Positions on August 4.
For the sake of clearness, the positions occupied by the rival Armies on the morning of the 4th may be succinctly described. The French stood thus: On the right, two divisions of the 5th Corps, one at Saareguemines, the other at Grossbliedersdorf; in what may be called the centre, three divisions of the 2nd Corps, on and over the frontier immediately south of Saarbrück; three divisions of the 3rd Corps echelonned on the high-road from Forbach to St. Avold, with one division at Boucheporn; on the left, three divisions of the 4th Corps, one at Ham, a second at Teterchen, and a third at Bouzonville. The guard were in rear of the left at Les Etangs. The position of the cavalry it is difficult to determine, but they were not where they should have been—feeling for and watching the enemy. Nor is it easy to ascertain the numerical strength of the French Army at any given moment, because the reserves and battalions, as they could be spared from garrisons, were constantly arriving; but on the 4th there were about 150,000 men and 500 guns in front of Metz. That fortress, however, like all the other strong places on or near the frontier, such as Toul, Verdun, Thionville, and Belfort, had no garrison proper, or one quite inadequate to its requirements.
The German Armies on the 4th were posted in this order: The Crown Prince’s was behind the Klingbach, south of Landau, assembled at dawn for the march which carried it over the frontier; the Second, or Central Army, under Prince Charles, was in line of march through the Haardt Wald by Kaiserslautern, the advanced guard of the 4th Corps being at Homburg, and that of the 3rd at Neunkirchen; while the Guard, the 10th, 12th, and 9th were still north or east of Kaiserslautern, which they passed the next day. The First Army, held back by orders from the Great Staff, was cantonned between Neunkirchen, Tholey, and Lebach. In front of the whole line, from Saarlouis to Saareguemines, were several brigades of cavalry, from which parties, both strong and weak, were sent out constantly to discover and report on the positions and doings of the enemy. The three Armies, as far as can be estimated from the official figures, brought into the field at the outset of the campaign, say the 4th of August, the First, 83,000 men and 270 guns; the Second, 200,000 men and 630 guns; and the Third, 170,000 men and 576 guns, an overwhelming array compared with that mustered by the adversary. These totals include only the active Army. The aggregate from which they were drawn amounted to the enormous sum of 1,183,389 men and 250,373 horses, which, of course, includes garrisons, depôts, and landwehr in course of formation. It has been laid down on indisputable authority that the number available for active operations, namely, that which can be put into the field, is, in all cases, as it was in this, less than half the nominal effective. The proportion of mobilized, to what may be called immobilized, troops in the French Army was for the moment, at all events, necessarily somewhat lower than in the German, because the Imperial military system, as we have already explained, was so clumsy, as well as so incomplete.