Battle of Gravelotte–St. Privat

Date: August 18, 1870

Location: Villages of Gravelotte and St. Privat in eastern France

Opponents: (* winner)

*Germans

French

Commanders:

*Germans Prince Friedrich Karl; General Karl Friedrich von Steinmetz

French Marshal François Achille Bazaine; Marshal François Certain Canrobert

Approx. # Troops:

*Germans 188,000

French 112,000

Importance: The French inflict heavier casualties on the Germans but withdraw to the fortress of Metz, missing a chance to break free.

The Battle of Gravelotte-St. Privat was an important battle during the Franco- Prussian War (1870-1871). In 1866 Prussian minister-president Otto von Bismarck had engineered a war with Austria that ended with Prussia becoming the dominant power in northern Germany. Although Prussia dominated the new North German Confederation, Bismarck knew that he could not complete his plan of unifying Germany under Prussian leadership without first defeating France.

French emperor Napoleon III had been humiliated by the 1866 war. Promised compensation by Bismarck in return for French neutrality, Napoleon expected that the war would be of long duration and that France would then be able to impose a settlement. The war lasted only seven weeks, far too short for France to have any role in determining peace terms. When Napoleon pressed for compensation, Bismarck asked for it to be put in writing. When Napoleon complied, Bismarck reneged. Later he used the document to help secure defensive alliances with the southern German states of Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg. Furious, French leaders were bent on revenge, yet the government did little to prepare the French Army for war. 

In 1870 Bismarck attempted to present the French with a fait accompli by placing the German Catholic Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen on the throne of Spain. The French government learned of the secret plan, and Foreign Minister Duc Antoine de Gramont demanded, through French ambassador to Prussia Count Vincent Benedetti, that the candidacy be withdrawn. Prussian king Wilhelm I, at Ems and away from Bismarck in Berlin, agreed. 

France thus achieved a mild diplomatic victory, but Gramont wanted more. He ordered Benedetti to secure a pledge for the future that no Prussian prince ever be a candidate for the throne of Spain. Wilhelm I politely but firmly rejected the request and communicated this information to Bismarck, who then edited the communication and released it to the press. This Ems Dispatch was so cleverly presented that it inflamed opinion in both countries and led to war. Most Europeans were not aware of Bismarck's hand in events and blamed France. 

French government ministers had whipped up public opinion to the point that it was next to impossible to back down. Premier Émile Olivier encouraged the national illusions by saying that he "accepted war with a light heart." Among the French leadership, only Napoleon expressed doubts. Minister of War Edmond Leboeuf's assertion that the army was ready "down to the last gaiter button" was entirely misplaced. 

On July 15, 1870, the French Corps Législatif (the elected branch of parliament) nonetheless voted war credits, with only 10 deputies dissenting. Prussia mobilized immediately. From this point there was no wavering on either side, and on July 19 the French government declared war. Prussia's treaties with the southern German states now came into force, so it was really a Franco-German war.

By the end of July, chief of the Prussian General Staff General Count Helmuth von Moltke had positioned three armies of some 380,000 in the Rhineland along the French frontier. From north to south, these were General Karl Friedrich von Steinmetz's First Army of 60,000 men, Prince Friedrich Karl's Second Army of 175,000 men, and Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm's Third Army of 145,000 men. Moltke held another 95,000 troops in reserve until he was certain that Austria would not intervene. King Wilhelm I had nominal command, but Moltke exercised actual command authority through the General Staff. The Prussians were fully prepared for the war, and their military intelligence and maps of France were both excellent. The French mobilization was not complete by the time the war began. The French Army deployed some 224,000 men in eight corps. The army had élan, but its recent military experience was in North Africa. The French breech-loading Chassepot rifle was superior to the basic Prussian rifle, the Dreyse Needle Gun. The French also had a new weapon in the mitrailleuse, which formed about a fifth of the French artillery. Developed in great secrecy, it was a 37-barrel machine gun that could fire about 150 shots a minute and had a range of some 2,000 yards. A lot depended on how the mitrailleuse was deployed, and the French chose to use it as artillery at long range, where it was inaccurate and could be destroyed by the new Prussian Krupp artillery. French mobilization procedures, logistical arrangements, and military intelligence were all abysmal. There was no general staff in the Prussian sense of the term, and senior military leadership was inept and unimaginative. 

At the end of July, Napoleon ordered a general advance. The emperor was not well, but he accompanied the army in the field. On August 2 a skirmish at Saarbrücken, just across the border, saw the French advancing from the fortress of Metz to scatter the few Prussian troops defending there, although the French failed to occupy the city. Moltke then attacked to the south, driving French forces back toward Strasbourg. Attempting to halt this offensive, on August 6 Marshal Patrice MacMahon sacrificed his cavalry in gallant but costly charges near the town of Fröschwiller (Wörth). MacMahon was forced to evacuate Alsace, and the road to Paris was now open to the Prussians.

To the north a second Prussian thrust enjoyed success at Spieheren, and Napoleon ordered Metz abandoned. The emperor's defeatism rapidly spread through the army. On August 12 Napoleon yielded field command to Marshal François Achille Bazaine to lead a reorganized Army of the Rhine. Napoleon departed for Chalons in order to raise a new army. Moltke sought to cut off the withdrawing French, but in the ensuing August 16 battles at Vionville, Merse-la-Tour, and Rezonville the French fought well. They lost 13,761 men to 15,780 for the Prussians, but Bazaine, having given up hope of breaking out, ordered the army to return to Metz. 

On August 18 Moltke attacked Bazaine with his First Army and Second Army, hoping to destroy the French. The battle was fought between the villages of St. Privat la Montaigne and Gravolette, with the major point of combat the walled village of St. Privat. This battle differed from previous engagements in its size-more than 188,000 Germans with 732 guns fought 112,000 French with 520 guns-and in that both sides expected it. 

At St. Privat, commander of the Second Army Friedrich Karl sent in the elite Prussian Guard against Marshal François Certain Canrobert's VI Corps. The attackers lost 8,000 men, and Canrobert's corps of 23,000 men held against some 100,000 Germans. Bazaine ignored Canrobert's pleas for reinforcement. Not until a Saxon corps arrived to the north and threatened to cut off his force was Canrobert obliged to order a withdrawal back toward Metz.

Meanwhile, on the French right two German corps battled their way east of Gravolette, only to become trapped in a ravine. The German attempt to disengage resulted in a panicked withdrawal. The French counterattack was checked only by effective German artillery fire and Moltke's personal intervention with reinforcements. Although the French withdrew, the next morning there was little sense of victory among the Germans. They had lost some 20,163 men; the French lost 12,273 men.

The tragedy of St. Privat-Gravolette for the French was that had Bazaine made a concerted effort there, he would most likely have achieved a victory and broken free. As it was, on August 19 the French were back at Metz, where the Germans promptly sealed them in. The separation of their two field armies proved a disaster for France.

References Howard, Michael. The Franco-Prussian War. New York: Routledge, 2001. Wawro, Geoffrey. The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870- 1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Austro-Turk Wars (1529–1739)

The siege of united Christian forces in Buda, 1686.

No fewer than eight wars fought between the Austrian and Ottoman Turkish Empires, 1529–1739. The Turks sought to expand into Europe proper and the Austrians stood in the way, while harboring expansionist dreams of their own.

The war of 1529–1533 was a direct result of the Ottoman defeat of Hungary in the Hungarian-Turk War of 1521– 1526. The Hungarian king John Zapolya, now a subject of the Turk sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, requested help against the Austrians. The sultan took more than four months to move his huge army from Constantinople to Vienna, allowing the Archduke Ferdinand time to build his defenses. The unsuccessful siege lasted from 27 September to 14 October 1529. The sultan tried again in 1532 but a month-long siege at the Austrian fortress of Guns failed. A truce was called because of the Turk-Persian Wars of 1526– 1555 but this agreement did not stop the Turkish army from pillaging and plundering.

The sultan Süleyman, reacting to the attack by 24,000 Austrian and Bohemian troops on the Turk fort at Essek in 1537, renewed the war of 1537–1547. In 1543, issues of succession for the Hungarian throne led to a well-planned Turkish expedition that left Belgrade and captured the large forts of Stuhlweissenberg and Grau, then occupied Croatia as well as Buda and Pest, the capitals of Hungary. In 1545 Ferdinand offered a truce and an annual tribute of 30,000 ducats for Austrian Hungary. Again, the Turk-Persian Wars of 1526– 1555 played a role in this 1547 truce being signed at Adrianople.

The war of 1551–1553 involved Austrian and Turk disputes over Transylvania. Ferdinand besieged its capital, Lippa, in 1551 while an Ottoman army captured three fortresses in the nearby Temsvar region, soon made into a new Turkish province. However, the Turks failed to take the fortress at Erlau (Eger), and the army was recalled for the Turk-Persian war, yet again! An armistice restarted the 1547 truce of Adrianople.

The war of 1566 saw Süleyman repulsed at Malta in 1565 by the Knights Hospitallers. The sultan, near the end of his life, sought one vindicating victory over the Austrians and their new emperor, Maximillian II.A Turkish army of several hundred thousand crushed the Croatian fortress town of Szigetvar but the sultan died of natural causes during the battle. And some 3,000 Turks were blown up when timed powder bombs exploded as they breached the last defenses. The Turkish army returned with the body of Süleyman to Constantinople, effectively ending the war.

The “Long War” of 1591–1606 began with the defeat of the Bosnian Ottomans by Croatians at Sissek in 1593. The Porte (Ottoman government) suffered its worst losses against Vienna in the longest war between the two. The Porte lost much of Hungary, Romania, Moldavia, Walachia, and Transylvania both on the field and through defection to Vienna. Attacks by Dnieper Cossacks and losses of Esztergom and Giurgiu forced the sultan Muhammed III to take the field with the Prophet’s standard and rally his retreating infantry for an unlikely victory at Mezokersztes. Here 30,000 Germans and Hungarians died. Fortress and siege warfare became the norm, with the Austrians taking Raab but not Buda in 1598 and the Turks failing to take Varazdin and Pest in 1599 and 1603. The Turks regained lost territory in alliance with the Transylvanian prince Stephen Bocksay, and the fluctuating Long War ended in the Treaty of Zsitva- Torok of 1606, with the Austrians as clear winners over the Porte, now busy with yet another Turk-Persian war, 1603– 1612.

The war of 1663–1664 stemmed from the success of the Turks in the Transylvanian-Turk War of 1657–1662. The Turks, led by Grand Vizier Fazil Pasha, were now seen as liberators by Wallachian and Romanian Christians against the Habsburg Austrian reformation and the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. Buda was captured in 1663, as was Neuhasel, a great victory for the Turks. After winter in Belgrade, the Turkish-led forces captured forts on the road to Vienna, forcing the Austrian Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I to start peace talks. Unfortunately for the Turks, during the final battle at the Raab River on 1 August 1664, flooding allowed only half of their army to cross the river, and that half was defeated by the Austrian cavalry under Montecuccoli. The Treaty of Vasvar, a 20-year truce, was signed afterwards.

The war of 1683–1699 began with renewed hopes by the Turks that the tide had turned against the Austrians. Some 70,000 Austrian and Polish troops under King Jan III Sobieski repulsed 138,000 Turks led by Kara Mustapha Pasha. This last invasion of Austria and siege of Vienna was a disaster for the Turks. Pope Innocent XI started a crusading Holy League in 1686, composed of the Holy Roman Empire, Venice, Poland, and Moscow, to combat the Turks. Buda was taken from the Turks in 1686, as was Transylvania in 1687. The sultan Süleyman II sent a Turk army that captured Serbia and Belgrade in 1690. Turk forces invaded Transylvania in 1691, but were decisively defeated. Austria became involved with France in the War of the Grand Alliance, and a fixed border between the Turks and Austrians remained stable for five years. In 1697, a large Ottoman Turk army left Belgrade to invade Hungary and was met by the imperial army under Prince Eugene of Savoy. The Turks suffered a crushing defeat on 11 September 1697, at the Battle of Zenta. The war ended with the Treaty of Karlowits in 1699, as the Turks were now occupied with the Russo-Turk War of 1695–1700 and the Venetian-Turkish War of 1685–1699.

The war of 1716–1718 began with 60,000 troops under Eugene Savoy decisively defeating the Turks at the Battle of Peterwardein on the Danube River, on 5 August 1716. The Turks lost 6,000 men, 100 artillery pieces, and their grand vizier. Eugene then besieged Belgrade, the strongest city of the Turks in the Balkans. A large Turkish relief force was initially victorious, but was finally routed by Eugene’s cavalry charge, forcing the surrender of Belgrade. The Austrian forces then marched on Constantinople, and with most of the Balkans lost, the Sublime Porte sued for peace in 1718.

References and further reading: Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Rothenburg, Gunther. The Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 1522–1747. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960.

Francis Joseph

Francis Joseph, 1854

Francis Joseph (1830-1916) was emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. He was the last noteworthy ruler of the Hapsburg Empire. Born on Aug. 18, 1830, at Schönbrunn (Vienna), the elder son of Archduke Francis Charles, who was the second son of Emperor Francis I (Holy Roman emperor Francis II), Francis Joseph (German, Franz Josef) was not in direct line of succession. Yet, because his mentally impaired uncle Ferdinand I proved childless, Francis was immediately viewed and educated as an heir presumptive.

Proclaimed emperor after Ferdinand’s abdication on Dec. 2, 1848, Francis Joseph began his rule by subduing a series of revolutions in his realm. The most serious of these, the Hungarian revolution, he crushed with Russian help. Then, after this dearly won victory, he had to reconstruct his near-defunct empire. Begun under the aegis of a constitution (March 4, 1849), this reconstruction continued throughout the 1850s, although in 1851 constitutionalism was replaced by a system of absolutist centralism.

Foreign-policy reverses during the 1850s, however, compelled Francis Joseph to reconsider his position on constitutionalism. Thus there soon ensued a period of constitutional experiments (‘‘October Diploma’’ of 1860 and ‘‘February Patent’’ of 1861) which kept the empire’s political life in a constant state of crisis up to 1867. These crises, together with Austria’s expulsion from Italy and Germany (1866), convinced Francis Joseph of the necessity of coming to terms with his subjects. He opted for a compromise with the strongest nationality, the Magyars. The result was the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867, which brought about the dualistic reconstruction of the empire (Austria-Hungary), with both halves receiving their own constitutional governments and internal autonomy, and their common affairs being reduced to matters of foreign and military policy and some finances.

Although the new political structure was much more favorable for the evolution of political democracy and capitalism than the previous absolutist system, it still preserved the hegemony of the earlier ruling classes. Francis Joseph did not regard the compromise as an ideal solution, but he fought all attempts to alter it for fear of disrupting the unity of his empire. The weakness of this arrangement was revealed not only in the continued rivalry between the two partners but also in the growth of German-Czech national antagonism and extremism in Bohemia and in the increasingly bellicose Serbian irredentism.

Having been pushed out of Italy and Germany, the empire under Francis Joseph became increasingly active in the Balkans, which resulted in its occupation (1878) and later annexation (1908) of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This policy, however, soon placed Austria-Hungary on a direct collision course with Russia, forcing Francis Joseph to seek support in Bismarckian Germany in the form of the Dual Alliance (1879). This alliance later proved to be the first step in the direction of the political polarization of Europe, a polarization that, together with the nationality struggle in the Danubian and Balkan region, was of decisive importance in the outbreak of World War I and the dissolution of the empire.

Francis Joseph was a man of simple tastes. His political thinking was as uncomplicated and simple as his private life. He was basically a benevolent despot, unable to grasp the meaning and purpose of modern ideologies and popular political institutions. At the same time he was devoted to duty, to honor, and to the welfare of his people. Above all, he believed in the calling and destiny of his beleaguered dynasty. His death at Schönbrunn on Nov. 21, 1916, signaled the passing of an age.

Further Reading The best works about Francis Joseph are the products of Austro- German historiography. Fortunately, a number of them have also appeared in English. Of these, Josef Redlich, Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria: A Biography (1929), is undoubtedly the best and most readily available account. Karl Tschuppik, The Reign of the Emperor Francis Joseph, 1848-1916 (trans. 1930), is also excellent. Valuable, but not of the same caliber, are Albert Margutti, The Emperor Francis Joseph and His Times (1921), and Eugene Bagger, Francis Joseph: Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary (1927). Chester Wells Clark, Franz Joseph and Bismarck: The Diplomacy of Austria before the War of 1866 (1934), and Charles W. Hallberg, Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, 1852-1864 (1955), are excellent monographs, but they deal only with certain limited aspects of Francis Joseph’s reign. Among the popular works on the Emperor’s family and personal life is Bertita Harding, Golden Fleece: The Story of Franz Joseph and Elizabeth of Austria (1937).