Franco-Prussian War 1870

[Boyar Son]

What's with all the French defeats and a seemingly invincible Prussian/German army?


what was it that the Prussians had that gave them a huge advantage (besides amassing a large formidable army at the border in a few days) over a country that gave you Napoleon (besides him being Corsican, still became french shortly after..).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Better yet, do any of you even know this war existed? it did bring about the same German Empire that fell in 1918

[Harbringerxv8]

Mostly advanced Prussian artillery pieces, overly-defensive tactics by the French (while they could win a battle, they couldn't capitalize on it), quick mobilization of reserves, a lack of French allies (with a humiliated Austria, and an insulted Italy), and a plethora of Prussian allies.

Would post more but I'm tired.

[jankren]

Frenchmen are too sensitive to make good soldiers.

[Pious Agnost]

Frenchmen are too sensitive to make good soldiers.

Let's just ignore everything in history that implies the contrary...

[Lysimachos11]

Faster Prussian mobilization using for one of the first times railways to transport troops quickly to the frontline. Prussians had more advanced artillery, giving them an advantage on the battlefield. French had much better rifles however than the Prussians which worked against them. IIRC the French manouvred themselves in a trap at Sedan, so the Prussians could capture the French Emperor.

Prussians were also considered to have the finest army in the world from the 17th century onwards (up to the Wehrmacht), keep that in mind.

[Monarchist]

Faster Prussian mobilization using for one of the first times railways to transport troops quickly to the frontline. Prussians had more advanced artillery, giving them an advantage on the battlefield. French had much better rifles however than the Prussians which worked against them. IIRC the French manouvred themselves in a trap at Sedan, so the Prussians could capture the French Emperor.

Prussians were also considered to have the finest army in the world from the 17th century onwards (up to the Wehrmacht), keep that in mind.

I agree with this assessment! The Prussians had been fighting and winning since 1740, basically. Except for the terrible time under the Monster (Bonaparte), Prussia won practically every conflict it engaged in. 1740-1748, 1756-1763, etc. They had just subjugated Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and Bavarian throughout the 1860's. Prussia was quite full of itself, and rightly so, by 1870.

Prussia was an army with a state; France was a state with an orchestra.

[jankren]

Prussians were also considered to have the finest army in the world from the 17th century onwards (up to the Wehrmacht), keep that in mind.

At the beginning of WW2, the French army was better than the German army (except the air force).

[gaius valerius]

At the beginning of WW2, the French army was better than the German army (except the air force).

How so?

[Ulf]

IIRC the French manouvred themselves in a trap at Sedan, so the Prussians could capture the French Emperor.

They certainly did move into a trap at Sedan (and Metz). But neither side wanted Louis-Napoleon to be captured. The French because he was (duh) the head of their government and emperor. The Prussians (and other german states) didn't want to capture him because they knew that he was the head of a stable government that could be reasoned with. If Napoleon had not been captured at Sedan, it is very likely he would have pressed to end the war as he would have realized it was over. The Republic would have never been declared (redeclared) and the dreaded Loire campaign would have never happened, nor would Paris have been besieged.

But as has been said, the Prussian victory is due to a lot of different factors. Better artillery, offensive attitude, fantastic leadership, four years of planning the invasion, having maps (the French did not possess recent maps of the German states), the railroad (specifically the dual-line railroad, the French only possessed one line of rail for each route whereas the Prussian had 2, thus the Prussians could bring men to the front and move empty trains or trains with refugees to the rear simultaneously), and of course the Prussian reserve system.

Personally, I believe the French lost primarily because of Bazaine. Had he pressed to continue towards Chalons after the battle at Mars La Tour, he would have never been surrounded in Metz. I'm not sure exactly what would have happened if he had moved to Chalons instead of sitting in Metz, but it was his only shot to keep his army in tact and not be surrounded. He made numerous other tactical mistakes that I can't bring to mind right now. He is certainly one of the major reasons the French lost IMO

[Monarchist]

I think France just had more men and better-quality tanks. The army itself was larger and more advanced than Germany's to be sure, but the leadership... not so much.

[Odovacar]

Moltke. Swift mobilization.

[konny]

The Prussian army of the 1860s/70s was certainly the most effective of its periode, making excessive use of all high-tec available at that time, like railroad, telegraph, steel cannons, and the like. It also had the most modern tactical and strategical concepts developed by one of the outstanding military commanders Germany had produced in her long history of warfare: Moltke. Compared to that the French military of 1870 was in a very poor condition and absolutly not prepered for a full scale war in Europe.

Don't forget that in 1866 it took Prussia not more than six weeks to decisivly defeat Austria; and Austria's army was considered the second strongest worldwide, after Russia. So, we could also ask, how cames it that Prussia needed so long to defeat France....

[clandestino]

Read Emile Zola's '' The Downfall '' and you'll know why.

[Oklop]

I think that Prussian higher command (Moltke) was much superior to their French counterparts. The pre-war maneuvers of the French army were staged, meaning it was known who the winner would be (usually the side commanded by the favored or more prestigeus commander) , unlike the Prussians that went about this much more seriously and realistically. So much so that the French military attache in Berlin tried repeatedly to warn the French high command for years hoping that they will implement more realistic training for the larger bodies of troops, but of course he being only colonel he had no real influence over the marshals of France that were covered in glory from the Crimea and Italy.

Another problem was that the French army had a complicated system of forming divisions, such as that the regiments from different parts of France were supposed to form a division, while the Prussian regiments were organized to form a division in their local area. The French had this leftover method from the times when they were afraid of forming "local" armies that would be more concerned with their local area wellbeing and not be quite as loyal.

This contributed in delays in mobilization and equipment distribution and when eventually the regiments were ordered to form local divisions, officers were put in position to cooperate with units and officers with whom they had no previous contact, as they have gotten to know and formed cooperative relationships with different units and their commanders.

While troops and smaller units were of about similar quality, and French had better rifle, it was in the command part that French were lacking, so that they missed few good chances to defeat the Prussians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gravelotte)

While Moltke was unifying presence at the Prussian side, many of the French marshals had personal rivalries (not helpful in war) and Napoleon III did not exactly help in the strategic sense.

In short, the troops fought valiantly on both sides and units up to regiments were about equal as well as their equipment, but the war was lost by French higher command.

I read a good book called Wars and armies of the 19th century published in the 1960s in Yugoslavia that deals wit this war (as well as all mayor wars after 1815 all the way to 1904) so most of my opinions are based on this. Nevertheless I beleive that the book was quite realistic as it analyzed every aspect and detail of the armies of the time, from the trooper and its background, NCOs, officers and politicians, equipment and its use, tactics and strategy, plans and their implementations.

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

Despite the solid reputation of the French army at the time, by 1870 it was a sorry sight to see. Nepotism had pervaded its ranks to the point that promotions were based on connections rather than merit. The army was macrocephalous -- too many officers -- and the officers were mostly old geezers -- the average French officer in 1870 was 20 years older than his Prussian counterpart!

This has often been the case in countries often engaged in colonial wars, and may also be observed in Spain towards the end of the 19th century: Colonial wars offer a continuous flow of activity and experience, leading to an excessive promotion of officers. This leads to an overgrown officer class more interested in perpetuating its status than in giving way to younger, more capable people; in Spain's case, the officer class became notoriously political, and even meddled in the state's affairs.

In the French case, when Napoleon III attacked the Prussians, his army was roughly 265,000 strong and expected to grow with mobilization; the Prussians made a pan-German mobilization and managed to reach a strength, according to Moltke, of 550,000 Prussians + 250,000 troops from the southern German states, for a total of 800,000 men.

The French doctrine was particularly misplaced in the conflict, as the Prussians used a new method of war, strongly based upon movement, which caught the French off guard. The French infantry tactics were essentially defensive, massing troups to maximize firepower; this, however, made them vulnerable to flanking moves and artillery, which the Prussians took advantage of extensively, forcing the French to either withdraw or be outflanked (unless they were already cut off by that time), despite the French causing heavy casualties with their rifle fire. This would, in turn, create a strong reaction in the French military after the war, resulting in the extremely aggressive French doctrine in WWI based upon elan.

The destruction of Napoleon's professional army and his own capture lead to the hasty recruitment of reservists -- the ill-equipped Garde Mobile -- and guerrilla forces, the Francs-Tireurs, who were no match for professional troops. Even so, they attempted to keep up the fight under a new republican government, especially as long as the Paris garrison managed to hold off the Prussian siege during 4 months.

It is wrong, however, to assume that this came from a long linage of Prussian dominance; this is an over-simplification. Indeed, the Prussians had undergone a period of decadence which culminated in their crushing defeat during the Napoleonic wars, which shocked and demoralized the country. Since then, and particularly due to the military reforms of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the Prussian military was deeply reformed and improved, allowing them to defeat the Danes (Second Schleswig War), Austrians (1866), and the French (1870).

[Dr. Croccer]

What's with all the French defeats and a seemingly invincible Prussian/German army?


what was it that the Prussians had that gave them a huge advantage (besides amassing a large formidable army at the border in a few days) over a country that gave you Napoleon (besides him being Corsican, still became french shortly after..).

Essentially, neither side had an advantage. The populations of France and the German coalition were comparable, as were their army sizes. In military terms, neither side again had an advantage, the French troops were armed with new Chassepot rifles, which were fare more accurate than the Prussian needlegun and the mitraileusse, despite not being a Gatling or Maxim, was a pretty terrifying and effective weapon, when used properly. The Prussians had considerably better leadership, mobilisation and planning and had new Krupp breech-loading Krupp cannons, which were considerably more accurate and powerful than the older, muzzle-loading French ones.

The Prussians suffered quite a few painful phyrric victories and defeats as well, such as Gravelotte.

I think the decisive aspect was the fact that the Prussians had men like Bismarck, Roon and Von Moltke, who carefully studied earlier major wars and reformed the Prussian army to deal with these problems. Von Roon and Bismarck reformed mobilisation and conscription after it became apparant in the 1859 Italian problems that mobilisation was, frankly, crap. Moltke completely revamped German and Prussian military thinking. He studied the American Civil War and was disturbed and disgusted by the fact that the American generals were unable to use their advantage and clung on to Napoleonic strategy, which made them incompetent with dealing with multiple armies, let alone entire fronts, which resulted in massacres. He concluded that, in order to avoid large-scale massacres and attrition due to new arms, a modern army must be led by an effective command structure which operated under new strategic and operative guidelines, otherwise it would simply be a wandering mass, fettered by Napoleonic guidelines. He constructed a strategy which relied on decentralisation of command, to achieve centralisation on the field at crucial moments. A commander would have to concede the fact that he can't attend every detail of the front, and must rely on same-minded subordinates in many cases. These two aspects meant that the Prussians were far more advanced than the French in strategic terms. They had already mobilized a large army before the French had, and were able to advance and defend far more organised and coherent than the confused French troops.

Moltke's military thinking essentially became standard German military thinking untill the end of WWII, whilst their enemies lacked such athing untill WWII, which was the main reason they were so effective. The Blitzkrieg was merely Moltke's theories in a modern jacket.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Better yet, do any of you even know this war existed? it did bring about the same German Empire that fell in 1918

The Franco-Prussian War is pretty basic high school stuff, I would be surprised if anyone here didn't know about it.

[Arch-hereticK]

I did my leaving-cert thesis on the Franco-Prussian war and in my humble opinion that the main advantage lay in the comandeering of the public railway systems of, not only Prussia and the North German Confederacy, but later all of Germany.

The subtle manipulations by Bismark led to the French isolation rather than Napoleon III's incompetence.
On the field it was Prussia's reserves that won the day, their regulars were only 300,000 strong compared to french 450,000, but Prussian reserves were 900,000. The superior Prussian machine guns helped too I'm sure.

[Dr. Croccer]

I did my leaving-cert thesis on the Franco-Prussian war and in my humble opinion that the main advantage lay in the comandeering of the public railway systems of, not only Prussia and the North German Confederacy, but later all of Germany.

The subtle manipulations by Bismark led to the French isolation rather than Napoleon III's incompetence.
On the field it was Prussia's reserves that won the day, their regulars were only 300,000 strong compared to french 450,000, but Prussian reserves were 900,000. The superior Prussian machine guns helped too I'm sure.

The Prussians didn't have machineguns, AFAIK. Perhaps they had a few Gatlings or something but I doubt they had the same kind of amounts that the French had.

Also, Gatylings, Mitralieusses, etc technically aren't machineguns, but volley guns.

[Arch-hereticK]

The Prussians didn't have machineguns, AFAIK. Perhaps they had a few Gatlings or something but I doubt they had the same kind of amounts that the French had.

Also, Gatylings, Mitralieusses, etc technically aren't machineguns, but volley guns.

I knew that, why didn't I say it? I dunno.
I remeber reading somewhere that the Prussian volley guns were lighter and more numerous, shorter range and easier to maintain and were also spread out in the field where the french would only use them in batteries. Hardly any french soldiers could use them due to their secrecy added to their ineffectiveness.

It's been 4 years but I think I could find the source again, it's here somewhere.

edit.
It was a book only about the battle of Sedan, it could be possible the Prussians used captured modified French guns? I remember very distinctly the map of the envelopment tactic featuring gatling-gun symbols en-masse. This is going to drive me insane if I don't find this book, I might be crazy anyway.

[Monarchist]

[...]The superior Prussian machine guns helped too I'm sure.

I don't believe the Germans really developed the idea of machine gun companies until they adopted the Maxim 1908. They were at the forefront of development in M.G. technology 20 years after the Franco-Prussian war, though.