CHAPTER XII
France and the War of 1870-71
When France went to war with Germany in 1870-71, her military rail-transport was still governed by regulations which, adopted as far back as 1851 and 1855, related only to such matters of detail as the financial arrangements between the Army and the railway companies, the length of troop trains, etc., without making any provision for an organisation controlling the transport of large bodies of men in time of war. It certainly had been under these regulations that the French troops were conveyed to Italy when they took part in the campaign of 1859; but the defects then developed, coupled with the further lessons taught by the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, had shown the need for bringing these early French regulations into harmony with the conditions and requirements of modern warfare.
Impressed by these considerations, and realising the disadvantages and dangers of the position into which his country had drifted, the French Minister of War, Marshal Niel, appointed in March, 1869, a "Commission Centrale des Chemins de Fer," composed of representatives of the Army, the Ministry of Public Works, and the principal railway companies, for the purpose not only of revising the existing regulations on military transports but of preparing a new one to take their place. The Commission held twenty-nine sittings and it drew up a provisional scheme on lines closely following those already adopted in Germany and Austria and based, especially, on the same principle of a co-ordination of the military with the railway technical element. This provisional scheme was subjected to various tests and trials with a view to perfecting it before it was placed on a permanent basis. But Marshal Niel died; no new regulation was adopted; the projected scheme was more or less forgotten; time was against the early completion of the proposed experiments, while political and military developments succeeded one another with such rapidity that, on the outbreak of war in 1870, it was no longer possible to carry out the proposed plans. So the studies of the Commission came to naught, and France embarked on her tremendous conflict with no organisation for military transport apart from the out-of-date and wholly defective regulations under which her troops had already suffered in the Italian war of 1859.
There was an impression that the talent of the French soldier would enable him to "se débrouiller"—to "pull," if not (in the English sense) to "muddle," through. But the conditions were hopeless, and the results speedily brought about were little short of chaos.
So far as the actual conveyance of troops was concerned, the railway companies themselves did marvels. "The numerical superiority of Germany," as Von der Goltz says in his "Nation in Arms," "was known in Paris, and it was thought to neutralise this superiority by boldness and rapidity. The idea was a good one ... but ... it was needful that the Germans should be outdone in the rapidity with which the armies were massed." That the railway managements and staffs did their best to secure this result is beyond any possibility of doubt.
On July 15, 1870, the Minister of Public Works directed the Est, Nord and Paris-Lyon Companies to place all their means of transport at the disposal of the War Minister, suspending as far as necessary their ordinary passenger and goods services; and the Ouest and Orléans Companies were asked to put their rolling stock at the disposal of the three other companies. The Est, to which the heaviest part in the work involved was to fall, had already taken various measures in anticipation of an outbreak of war; and such was the energy shown by the companies, as a whole, that the first troop train was started from Paris at 5.45 p.m. on July 16, within, that is to say, twenty-four hours of the receipt of the notice from the Minister of Public Works. Between July 16 and July 26 there were despatched 594 troop trains, conveying 186,620 men, 32,410 horses, 3,162 guns and road vehicles, and 995 wagon-loads of ammunition and supplies. In the nineteen days of the whole concentration period (July 16-August 4) the companies carried 300,000 men, 64,700 horses, 6,600 guns and road vehicles, and 4,400 wagon-loads of ammunition and supplies.
All this activity on the part of the railway companies was, however, neutralised more or less by the absence of any adequate organisation for regulating and otherwise dealing with the traffic, so far as concerned the military authorities themselves.
The first regiment to leave Paris, on July 16, arrived at the station at 2 p.m. for the train due to start at 5.45 p.m. The men had been accompanied through the streets by an immense crowd shouting "À Berlin!" and, with so much time to spare, they either blocked up the station or were taken off by their friends to the neighbouring taverns, where the consumption of liquor was such that, by the time the train started, most of the men were excessively drunk. In addition to this, many had been relieved of their ammunition—taken from them, perhaps, as "souvenirs" of an historic occasion, though destined to reappear and to be put to bad use in the days of the Commune, later on.