French Mobilization.
How differently was the precious time employed on the other side of the Rhine. When the Imperial Government rushed headlong into war, they actually possessed only one formed Corps d’Armée, the 2nd, stationed in the camp of Chalons, and commanded by General Frossard. Yet even this solitary body was, as he confesses, wanting in essential equipments when it was hurriedly transported to St. Avold, not far from Saarlouis, on the Rhenish Prussian frontier. Not only had all the other Corps to be made out of garrison troops, but the entire staff had to be provided in haste. Marshal Niel, an able soldier, and the Emperor, had studied, at least, some of Baron Stoffel’s famous reports on the German Army, and had endeavoured to profit by them; but the Marshal died, the Corps Législatif was intractable, favouritism ruled in the Court, the Emperor suffered from a wearing internal disease, and the tone of the Army was one not instinct with the spirit of self-sacrificing obedience. In time it is possible that the glaring defects of the Imperial military mechanism might have been removed, and possible, also, that the moral and discipline of the officers and men might have been raised. Barely probable, since Marshal Lebœuf believed that the Army was in a state of perfect readiness, not merely to defend France, but to dash over the Rhine into South Germany. His illusion was only destroyed when the fatal test was applied. Nominally, the French Army was formidable in numbers; but not being based on the territorial system, which includes all the men liable to service in one Corps, whether they are with the colours or in the reserve, and also forms the supplementary landwehr into local divisions, the French War Office could not rapidly raise the regiments to the normal strength. For a sufficient reason. A peasant residing in Provence might be summoned to join a regiment quartered in Brittany, or a workman employed in Bordeaux called up to the Pas de Calais. When he arrived he might find that the regiment had marched to Alsace or Lorraine. During the first fortnight after the declaration of war thousands of reserve men were travelling to and fro over France in search of their comrades. Another evil was that some Corps in course of formation were split into fragments separated from each other by many score miles. Nearly the whole series of Corps, numbered from One to Seven, were imperfectly supplied with a soldier’s needments; and what is more astonishing, the frontier arsenals and depôts were sadly deficient in supplies, so that constant applications were made to Paris for the commonest necessaries. There were no departmental or even provincial storehouses, but the materials essential for war were piled up in three or four places, such as Paris and Versailles, Vernon and Chateauroux. In short, the Minister of War, who said and believed that he was supremely ready, found that, in fact, he was compelled almost to improvise a fighting Army in the face of an enemy who, in perfect order, was advancing with the measured, compact, and irresistible force of a tidal wave.
The plan followed was exactly the reverse of the German method. East of the Rhine no Corps was moved to the frontier, until it was complete in every respect, except the second line of trains; and consequently, from the outset, it had a maximum force prepared for battle. There were some slight exceptions to the rule, but they were imposed by circumstances, served a real purpose, and disappeared when the momentary emergency they were adapted to meet had been satisfied. West of the Rhine, not one solitary Corps took its assigned place in a perfect state for action. All the battalions of infantry, and of course the regiments, were hundreds short of their proper strength. Before a shot had been fired, General de Failly, at Bitsche, was obliged to send a demand for coin to pay the troops, adding notes won’t pass—“les billets n’ont point cours.” General Frossard, at St. Avoid, reported that enormous packages of useless maps had been sent him—maps of Germany—and that he had not a single map of the French frontier. Neither Strasburg, Metz, Toul, Verdun, Thionville, nor Mézières, possessed stores of articles—such as food, equipments, and carriage—which were imperatively required. The Intendants, recently appointed to special posts, besieged the War Office in Paris, to relieve them from their embarrassments—they had nothing on the spot. The complaints were not idle. As early as the 26th of July, the troops about Metz were living on the reserve of biscuits; there were sent only thirty-eight additional bakers to Metz for 120,000 men, and even these few practitioners were sadly in want of ovens. “I observe that the Army stands in need of biscuit and bread,” said the Emperor to the Minister of War at the same date. “Could not bread be made in Paris, and sent to Metz?” Marshal Lebœuf, a day later, took note of the fact that the detachments which came up to the front, sometimes reserve men, sometimes battalions, arrived without ammunition and camp equipments. Soldiers, functionaries, carts, ovens, provisions, horses, munitions, harness, all had to be sought at the eleventh hour. These facts are recorded in the despairing telegrams sent from the front to the War Office. The very Marshal who had described France as “archiprête,” in a transcendent state of readiness for war, announced by telegram, on the 28th of July, the lamentable fact that he could not move forward for want of biscuit—“Je manque de biscuit pour marcher en avant.” The 7th Corps was to have been formed at Belfort, but its divisions could never be assembled. General Michel, on the 21st of July, sent to Paris this characteristic telegram: “Have arrived at Belfort,” he wrote: “can’t find my brigade; can’t find the General of Division. What shall I do? Don’t know where my regiments are”—a document probably unique in military records. Hardly a week later, that is on the 27th, Marshal Lebœuf became anxious respecting the organization of this same Corps, and put, through Paris, some curious questions to General Félix Douay, its commander. “How far have you got on with your formations? Where are your divisions?” The next day General Douay arrived at Belfort, having been assured in Paris by his superiors that the place was “abundantly provided” with what he would require. After the War, Prince Georges Bibesco, a Roumanian in the French Army, attached to the 7th Corps, published an excellent volume on the campaign, and in its pages he describes the “cruel deception” which awaited Douay. He writes that, for the most part, the troops, had “neither tents, cooking pots, nor flannel belts; neither medical nor veterinary canteens, nor medicines, nor forges, nor pickets for the horses—they were without hospital attendants, workmen, and train. As to the magazines of Belfort—they were empty.” In the land of centralization General Douay was obliged to send a staff and several men to Paris, with instructions to explain matters at the War Office, and not leave the capital without bringing the articles demanded with them. Other examples are needless. It would be almost impossible to understand how it came to pass that the French were plunged into war, in July, 1870, did we not know that the military institutions had been neglected, that the rulers relied on old renown, the “glorious past” of the Duc de Gramont, and that the few men who forced the quarrel to a fatal head, knew nothing of the wants of an army, and still less of the necessities and risks of war.