Sedan 1870- The Eclipse of France by Douglas Fermer

Author:Douglas Fermer [Fermer, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Battles, Modern Warfare, Franco-Prussian War
ISBN: 9781844157310
Amazon: 1473828899
Goodreads: 5920580
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Published: 2008-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Among the sad relics in the Gravelotte museum, one perhaps speaks more eloquently of the horror of the fighting than all the monuments and burial plots that dot these fateful battlefields: three Chassepot bayonets fused together by the intense heat of the fire that destroyed Moscou farm and its French defenders.

Although the Germans had paid a terrible price, Bazaine’s lack of strategic sense had allowed them to trap his army in Metz. On 19 August they completed a ring around it. A junction between the two halves of the French army, relatively easy only a week before, must now involve a battle with the Germans holding the central position.

Meanwhile, France waited expectantly, starved of reliable military news by censorship. Palikao sought to keep up morale, hinting that victory was imminent and spreading tales worthy of Baron Munchausen of Prussians slaughtered in hecatombs. Such was popular faith in Bazaine that it was believed that his withdrawal into Metz must be part of a clever plan. Howls of treason were raised against journalist Edmond About when he described the drunkenness and disorder of MacMahon’s retreating army rather too frankly.24

Yet invasion was becoming a reality in eastern France. Fear of it was borne westwards by hordes of refugees fleeing before German cavalry patrols which boldly demanded the surrender of village after village. In the fevered wartime atmosphere wild rumours ran: spy mania was everywhere and sparked ugly incidents. Palikao had one German shot in Paris for passing information to the enemy, and plans were discussed to expel 70,000 German citizens from the capital. Foreigners and minorities came under suspicion. Many an English tourist or newspaper correspondent seen making sketches, consulting a map or asking directions had nasty brushes with mobs and suffered brief imprisonment. In Strasbourg on 7 August a telegraphist saw a man accused of spying beaten to death by a mob, and narrowly escaped the same fate himself, being abused as a ‘dirty Jew’.25

In Alsace and the south Protestants were accused of being in league with the enemy. In the south-west priests and nobles were eyed suspiciously as conspirators and isolated acts of violence swept the countryside. Deep in rural France on 16 August, at an agricultural fair outside the hamlet of Hautfaye in the Dordogne, a peasant mob shouting ‘Long Live the Emperor!’ battered, tortured and burned to death a young nobleman whom they mistook for both a ‘Prussian’ and a hated ‘republican’.

By contrast, in large towns where the Empire had never been popular, principally Paris, Marseilles and Lyon, republican activists became restless at news of the first defeats, sensing their opportunity as the regime foundered, but the authorities quickly restored order. An insurrectionary attempt by the extreme Left in Paris on 14 August failed utterly. Wielding pistols and daggers, hard-line followers of the arch-revolutionary Auguste Blanqui attempted to seize rifles at the La Villette firemen’s barracks, but were captured after a fight with gendarmes. Bystanders were so out of sympathy with the insurgents that they beat some up, shouting

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