PRINCE FRIEDRICH KARL OF PRUSSIA
“THE FRENCH SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY FAILED TO DELIVER, ESPECIALLY DURING THE SIEGE OF PARIS”
PRINCE FRIEDRICH KARL LED THE PRUSSIAN ARMY TO VICTORY AT METZ PRUSSIA
The son of Prince Charles of
Prussia, Friedrich Karl was a superb military tactician and a proponent of comprehensive training for his troops. The author of several books on tactics and military discipline, he implemented theories that made his commands elite among Prussian military formations. With the eruption of the Franco-prussian War, he was given command of the Second Army and proceeded to win a string of victories against the French, particularly the ill-fated Army of the Rhine. He defeated the French at Mars-la-tour in August 1870, preventing the enemy’s escape, and hammered the foe two days later at Gravelotte-st Privat. Subsequently, the Army of the Rhine took shelter in the old fortress city of Metz. Friedrich Karl laid siege to Metz, which fell on 27 October 1870, and 140,000 French soldiers marched into captivity. Subsequent victories at Orleans and Le Mans led to his promotion to field marshal.
SURRENDERED THE CITY OF METZ TO THE PRUSSIANS FRANCE
Although he had held every rank in the French Army from fusilier to marshal, and exhibited tremendous gallantry in battle, leading from the front and wounded on numerous occasions, Francois Achille Bazaine is remembered for his ignominious negotiations with the besieging Prussians and surrender of the fortress city of Metz on 27 October 1870, making 140,000 French troops prisoners of war. A Marshal of France since 1863, Bazaine was appointed commander in chief on 10 August, three weeks after France declared war on Prussia, and personally took command of the Army of the Rhine, the left wing of the French Army. His initial thrust at Verdun was blunted four days later at Borny, and he was wounded in the fighting. Within a week, he was defeated again at Mars-la-tour and Gravelotte-st Privat. He retired to Sedan by 1 September and surrendered the last viable French army there. For his failure, Bazaine was sentenced to death in 1873, later commuted to 20 years in prison. He escaped in August 1874, and died in exile.
MARSHAL FRANCOIS ACHILLE BAZAINE
It is usually accepted that warfare is a direct stimulus to scientific advancement. Arms races and conflicts act as a spur for scientific exploration, and many inventions that seem essential today – canned food, microwave ovens and digital photography among them – were born out of military necessity.
During the Franco-prussian War, the French population had unwavering faith in the ability of their greatest minds to deal with the Prussian threat. Their world-leading scientists would find new ways to feed them, arm them and destroy the Prussian invaders.
However, the French scientific community failed to deliver, especially during the siege of Paris. Partly this was due to the speed with which events spiralled out of control. There was no time for a leisurely consideration of ideas and lengthy trials of the more promising ones – matters had reached a critical point almost before anyone knew what was happening.
The failure to defend the city led to defeat and the formation of a German Empire. This included the disputed territory of Alsacelorraine, which became a key factor in the outbreak of World War I.
City under siege
France had a thriving scientific community in the 19th century. Paris had hosted the International Exhibition of 1867, where innovative designs in clocks and telegraphs had been displayed (ominously, in retrospect, a German company had showcased a 50-ton cannon).
Just three years later, the best minds in France (many of them based in Paris) had to turn their attention to the looming crisis. It was more than some of them could stand. The two most famous French scientists of the day, Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard, both left Paris as quickly as they could and did nothing to help the war effort. Pasteur even admitted, “The war sent my brain to grass.”
The most obvious challenges facing the city were how to combat the Prussian forces and how to feed the two million or so inhabitants caught up in the siege. The production of milk became as important as the production of gunpowder, but most of the cattle in the city were bullocks, intended for consumption.
The response was a number of efforts to make a synthesised milk substitute. Sugar beet had been used during the Napoleonic Wars as a replacement for sugar cane, but milk proved to be a far more difficult proposition and no suitable substitute was created – the best efforts were safe to consume, but had none of the taste, texture or nutrients of the real thing.
It was a similar story with a new foodstuff, named ‘osseine’ and made from animal bones. Similar to gelatine, it didn’t appear to be nutritious, but it was at least safe to consume and staved off hunger pangs for a while.
Chemical Society
Military innovation was also of paramount interest. Dynamite had been invented some years earlier, but France had been slow to take up this new explosive. By the time the siege was in place, the vital ingredient needed to stabilise nitroglycerin, ‘kieselguhr’, was not available within the city and a replacement urgently needed to be found.
One of the many committees established in Paris, the Chemical Society, set about tackling this issue. With meetings every day, the problem was quickly solved and within two months dynamite was being manufactured in Paris to the tune of 300kg per day.
It was perhaps the greatest success of the scientific community during the war, and achieved under the most intense pressure imaginable. With much of the research into munitions undertaken under the supervision of Marcellin Berthelot, some significant progress was made. Berthelot, in contrast to Pasteur and Bernard, recognised the need to contribute wherever he could. “This is how I was torn away from my abstract studies,” he would later comment, “and I had to concern myself with the manufacture of cannon, gunpowder and explosives.”
Berthelot also had some success in revisiting ancient methods of finding nitrates for gunpowder manufacture in saltpetre, but in other areas there simply wasn’t enough time to make meaningful contributions.
Mass manufacture of the existing ‘mitrailleuse’ machine-gun was discussed, but proved infeasible. The overwhelming Prussian superiority in artillery was recognised in a decision by the Chemical Society to sponsor the production of a breech-loading cannon, at a cost of 5,000 francs. The idea that one such gun would make any difference was quaint at best, but Berthelot quickly proposed that raising money through public subscription could allow them to manufacture 1,500.
There was no time for such ambitious plans to come to fruition, however, as Parisians ate their way through the available food in the city (including forays into the zoo) and moved inevitably on to the starvation stage of the siege. Even truly innovative ideas, like the use of armoured wagons packed with soldiers and referred to as ‘mobile redoubts’, were not enough to tip the balance. The idea for what would one day be termed armoured cars would need to wait for another war to be realised.
More outlandish ideas (one bright spark submitted a plan to literally hammer the Prussians into submission, by using balloons to lift a giant hammer weighing millions of tons and drop it on the Prussian armies), got no further than fanciful sketches on pieces of paper, and eventually French confidence in their scientific prowess had to bow to Prussian organisation, military hardware and superior deployment of forces.
With more time (or more foresight), the deployment of large numbers of machine-guns, breech-loading cannon and ‘mobile redoubts’ may well have allowed the French to resist the Prussian armies, but given mere months, rather than years, the demands were just too much.
Even the one area where the French could point to a truly radical and original invention, the hot air balloon, proved inconsequential. Apart from some minor use as observation platforms, balloons served mainly as a postal service to the outside world and as a means for a select few to escape the city. Air superiority was a concept that as yet held no importance.
Science would one day come far closer to ruling the battlefield, but despite the best efforts of a motivated, resourceful and patriotic scientific establishment in Paris, 1870 was just
a little too early.