MOLTKE’S LUCK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 9646, 11 February 1892, Page 2

MOLTKE’S LUCK.

(AreJwbald Forties in the Nineteenth Centwry,} “ As a skilful, untiring and far-seeing organiser of the means which make for success in war Moltke has never had an equal, and probably can never have a superior. The unequalled success of the efforts on hie part and that of hia coadjutor Yon Roon to perfect the national preparedness for war, produced the result that while those two lasted Germany could find in no European Bower an equal antagonist. Still leas did any Power produce a strategist who gave proof of ranking as Moltke’s peer. Thus it is impossible to gauge the full measure of his potentialities. He may’ have had reserves of strategical genius which were never evoked. It is impossible to determine whether in the FrancoGerman war he put forth his full strength, or only so much of it as was proportionate to the requirements suggested by THE KNOWN INFERIORITY OP THE ADVERSARY. One thing is certain, that never was Fortune kinder to any director of a great war than she was to Moltke in 1870. Spite of the significant warning of Sadowa, it seemed almost as if in its later years the Second Empire, as regarded its army, had been deliberately " riding for a rail.” With the melancholy exposure of its military decadence all the world is familiar. When Marshal Niel enjoined the defensive as the complement of the chassepot, he throttled the traditional ilan of the soldiers of Prance. Her army, deficient in everything save innate courage, lacked most of all competent leadership, and the assumption of the chief command by the Emperor made the Germans a present of the issue before a shot was fired. The campaign begun, Fortune continued to shower her favours on Moltke. It appeared as if the very stars in their courses fought in his favour. AN ESSENTIAL FEATURE OF HIS PLAN was to push for the enemy’s capital, Bazame helped him in this by bottling himself up in Metz. Macmahon yielded him the fair-way by moving out of his path. Another element of Moltke's scheme was that the French should be driven from the spacious and fertile middle provinces into the barren and cramped precincts of the north. Bazaine did not lend himself to the accomplishment of this purpose, but he disposed of himself otherwise in a manner equally satisfactory to Moltke. Macmahon obliged by going northward without being drivefi—at least by the Germans; his coercion was from Paris. Moltke, fully convinced of the paramount importance to the French that the army of Metz should make good its retreat on the Chalons force, concentrated every energy toward the prevention of that union. It happened that, as Moltke genially observes, Bazaine did not share the German chief’s conviction, and indeed played into the other’s hand by his preference for Metz to the prosecution of a retreat toward Ch&lons. Ready enough to fight, Bazaine was not earnest to march. But Moltke’s plan of campaign was based, beyond all other considerations, on the resolution at once to assail the enemy wherever found, and to keep the German forces so compact that the attack could always be made with the advantage of superior strength. Although the Germans had OVERWHELMINGLY SUPERIOR NUMBERS IN THE FIELD, this aspiration failed conspicuously. Indeed, there is a certain pride in Moltke’s avowal that the Germans fought—and won —four important battles with the odds against them, not to mention his claim of equal strength at Gravelotte. The failure to make good the wise postulate of hia plan resulted inevitably from the free hand accorded to subordinate commanders to bring on an unexpected battle at their discretion or indiscretion. It is true that, because of various circumstances, no defeats resulted from this license, but the risks it involved were certainly in two instances disproportionate to the advantage attained. Is it creditable that, had not Prossard at Spicheren been trammelled by imperial restrictions, his three divisions would not have smashed Eameke’s two brigades as they clung to his skirts for hours before reinforcements arrived ? The German “ Staff History ” owns to the imminence of disaster at Horny; and but that the French were tied to the defence, it is inconceivable that five French divisions could not have defeated five German brigades. What soldier who has realised THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF NUMBERS IN BATTLE will deny that had Bazaine, with 150,000 French regulars at his back, been in earnest to force through at Mara la Tour, he could not have swept Alvensleben’a 40.000 Prussians oat of his path before support could have reached the latter? Moltke writes at Noissevillo that there 36.000 Prussians repulsed 137,000 Frenchmen. With such odds in their favour as four to one, the Servian militia, fighting in earnest, would crash the best troops in Europe. The French did not break out, simply because Bazaine fought merely to save appearances. With superior forces and copious reserves the brusque and butcherly offensive is a tempting game; but its attractions wane when, as at Gravelotte, it entailed the slaughter of 20,000 men in causing to the enemy a loss of 8000

It remains that the Germans were the conquerors, and that they conquered in virtue of moltke’s strategical skill and infusion OF ENERGY INTO ALL RANKS of the German army. It is a true saying that nothing succeeds like success; and its converse is not less true that nothing fails like failure. But the eye-witness of the Franco-German war must be purblind or warped who dare aver that the old spirit had faded out of the army on which had shone the sun of Austerlitz, and which had stormed the Malakoff with a rush. No; the poor miscommanded, bewildered, harassed, overmatched, ■ outnumbered soldiers in the blue kepis and red breeches, fought on with a royal valour that ever commanded respect and admiration. The ead noble story of unavailing devotion is-to be told of the French- regular army from the first battle to the ending at Sedan. With swelling heart and wet eyes I looked down on the final scene of the awful tragedy. The picture rises now before me of that terrible afternoon. The stern ring of German fire, ever encircling with stronger grip that plateau on which stood huddled the Frenchmen in the shambles; THE STORM OF SHELL FIRE that tore lanes through the dense masses of all exposed there to its pitiless blasts; tbe vehement yet impotent protests against tbe inevitable in the shape of furious sorties —now a headlong charge of Margueritte’s cuirassiers thundering in glittering steel-clad splendour down the slope of Illy with an impetus that seemed resistless, till the fire of the German infantrymen smote the squadrons fair in the face, and strewed the sward with dead and dying; now the frantic gallop to their fate of a regiment of light horsemen on their gray Arab stallions, up to the very muzzles of the needle-guns which the German linesmen held with so unwavering steadiness; now a passionate outburst of redtrousered foot-soldiers darting against a chance gap in the tightening environment, too surely to be crushed by tbe ruthless flanking fire. No resemblance of order there, no token of leadership ; simply a hell in the heart of which writhed an indiscriminate mass of brave men, with no thought but of fighting it out to the bitter end! I shudder as I write at the recollection of that ghastly field’s horrors on the day after the battle. The shell fire hurled on the exposed French masses had been so close and so incessant that numbers been torn or blown into *W?Tj d £ nd ground was still slippery with W™ ». * in the hollows lay little „ which made one faint. experience did not deaden m the soldiers ol the French army the passion. tokejp fighting. Napoleon’s one wiseact wasMi displaying the white flag oil the afternoon of Sedan? Bat with what fury the soldiets execrated him and his conduct.