killed and wounded. The French losses were somewhat
less. This battle is also known as the battle of St. Privat.
The Prussians were now able to destroy the French at
Sedan.”
As the Prussians moved on Metz, Bazaine and the
French army tried to cut them off at Bellevue (18 Oc-
tober 1870). The French were driven back with heavy
casualties, approximately 1,200 men. They took shel-
ter in the fortress at Metz, holding out from the end of
the battle at Bellevue until 26 October 1870. On that
day, facing the reality of the situation, which was com-
pounded by the French disasters at Gravelotte and Sedan
(1 September 1870), Bazaine surrendered his army to
Prince Frederick Charles—a total of three marshals,
6,000 officers, and nearly 175,000 men. The loss to the
French was fatal, and the war would soon end in the
French defeat.
Bazaine, released by the Prussians, returned to
France and was reviled as a traitor. He demanded an of-
ficial inquiry to investigate the reasons behind the loss
at Sedan and Gravelotte that forced his surrender. The
inquiry was carried out and, in 1872, concluded that
Bazaine was to blame for the disasters; he was also held
accountable for several factors over which he had no
control, including administrative matters that had left
his army improperly fed. Bazaine rejected the report and
demanded that he be court-martialed so that he could
clear his name. This exercise backfired: Bazaine was con-
victed of treason and sentenced to death on 10 Decem-
ber 1873. His old friend Patrice de MacMahon, now the
president of France, commuted the old soldier’s sentence
to life in prison. Bazaine was sent to the island of Île
Sainte-Marguerite in the Mediterranean and allowed to
have his wife and children live with him. On 9 August
1874, with the aid of his wife, Bazaine escaped from the
island fortress and fled first to Italy and then to Spain,
settling in Madrid under the protection of King Alfonso
XII of Spain. Bazaine died in Madrid on 23 Septem-
ber 1888 at the age of 77. In his final years, he wrote
his memoirs, Épisodes de la Guerre de 1870 (published
1888).
References: Windrow, Martin, and Francis K. Mason,
“Bazaine, François-Achille,” in The Wordsworth Diction-
ary of Military Biography (Hertfordshire, U.K.: Word-
sworth Editions Ltd., 1997), 22–24; Guedalla, Philip,
The Two Marshals: Bazaine, Pétain (New York: Reynal
& Hitchcock, 1943); Wylly, Harold Carmichael, The
Campaign of Magenta and Solferino, 1859 (London: Swan
Sonnenschein & Co., 1907); Bruce, George, “Bellevue,”
“Gravelotte,” and “Metz,” in Collins Dictionary of Wars
(Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), 33,
101, 161.Beatty, David, first earl Beatty, Viscount
Borodale of Wexford, Baron Beatty of
the North Sea and of Brooksby (1871–
1936) British admiral
Born in the village of Howbeck Lodge, Stapeley, near
Nantwich in Cheshire, England, on 17 January 1871,
David Beatty was the son of Captain David Longfield
Beatty. He entered the British navy in 1884, when he
began training as a cadet on the HMS Britannia. Beatty’s
first service to his nation was in Egypt and the Sudan
from 1896 until 1898 when, with the rank of lieuten-
ant, he served under Lord kitchener along the Nile.
He first showed the signs of his military prowess when,
with his commander wounded, he assumed control and
helped take Dongola (June 1896). He also served as
the second in command of a gunboat flotilla that en-
gaged Muslim rebels at their fortress in Hafir (19–26
September 1896). He finished his service in Africa with
the taking of Khartoum on 2 September 1898. At the
end of the war, Beatty was promoted to commander,
and in 1900 he was sent to China, where once again he
showed his courage and ability, at Tientsin, where he was
wounded twice. This service earned him promotion to
the rank of captain. In 1905, he was appointed MVO
(member of the Royal Victorian Order), and in 1910 he
became a rear admiral.
In 1911 (or 1912, according to some sources),
Winston Churchill, at that time first lord of the Admi-
ralty, named Beatty as the naval secretary. Beatty served
in this position until 1913, when he was named com-
mander of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron. In August
1914, he was promoted to acting vice admiral one day
before the British declared war on Germany, setting off
the World War I.
Beatty’s first service in the war was his assault on the
German forces at the Heligoland Bight, a small island
off Germany’s northwest coast that had been captured
by Admiral Thomas Russell in the Napoleonic Wars
on 31 August 1807. Here, almost 107 years later to the
day (27–28 August 1914), Beatty fought one of the first
battles of the First World War. The British fleet luredbeAtty, DAviD, FiRSt eARl beAtty