"To Marshals MacMahon and Lebœuf alone, the Emperor had entrusted his scheme of warfare. His purpose was—to mass 150,000 troops at Metz, 100,000 at Strasbourg, and 50,000 at the Camp of Châlons. The concentration of the first two armies—one on the Sarre, and the other on the Rhine—did not reveal the purpose of the Imperial Commander-in-Chief, for the enemy would be left in uncertainty as to whether the attack would be made against the Rhenish Provinces or the Duchy of Baden."
Would the Warlock have long remained in uncertainty? But hear the pamphleteer:
"As soon as the troops should have been concentrated at the points indicated, it was the Emperor's purpose to instantly unite the armies of Metz and Strasbourg; and at the head of 250,000 men, to cross the Rhine at Maxau, compel the Southern States of Germany to observe neutrality, and hasten to encounter the Army of Prussia." Later on occurs the pathetic complaint: "If one could only know beforehand exactly where the enemy was, one's plans would be easy to carry out!"
Indeed, the dispositions of Moltke were made with baffling secrecy. Even as the Heathen Chinee accommodated card-packs innumerable in his ample sleeves, so the Warlock hid the twelve Army Corps of the North German Confederation, with the Prussian Guard Corps, the Bavarian Field Army and the Württemberg and Baden Divisions, in the skirts of his military cloak.... When the moment came, the aged conjuror twitched open the garment and showed them: Steinmetz with the First Army at Treves, Prince Frederick Charles with the Second at Mayence, the Crown Prince with the Third at Landau.
When the Three Armies rolled on, the art of the strategist covered their movements with a baffling veil of cavalry. That immense, well-organized and highly mobilized arm was thrown well forward before the Germans crossed the frontier: at their first entry into France they came in contact with French troops. A day's march ahead of the Army Corps' advanced-guards, Divisions of Uhlans, Dragoons and Hussars—(in a little all were "Uhlans" to the terrified French peasants)—provided for the security of the huge infantry bivouacs behind them; made requisitions for provisions, fuel, and forage; rendered railways and telegraphs useless—scouted for the enemy's positions—took prisoner or shot dispatch-bearers and patrol-riders—harassed marches, and boldly fired into camps. Many fell in forays, or skirmishes, many were those accounted for by the long-range hitting chassepot, which was heartily detested by Prussia's mounted men.
"If I had not been called to Metz to attend an Imperial War-Council," Marshal MacMahon is reported to have said bitterly, when the news of the defeat of Wissembourg reached him, "this blow upon the south would not have fallen. My Second Division would still be left to guard the opening between the Vosges and the Rhine."
The thunder of the guns of Worth add their comment upon that utterance.
Over the head of the town, lying at the bottom of a fertile valley patched with hop-gardens and vineyards, and threaded by a river, was waged between the Marshal with 50,000 troops, the pick and flower of the French Army, and "Unser Fritz" with twice the number of men, a desperate and bloody fight.
The French on the bluffy wooded cliffs that are the foothills of the Vosges, occupied, as strategists have declared, an almost unassailable position. But the fire of the mitrailleuses was hampered by the artillery of the 2d Bavarians under Hartmann, that seasoned veteran, who had fought at Waterloo in 1815 and now led an Army Corps against France in his seventy-sixth year. Thus the Prussian infantry crossed the Sauerbach on bridges improvised of planks and hop poles; and though the chassepot proved an infinitely deadlier weapon than the needle-gun, the generalship of Von Kirchbach and Von der Tann,—in command of the Prussian 4th Division and 5th Corps, backed by a division of the 11th Corps,—forced MacMahon's hand.
Outnumbered, outflanked and disorganized, with the loss of 9,000 men killed, 5,000 taken prisoners, twenty pieces of artillery, six mitrailleuses, and two eagles, the Marshal fled by the way of Zabern, under cover of night, trailing after him the beaten remnant of the Army of Strasbourg.