New-York tribune., 1870-09-07
THE FRENCH DEFENSE Or SEDAN


The account of the battle Of Sedan, from
THE TRIBUNE correspondent in the fortress.
herewith published, concludes the story of that
remarkable engagement. We have now
given complete and elaborate records of
the battle from correspondents among
assailants and assailed. There is no parallel
feat to this in the history of journalism. Dur
ing our own war able and graphic accounts of
its various battles were published by ourselves
and contemporaries with wonderful promptitude,
but those reports told but one side of the
story. Of the battle of Sedan, fought 5000
miles away, We have furnished the public in
successive issues the reports alike of victOrs
and vanquished in less than week after the
victory and defeat. That these accounts thus
promptly furnished are also true and faithful,
is proven by the exactness as to time and in
cdent with which they agree.
The French story of Sedan reveals that the
tactics of the French commander were as bad
as those of the German general were brilliant.
The retreat to Sedan from Beaumont and Ca
rignan was made in great confusion; result
due undoubtedly to the bad conduct of Gen.
De Failly on the former field. While the
French troops on the day before the final
struggle were in fine spirits and eager for
battle, it is clear that they were badly posted
and in greatest force on the wrong side of the
river. The daring movement by which Won
Moltke transferred the two armies of the Crown
Princes during the night before the battle by
divergent routes to the north and east
of Sedan appears to have been not
only unknown but unsuspected by Mac
Mahon or Gen. Wimpffen, for it does
not appear who was in command on Sept.
OF when MacMahon was wounded. The extern
sion of the French lines to meet this move
ment was not accomplished until late hour
on Sept. 1, and then apparently not in suffi-
cient force to resist the easy capture by the
Prussian corps of the key point of the field
north of the town. Moreover, when the ex-
tension to the French left was made gap
was created in the lines south of the town,
and into this the First Bavarian Corps rushed
with promptitude fatal to their enemy. To re-
store this part of their lines the French re-
serves were advanced, and thus before the
battle fairly opened the whole French force
was at the front. Knowing this much, it is
not astonishing to learn that the battle won,
according to the German account, at five
o'clock in the afternoon, was really lost at
eleven in the forenoon, and that the mis-
managed army from that time forward fell
back in the widest confusion into the town.
The scene which followed there is almost
indescribable. Officers and men, privates and
generals, crowded the streets in mad retreat,
the latter leading instead of checking the flight.
The French lines beyond the town appear to have
been from this hour until the surrender a mere
thread of gallant and devoted men, filed with
sullen despair rather than inspired by high
hopes of successful resistance. At length,
driven back by the numbers of the advancing
enemy, they were forced into the works OF the
city, no longer defensible against the artillery
of the Germans, whose fire soon enfiaded the
streets of the town. The peasantry of the
neighboring country and the National Guard
of the department were also in the town, and
added to the confusion in degree which sug-
gests the danger of attempting to defend the
capital, similarly crowded, with like troops.
There was nothing left but to surrender this
broken mass to save it from annihiatiOn. 1t
was the French Emperor, be it said to his
credit, who at length ordered the white flag to
be raised in token of surrender, and who thus
saved the troops from massacre.
Had the generalship of the French COM
mander been equal to the courage and the devO-
ton of his troops, the victory of the Germans
would not have been so easy or gained at such
little cost. That it could have been long de-
ferred by the gallantry of the French we do
not believe. Escape, except to Belgium, was
impossible when MacMahon permitted the
Crown Prince to cross to the north of the Meuse
The French could not have gotten away to
Mezieres had they attempted it the evening
before the battle; much less did opportunity
offer during the conflict. They were com
pletely surrounded by twice their numbers, and
resistance in their position was as Gen. Sheridan
said of an incident of this series of saughters,
" sheer murder" We rejoice, therefore, at
the early capitulatiOn of the French for hu-
manity's sake not less than because We be-
lieve their surrender was a triumph of the
just cause. But he who, in reading this story
of the defense of Sedan, fails to see in it fire.
quent displays of the sublime courage which
has ever stamped the French as a truly mar
tial race, does not comprehend the moral of
the struggle. There was lacking in the French
Army of the Nephew none of the great quail
ties which made that of his Uncle immortal,
save Discipline. There was ValOr and En-
durance, but Discipline Napoleon Ill. could
not create; and the Army of France has
ceased to exist because it had no leader
worthy of it.