News from the Front (3)

Leaving Metz on Thursday morning we took the A4 as far as Forbach then lesser roads to Bitche. The route was of great interest to me because Forbach was the centre of another of the Franco-Prussian War battles (known as Forbach to the French, but Spicheren to the Germans). Since Forbach and Saarbrücken have expanded greatly over this field I had decided not to visit, but as we drove along the names of the towns and villages were familiar from my study of the battle - Forbach, Spichern, Behren, Petite Rouselle, Grosbliederstroff, etc. The road in fact took us across the back of the battlefield and I caught a good view of the Simbach Ravine that marked the French extreme right.

We stopped briefly at Bitche and could see the fortress high on the hill, dominating the whole area. But it was a public holiday and everything except a Café was closed. So after a coffee and a few macarons we were back on the road to our stop for the night, Niederbronn les Bains. The town featured briefly in the FPW during the French retreat after the Battle of Froeschwiller. It was here that late arriving elements of de Failly's 5th Corps covered the retreat of shattered 1st Corps. 

We arrived way too early for our room to be ready so we set off on a walk to the town center. I hadn't expected much of Niederbronn, but it is a charming town with a strong German architectural influence. Since it was a holiday the shops were closed, but there was a fair in the square and I am sure the whole town was present.

We left the hotel at 9:00 AM and drove to Froeschwiller via Reichtshoffen. Driving through the narrow streets of Reichtshoffen it is easy to imagine the chaos that must have reigned as the retreating French crammed through with German cavalry nipping at their heals. The road carried us through the woods where the troops of Ducrot's and Pelle's divisions fought a deperate rearguard and out into the open ground that leads to Froeschwiller.

We didn't linger in Froeschwiller, but turned off to the left towards Nehwiller. This was where Ducrot's Division  formed in the relatively open ground about 100 meters in front of the road (at the extreme left of the image below) with clear field of fire to the woods.  The ground rises significantly from the woods where the Bavarian 4th Division initially advanced until Ducrot ordered two battalions of Zouaves to clear them out.

Turning back towards Froeschwiller we passed through the village and turned right towards Elhasshausen,  stopping about half a kilometre down the road beside the monument to the 3rd Wurtemberg Jäger Battalion. This unit charged forward from Elhasshausen and was the first German unit to force its way into Froeschwiller towards the end of the battle.

The same position marks the crest of the ridge and along that the ridge line the French artillery deployed and tried to respond to the deluge of shells from from all 14 batteries of the German V Corps. In the image below the ground can be seen falling away from the ridge. In this dip Bonnemain's cuirassiers and Pelle's Division waited out most of the battle.

The next shot shows the view back towards Froeschwiller from the same spot.

The next two shots show the ground looking from the ridge looking east. This was the focus of the fignting of the mid to late afternoon. Beyond  what appears to be the treeline (but in truth is just a number of scattered trees the the camera sees as a mass) is the forward edge of the ridge where Raoult's Division deployed and fought most of the day. 

Later in the day it became the site of the counterattack of the Wollf's and Marie's brigades.

Perhaps most famously it was the site of the charges of Bonnemain's cuirassiers.

The next shot is taken from the Elsasshuasen road looking south towards the Neiderwald. This marked the right of Raoult's line.  Starting within the wood and extending further south is where Lartigue's division stood.

This shot, a little to the right of the one above, is where Nicolaï,'s 7th Corps division stood at the start of the battle.

A little further along the Elsasshausen road is the Lion Monument to the German 83rd Regiment.

 

The ground along this ridge line is scattered with small apple orchards and, as in the last  of the shots below offers a view back to Freoeschwiller.

A little furher along the road stood the monument to the German 94th Regiment, that finally carried the village of Elsasshausen.

And yet further down the road, past the village of Elsasshausen, is the artillery monument, marking the position taken along the road by batteries of the XI Corps. This two level, octagonal observation tower, with 8 Krupp gun barrels built into its walls, offers a mgnificent view of the center of the battlefield.

Below, looking back towards Froeschwiller, give a great view over the ground that Bonnemain's troopers charged. What really surprised me was the number of clumps of vegitation, not woods, but just a few trees, were scattered across the fields...food for thought for future game tables.

This shot looks west towards Elsasshausen.

This looks south towards the Neiderwald. The wood in the center middleground is the Petit Bois, the scene of fierce hand to hand fighting.

Still further north the road descends through the gully (the name of which escapes me) that runs north of Calvary Hill. Atop this hill, the site of the counterattack by the French 99th Regiment, stands the French memorial to the battle, which comes in the form of this modern sculpture (sorry it is so dark but the shot is taken almost directly into the sun)...

And the more traditional form.

The site also offers great views southeast across the face of the hill towards Gunstett where the XI Corps artillery was positioned early in the day, and in the second shot south towards the Niederwald. 

The next stop for us was at the monument to the 11th Jäger battalion. This battalion was roughly handled first by the Turcos in front of the Brüch Mill and then at the farm that stood at the top of the hill beyond the monument.

On the crest of that hill, shown better here, is where the bulk of Lartigue's Division initially deployed.

Moving further around to the south, beyond Morsbronn, stands the memorial to Michel's Cuirassier Brigade that made the suicidal charge across the slopes show in the second image.

Also from the position of the Cuirassier memorial, looking southeast, can be seen the route taken by von Bose's XI Corps in thier flanking movement around Lartigue's right.

The final stop was on the north end of the line near Langensoultzbach. It was here that the Bavarian 4th Division formed and advanced against Ducrot early in the action. 

By now it was lunch time and we found a little place and settled in. After that we went into the town of Woerth to visit the Musée de 6 août, but that is another post, since this one has gone on for too long.

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.

News from the Front (1)

Regular readers might have noted that things have been a little quiet on this blog for a while. The reason is pretty straightforward…I am away from my toys and paints in foreign lands.

 

For our annual winter holiday this year we have travelled almost exactly half way around the globe to London before we head across to eastern France where amongst other things we will be visiting four of the Franco-Prussian War battlefields.

 

While I have transited London on several occasions in recent years I haven’t spent any significant time in the city for thirty years. I did have a brief stop here in 2008 on the way back from a meeting in Lisbon, but that was just an afternoon and an evening before a meeting the next morning and flying home that afternoon so I would hardly rate that more as any sort of time in the place. This time we have nine days in the city. This "Report from the Front" will focus on the military rather than the many cultural activities of the trip.

Arriving on the Saturday in sunny weather with 32C temperatures we had a bit of a wander around near the hotel, down through Waterloo Square where the Guards Crimea monument took my attention.

We soon found ourselves near Westminster Bridge, where the crowds were so suffocating that we quickly retreated to the hotel bar before turning in early.

The schedule for Sunday had us visiting the Palace. Regrettably the Queen was not at home but we had a good look through her place anyway. We caught the Changing of the Guard along with what seemed like five million others.

The Queen's Gallery had a display of the gifts brought back by the Prince Of Wales on his visit to India in 1875. One item was this collection of 18th Century brass model soldiers, presented to the Prince by the Raja of Peddapuram.

The next day, Monday, we made for the Tower of London. We got there early...right on opening time actually and managed to beat not only most of the tour groups but also the real heat of the day. Her indoors wanted to see the the crown jewels, but I wanted to see the collections in the White Tower, with the medieval and ECW armour to the wall of cuirasses from the field of Waterloo.

Next on the list was Hampton Court. There in the apartments of William III was a room where the walls were covered with maginificent displays of captured muskets, pistols, swords, daggers, pikes, armour and bayonets.

On the way back to the hotel we detoured to the National Army Museum, with which I was sadly disappointed. The only point of interest for me was the Siborne model of the Waterloo battlefield.

Next on the agenda was the Churchill War Rooms and Guards Museum. The weather had changed and it was a chilly 17C and raining. I was dubious about the War rooms. The entry fee was £21.00 and there did not seem to be a lot to see...until we entered the Winston Churchill Museum that is. This place was a mine of information and well worth the visit. 

Next up was the Guards Museum. I had no trouble in getting her indoors to agree to go since her maternal grandfather served in the Coldstreams. What a great adults museum this is, not dumbed down to child level and it made up for the disappointment at the National Army Museum, although sadly no photography was permitted.  Having completed guards units for my Crimean and Egyptian armies, it was great to see artefacts, uniforms and weapons from those eras in the flesh.

Our Friday morning was spent in Greenwich where we went through the Maritime Museum. Again I have to grumble about the dumbed down displays, clearly designed to let primary school children complete their school projects or rush the tour groups through in 20 minutes, but completely ignoring those with a level of intelect that allows them to discover things for themselves. I did find a few thing of interest like Nelson's coat and a painting of a certain Frenchman surrendering to the British on HMS Bellerophon.

Regrettably the Imperial War Museum follows the same dumbed down approach and the displays were nowhere as generous as I remember then from 39 years ago. Nonetheless there was still enough for me to fossick through, including a battle damaged 13lb gun and limber from the Néry battery, a German 88mm gun and a T34 tank. 

    

 The Horse Guards Museum, on the other hand, featured some wonderful uniforms throughout the ages.

In the picture above, until a few moments before it was impossible to get an uninterrupted shot without tourists posing beside the horse, but when one child attempted to hold the reins, the trooper shouted, "don't touch the reins!" and everyone moved away for about a minute and I was able to get this shot clear of any other people.

The final military themed activity in London was the Changing of the Guard at Horse Guards where we watched the Blues relieve the Life Guards.

And on the drillground of Horse Guards stood this Turkish gun dated 1524 and according to the plaque was "taken in Egypt by the British Army in 1801"...hang on...weren't the Turks allies in 1801?

Tomorrow we depart for France and part two of our adventure.