Industrialization of War, 1840–84 251
sepot, after its designer. The French also had high hopes for a machine
gun, the mitrailleuse; but only 144 of these secret weapons were on
hand when war broke out in 1870,^42 and no effort was made to teach
the French soldiers how best to use their new weaponry. In fact,
French army leaders did not believe that any change in tactics would
be needed. Instead the mitrailleuse was treated like an artillery piece,
in which role it proved ineffective. As in 1859, they expected the
climax and crisis of battle to be a bayonet charge delivered by col
umns of infantry.
In speed of supply and deployment, the French fell far behind the
Prussians—a weakness that proved irremediable. So Prussian planning
defeated French élan and, as a result, citizen-soldiers easily over
whelmed Europe’s best professionals, to the amazement of all the
world. Instead of taking the offensive and fighting on German soil, as
everyone, including Moltke, had expected, the French had to im
provise a defense against the advancing Prussians. Napoleon III and an
entire French army soon found themselves surrounded at Sedan.
After watching his troops take a fearful pounding from Prussian artil
lery, the emperor surrendered, just six weeks after hostilities had
begun. Eight weeks later the principal French field army, besieged at
Metz, also capitulated.
An important factor in this surprising victory was the way Prussian
staff officers had profited from their experience against the Austrians.
Prussian field artillery, for example, had fallen distinctly short of Aus
trian levels of performance in 1866. Designing and manufacturing
new and better guns took time, and little was done in that respect
before 1870. But the manner in which the Prussians deployed their
artillery in battle could be and was radically altered. As a result French
troops found themselves distracted by long-range bombardment as
they were trying to form into columns for the attack. Such formations,
of course, offered easy artillery targets, whereas the more open order
favored by the Prussian infantry gave the French gunners nothing
comparable to shoot at. Moreover, since Prussian guns outranged the
French, their most punishing attacks were often delivered without any
French riposte whatever.
The Prussian’s capacity to learn from deficiencies in their past per-
- On chassepot and mitrailleuse, see Maréchal Randon, Mémoires, 2:234–36; E.
Ann Pottinger, Napoleon III and the German Crisis, 1865–66 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966),
pp. 94–97; G. S. Hutchison, Machine Guns; Their History and Tactical Employment
(London, 1938), pp. 9–15; Louis Etienne Dussieux, L'Armée en France: histoire et or
ganization (Versailles, 1884), 3:233; Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The
German Invasion of France (London, 1961), p. 56.
