Battle of Sedan, (1870)
Posted by Mitch Williamson in Battle on Thursday, January 26, 2012
The most decisive German victory of the Franco-Prussian War.
With the French Army of the Rhine under Marshal Bazaine besieged in Metz, the
last hope for France rested with the Army of Châlons, commanded by Marshal
Patrice MacMahon. MacMahon’s options were to either race east to Bazaine’s aid
or to retire to the west and use the strong fortifications around Paris to
support his defense. The stronger course of action would be to retreat west, but
MacMahon was under great pressure from the Empress Eugénie and her advisors.
Furthermore, the Emperor Napoleon III himself was with MacMahon’s army, and
retreat would have dealt a grave blow to the political stability of the Empire.
The Army of Châlons marched east.
To counter this threat, the German commander, General
Helmuth von Moltke, split his forces into four armies. Leaving two to keep
Bazaine contained at Metz, he ordered the other two to head west and find
MacMahon. German cavalry probing ahead found indications that the Army of
Châlons was heading northeast, perhaps to reach Metz via Sedan and Thionville,
hugging the Belgian border. It would have been a grave risk for the Germans if
they had turned north to pursue, only to find the French were not there. If the
French move was a feint, Moltke would be presenting his left flank to MacMahon.
On the other hand, if MacMahon was retiring to safety around Paris, the Germans
would lose as much as a week reforming and chasing after the French, giving them
ample time to bolster the defenses of Paris. Moltke was prepared to gamble and
accordingly ordered the two armies to turn north and cut off MacMahon’s line of
advance. Through forced marches, the Germans caught up with the French and
stopped the Army of Châlons at the town of Sedan, a few miles from the Belgian
border, on August 31.
The Army of Châlons was now caught in a triangle-shaped
position, surrounded by German forces on all sides. On September 1, the Germans
commenced their final assault. Early in the action MacMahon was severely
wounded, but there was confusion as to who would take his place. MacMahon
appointed General Auguste Ducrot as acting commander; however, a more senior
general and recent arrival, Emmanuel Wimpffen, refused to take orders from
Ducrot and insisted he was now in charge. The two commanders disagreed over
which direction the army should attempt a breakout. Ducrot advocated a breakout
to the west and a return to Paris; Wimpffen ordered an attack to the east and a
continuation of the drive to relieve Metz. Either option was doomed to failure.
The German artillery controlled the heights above Sedan on all sides and was
able to rain down artillery fi re from different directions on the French
troops below. There was no cover, and thousands of French soldiers and horses
were cut to pieces. A few units were able to sneak to the north and into
neutral Belgium, where they were interned, but the rest either died or were
captured. By the end of the day, the French had suffered 3,000 men killed,
14,000 wounded, and 21,000 more taken prisoner, including the Napoleon III and
MacMahon; over the next few days, the total French prisoner count reached
nearly 100,000. The Germans’ total losses—killed, wounded, and missing—were
only 9,000, the vast majority of which had been incurred by a few ill-advised
infantry assaults by commanders too impatient to let the artillery do their
work for them. The defeat at Sedan was the last gasp of the French Second
Empire and opened the road to Paris for the victorious German armies.
FURTHER READING: Howard, Michael. The Franco-Prussian War.
New York: Collier, 1969; Wawro, Geoffrey. The Franco-Prussian War: The German
Conquest of France, 1870–1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003;
Wetzel, David. A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon II and the Origins of the
Franco-Prussian War. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001.
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