly, as the event proved--that

should he fall suddenly on the allied centre, Blücher would hurry

forward to repel the attack, and that Wellington would be slow to

advance; and this single circumstance, it was not unlikely, would

give the Imperial chief an admirable chance to beat in detail his

divided enemies. The peculiarities of the theatre, too, encouraged

an attempt against the allied centre. At each side of this point the

French frontier at this time ran into Belgian territory, especially

from Valenciennes to Rocroy; a great main road by Charleroi to Brussels

nearly traversed the space where the Allies met, and led into the

heart of the Belgic provinces; the communication between the Allies

depended chiefly on one lateral road, extending from Nivelles to Namur

eastwards, and behind this lay a difficult region of hills and marshes

watered by the Dyle, and unfavourable to the junction of divided

armies. Should Napoleon, therefore, advance on this path, he would have

the shortest line of attack from France; he would have an avenue into

the midst of the camps of his foes, and conducting him to the Belgian

capital; and should he once be able to force his adversaries from their

main point of contact, the Nivelles and Namur road, they would find it

no easy task to reunite, and they would probably be placed in serious

peril.

The Allies were thus to be struck at their centre, and their separated

hosts to be rent asunder as Beaulieu and Colli, twenty years before,

when Bonaparte was first revealed to Fortune, were assailed from the

Genoese seaboard and driven in eccentric retreat from Piedmont. An

untoward event at the outset increased the difficulties of carrying

out a plan, which may be pronounced one of the most brilliant even

of Napoleon’s marvellous career. The united armies of Blücher and

Wellington were about 224,000 strong; the Emperor reckoned that

150,000 men were required to assure his operations success; and it may

confidently be said that, had he had this force, he would, humanly

speaking, have been victorious, spite of the misadventures and faults

of the Campaign. A sudden rising in La Vendée, however, deprived him

of 20,000 good troops; but, though this added largely to his adverse

chances, his position was such that he still resolved to persevere

in his audacious project. The execution of his profound design was

admirable, and, indeed, all but perfect. The divisions intended to make

the movement were encamped along the northern frontier of France, or

thrown back southward almost to the capital; and the problem was how to

draw together these widely separated bodies of men, and to concentrate

them at the appointed spot, without interference on the part of

the enemy, and without even his knowledge, if this were possible.

The operation was accomplished with success, largely through that

remarkable skill in stratagem which was one of Napoleon’s distinctive

gifts. While the corps on the frontier, their march concealed by

different expedients with consummate art, were collected together

from the vast distance which extends from Lille and Valenciennes to

Metz, the corps in the interior were moved forward by degrees, and

the united masses were brought into contact, at the points indicated

by their great head and leader. On the evening of the 14th June 1815,

nearly 128,000 Frenchmen, including 22,000 cavalry, and with 350 guns,

had effected their junction, on a narrow front, on the very verge of

the plains of Belgium, a few miles from the banks of the Sambre, and

converging towards the great main road, running, we have seen, from

Charleroi to Brussels; and the concentration, if not quite complete,

was, in the circumstances in which it was made, one of the finest known

in the annals of war. The Emperor’s left wing, about 45,000 strong,

composed of the 2nd and 1st Corps, in the experienced hands of Reille

and D’Erlon, was near the Sambre at Leez and Solre; the centre, nearly

68,000 men, comprising the Imperial Guard, the 3rd Corps of Vandamme,

the 6th Corps, with Lobau as its chief, and the cavalry reserves,

under the command of Grouchy, lay in the country around Beaumont;

and the right wing, the 4th Corps, led by the brilliant Gérard, and

numbering perhaps 15,000 soldiers, was, in part, at Philippeville,

its appointed station, a part, however, being half a march distant,

the single detachment that had not fulfilled its mission. The purpose

of Napoleon was to conduct these forces, assembled at his bidding as

if by magic, at daybreak against the enemy in his camps; to cross the

Sambre, to enter Charleroi, holding the main road to Brussels before

referred to; and having taken possession of the adjoining country, and

overpowered, if possible, any foes in his path, to press on to the road

from Nivelles to Namur, to occupy on it Quatre Bras and Sombreffe,

the two points where the allied commanders would probably attempt to

effect their junction, and having attained this position of vantage, to

interpose between their divided armies, completing the first act in the

drama of the Campaign.

Having made a spirit-stirring address to his troops, Napoleon set

his army in motion at about 3 A.M. on the 15th of June. The

left wing was not long in crossing the Sambre; soon after mid-day the

corps of Reille, that of D’Erlon being some miles behind, had passed

the bridge which spans the stream near the town of Marchiennes--it

had been left intact by the enemy--and the great French columns had

easily pressed back a detachment of the Prussian corps of Ziethen, in

observation along the frontier. The march of the centre was greatly

delayed; an advance-guard of cavalry, with a weak support of foot,

entered Charleroi, indeed, and was over the Sambre a short time after

the left wing--the bridge at Charleroi, too, was not broken--but an

accident had kept back Vandamme; and it was past three in the afternoon

before a part of the Guard, the 3rd Corps, and part of the reserve of

cavalry had made their way out of the narrow streets of Charleroi,

Lobau and much of the cavalry being still in the rear. The progress of

the right wing was even more retarded; it did not move until a part

at least of its backward detachment had come into line; the march of

the troops was, in some measure, checked by the villainous treason of

Bourmont; the country to be traversed was close and difficult; and

it was about five before it had passed the Sambre, even in part,

across the bridge at Châtelet--unbroken like those of Marchiennes and

Charleroi--more than half the corps being on the southern bank of

the river. These delays enabled the bulk of Ziethen’s forces--their

head-quarters had been at Charleroi--to effect their retreat before the

advancing French, and frequently to arrest the heads of their columns.

The Prussian commander had manœuvred ably, though he had greatly erred

in not destroying the bridges; Ziethen made good his way to Fleurus,

with a loss of not more than 2,000 men, any hope which Napoleon may

have entertained of surprising and crushing his isolated corps having

been at an early hour frustrated. Mainly, too, from this cause, the

Emperor failed to seize the two points of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe,

on the cross road from Nivelles to Namur, which had been the object of

his march on the 15th; and the day, as Charras has said, was, in part,

incomplete.

[Illustration: “THE IDOL OF THE SOLDIER’S

SOUL.”--_Byron._]

Nevertheless, Napoleon had already attained considerable and most

promising success; and he might even now reckon on approaching victory.

As evening closed one division of the left wing, supported by a large

body of horsemen, was at Frasnes, quite near Quatre Bras; and, in fact,

it had been prevented from gaining that point only by a demonstration

made by the young Prince of Saxe Weimar, anticipating his orders by

several hours. The remainder of the left wing, now under the command of

Ney--the Marshal had reached Charleroi some time in the afternoon--was

extended from Gosselies to Jumet, holding the great road from Charleroi

to Brussels, and from ten to thirteen miles from Quatre Bras, a single

division approaching the centre; and a march of a few hours could

place it in force on one of the chief points of the allied line of

junction. As for the centre, Lobau, and part of the Guard and of the

heavy cavalry were still near Charleroi; but Vandamme and the great

body of the Guard and of the cavalry reserve were not far from Fleurus,

a few miles only from the point of Sombreffe, by which Blücher would

unite with Wellington, and filling the country back to Charleroi;

while the right wing of Gérard was at a half march’s distance. The

main body of the French army, about 100,000 strong, had thus attained

positions near the allied centre, which already made it difficult in

the extreme for Blücher and Wellington to combine their forces along

the road from Nivelles to Namur; if the Emperor had not cut his foes

in two, he threatened their communication in a most dangerous way; he

was master of the main road from Charleroi to Brussels almost up to the

point of Quatre Bras; and notwithstanding several mishaps, he had not

30,000 men in his rear. He had every reason to assert, as he did, that

if not wholly, he was, in the main, satisfied with the results of the

operations of the day.

What had been the dispositions of the allied chiefs, while Napoleon had

gained this immense advantage? Neither Blücher nor Wellington seriously

thought that their adversary would venture to invade Belgium, for

his inferiority of force was well known to them; and Wellington was

convinced that the Emperor would await the attack of the Coalition,

as he had awaited it the year before. This partly explains, though it

does not justify, the dissemination of their scattered forces; and, as

has been said, it is now conceded that this strategy was essentially

faulty. They admitted, however, that an attack was possible, and

everything tends to show that Blücher conceived that an attack on

his centre and left was the most probable; while the Duke certainly

believed that the blow would be most likely directed against his right.

As an attempt, however, against their centre might be made, they had

made provision for this contingency; and it had been arranged between

them that should Napoleon advance by Charleroi on the great road to

Brussels, striking at the point of contact of their inner flanks,

each should concentrate in force on the road from Nivelles to Namur,

holding the two positions of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, which they felt

assured they could occupy in time, though the mass of their armies

was far distant, and Quatre Bras and Sombreffe were but a march from

the frontier. These calculations might have proved correct in the

case of a foe of ordinary powers; but in that of a consummate master

of his art they were pregnant, as Charras has said, with danger. The

Duke, however, and Blücher were not surprised, as has been alleged,

in the true sense of the word, though they were out-generalled by

Napoleon’s movement. As early as the afternoon of the 14th of June,

Ziethen had learned that the French had approached the frontier, and

he immediately despatched the news to Blücher at his head-quarters,

miles off at Namur. The Prussian army was about 118,000 strong,

including 12,000 horsemen and 312 guns; but its four corps were widely

apart: the first, that of Ziethen, being around Charleroi; the second,

that of Pirch, in camp at Namur; the third, under Thielmann, to the

south-east at Ciney; the fourth led by Bülow far away at Liège; and

it was all but impossible that the collective mass could be united on

the road from Nivelles to Namur before nightfall on the 16th of June.

The ardent veteran, however, eager for the fray, at about midnight on

the 14th, when Napoleon’s advance might be presumed, ordered a general

concentration of his army on Sombreffe, as had been agreed between

himself and Wellington; the Prussian chiefs gave proof of extreme

activity; and while Ziethen, who, as we have seen, had skilfully

retarded the march of the French, fell back to Fleurus, and thence

to Sombreffe, Pirch, by the night of the 15th of June, had got near

Mazy, four miles from Sombreffe, with three of the four divisions of

his corps, the fourth being a short way in the rear; while Thielmann

had attained Namur, half a march from the intended point of junction.

Three corps, therefore, of Blücher’s army could be at Sombreffe on the

16th by noon, ready to encounter the shock of Napoleon, and doubtless

expecting support from Wellington. The corps of Bülow, however, could

not be up in time; notwithstanding his energy, Blücher had assembled

only three-fourths of his army; and, in the actual position of affairs,

could he confidently rely on the aid of his colleague?