The Day of Doom: The Battle of Gravelotte/Saint-Privat
By Dennis Showalter

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But the events of August 18 did not go according to plan. Virtually every standard account of this battle lays the blame for what happened on Moltke’s subordinates. When the 2nd Army encountered the French positions on the Amanvillers ridge at around 10 a.m., Frederick Charles, archetype of a “good ordinary general,” evidently mistook them for the flank of an army in retreat and responded by swinging his army eastward instead of continuing north as ordered by Moltke. That decision seemed validated, however, when Moltke confirmed Frederick Charles’ move and ordered the Saxons and the guard to advance directly east against the presumed exposed French flank at Amanvillers. The chief of staff, in other words, agreed the French were massed farther south than he had originally believed and that the position observed by Frederick Charles was their actual right flank.

Frederick Charles and Moltke, apparently as obsessed with flanks as two elderly rakes at the Folies Bergère, were determined to seize what looked like an opportunity, despite the absence of direct evidence. Both were depending on a mixture of intuition and coup d’oeil that probably had its roots in an earlier era of smaller armies and smaller battlefields. Frederick Charles then received a reality check from cavalry patrols reporting Saint-Privat as heavily fortified and swarming with Frenchmen. He promptly ordered the IX Corps to halt in place as the pivot for the guard and the Saxons as they advanced. But IX Corps commander Albrecht von Manstein had the bit in his teeth and instead sent nine batteries forward to establish a gun line and “shoot in” his riflemen before the French could know what hit them.

Around noon the Prussian guns opened, and the French 3rd Corps boiled out of its tent lines to give the Prussians a lesson in combined-arms tactics: Manstein’s artillery officers had made the mistake of deploying within chassepot range, and their crews suffered heavy losses. When the Prussian infantry went forward over billiard-table ground, the French Reffye mitrailleuse came into its own. Mounted on a wheeled gun carriage, the mitrailleuse looked like a cannon and functioned like a machine gun, with 25 rifle barrels built into a cylinder and fired in sequence by turning a crank—no mean force-multiplier for an infantry armed with single-shot weapons. Its range was no greater than that of a rifle, but French gunners understood that mitrailleuses were best used forward with the infantry. Prussian officers had vaguely heard of a French superweapon, but discounted the stories as rumor. Now dug-in mitrailleuses rapidly convinced Manstein’s infantry of the wisdom of keeping their heads down.

The commanding general of the Prussian 1st Army, Karl von Steinmetz, was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, a hero of the war of 1866 against Austria and in 1870—with his impetuosity and obtuseness—a thorn in Moltke’s side. Moltke intended to use the 1st Army only in support of Frederick Charles, and when Manstein’s guns opened, the chief of staff sent Steinmetz a direct order to engage only his artillery and nothing else until further notice.

Believing Steinmetz safely neutralized, Moltke moved forward to the village of Rezonville to see what was happening to his 2nd Army. He did not advance alone. With the outbreak of war, King William took the field in person with a large headquarters contingent, including many civilian officials. In contrast to most of his royal counterparts and all of their successors, William was no amateur of war: He had won his spurs as a junior officer against Napoleon, and before ascending to the throne he had established a peacetime reputation as a solid senior commander. A legitimate soldier-king, he usually forbore to interfere directly with his chief of staff. Moltke nevertheless saw himself as the king’s man, and one reason for his reluctance to exercise direct control of the armies committed to battle was his unwillingness even to seem to challenge the king’s authority. Most of the time the system worked.

Tags: 19th Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Weaponry

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