Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4

by Wolfgang Menzel

Still, for the only time in the war, the emperor was able to send a reassuring telegram to Paris. The young prince, upon whom the hopes of the nation would, he hoped, rest, had undergone the "baptism of fire." French troops had made the first step in advance.

Soon, however, it became clear to him that the enemy had concentrated along the line of the frontier, and were about to make their spring. Moltke, in fact, from his headquarters at Mayence, was, by means of solitary horsemen employed in profusion, keeping himself thoroughly well acquainted not only with the movements of the French, but with their vacillation, their irresolution, their want of plan. The sudden appearance from unexpected quarters of these horsemen conveyed a marked feeling of insecurity to the minds of the French soldiers, and these feelings were soon shared by their chiefs. It was very clear to them that an attack might at any moment come, though from what quarter and in what force they were absolutely ignorant. This ignorance increased their vacillations, their uncertainties. Orders and counter-orders followed each other with startling rapidity. The soldiers, harassed, began to lose confidence; the leaders became more and more incapable of adopting a plan.

Suddenly, in the midst of their vacillations, of their marchings and counter-marchings, the true report reached them, on the evening of the 3d of August, that a French division, the outpost of MacMahon's army, had been surprised and defeated at Weissenburg by a far superior force. Napoleon at once ordered the Fifth Corps to concentrate at Bitsche, and despatched a division of the Third to Saarguemünd. These orders were followed by others. Those of the 5th of August divided the army of the Rhine into two portions, the troops in Alsace being placed under MacMahon, those in Lorraine under Bazaine, the emperor retaining the Guard. Those of the 7th directed the Second Corps to proceed to Bitsche, the Third to Saarguemünd, the Fourth to Haut-Homburg, the Guard to St. Avoid. These instructions plainly signified the making of a flank movement in front of a superior enemy. With such an army as the emperor had, inferior in numbers, many of the regiments as yet incomplete, all his resources behind him, and these becoming daily more unavailable, his one chance was to concentrate in a position commanding the roads behind it, and yet adapted for attack if attack should be necessary. As it was, without certain information as to the movements of the Germans, anxious to move, yet dreading to do so, until his regiments should be completed, the French emperor was confused and helpless. He forgot even to transmit to the generals on one flank the general directions he had issued to those on the other. Bazaine, for instance, was left on the 5th in ignorance of the emperor's intentions with respect to MacMahon; on the 6th none of the subordinate generals knew that the flank march was contemplated. Frossard, who had fallen back to Spicheren, considered his position so insecure that he suggested to Leboeuf that he should be allowed to retire from the Saarbrücken ridge. He was ordered in reply to fall back on Forbach, but no instructions were given him as to the course he should pursue in the event of his being attacked, nor were the contemplated movements of the emperor communicated to him. In every order that was issued there was apparent the confused mind of the issuer.

Turn we now to MacMahon and the movements of himself and his generals. When the war broke out MacMahon was in the vicinity of Strasburg with forty-five thousand men; General Douay with twelve thousand men at Weissenburg. The same confusion prevailed here as at Metz. The orders given to MacMahon were of the vaguest description: Douay had no instructions at all. Yet, in front of him, the German hosts had been gathering. The commander of the left wing of the German army, the crown prince of Prussia, had, in obedience to the instructions he had received, crossed the frontier river, the Lauter, on the 4th of August, with an army composed of the Second Bavarian and Fifth Prussian army, numbering about forty thousand men, and marched on Weissenburg. As his advanced guard approached the town, it was met by a heavy fire from the French garrison. The crown prince resolved at once to storm the place. Douay had placed his troops in a strong position, a portion of his men occupying the town defended by a simple wall; the bulk, formed on the Gaisberg, a hill two miles to the south of it. Against this position the crown prince directed his chief attack. The contest which ensued was most severe, the assailants and the defenders vying with one another in determination and courage. But the odds in favor of the former were too great to permit Douay to hope for ultimate success. After a resistance of five hours' duration the Germans carried the Gaisberg. Douay himself was killed; but his surviving troops, though beaten, were not discouraged. They successfully foiled an attempt made by the Germans to cut off their retreat, and fell back on the corps of MacMahon, which lay about ten miles to the south of Weissenburg.

The same day on which the crown prince had attacked and carried Weissenburg, another German army corps, that of Baden-Würtemberg, a part of the Third Army, under the command of the crown prince, had advanced on and occupied Lauterburg. That evening the entire Third Army, consisting of one hundred and thirty thousand men, bivouacked on French ground. Meanwhile MacMahon, on hearing of Douay's defeat, had marched to Reichshofen, received there the shattered remnants of Douay's division, and, with the emperor's orders under no circumstances to decline a battle, took up a position on the hills of which Worth, Fröschweiler and Elsasshausen form the central points. He had with him forty-seven thousand men, but the Fifth Corps, commanded by De Failly, was at Bitsche, seventeen miles from Reichshofen, and MacMahon had despatched the most pressing instructions to that officer to join him. These orders, however, De Failly did not obey.

The ground on which MacMahon had retired offered many capabilities for defence. The central point was the village of Worth on the rivulet Sauerbach, which covered the entire front of the position. To the right rear of Worth, on the road from Gundershofen, was the village of Elsasshausen, covered on its right by the Niederwald, having the village of Eberbach on its further side, and the extreme right of the position, the village of Morsbronn, to its southeast. Behind Wörth, again, distant a little more than two miles on the road to Reichshofen, was the key to the position, the village of Fröschweiler. From this point the French left was thrown back to a mound, covered by a wood, in front of Reichshofen.

On the 5th of August the crown prince had set his army in motion, and had rested for the night at Sulz. There information reached him regarding the position taken by MacMahon. He immediately issued orders for the concentration of his army, and for its march the following morning toward the French position, the village of Preuschdorf, on the direct road to Wörth, to be the central point of the movement. But the previous evening General von Walther, with the Fifth Prussian Corps, had reached Görsdorf, a point whence it was easy for him to cross the Sauerbach, and take Worth in flank. Marching at four o'clock in the morning Walther tried this manoeuvre, and at seven o'clock succeeded in driving the French from Wörth. MacMahon then changed his front, recovered Wörth, and repulsed likewise an attack which had in the meanwhile been directed against Fröschweiler by the Eleventh Prussian and Fifth Bavarian Corps.

For a moment it seemed as though he might hold his position. But between eleven and twelve the enemy renewed his attack. While one corps again attacked and carried Wörth, the Eleventh Prussian Corps, aided by sixty guns placed upon the heights of Gunstett, assailed his right. They met here a most stubborn resistance, the French cuirassiers charging the advancing infantry with the greatest resolution. So thoroughly did they devote themselves that they left three-fourths of their number dead or dying on the field. But all was in vain. The Prussians steadily advanced, forced their way through the Niederwald, and threatened Elsasshausen. While the French were thus progressing badly on their right, they were faring still worse in the centre.

The Germans, having seized Wörth, stormed the hilly slopes between that place and Froschweiler, and made a furious assault upon the latter, now more than ever the key of the French position. For while Froschweiler was their objective centre, their right was thrown back toward Elsasshausen and the Niederwald, their left to Reichshofen. While the Eleventh Prussians were penetrating the Niederwald, preparatory to attacking Elsasshausen on the further side of it, the Fifth Prussian Corps with the Second Bavarians were moving against Froschweiler. It was clear then to MacMahon that further resistance was impossible. Still holding Froschweiler, he evacuated Elsasshausen, and drew back his right to Reichshofen. The safety of his army depended now upon the tenacity with which Froschweiler might be held. It must be admitted, in justice to the French, that they held it with a stubborn valor not surpassed during the war. Attacked by overwhelming numbers, they defended the place, house by house. At length, however, they were overpowered. Then, for the first time, the bonds of discipline loosened, and the French, struck by panic, fled, in wild disorder, in the direction of Saverne. They reached that place by a march across the hills the following evening. On their way they fell in with one of the divisions of the corps of de Failly, and this served to cover the retreat.

Though their defeat, considering the enormous superiority of their assailants, might be glorious, it was doubly disastrous, inasmuch that it followed those perturbations of spirit alluded to in a previous page, which had done so much to discourage the French soldier. A victory at Worth might have done much to redeem past mistakes. A defeat emphasized them enormously. It was calculated that, inclusive of the nine thousand prisoners taken by the Germans, the French lost twenty-four thousand men. The loss of the victors amounted to ten thousand. They captured thirty-three guns, two eagles, and six mitrailleuses.