page_title: Battle of Mars-la-Tour
section_title: Afternoon
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Mars-la-Tour / Battle / Afternoon
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Édouard Detaille (1848-1912) bataille de Rezonville 1870 "Détachement de grenadiers de la garde impériale."
context_page_description: The Battle of Mars-La-Tour was fought on 16 August 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, near the village of Mars-La-Tour in northeast France. One Prussian corps, reinforced by two more later in the day, encountered the entire French Army of the Rhine in a meeting engagement and, surprisingly, forced the Army of the Rhine to retreat toward the fortress of Metz.
  A cavalry patrol of the 1st Squadron of the 1st Hanoverian Dragoon Regiment No. 9, led by Rittmeister Oskar von Blumenthal, discovered that Marshal François Bazaine's 160,000-man Army of the Rhine was attempting to escape from Metz to join with French forces at Verdun. This intelligence prompted General Prince Friedrich Karl, commander of the Prussian Second Army, to order at 1900 on 15 August a grossly outnumbered group of 30,000 men of the advanced III Corps under General Constantin von Alvensleben to cut off the French line of retreat at Mars-la-Tour and Vionville.
  At 0900 on 16 August, they engaged the French army near Vionville, east of Mars-la-Tour. III Corps routed the French 2nd Army Corps and captured Vionville at 1130, blocking any further escape attempts to the west.
context_section_description: With Vionville and Flavigny lost and the French 2nd Army Corps retreating toward Rezonville, Bazaine and Frossard at 1230 ordered the cavalry to stabilize the course of the battle. The 3rd Lancers at Rezonville was ordered to attack the Prussian pursuers but did not charge home because "no definite object of attack had been pointed out to them". The Cuirassiers of the Guard moved to attack, forming up in two lines of two squadrons with the fifth as reserve. The Prussian infantry companies fired by file and massacred them at 200 meters range. The French lost 230 men and 243 horses, and the rest fled as a helpless remnant. Lieutenant Colonel Leo von Caprivi, chief of staff of X Corps, advised Rauch's 17th Hussars to charge the disorganized French cuirassiers at 1245. Rauch promptly did so, while Lieutenant Colonel Eberstein's 11th Hussars hunted down the French infantry stragglers. They also destroyed a French Guard battery and captured the guns, but could not haul them away for want of draught horses. The 3rd French rifle battalion and two French cavalry squadrons arrived and forced the Germans to retreat.
  Once 2nd Army Corps defeat became clear, Alvensleben ordered the 6th Cavalry Division to pursue. At the same time, Bazaine moved the Grenadier and Voltigeur Divisions forward to support 2nd Army Corps. 6th Cavalry Division was thus halted on the Rezonville plateau at 1300 by an onslaught of French infantry and artillery fire before it could even fully deploy and was forced to withdraw both of its brigades after heavy casualties. The cavalry did enable the forward movement of German artillery to more advantageous positions. The German artillery pounded the French infantry incessantly, forcing the French to hang back and preventing them from exploiting the German infantry's ammunition shortage or the casualties of the German cavalry. As the 6th Prussian Infantry Division advanced on Rezonville, it was subject to flanking infantry and artillery fire by Canrobert's 6th Army Corps to the north along the so-called Roman road, forcing the Prussian division to halt its attack and front north. The Prussians suffered heavy losses from the French guns. They beat off French attacks on their position but at a high cost under the intense French fire. 5th Infantry Division's 10th Brigade advance on Rezonville from the south reached the Metz-Verdun road but was then thrown back by overwhelming French infantry firepower, which killed or wounded nearly all officers of the brigade. Out of ammunition and largely destroyed, the 10th Brigade retreated to Vionville and Flavigny.
  Bazaine saw the arrival of more Prussian forces up the Moselle valley against his left flank as the biggest threat to his position. Accordingly, at noon, he re-deployed the Imperial Guard, the Voltigeur Division and the reconstituted remnants of 2nd Army Corps on his left. All other available forces were directed to outflank the Prussian left wing. At 1330, two French divisions advanced against the German left flank to the west of Vionville, with 4th Army Corps on the way. An X Corps demi-brigade had arrived on the battlefield to reinforce the Germans at 1145 and secured the woods near Tronville by 1230. They were soon attacked by the long-range fire of the French chassepots to which they could not reply owing to the inferior range of their Dreyse needle guns. With the German fire weakening, Canrobert moved to re-capture Vionville. By 1400, Alvensleben's III Corps was facing four deployed French corps. With all his infantry and artillery committed and largely spent, only his cavalry could stop Canrobert's onslaught. Alvensleben directed 5th Cavalry Division to secure the corps left flank with two brigades, while the third heavy brigade under Major-General Friedrich Wilhelm Adalbert von Bredow would remain at his disposal. To protect the German position, Alvensleben sent his chief of staff, Colonel von Voigts Rhetz, to Bredow with orders to silence Canrobert's batteries along the Roman road.
caption: Grenadiers of the French Imperial Guard. Detail from Édouard Detaille's painting of the battle of Rezonville.
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