252 Chapter Sevenformance was, perhaps, the master key to their dazzling succession of
victories. The application of reason and intelligence to the waging of
war was not in the least new in nineteenth-century Europe; but seldom
had it been carried out so systematically by a circle of men with the
authority to put their ideas for change into practice without delay. The
prestige that Moltke and the General Staff had won in 1865 and the
authority King Wilhelm had conferred upon the chief of the General
Staff in 1866 were what made Prussian reaction to the experience of
war so much more rapid, rational, and thorough than anything other
European armies were able to achieve.
Another example may reinforce this point. From the time they went
over to the breech-loading needle gun, Prussian staff officers had
recognized that such a change in weaponry called for a new drill; and a
new drill called for retraining of the noncoms and junior officers who
actually commanded troops in the field. This was an enormous under
taking. A special six-month training course was therefore set up to
teach the new tactics. Each regiment was required to send a quota of
noncoms and junior officers to this school; and its graduates, in turn,
were responsible for teaching what they had learned to the rest of the
regiment. The result was truly remarkable. The twin problems that
had seemed insuperable to other armies—conservation of ammunition
and maintenance of tactical mobility under fire even when individual
soldiers were free to take cover and shoot from crouching or prone
positions—were triumphantly overcome. Indeed, extension of radical
rationality towards the bottom of the chain of command was just as
important for Prussian successes as was the strategic control from the
top that Moltke, Bismarck, and the king exercised with the help of the
telegraph and railroads.
Yet there were limits to what advance planning and rational admin
istration could accomplish. This was illustrated by the sequel to the
Prussian victories at Sedan and Metz. French resistance did not end.
An insurrectionary government, established as soon as the news of
Napoleon Ill’s surrender reached Paris, attempted to summon the
spirit of 1793 from the depths and did succeed in making life un
comfortable for the invading German armies by guerrilla attacks on
their lengthening lines of communication. A siege of Paris culminated
in the surrender of the city to the Germans in January 1871, ten days
after the establishment of the Second German Empire had been for
mally proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Peace, transfer
ring Alsace and most of Lorraine to the new German empire, was
signed in May, but not before violent revolution in the capital led to a