The Battle of Gravelotte–St-Privat, fought on Thursday 18 August 1870, marked the conclusion of the opening campaign of the Franco-Prussian War. It had commenced with the fall of Saarbrücken to the French on 2 August 1870, but had ended with the main French field army under Marshal Bazaine blockaded in the fortress city of Metz. The intervening period had seen the apparently invincible armies of Germany’s General Moltke sweeping across north-eastern France, inflicting defeat after defeat on the forces of Imperial France. The conclusion drawn by most contemporaries and many subsequent commentators was that it was the inevitable victory of a professionally led conscript army over the amateurism of a traditional long-service army. Further, the campaign established the first claim to military posterity by the German General Staff as being the classic example of strategic planning and organization laying the basis for victory on the battlefield.
Yet the battles from 2 to 18 August all too often give evidence of impetuosity on the part of individual Prussian officers of all ranks, operating with limited reference to central command, and with resultant exposure of their troops, both strategically and tactically. That this weakness was not exploited to any effect by the French was more to do with serious failure in the quality of French command rather than any innate superiority on the part of the German forces. In this respect the Battle of Gravelotte–St-Privat was an appropriate finale to the campaign, exemplifying as it did so much of the fighting of the previous seventeen days. A most un-German lack of restraint by the Prussian General Steinmetz and the less than inspired command of the Guard by Frederick Charles, saw the German forces endure a twelve-hour mauling. As evening fell, more than 20,000 Prussian casualties against 13,000 French lay on the field and a great part of the Prussian king’s army was on the verge of retreat. Yet the French command under Bazaine was tamely to lock the intact main French field army up in Metz rather than use its reserve to exploit its enemy’s tactical errors. Having safely blockaded Bazaine, Moltke was to finish off the remaining forces of Imperial France two weeks later at the Battle of Sedan, so ending the Second Empire of Napoleon III.
Here it should be noted that although the conflict of 1870-1 is normally termed the Franco-Prussian War, it was actually fought by the North German Confederation formed in 1867 with its south German allies of Bavaria, Württemberg, Hesse and Baden against Imperial France. It is fair to say that a united Germany thereby already existed and its single army fought the war, this despite the fact that the Confederation and its southern allies were not transformed into the Imperial German Empire until 18 January 1871. Hence post 1867, the generic term ‘Germany’ rather than ‘Prussia’ or other individual German states forming the Confederation, will be used in the text.