Chapter XII: France and the War of 1870-71

When France went to war with Germany in 1870-71, her military rail-transport was still governed by regulations which, adopted as far back as 1851 and 1855, related only to such matters of detail as the financial arrangements between the Army and the railway companies, the length of troop trains, etc., without making any provision for an organisation controlling the transport of large bodies of men in time of war. It certainly had been under these regulations that the French troops were conveyed to Italy when they took part in the campaign of 1859; but the defects then developed, coupled with the further lessons taught by the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, had shown the need for bringing these early French regulations into harmony with the conditions and requirements of modern warfare.

Impressed by these considerations, and realising the disadvantages and dangers of the position into which his country had drifted, the French Minister of War, Marshal Niel, appointed in March, 1869, a "Commission Centrale des Chemins de Fer," composed of representatives of the Army, the Ministry of Public Works, and the principal railway companies, for the purpose not only of revising the existing regulations on military transports but of preparing a new one to take their place. The Commission held twenty-nine sittings and it drew up a provisional scheme on lines closely following those already adopted in Germany and Austria and based, especially, on the same principle of a co-ordination of the military with the railway technical element. This provisional scheme was subjected to various tests and trials with a view to perfecting it before it was placed on a permanent basis. But Marshal Niel died; no new regulation was adopted; the projected scheme was more or less forgotten; time was against the early completion of the proposed experiments, while political and military developments succeeded one another with such rapidity that, on the outbreak of war in 1870, it was no longer possible to carry out the proposed plans. So the studies of the Commission came to naught, and France embarked on her tremendous conflict with no organisation for military transport apart from the out-of-date and wholly defective regulations under which her troops had already suffered in the Italian war of 1859.

There was an impression that the talent of the French soldier would enable him to "se débrouiller"--to "pull," if not (in the English sense) to "muddle," through. But the conditions were hopeless, and the results speedily brought about were little short of chaos.

So far as the actual conveyance of troops was concerned, the railway companies themselves did marvels. "The numerical superiority of Germany," as Von der Goltz says in his "Nation in Arms," "was known in Paris, and it was thought to neutralise this superiority by boldness and rapidity. The idea was a good one ... but ... it was needful that the Germans should be outdone in the rapidity with which the armies were massed." That the railway managements and staffs did their best to secure this result is beyond any possibility of doubt.

On July 15, 1870, the Minister of Public Works directed the Est, Nord and Paris-Lyon Companies to place all their means of transport at the disposal of the War Minister, suspending as far as necessary their ordinary passenger and goods services; and the Ouest and Orléans Companies were asked to put their rolling stock at the disposal of the three other companies. The Est, to which the heaviest part in the work involved was to fall, had already taken various measures in anticipation of an outbreak of war; and such was the energy shown by the companies, as a whole, that the first troop train was started from Paris at 5.45 p.m. on July 16, within, that is to say, twenty-four hours of the receipt of the notice from the Minister of Public Works. Between July 16 and July 26 there were despatched 594 troop trains, conveying 186,620 men, 32,410 horses, 3,162 guns and road vehicles, and 995 wagon-loads of ammunition and supplies. In the nineteen days of the whole concentration period (July 16-August 4) the companies carried 300,000 men, 64,700 horses, 6,600 guns and road vehicles, and 4,400 wagon-loads of ammunition and supplies.

All this activity on the part of the railway companies was, however, neutralised more or less by the absence of any adequate organisation for regulating and otherwise dealing with the traffic, so far as concerned the military authorities themselves.

The first regiment to leave Paris, on July 16, arrived at the station at 2 p.m. for the train due to start at 5.45 p.m. The men had been accompanied through the streets by an immense crowd shouting "À Berlin!" and, with so much time to spare, they either blocked up the station or were taken off by their friends to the neighbouring taverns, where the consumption of liquor was such that, by the time the train started, most of the men were excessively drunk. In addition to this, many had been relieved of their ammunition--taken from them, perhaps, as "souvenirs" of an historic occasion, though destined to reappear and to be put to bad use in the days of the Commune, later on.

If, however, at the beginning, the troops got to the station three hours before there was any need, other occasions were to arise when they kept trains waiting three or four hours before they themselves were ready to start.

Then, in Germany the concentration of the troops at some safe point in the interior, and their transport thence by rail to the frontier in complete units, took place as separate and distinct operations. In France the two movements were conducted simultaneously; and this, in itself, was a prolific source of confusion and disorganisation on the railways. The troops came to the stations on a peace footing and in various strengths. One regiment might have only one-third the strength of another despatched earlier the same day or on the previous day, although the railway company would have provided the same number of vehicles for both. There was thus a choice of evils as between removing two-thirds of the carriages (a procedure which time or the station arrangements did not always permit); sending the train away only partially loaded; or filling up the available space either with men belonging to other corps or with such supplies as might be available at the moment. Some trains did leave nearly empty, but it was the last mentioned of the three courses that was generally adopted. Men of different arms--Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery; mobilised troops, reservists, and individuals, separated, it might be, from their own officers and not willing to show themselves amenable to the discipline of other officers--were thus transported at the same time as, possibly, a miscellaneous collection of horses, material and commissariat supplies. Other trains, again, went away so overcrowded that they could not accommodate all the men who should have gone by them, many being left behind in consequence.

Confusion and delays at the railway stations during the entraining of the troops were rendered the more complete because the railway staffs failed to get an adequate degree of support from the military authorities. According to one of the articles in those regulations of 1855 which were still in force, "officers were responsible for the prescribed movements in connection with the entraining, and should personally co-operate in ensuring observance of the regulations referring thereto"; but, according to Baron Ernouf, ("Histoire des Chemins de Fer Français pendant la Guerre Franco-Prussienne,") there were officers who refused absolutely to concern themselves with the entraining of their men at the Est station in Paris, declaring that this was a matter to be looked after by the railway officials with the help of subordinate officers, if they wanted it.

Under such conditions as these, officers in charge of troops got hopelessly separated from their men, who themselves might have been sent off with no knowledge of their proper destination. One General telegraphed to Paris on July 21:--"Have arrived at Belfort. Not found my Brigade. Not found General of Division. What should I do? Don't know where my Regiments are." As for the men, it was not many days before the stations _en route_ to the front were occupied by a floating mass of "lost" soldiers, who pretended to be looking for their corps but too often found it much pleasanter to remain in the station buffets, and there enjoy the hospitality of local patriots. Such proportions did this evil assume that in August, 1870, the railway station at Reims had to be protected against a mob of from 4,000 to 5,000 "lost" ones, who wanted to plunder the wagons containing supplies for the front.

Confusion, again, was made still worse confounded by the multiplicity of orders--too often contradictory or impossible to carry out--which bombarded the railway officials, and must have driven them at times almost to distraction. Orders came direct from anybody and everybody possessed of the slightest degree of military authority. They came from the Ministry of War, the General Staff, and the Administrative Staff; from the Quartermaster-General's Department and the Commissariat; from officers and non-commissioned officers of Infantry, Artillery and Engineers; while each individual invariably gave his orders based on the range of his own particular sphere, or the convenience of his own particular troops, without any regard for the situation as a whole, for what might be wanted in other spheres, or for whether or not it was physically possible for the railway staffs to do at all what was asked of them, even if they were not being overwhelmed with those other orders, besides. Commanding officers of different corps especially distinguished themselves by presenting to the railway managements claims for priority in the despatch of Infantry, Artillery or supplies, as the case might be, threatening them with grave consequences if, in each instance, they did not yield such priority at once, though leaving them to meet an obviously impracticable position as best they could. Then it might happen that when all the necessary arrangements--involving much interference with other traffic--had been made, another order would come countermanding the first one, or postponing the execution of it until a later occasion.

As though, again, the orders from all these independent military authorities were not sufficient, the railways were further worried by local authorities who wanted special trains for some such service as the conveyance of detachments of garde mobile a distance of ten or twelve miles to an instruction camp so that the men would not have to march by road. There were even demands from certain of the local authorities that they should be allowed to use railway wagons as barracks for troops.

M. Jacqmin, general manager of the Chemin de Fer de l'Est, relates in his book, "Les Chemins de Fer Pendant la Guerre de 1870-71," that at the moment when the Compagnie de l'Est was providing for the transport of Bourbacki's forces, and preparing for the revictualling of Paris, the préfet of the Rhone demanded the use of railway wagons in which to house the garde nationale mobilised on the plain of Vénissieux, on the left bank of the Rhone, there having been a delay in the delivery of the material for barracks. The company refused the request, and they had with the departmental authorities a lively controversy which was only settled by the decision of the Bordeaux Government that those authorities were in the wrong.

Typical of the general conditions, as they prevailed not only in Paris but elsewhere in France, were the circumstances under which the Nineteenth Army Corps, of 32,000 men, 3,000 horses and 300 guns, was sent from Cherbourg to Alençon. The troops were late in arriving at the station; the officers neglected to look after the men; the men refused to travel in goods trucks; orders and counter-orders succeeded one another in rapid succession; two or three hours were required for the despatch of each train, and delays occurred which must have disorganised the traffic all along the line.

Great as the confusion undoubtedly was at the points of despatch, it was far surpassed by that which prevailed at stations to which trains were sent regardless of any consideration as to whether or not they could be unloaded there with such despatch as to avoid congestion. No transfer stations--constituting the points beyond which only the supplies wanted for immediate or early use at the extreme front should be taken, the remainder being forwarded as wanted--had been arranged, and the consignors, military or civil, had assumed that all supplies should be sent in bulk to places as near to the troops as possible. There were, consequently, many stations close to the frontier where the rails leading to them were occupied for miles together by loaded wagons, the number of which was being constantly added to by fresh arrivals. Many of these wagons were, in fact, used as magazines or storehouses on wheels. The same was, also, being done to a certain extent on the German lines, though with this difference--that whereas in Germany there were at the railway stations route commandants whose duty it was to enforce the prompt unloading of wagons, in France there was no corresponding authority. It suited the officers or the military department concerned to keep the supplies in the wagons until they were wanted; and this arrangement may have appeared an especially desirable one from their point of view because if the army moved forward--or backward--the supplies could be more readily moved with it if they were still in the wagons.

For these various reasons, there were officers who gave the most stringent orders that the wagons were not to be unloaded until their contents were actually required. It was evidently a matter of no concern to them that the wagons they were detaining might be wanted elsewhere, and that, for lack of them, other troops might be experiencing a shortage in their own supplies.

When the wagons were not deliberately kept loaded, it might still be impossible for the unloading to be done because of there being no military in attendance to do the work. As for the picking out, from among the large number in waiting, of some one wagon the contents of which were specially wanted, the trouble involved in this operation must often have been far greater than if the wagon had been unloaded and the supplies stored in the first instance.

Even the stations themselves got congested, under like conditions. The Commissariat wanted to convert them into depôts, and the Artillery sought to change them into arsenals. There were stations at which no platform was any longer available and troops arriving by any further train had to descend some distance away, several days elapsing before their train could be moved from the place where it had pulled up. At stations not thus blocked trains might be hours late in arriving, or they might bring a squadron of cavalry when arrangements had been made for receiving a battalion of infantry.

In one instance a General refused to allow his men to detrain on arrival at their destination at night, saying they would be more comfortable in the carriages than in the snow. This was, indeed, the case; but so long as the train remained where it was standing no other traffic could pass. Sometimes it was necessary for troop trains to wait on the lines for hours because no camp had been assigned to the men, and there was at least one occasion when a Colonel had to ask the stationmaster where it was his troops were to go.

Most of the traffic had been directed to Metz and Strasburg, and the state of chaos speedily developed at the former station has become historic.

The station at Metz was a large one; it had eight good depôts and four miles of sidings, and it was equal to the unloading of 930 wagons in twenty-four hours under well-organised conditions. But when the first infantry trains arrived the men were kept at the station four or five hours owing to the absence of orders as to their further destination. The men detrained, and the wagons containing road vehicles, officers' luggage, etc., were left unloaded and sent into the sidings. Other trains followed in rapid succession, bringing troops and supplies, and the block began to assume serious proportions.

The railway officials appealed to the local Commissariat force to unload the wagons so that they could be got out of the way. They were told that this could not be done because no orders had been received. The Commissariat force for the division also declined to unload the wagons, saying it was uncertain whether the troops for whom the supplies were intended would remain at Metz or go further on.

Any unloading at all for several days was next rendered impossible by the higher military authorities. They asked the railway officers to prepare for the transport of an army corps of 30,000 men. This was done, and forty trains were located at various points along the line. An order was then given that the trains should be brought to Metz, to allow of the troops leaving at once. Within four hours every train was ready, and its locomotive was standing with the steam up; but no troops appeared. The order was countermanded. Then it was repeated, and then it was countermanded over again.

All this time fresh train-loads of supplies and ammunition had been arriving at Metz, adding to the collection of unloaded wagons which, having filled up all the sidings began to overflow and block up, first the lines leading to the locomotive sheds and next the main lines themselves. Everything was in inextricable confusion. Nobody knew where any particular commodity was to be found or, if they did, how to get the truck containing it from the consolidated mass of some thousands of vehicles. "In Metz," telegraphed the Commissary-General to Paris, "there is neither coffee, nor sugar; no rice, no brandy, no salt, only a little bacon and biscuit. Send me at least a million rations to Thionville." Yet it was quite possible that the articles specified were already in some or other of the trucks on hand, had the Commissary-General only known where they were and how to get them.

The railway people did what they could. They unloaded some of the consignments and removed them a considerable distance by road--only to have them sent back again to Metz station for re-loading and conveyance elsewhere. Hay unloaded at the station was sent into Metz to some magazines which, in turn, and at the same time, were sending hay to the railway for another destination. Finally, as a last resource, and in order both to reduce the block and to get further use out of the wagons, the railway officials began to unload them and put their contents on the ground alongside. A big capture alike of wagons and of supplies was made by the enemy on his occupation of Metz.

Analogous conditions prevailed in many other places. At Dôle (Dep. Jura) an accumulated stock of loaded wagons not only filled up all the sidings but blocked up a large portion of the main line. When the evacuation was decided on a great waste of time occurred in selecting the wagons to be moved. Orders given one hour were countermanded the next; trains which had been made up were moved forward and backward, instead of being got out of the way at once; and, eventually, a considerable quantity of rolling stock, which might and should have been removed, had to be left behind.

On the Paris-Lyon railway a collection of 7,500 loaded trucks had accumulated at a time when a great truck shortage began to be felt, and the whole of these, together with the provisions and the materials they contained, fell into the hands of the Germans, whose total haul of wagons, including those captured at Metz and other places, numbered no fewer than 16,000. The wagons thus taken were first used by them for their own military transport during the remainder of the war; were then utilised for ordinary traffic on lines in Germany, and were eventually returned to France. Not only, therefore, had the French failed to get from these 16,000 railway wagons the benefit they should have derived from their use but, in blocking their lines with them under such conditions that it was impossible to save them from capture, they conferred a material advantage on the enemy, providing him with supplies, and increasing his own means both of transport and of attack on themselves.

The proportions of the German haul of wagons would, probably, have been larger still had not some of the French railway companies, on seeing the advance the enemy was making, assumed the responsibility of stopping traffic on certain of their lines and sending off their rolling stock to a place of safety. In taking this action they adopted a course based alike on precedent and prudence, and one fully warranted by the principle of keeping railway rolling stock designed for purposes of defence from being utilised by the enemy for his own purposes of attack.