François Achille Bazaine

On 12 August 1870, during the war, Bazaine was nominated as the commander-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine, which was forced to unfold towards Châlons-sur-Marne to rejoin reserves in order to face the German troops. On the other hand, while he was presented with the occasion to destroy several enemy army corps following the Battle of Mars-la-Tour, on 16 August, he decided, to the astonishment of his general staff headquarters to unfold his army of 180,000 men at Metz, accordingly cutting himself from free France and his reserves. Two days later, at the eve of the Battle of Saint-Privat, Marshal François Certain de Canrobert requested urgently and for several times reinforcements from Bazaine, but did not obtain them. The latter had judged that Saint-Privat was not an important battle and refused to engage his reserve troops, which were numerous. No reinforcements were sent to the French troops which were engaged heroically in combat on the plateau and Bazaine didn't even appear on the field of battle.

Directing the only true organized armed force of France at that moment, he seemed to consider it mainly as a political tool and contemplated the various intrigues, notably with the Empress, probably to restore the Empire torn since 4 September. He negotiated equally with the Germans the authorization of an exit of his army « pour sauver la France d'elle-même » (to save France from itself), which meant from the republican push, as in revolutionary. It was during this stage that he vigorously opposed captain Louis Rossel who wanted to pursue the war and not betray his country (Rossel was the only officer to join since 19 March 1871 the Paris Commune).

Since the Fall of Sedan, on 2 September, he represented the last hope in the French camp, Bazaine renounced to pursue combat and capitulated on 28 October. This surrender is often explained by the lack of motivation of Bazaine to defend a government which was corresponding less and less to his conservative ideas. However, Bazaine also presented the situation differently in a letter on 2 November 1870 in the Journal du Nord (Northern Journal): "famine, the atmospheres brought down the arms of 63,000 real combatants which remained (the artillery no longer fixed and the cavalry demounted, all this after having eaten the majority of horses and searched the land in all directions to find rarely a weak provision to general privations).[...] Add to this dark painting more 20,000 sick or wounded to the point of absence of medicines and a torrential rain since 15 days now, flooding the camps and not allowing the men to rest because their small tents were the only shelter they had".

The news of this surrender afflicted France, while general Louis-Jules Trochu couldn't even seem to loosen the German noose around Paris which was besieged. Léon Gambetta, gone to Tours in the hope to assemble a Liberation army, understood that his tentative was unworkable and accordingly launched a proclamation where he explicitly accused Bazaine of treason in his speech: "Metz was capitulated. A general on who France was counting on, even after Mexico, just lifted from the Nation more than a 100,000 of its defenders. Marshal Bazaine has betrayed. He has made himself the agent of Sedan, the partner in crime with the invader, and, in the middle of the army which had the guard of, he simply delivered it, without even attempting a supreme effort, 120,000 combatants, 20,000 wounded, guns, cannons, the flags and the strongest citadels of France, Metz, virgin, to him, of foreign defilements".

Bazaine took no part in the earlier battles, but after the defeats of Marshal MacMahon's French Forces at Wörth and Marshal Canrobert's at Forbach, Napoleon III (who was in increasingly poor health) was swift to give Bazaine the title of Commander-in-Chief of the French Army on 13 August 1870. At the time, Napoleon's choice was considered to be a wise one. It was widely believed by French politicians and soldiers alike, that if anyone was capable of saving France from the Prussian onslaught, it was "notre glorieux Bazaine" ("our glorious Bazaine"). He was the only remaining Marshal of France not to have suffered defeat at the hands of Prussian forces in the early weeks of the war. However, being the youngest of the French Marshals, Napoleon's choice was met with suspicion and jealousy by the older, socially superior Marshals. Hence it was with reluctance that he took up the chief command, and his tenure became the central act in the tragedy of 1870. He found the army in retreat, ill-equipped and numerically at a great disadvantage, and the generals and officers discouraged and distrustful of one another. Bazaine's solution was to bring back his army to Metz. The day after assuming command of the Army, on 14 August at Borny he was badly wounded by a shell on the left shoulder, a fact which was to be excluded from his service roll presented at his Court Martial in 1873.

The armies of France, led by Bazaine, took up defensive positions that would protect against every possible attack, but which also left their armies unable to support one another.[9] Taking up "strong positions" in small-scale battles, was a common military strategy of French generals of 1870. Frossard ("the school master"), lately the Prince Imperial's tutor, who was now in commander of the army corps posted at Spicheren, was a "strong position" tactic advocate. The "strong positions" tactic has been blamed for the paralysis of the rest of the army, which left the corps at Spicheren unsupported, and ultimately lead to the French defeat at the ensuing Battle of Spicheren. When called upon, Bazaine moved part of his corps forward, but only to "take up strong positions," not to strike a blow on the battlefield.[9]

Remaining in Metz was based on the knowledge that if the slow-moving French army ventured far out it would infallibly be headed off and brought to battle in the open by a superior numbered adversary. In "strong positions" close to his stronghold, however, Bazaine hoped that he could inflict damaging repulses on the German enemy. The over-cautious troop movement, to prevent surprise rushes and ambushes, reduced the mobility of a large army, which had favourable marching conditions, to 5 miles a day as against the enemy's rate of 15 miles a day. Bazaine attempted halfheartedly to begin a retreat on Verdun. In his book Episodes de la guerre de 1870 et le blocus de Metz, Bazaine retrospectively argues that Verdun was the best line of defense for France, and therefore Napoleon was right in ordering a retreat to Verdun, after the defeats of August.[10] However, the French staff work and organization of the movement over the Moselle was so ineffective that when the German staff calculated that Bazaine was nearing Verdun, the French had in reality barely got their artillery and baggage trains through the town of Metz. Even on the battlefield Bazaine forbade the general staff to appear, and conducted the fighting by means of his personal orderly officers.[11]

Bazaine and his staff officers including Colonel Willette and his nephews Capt Adolphe Bazaine-Hayter and Lt George Bazaine-Hayter in 1870

A cavalry patrol of the 1st Squadron of the 1st Hanoverian Dragoon Regiment No. 9, led by Rittmeister Oskar von Blumenthal, discovered that Marshal François Bazaine's 160,000-man Army of the Rhine was attempting to escape from Metz to join with French forces at Verdun. This intelligence prompted General Prince Friedrich Karl, commander of the Prussian Second Army, to order at 1900 on 15 August a grossly outnumbered group of 30,000 men of the advanced III Corps under General Constantin von Alvensleben to cut off the French line of retreat at Mars-la-Tour and Vionville. Bazaine's army had passed through on its way to Metz, and was attacked by this isolated corps of the enemy near the village of Mars-la-Tour. Bazaine's was able to successful repel the attack in spite of the fierce fighting by the two German corps. However, Alvensleben defeated all attempts by four French corps to dislodge his III Corps. On 16 August, Alvensleben attacked the French advance guard, believing that it was the rearguard of the retreating Army of the Rhine. Despite his misjudgment, Alvensleben held off four French corps for seven hours. The French could have swept away the key Prussian defense and escaped, however, Bazaine had no confidence in his generals or his troops, and contented himself with inflicting severe losses on the most aggressive portions of the German army. Ultimately the aggression and skill of the Prussians prevailed over Bazaine's gross indecision.[11]

Citing the need to acquire more ammunition and the distance from the supply trains, Bazaine issued an order on the night of 16–17 August for his army to fall back closer to Metz.[12] The strong defensive positions of the fortress would, he thought, enable him to inflict massive losses on the Germans and crush their armies.[12] After resupplying, Bazaine would begin anew the march to the Meuse on 19 and 20 August.[12] Despite some skirmishing on 17 August, the Prussians did not pursue the French in force, as attacking that day was not their intention.[13] The French withdrew to the Plappeville plateau east of Gravelotte over the course of the day.[12] There the Battle of Gravelotte would be fought on 18 August.[14]

Two days later, while the French actually retreated on Metz (taking seven hours to cover 5 to 6 miles) the masses of the Germans gathered in front of Bazaine's Army at Gravelotte, intercepting his communication with the interior of France. This Bazaine expected, and feeling certain that the Germans would sooner or later attack him in his chosen position, he made no attempt to interfere with their concentration. The great battle was fought, and having inflicted severe punishment on his assailants, Bazaine fell back within the entrenched camp of Metz. But although he made no appeals for help, the only remaining army of France, Marshal Mac-Mahon's Army of Châlons, moved to rescue Bazaine. Napoleon III followed close behind MacMahon's army in a carriage. When on 2 September 1870, MacMahon blundered into a German trap at Sedan, the Emperor mounted a horse despite his pain, rode along the firing line for hours seeking death. It never found him. Napoleon III surrendered with 80,000 men.[4] With Sedan the Second Empire collapsed, Napoleon III being taken as a prisoner of war.

The Prussian army of 200,000 men now besieged the city of Metz, where 3 French marshals, 50 generals, 135,000 men, and 600 guns were encircled. Bazaine attempted to break the siege at Noisseville on 31 August but the French were repulsed, losing 3,500 men in the attempt. There were supplies in Metz to last no more than a month, such that by early September the order was given for work horses to be slaughtered for food. By mid September, cavalry horses also began to be slaughtered. Without cavalry and horses to pull the guns, Bazaine's ability to mount effective attempts to break out rapidly diminished. On 7 October, hungry and immobilised, Bazaine dispatched two 40,000 man foraging parties along both banks of the Moselle, but the Prussian guns blew the French wagons off the road and the Prussian infantry cut swathes through the desperate French soldiers with Chassepots captured at Sedan. Over 2,000 men were lost in this operation. Typhus and smallpox was spreading and by 10 October, it is estimated that 19,000 of the French troops in Metz were hospitalised. A further attempt was made to break the siege on 18 October at Bellevue, but again the French troops were repulsed, with the loss of 1,250 men. The city was on its knees, the troops and inhabitants on the point of starvation.

As commander of the only remaining organized army of France, Bazaine refused to recognise the new Government of National Defence, formed following Napoleon's capture and the resulting collapse of his government, and instead engaged in a series of diplomatic negotiations with the Prussian high command and Empress Eugenie who with the Prince Imperial had fled to Hastings, England. The purport of these negotiations still remain to some extent obscure, but it is beyond question that he proposed with the permission of the Prussians to employ his army in "saving France from herself", perhaps to ignite a revolution against the government of the Third Republic. When considered in light of the fact that Bazaine had long been a known Bonapartist, his actions were clearly designed to forge a way to restore the monarchy.

The scheme collapsed. In 1870, he surrendered the last organized French army to Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War at the siege of Metz. Upon surrendering, the Army of the Rhine became prisoners of war to the number of 180,000. This surrender is often explained by Bazaine's lack of motivation to defend a government that corresponded less and less to his political ideals and the best interests of France, as he saw it. A week's further resistance would have potentially enabled the levies of the National Defence government to crush the weak forces of the Germans on the Loire and to relieve Paris. Upon Bazaine's surrender, the army of Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia was deployed to the Second Battle of Orléans.

The defection of Bazaine liberated the army of besieging Germans, who hastened to Orléans to front face the initiative in progress of raising a Republican Army. It was then therefore easy to assign the moral weight of the defeat to Bazaine. In August 1873, he arrived at Paris, where an investigation was opened on the initiative of General Ernest Courtot de Cissey. The investigative board gave their advice which led to several accusations. Bazaine then requested that the case be presented to a war council. The royalists and the republicans held their bouc émissaire in order to lay all the responsibilities of a defeat on a Bonapartist and justify the proclamation of the French Republic of 4 September 1870, and attempting to show the incapacity of the Emperor, through his subordinate. Certain Bonapartists were not unhappy that Bazaine was being judged, as this obscured accordingly the responsibilities of Napoleon III. Bazaine was then the ideal expiatory victim, who was brought in front of a war council sitting at Grand Trianon. The Duke of Aumale, President, condemned him to death with military degradation for having capitulated in an open campaign, collaborated with the enemy, and surrendered Metz before having exhausted all available means of defense. However, the same tribunal, which just condemned him, signed unanimously and sent to the President of France (and the Minister of War) a request for mercy in regards to M. Marshal Bazaine. His sentence was commuted then to 20 years in prison, without degradation ceremony, by the new president, Marshal MacMahon, who also was beaten at Sedan. This inspired Victor Hugo to remark: "Mac-Mahon absolves Bazaine. Sedan washes Metz. The idiot protects the traitor."[15]

The French nation could not rest with the thought that their military supremacy had been broken by the superiority of the Prusso-German armies; their defeats could have proceeded only from the treachery or incapacity of their leaders. The commanders who had surrendered the French fortresses to the enemy were subjected to a trial by court-martial under the presidency of Marshal Baraguey d'Hilliers. The majority of them were, on account of their proved incapacity or weakness, deprived of their military honours. Even Ulrich, the once celebrated commander of Strasbourg, whose name had been given to a street in Paris, was brought under the censure of the court-martial. However, Bazaine, as Commander-in-Chief, was attributed with the blame for the Third Republic for France's defeat at the hands of the Prussians

On return to captivity in 1872, Bazaine published his account of the events of 1870 in L'Armée du Rhin and formally requested and was granted a trial before a military court, in order to give an opportunity to clear his name and put his version of events to the public. For months he was imprisoned at the Grand Trianon in the Palace of Versailles with his wife and two youngest children, while preparations were made for the court-martial, which started the following year (6 October 1873) under the presidency of the Duc D'Aumale in the Grand Trianon's Peristyle.

For some time the Duke and his colleagues had been looking for a way out of their difficulty, by which they could save themselves, satisfy public clamor and yet avoid responsibility before history. Bazaine stated in his defence "I have graven on my chest two words – 'Honneur' et 'Patrie'. They have guided me for the whole of my military career. I have never failed that noble motto, no more at Metz than anywhere else during the forty-two years that I have loyally served France. I swear it here, before Christ".[16] Despite a vigorous defence of Bazaine's actions by Lachaud, and the presentation of a number of strong witness statements from his staff including Colonel Willette, the court found Bazaine guilty of negotiating with and capitulating to the enemy before doing all that was prescribed by duty and honour.

Opinion is has been divided on the veracity of the trial. One New York Time commentary piece wrote:-

"There was nothing shown in the trial at Versailles to prove to unprejudiced observers that Bazaine was a traitor, or that he had done all in his power to extricate his army from the perilous position in which it had been placed."[8]

Bazaine surrendered only after receiving letters recommending him to do so from his generals, but the presentation of these at the trial was ignored. "I have read every word of the evidence [against Bazaine] and believe it to be the most malicious casuistry" (New York Times correspondent).[17] A letter which Prince Frederick Charles wrote in Bazaine's favour only added to the wrath of the people, who cried aloud for his execution.

Another, contrary New York Time commentary piece wrote:-

The proofs alleged against him make it clear that he thought not of defeating or escaping from the enemy, but solely of becoming the arbiter of the fortunes of France. His defense is valueless against the evidence not only of witnesses, but of his own acts and writings. He, in short, convicts himself, and his habitual trickery and his ingrained habits of falsehood render it impossible to accept his own word on any subject. We not only consider the accusation fully proved against him, but we believe that his conduct was even worse than it appeared to be."[7]

Sentenced to death by the government of the Third Republic following the war. The court unanimously sentenced Bazaine to 'degradation and death', and to pay the costs of the enormous trial (300,000 francs), which was to leave Bazaine's family penniless. Bazaine's reaction on being read the sentence of the court was "It is my life you want, take it at once, let me be shot immediately, but preserve my family". Since the Revolution, only two French Marshals have been condemned to death — Ney, by a Bourbon, and Bazaine, by an Orléans. But, as though the judges themselves felt a twinge of conscience at the sentence, they immediately and unanimously signed a petition for 'Executive Clemency' to the President of the Third Republic, Marshal MacMahon, although Bazaine refused to sign this petition himself.

Bazaine petitioned the government to commute his punishment to a simple banishment.[18] MacMahon, was a fellow Foreign Legion Officer, had served in many campaigns alongside Bazaine, also been beaten at Sedan. MacMahon was visibly disgusted when he received the news of the Court's decision and was incensed by their attempt to pass responsibility to him.[17] MacMahon first proposed life imprisonment, though he softened and commuted the punishment of death to twenty years' imprisonment[18] and remitted the disgrace of the formalities of a military degradation ceremony.

Bazaine wrote to thank his fellow legionnaire, though he added, tongue in cheek, that he might have let his feelings run away with him. It was an academic concession for a man nearing sixty-three. Other have judged this move harshly in later years, with Victor Hugo writing “Mac-Mahon absolves Bazaine. Sedan washes Metz. The fool protects the traitor."[19]

Bazaine was incarcerated in the Fort Royal on Île Sainte-Marguerite and treated rather as an exile than as a convict. During the night of 9–10 August 1874, at the instigation of his wife (Pepita) and assistance,[6] who was only twenty-six in 1873, and with the help of ex-Captain Doineau of the Arab Bureaux, his aide de camp lieutenant-colonel Henri-Léon Willette, Bazaine escaped after two hundred and twenty-one days of imprisonment.[18] During the night of 10 August 1874, using parcel rope supplied by Angelo Hayter, (son of the Court Painter Sir George Hayter) and baggage straps which he knotted into a rope, the 63-year-old attached one end to his body and tied the other end to a gargoyle and climbed down the 300 foot cliffs to a boat, which his wife had brought out from Cannes. They sailed to Genoa in Italy, and from there Bazaine came to London with his young family where he stayed for a time with his Hayter relations.

Bazaine was the only prisoner to have escaped from the Fort Royal. A terrace of the fort, now housing a museum, is today named after Bazaine, due to his legendary escape.[20]