Leaving Wissembourg and the site of Schloss Geisberg behind me – at least for the afternoon – I followed the route taken by the survivors of Gen. Douay’s luckless division, over the mountains and towards Froeschwiller, where General MacMahon had the headquarters of his Corps*.
(*At this point I should perhaps briefly explain something about the organisation for those who are not aficionados of military history. A corps (or more precisely ‘army corps’) is in fact a small army in its own right, with all the necessary infantry, artillery and cavalry to operate independently. Although the organisation is flexible, an army corps consists of at least 2 divisions of infantry and each division in this period consisted of 2 brigades. A brigade was made up of 6 infantry battalions: each battalion in the French army represented about 650 of all ranks. In this case, MacMahon had an extra-large corps with five divisions of infantry, plus the artillery and a division of cavalry.)
(*At this point I should perhaps briefly explain something about the organisation for those who are not aficionados of military history. A corps (or more precisely ‘army corps’) is in fact a small army in its own right, with all the necessary infantry, artillery and cavalry to operate independently. Although the organisation is flexible, an army corps consists of at least 2 divisions of infantry and each division in this period consisted of 2 brigades. A brigade was made up of 6 infantry battalions: each battalion in the French army represented about 650 of all ranks. In this case, MacMahon had an extra-large corps with five divisions of infantry, plus the artillery and a division of cavalry.)
It was a warm afternoon as a drove along steep, winding roads amid woods and fields, past grazing cattle and through the village of Climbach to reach Lembach. Here I parked the car, collected my books and maps together and found a pub where I could read again the course of the battle and familiarise myself with the layout of the area. I ordered a beer, spread the documentation out on a table at the otherwise empty hostelry and started to read, watched all the time by a rather sullen and taciturn landlady. She was polite enough, but I found it rather odd that she should watch me with bovine attention yet not raise enough curiosity to enquire about or comment upon a stranger’s interest in her local area.
Dismissing her from my mind, I focused on the events of 6 August 1870. As you may recall from my previous posts, this was the very same day that another French corps was battling to hold Spicheren some distance to the northwest. Here in the Vosges, MacMahon was not too perturbed by the defeat of Douay’s division at Wissembourg; after all, he had another five divisions and a strong position (a position magnifique, in fact) at Froeschwiller that covered the approaches from the east. So confident was he that he didn’t even order his men to dig in as the scattered divisions converged, tired by marching, on this spot. He had good reason to hope that the German Third Army would even choose to bypass it altogether rather than attempt an assault. In this, however, he was to be disappointed. Advance formations of Third Army reached the outskirts of Woerth by the evening of the 5th and sporadic skirmishes ensued throughout the night. Discipline in the French units was lax and the men, tired and poorly provisioned, were inclined to drift into the estaminets of Woerth for wine and warmth at night. Hearing this easy revelry, the Prussians mounted a small-scale attack, putting an end to the party before withdrawing in the face of a French counter-attack.
The next morning, hostilities commenced in earnest. It was by no means a coordinated attack, for the commander of Third Army, Prussian Crown Prince Frederick, was still many miles behind. Instead, individual divisional commanders initiated attacks where they could perceive the enemy; others hearing the sounds of battle, marched towards the noise of the guns and attempted to flank the French positions. The French line stretched for some 5 miles (8 kilometres) north to south. In the centre, the Prussians attacked at Woerth, creating makeshift bridges across the Sauerbach before taking the village and storming up the slopes towards Froeschwiller, only to be halted in confusion by accurate and deadly Chassepot fire. To the north, at Langensulzbach, the Bavarians tried to force a way through the woods in the direction of Neewiller; a bloody, confused slaughter followed, and there are accounts of some brave infantry pushing on as bullets from rifles and machine guns ripped into trees and human flesh while others, panicked and demoralised, hastened to the rear. In the south, the Saxons had to cross the open fields opposite Morsbronn as shells and bullets shrieked, whistled and fell among them, even from the more lightly held French positions on this wing. Despite the casualties, German discipline held and the Saxons advanced into Morsbronn, Eberbach and put pressure on the French division that was spread out in the Niederwald wood.
To relieve this pressure, MacMahon ordered first one and then another attack by the cavalry held in reserve at Reichshofen. If this had been the era of Waterloo, when infantry were armed only with muzzle-loading, smoothbore muskets effective only to 100 yards, these might have succeeded; but technology had moved on since then. The thundering charges were first disorganised by obstacles in the way. As they approached to within 400 yards, the German troops almost casually unleashed a withering fusillade from their bolt-action rifles and cut the riders down in swathes. A few brave troopers managed to reach the village of Morsbronn where they surged forlornly in the narrow streets, picked off from windows until a German officer, sickened by the sight of dying men and horses, called a halt to the butchery.
Technology, in the end, secured the final downfall of the French defence. A long line of Krupp guns had already been established on the rise to the east of Woerth. This rained shells on the French positions in the centre. With the conquest of Morsbronn, Eberbach and the Niederwald, a new line of guns was established to bombard the last French positions from the south. Enclosed on three sides and mercilessly bombarded, the French finally broke and began to flee via the available escape routes, some in the direction of Niederbronn and others towards Haguenau. The battle was over.
My day, of course, was not yet over, although the sun was already pulling well to the west. With a nod to the taciturn landlady of the pub, I gathered my maps, left and drove to the rise just to the east of Woerth where the German gun line had been drawn up. There was now a road intersection with a convenient grassy hump of a traffic island from which I could survey the scene through my binoculars... the line of the Sauerbach stream, the water meadows on either side, the village of Woerth and, beyond it to the west, the steep hill leading up to Froeschwiller. The occupants of passing cars goggled at me as I stood on this mound, perhaps thinking I was some kind of traffic policeman. Then I continued on my way, stopping frequently at a variety of locations and thinking about the action that I knew to have taken place there so long ago.
There were even more of the imposing German monuments, all in a good state of repair; so many, in fact, that I gave up trying to inspect all of them. The best was the monument to the Bavarian soldiers, a mausoleum surmounted by a bronze statue in truly heroic proportions of a dying grenadier, with Nike holding the laurels of victory aloft. It was superbly detailed, and you can even make out the multiple muzzles of a mitrailleuse, the French machine gun that I mentioned in my previous entry.
In the evening sun I ecstatically took in all of the significant sites: the woods where French and Saxons had fought at close quarters... the open slopes down which the cuirassiers and lancers had thundered... the village of Morsbronn where these horsemen were slaughtered... and finally the heights of Froeschwiller where the French made their final stand. Eventually I was sated with history and had to acknowledge the growling of my stomach. It was 7.30 in the evening. Turning to Travel Monkey, my mascot and sole companion on my journeys (a gift from my daughter before my first visit to Iceland in ’08), I asked: “What do you think, TM? Home and food?” “Good idea”, he replied.