Vionville—Mars la Tour.
That feebleness and hesitation which had been so conspicuous on the side of the French from the outset of the campaign were not likely to cease when dangers and difficulties increased with every passing hour. The Emperor, while he commanded, had been incapable of taking, not merely a bold, but any resolution, and the mental qualities of Marshal Bazaine were not sufficiently far above the average to enable him to remedy the mischievous effects of the long course of erroneous conduct to the heritage of which he succeeded. Moreover, neither Bazaine nor any other French commander, despite recent experiences, had formed a correct estimate of German energy and enterprise. Least of all could they believe that a single Corps and two divisions of cavalry would venture to plant themselves across the road to Verdun. The evil consequences were increased by the inactivity of the cavalry, and the bad, unsoldierlike habit of making perfunctory reconnaisances carried only a mile or so to the front and on the flanks. Marshal Bazaine’s phrase—“les reconnaissances doivent se faire comme d’habitude”—reveals the whole secret. At Wissembourg, on the 4th of August, General Abel Douay’s horsemen returned from a short excursion and reported that no enemy was near; and at eight in the morning of the 16th, General Frossard was informed by the patrols which had come in that there was no adversary in force on his front. The German horse were near at hand, yet De Forton’s cavaliers had not felt out as far as their bivouac. Marshal Bazaine’s original intention was that the two corps ordered to follow the Mars la Tour road should start at four o’clock; and Frossard had his men out in readiness to move at that hour when a fresh order postponed the march until the afternoon. During the night Marshal Lebœuf, alarmed at the absence of two divisions and at the continued sojourn of De Ladmirault in the Moselle valley, had suggested that it would be better to stand fast until the several Corps had been once more brought within supporting distance; and Marshal Bazaine had readily yielded to the suggestion. Still no measures were taken to ascertain whether foes were approaching or not, and the soldiers, horse and foot, took up their ordinary camp duties as they would have done had they been at Chalons in time of peace. The actual situation, if they had known it, required that every horse, man and gun should have been in motion at dawn, yet they all lingered; and it may be said that neither superiors nor subordinates were alive to the peril in which they stood—not of defeat, still less rout, the odds available against German enterprise were too great,—but of a blow which would make them reel and, perhaps, turn them aside from the paths to the Meuse.
PLAN IV: BATTLE of VIONVILLE–MARS LA TOUR, ABOUT 4. P.M.
Weller & Graham Ltd. Lithos. London, Bell & Sons