while the 2nd advanced on their left flank. The rest is familiar history: 3 July 1866
witnessed arguably the most decisive and significant battle between the Napo-
leonic Wars and the Second World War. 25
From Prussia’s perspective, the run-up to Ko ̈niggra ̈tz is best understood in
terms of imposing will on circumstances. An evaluation of the evidence suggests
that both the campaign and the battle were near-run things. Moltke’s reliance on
the railroads to deploy his armies was a calculated risk committing Prussia to an
operational approach offering a reasonably enterprising enemy significant op-
portunities to decide the issue by defeating the advancing armies in detail.
Ko ̈niggra ̈tz itself was essentially a tactical victory. Prussia’s success owed more
than is generally understood to the principal field commanders, Crown Prince
Frederick and Prince Frederick Charles, and to the fighting power of the men they
led. The implications and the possibilities of a forward strategic concentration
and an operationally structured campaign were clearer in retrospect than in
prospect even to Moltke. But the results had been decisive, and the chief of staff
saw the prospects of their systematic repetition.
The ‘Instructions for Higher Troop Commanders’ were issued in 1869 with the
king’s approval, summarizing the lessons of the previous campaign in the context
of the necessity for breaking the enemy’s will by destroying his force as quickly as
possible:Vernichtungsschlacht. That was a combined-arms process, involving a
synergy of manoeuvre, firepower, and pursuit. It was also, Moltke declared, the
operational objective of the campaign, which, on one hand, served the ends of
strategy and, on the other, would be completed tactically. 26
Moltke’s concept of operations was also shaped by his understanding of the
relationship between war and policy. As chief of staff, he accepted a sharp
distinction between the two spheres. In peacetime, the army’s job was to plan
and prepare for the next war. It was the government’s task to establish that
conflict’s paradigm and define its parameters. 27 That yin–yang symbiosis gave
Moltke after 1866 a single-contingency situation: planning a war against France.
Like all of Prussia’s wars, it would have to be decided quickly. That depended on
the railroads. Where in 1866 he had improvised existing lines and based his plan
on the extrinsic deployment that resulted, his concern from 1867 to 1870 was to
funnel as many men and horses as possible into the Rhineland–Palatinate area of
Prussia as quickly as possible. A military transportation plan established rail
schedules for the entire army. Tested in a November 1867 war game, it required
thirty-two days to move the Prussian field army into its designated zone of
operations in the west. A year later, that time had been reduced to twenty-four
days. By 1870, it was twenty days. The railway system had no fewer than six
organized rail routes, each able to handle two or three corps in succession:
eighteen trains a day over double-track lines, twelve on single-track routes. By 3
August, the nineteenth day of mobilization, the field force was ready to advance. 28
The purpose of this rapid concentration in such a relatively small and limited
area was to enable a march on Paris. Paris was the heart of France, and of the
Second Empire: it could not be sacrificed in a strategic withdrawal. To threaten it
was to make possible the campaign’s operational goal: engaging and destroying
Prussian–German Operational Art, 1740–1943 41