Battle of Gravelotte

Background

France declared war on Prussia in July 1870, and the German armies won the opening battles on the frontier in early August. Marshal Bazaine took command of the main French field force, the Army of the Rhine, around Metz, and on 14 August, the day after he took over, fought the Germans at Borny on the east side of the fortress. He was then trying to get his army west to Verdun.

The retreat was slow. The baggage trains blocked every road, and on 16 August the Prussian III Corps caught the French on the Verdun road at Vionville and Mars-la-Tour. Moltke reckoned that 16,000 men fell on each side that day. The Germans were left astride the road to Verdun, and Bazaine fell back eastwards towards Metz.

On 17 August he drew his army up on the ridge west of the Moselle, along the edge of the Châtel valley, from Rozérieulles in the south to Roncourt in the north. Moltke thought the position all but impregnable. It sloped away like a glacis to the front, and a short, steep slope behind it hid the reserves. The Germans did not know how far north it ran. Moltke planned to wheel the Second Army's left round the French right flank while the First Army held the French left.

The battle was fought with inverted fronts: the Germans faced east with France behind them, and the French faced west with Metz at their backs. Moltke noted that a defeat would hurt either side all the more, but that the French had a great fortress to fall back on.

The armies

The Germans brought the First Army under Steinmetz (VII and VIII Corps, with the 1st Cavalry Division) and the Second Army under Prince Friedrich Karl (the Guard, III, IX, X and Saxon XII Corps, with the Pomeranian II Corps arriving in the evening). King Wilhelm was with the army and Moltke directed it. At about 188,000 men and 732 guns, they had the larger army and more artillery.

The French Army of the Rhine had four corps in line from the south: Frossard's II at Point du Jour, Le Bœuf's III around Moscou and Leipzig farms, Ladmirault's IV at Amanvillers, and Canrobert's VI at St Privat and Roncourt. A brigade of V Corps stood near Ste Ruffine. Bazaine kept Bourbaki's Imperial Guard in reserve at Plappeville, behind his left, where he expected the main attack. Canrobert's corps had no engineer park and could not dig the defences that the left wing had.

The weapons cut both ways. The French chassepot rifle outranged the Prussian Dreyse needle-gun, so French infantry could fire on the attackers before they could reply. The mitrailleuse added fire from the French positions. The German answer was artillery: the new Krupp steel breech-loading guns, massed in long lines of batteries, beat the French guns and set the villages on fire. Most Germans fell to the chassepot and most Frenchmen to Krupp shells.

The battle

Opening moves (morning to 14:00). At 06:00 King Wilhelm was at Flavigny. The German armies moved north and then east, with the XII Corps and the Guard delayed when their lines of march crossed near Mars-la-Tour. Headquarters still believed the French right ended near Montigny-la-Grange. At about 12:00 General von Manstein, commanding IX Corps at Verneville, saw what looked like an unguarded camp at Amanvillers and opened fire with eight batteries. He had in fact struck the French centre, and his guns took fire from three sides. By 14:00 they were almost useless, until the Hessian division and the artillery of III Corps and the Guard formed a line of about 130 guns from Verneville to St Ail.

The Mance ravine (14:00–22:00). In the south, the First Army's guns lined the road either side of Gravelotte. East of the village the road dropped into the deep, wooded Mance ravine and climbed a bare slope to the French entrenchments, farms and quarries around Point du Jour and Moscou. The VIII Corps' infantry crossed and stormed St Hubert farm at about 15:00, but every attack beyond it was shot down. At 16:00 Steinmetz sent four batteries and the 1st Cavalry Division through the ravine by the single road. One battery lost the crews of four guns at once; the cavalry found nothing to charge and went back under fire. French skirmishers counter-attacked, and chassepot bullets reached the King's staff. At about 18:00 the King ordered a fresh attack and gave Steinmetz the II Corps. It reached the quarries short of Point du Jour, then stuck among the broken units of the VII and VIII Corps in the dusk. Firing in the south did not stop until 22:00. Late in the day a stampede of wounded, stragglers and loose horses streamed back through Gravelotte.

Ste Marie and the Guard (15:00–19:00). In the north, Saxon and Guard batteries shelled Ste Marie-aux-Chênes, and at 15:30 Prussian and Saxon battalions stormed it. Shortly after 17:00 Prince August of Württemberg, commanding the Guard, decided not to wait for the Saxon flank march. The 4th Guard Brigade advanced on St Privat from the south-west, the 3rd on Amanvillers, and half an hour later the 1st Guard Division from Ste Marie. They crossed a bare slope swept by chassepot fire from terraced trenches and from houses held to the roofs. Moltke says five battalions lost all their officers within half an hour. By about 18:15 the survivors had reached 600–800 paces from the villages and could go no further. They lay there for an hour while the Guard's batteries came up and began to set St Privat on fire.

The fall of St Privat (19:00–20:00). Bazaine had sent Picard's Guard Grenadier Division towards his right at 15:00, but it took a roundabout route through the woods and had not arrived. Canrobert pulled his men back from Roncourt into St Privat, and the Saxons took Roncourt with little fighting. Some 24 batteries now pounded the burning village. At about 19:30 Saxons, Guards and men of X Corps attacked from all sides. Its defenders held the church and houses until about 20:00, when more than 2,000 surrendered. The VI Corps fell back into the Moselle valley. Bourbaki would not commit the rest of the Guard. Amanvillers stayed French overnight, but the III and II Corps left their positions at 03:00 and 05:00 on 19 August.

Aftermath

The Germans lost about 20,000 men, among them 899 officers, a far higher share of officers than usual. The Guard Corps alone lost about 8,000 of its 18,000 men. The French lost about 12,000–13,000, by incomplete counts.

Tactically the French had beaten off every attack across the Mance, and some of their officers thought the Germans exhausted. Strategically the battle settled the campaign. Bazaine took his army back inside the Metz forts on 19 August. Moltke left 150,000 men under Friedrich Karl to invest the fortress and formed a new Army of the Meuse from the Guard, IV and XII Corps. MacMahon's attempt to march to Bazaine's relief ended at Sedan on 1 September. The Army of the Rhine surrendered at Metz on 27 October.

Bazaine's conduct is still argued over. Von der Goltz, who fought there, saw his decision to keep the Guard behind the safe left wing as a sign that his thoughts already clung to Metz. Historians have criticised his passivity during the siege. In 1873 a court-martial sentenced him to death for the surrender of Metz, and MacMahon commuted the sentence to twenty years' imprisonment. The French call the battle St Privat and the Germans Gravelotte. A museum of the war and the annexation opened at Gravelotte in 2014, opposite the Halle du Souvenir that Wilhelm II inaugurated in 1905.

Wargaming it

Gravelotte is really two battles on one long ridge, about seven miles from Rozérieulles to Roncourt, joined by Manstein's gun line in the centre. A table for the whole battle suits a corps or division-level game, with brigades as units and turns of 30 minutes to an hour. Either wing makes a good game on its own. The Mance ravine is a frontal assault across a defile against entrenched farms. St Privat is the famous one: a slope with no cover, a fortified village on the skyline and a flank march coming in from the north.

The rules have to reflect the weapons. The chassepot should outrange the needle-gun badly, while German artillery should win the gun duel and slowly break down villages. Time matters as much as ground. The Germans must take St Privat before dark, and the Saxon flank march only bites from about 18:30. A game that ends at sunset gives the German player a real dilemma: wait for the Saxons, or attack now.

The what-ifs are rich. Can Manstein be held back until the Guard and Saxons are in place? Does Bazaine send the Guard to Canrobert in the morning, or even counter-attack Steinmetz's broken corps? Does Picard's division take the direct road? Hidden deployment, or simple fog-of-war rules, recreates the Germans' uncertainty about where the French right ended.

Maps and pictures