News from the Front (2)

In 2010 I attended a two week training course in Toulouse. Since I was in the midst of my research of the battles of Spicheren and Froeschwiller I concocted a plan to visit those two battlefields on the weekend between the two training weeks. The plan had me flying to Strasbourg, rent a car, visit the battlefields, drive back to Strasbourg and fly back to toulouse on Sunday night. But my plan unravelled when it became impossible to return the car on a Sunday. So when we began planning our current trip I found a way to slip a visit to four battlefields into the trip...of course there will be a cost...in the form of a visit to certain shops in the Champs Elysses when we pass through the Paris at the end of the trip.

We picked up the Eurostar train in London at 0755 and were in Paris by 1120. We then took the train to Metz, much as Napoleon III did on 28 July 1870 through the rolling country of Champagne and Lorraine, but whereas Napoleon’s journey took him twelve hours, ours took a little over one on the TVG. After settling into our hotel we went for a walk. First we passed through Place Ney where there was a statue of the man himself.

We then walked down to the magnificent gothic Cathedral St. Etienne. Now I have seen a lot of cathedrals around the world but this one just blew me away.

We wandered around a little more before settling on a bar for an aparatif in the Place de Chambre, where we also had dinner with the view above as a backdrop. Even the sudden arrival of rain didn't spoil the evening.

On Monday we picked up our hire car and I terrified her indoors with my driving in foreign lands. We drove west out of the city to Gravelotte where we stopped at Musée de la Guerre de 1870 et de l'Annexion. I loved this museum with more than 600 items to see. There were dozens of uniforms on display including...

The German 6th Cuirassiers that charged in von Bredow's Death Ride...

A French Guard Grenadier

 

A French cuirassier ( right) and a Guard Horse Artillery (left)

A mitrilleuse...I had seen one of these before in the Musée de l'Armée but this one seemed much larger.

The display also contained a number of fragments of the Rezonville Panorama. The fragment below features the 4th and 6th Batteries of the Guard Horse Artillery.

The glittering staff, with sappeurs woking to demolish a wall to the rear.

The a dragoon with the Guard Cuirassiers to the rear.

The Guard Grenadiers at rest.

And finally von Bredow's charge, although this is not a part of the panorama.

After visiting the museum we drove on to Rezonville where we began the battlefield tour. The field is one of gentle rolling fields. Comparing the current Google map images to the 1870 maps the area has changed very little. The whole area is remarkably open with clear fields of fire.

This first shot shows the French position from just west of Rezonville. The woods to the centre left are those that run along the edge of the old Roman Road that was the line of the French 3rd and 4th corps, while angling back from the right hand edge of the woods to a point several hundred meters beyond the rough treeline in the middle ground is where Canrobert's 6th Corps bent back towards Rezonville.

 

In the second shot, slightly to the west of the first, the full extent of the woods in front of the Roman Road can be seen. Just in front of that can be seen a field of corn - just beyond the bright spot in the middle ground - immediately beyond this lies the shallow dip along which von Bredow charged.

From Rezonville we drove further west to where the intersection of the road to Flavigny. This intersection stands on top of the shallow ridge on which Alvensleben's III Corps deployed to sever the the route to Verdun. The Brandenburg memorial (below) stands here.

Looking southwest past the memorial these wide open feilds are where III  and IX corps manoeuvred.

Still further west, towards Mars-la-Tour the ground is more broken and it was in the gully (center middle ground below) northeast of that  village  that the Prussian 52nd regiment was badly mauled by elements of the French VI Corps.

Finally on the extreme right of the French line in broad open fields was the site of the the last great cavalry battle on the planet marked by the silhouette sculpture.

We then drove back to Gravelotte and drove around a part of that battlefield, although I took no images there. Again it is largely open rolling country and the long shallow ridge that looked down on the ground where the Prussian Guard advanced and was so horribly butchered was eerily peacefully.