A German ammunition train.
A number of factors began to affect the conduct of military operations in the second half of the 19th Century in ways which enabled operations involving huge armies with modern weapons to be carried out and controlled over great distances. These can be summarised as: a much improved road network; the development of railways; the development of the telegraph; new weapons in the form of breechloading rifles and artillery; and the development of the general staff as a planning and controlling element. These combined to create a very different environment to that of the Napoleonic Wars, enabled the Germans to win their massive victory in the Franco-Prussian War, and paved the way for the huge effort made by the participants in the First World War.
The development of a dense network of roads in much of Europe with superior surfaces provided several good routes where before there may only have been one, or none at all. Whereas during the Napoleonic period the artillery tended to keep to the roads, the cavalry and infantry often marched across country, a procedure which led to substantial losses. By 1870 a corps or division with all its cavalry, infantry and artillery could march in a single column on a road up to the moment of its arrival on a battlefield, and as such a lengthy deployment for battle was no longer necessary. It also allowed the fighting formations to stay in touch with the many columns in the rear carrying ammunition, food, medical supplies etc. By 1870 the various supply columns were much larger than those in the Napoleonic period, partly because of the larger armies, also because more supplies of all kinds particularly ammunition were brought forward to the armies.
The railway network, which had developed in a big way in Europe from the 1840s onwards, allowed the transport of huge numbers of horses and men and enormous quantities of supplies off all kinds over great distances in a very short time. An army no longer needed to amass supplies at a few fortresses which then acted as the base of operations, instead the supplies could be organised and transported from many locations. The Prussian General Staff had in the years before 1870 worked out the detailed plan for the mobilisation and deployment of the German armies on the western frontier which enabled them to deploy hundreds of thousands of men within 14 days. Following the victories in August and September 1870 the Germans were able to make extensive use of the French railway system, and were able to sustain both the Siege of Paris and operations by armies in different areas as a result.
Some statistics give an idea of the importance of the railways to the German victory. Initially the German field armies had entered France with some 520,000 men; this total eventually increased to 600,000. Subsequently the railways transported a further 2,200 officers, 220,000 men and 22,000 horses to France as replacements for various losses. 240,000 German and French wounded were transported to Germany by rail durng the war, as were the great majority of the 384,000 French troops taken prisoner. 30,000,000 cartridges and 362,000 shells for the field and horse artillery were transported to France on trains. The huge weight of the many siege guns deployed by the Germans and the ammunition required for them placed great demands on the railways. At the Siege of Strasbourg the siege artillery fired three times the weight of shells fired by the entire German horse and field artillery during the whole war. The task of transporting the ammunition required by the siege artillery around Paris was so difficult that a regular bombardment of the city only began in December 1870, even though the city had been surrounded by the Germans since September.
Once the railways in occupied territory were available the Germans were able to bring supplies deep into France, often to within short distances of the fighting. Throughout the war the French leadership were unable to exploit the potential for doing damage to the German armies by attacking their railway communications, but then presumably noone had thought off doing so in an organised manner.
All this was achieved in an environment where one man can derail a train, or a determined group could do damage to a railway line that might take weeks to repair. The Germans reacted vigourously against attacks on railway lines, and the method they finally chose, namely carrying prominent local citizens as hostages on locomotives, stopped the attacks almost entirely.
The telegraph provided the means by which the Germans in particular were able to control operations by large armies in different areas of France. Whereas Napoleon I. had stated that operations by widely-separated forces could not be controlled effectively over long distances because communications did not allow it (he would keep the corps of his main army as close together as resources and communications allowed and would seek to bring them together on the battlefield for the decisive clash), the telegraph did away with this problem in that it allowed the supreme command to remain in touch with all areas of operations and provided them with a regular flow of information about the enemy. The methods used by Moltke in 1870-71 when issuing orders and directives were based on the assunption that commanders at various levels knew fully what they were doing and there were fully-trained staff officers in the various headquarters who would ensure that things went smoothly (Napoleon`s Marshals generally failed to some extent or other when placed in some independent command; The Germans made extensive use of captured French telegraph lines during the war, and by the end of the war hade built up an extensive telegraph system across the areas they occupied. The telegraph also enabled the Gerrmans to control effectively the mobilisation and deployment by rail of the huge armies they assembled in August 1870. The King of Prussia, Bismarck and the War Minister von Roon were present at the Grosses Hauptquartier in the field during the war, and as such the Prussian Governemnt was with the armies in the field, linked to Germany and to the armies by telegraph.
The development of breechloading rifles and artillery led to great changes in tactics and command and control, although nuch of this occurred after 1870 in Germany in particular when the Germans fully processed their experiences in the war. The ordinary infantryman could now fire from cover and lying down at a greater range and rate, and with greater effect. The French Chassepot had a much longer range than the German rifles, and this led to the German infantry often rushing forward in an attempt to get within their own effective range. The problems the Gernmans faced because of this were overcome by their overall numerical superiority, the more effective com,mand system, and the great effect of the German breechloading artillery; in addition after Sedan the newly-raised French armies generally had very little training, and their great numbers did not compensate for this. The much longer ranges and rates of fire of the new weapons meant that the old style breakthrough of the enemy centre was no longer an option unless perhaps terrain and enemy mistakes might allow it; at what was probably the most decisive battle of the war, Gravelotte-St. Privat, the French, who had held of all the earlier German attacks and inflicted heavy losses, withdrew when the Saxons took Roncourt on their extreme right wing. The German breechloading artillery was particularly effective, and played a major role in many victories. The lessons learned in 1866 had resulted in a doctrine which allowed the artillery to play a far more substantial role on the battlefield than the French artillery.
A consequence of the ever-increasing firepower and the consequent need for new tactics and command structures was the development in Germany of the system of Auftragstaktik whereby orders were issued in the form of directives; a great deal of responsibility was placed on lower levels in the command chain, especially ncos; training in the German armies encouraged initiative, activity and the taking of responsibility at all levels, and was one of the reasons for the Germans performing so well in the field in 1914-18. This method of command and control had been developing steadily since the Prussian General Staff was formed in the years after Jena (1806), and by 1870 it had reached a stage where it allowed the effective direction of great masses in the field by the Grosser Generalstab. This had been set up by Scharnhorst after Jena as an organisation that would allow Prussia to make fullest use of the great numbers of men made available by the Levée en masse. Such a system required a body of trained and educated staff officers who would coordinate activities in the field and ensure things went smoothly; its first great test came in 1815 when the General Staff enabled Blücher to rally after Ligny and march to Waterloo. By 1870 it had become an organisation engaged in planning for war using huge armies with great numbers of trained reserves, with detailed plans available for mobilisation by rail which could be put into effect at a moments notice, and which in wartimes provided a corps of uniformly trained staff officers for use in the field. The French, who in 1870 could field an army containing great numbers of men at all levels with extensive combat and field experience in Italy, Mexico, North Africa, etc., and armed with the superb Chassepot rifle, simply did not have anything to match the organisation or numbers on the German side. An unfortunate result for the French of their great victory at Jena in 1806 was the establishment of the Prussian General Staff with its consequences for them in 1870-71. After 1871 they made enormous efforts to rearm and build a large army with a General Staff, they also built a considerable number of fortresses and other fortifications along their north-eastern frontiers, and in 1914 successfully mobilised millions of men by rail; but they had not caught up with the Germans in many areas and suffered enormous losses in the First World War.
To summarise, the General Staff provided a means to organise and direct a mass army and plan for a war with detailed mobilisation plans, the telegraph provided the “nervous system” which allowed a government and high command to control and direct mobilisation and operations, the improved road net gave greater choice and ability in moving large forces in the field, and the railways provided the means to move the huge numbers of men and horses and masses of supplies required. The new weapons resulted in the development of tactics and plans which called for outflanking operations initially on the immediate battlefield, and later led to the ultimate outflanking maoeuvre, the “Schlieffen Plan”. By 1914 all the Great Powers had General Staffs, and many states had mobilisation plans that allowed an army to be assembled and deployed within a very few weeks; most had large numbers of trained reserves available. Machine guns were now standard, artillery now had the recoil mechanism, which put it to a higher level of effectiveness than that of 1870, much heavy artillery was more mobile and could be moved close to the front line at short notice, radio and telephone had been added to the telegraph as means of instant communication, and aircraft and airships provided a new dimension to reconnaisance and combat. The great success of the Prussian methods in 1870-71 had truly unfortunate consequences for the world.
