Battle of Coulmiers, 1870: France's rare victory on the Loire

By November 1870 France had lost its emperor and its regular armies. Napoleon III had surrendered at Sedan, Paris was under siege, and Marshal Bazaine's army had capitulated at Metz. Yet the new republic fought on with armies raised in a few weeks, and at Coulmiers, west of Orléans, one of them won a battle. It was a real victory, but a brief one.²

An army out of nothing

After the fall of the Empire, the Government of National Defense sent a delegation to Tours, where Léon Gambetta, Minister of War and of the Interior, ruled almost as a dictator, in the words of Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian General Staff. Moltke credits Gambetta's energy with putting 600,000 armed men and 1,400 guns into the field within a few weeks. Friedrich Engels, writing as a military commentator at the time, called it immensely to the credit of the French people that they had created a new army out of nothing in three months.³

The quality of these troops varied enormously. Engels described everything from old soldiers recalled to the ranks to raw recruits and volunteers who would accept no discipline, alongside solid battalions such as the Papal Zouaves. German officers who fought them said that with four more weeks of preparation they would have been a formidable opponent.⁴

In October the Bavarians of General Ludwig von der Tann had taken Orléans after the fight at Artenay. The Encyclopédie Larousse describes the I Army of the Loire, the XV and XVI Corps, formed by General d'Aurelle de Paladines at the camp of Salbris. Given the weakness of von der Tann's force, Moltke writes, a French council of war at Tours decided to win back Orléans, attacking mainly from the west.⁵

Von der Tann chooses his ground

The French corps gathered in early November along the lower Loire and behind the forest of Marchénoir. A Prussian cavalry reconnaissance on 7 November ran into strong forces under General Antoine Chanzy and had to break off. Von der Tann understood that he was about to be attacked from the west and threatened from the east as well. He would not fight in the thick woods, where his artillery and cavalry would be of little use and he might be surrounded, so he chose to meet the nearest French force in the open country around the village of Coulmiers. He left only a small detachment in Orléans to guard the hospitals.⁶

Four hours at Coulmiers

On the morning of 9 November the I Bavarian Corps stood on the edge of the woods between the Château de Montpipeau and Rosières, with Coulmiers in front. The French, with a great advantage in numbers, spread far around the Bavarian left and right. D'Aurelle with the XV Corps held the Bavarians in the south, Chanzy sent General Barry's division against the center and Admiral Jauréguiberry's division against the right, and General Reyau's large cavalry force rode north toward Patay to threaten the road to Paris. By noon, Moltke notes, von der Tann's three brigades were holding a front of more than four miles.⁷

The French attacked in earnest at about one o'clock. In the south the Bavarians gave up La Renardière and fell back to the woods of Montpipeau. In the center Barry's division drove Bavarian riflemen out of the quarries in front of Coulmiers, and at three o'clock attacked the village itself. The Bavarian 4th Brigade held the village park for a time with its guns, cavalry charges and the bayonet, but after four hours one brigade was facing three. On the French left, Reyau's cavalry did little; Moltke reports that it drew off westward, said to have mistaken French volunteers for German reinforcements.⁸

At four in the afternoon von der Tann ordered a retreat by brigades toward Artenay. Fresh French troops forced their way into the park of Coulmiers as the Bavarians pulled back, and a Bavarian brigade under General von Orff held its ground at Gémigny to cover the withdrawal. The French did not pursue.⁹

Orléans retaken

The Bavarians marched through the night on bad roads and reached Artenay by morning. Orléans was evacuated; an ammunition column, 150 prisoners and the sick who could not be moved fell into French hands. Moltke puts the fight at 20,000 Germans against 70,000 French and the German loss at about 800 killed and wounded, with the French loss nearly double. He judged that von der Tann had got out of a difficult position with much skill and good fortune.¹⁰

The victory mattered in France. The Larousse entry says that the victory and the recovery of Orléans restored confidence, and Engels saw it as the opening of the whole Loire campaign. After the battle d'Aurelle stayed in a strong position before Orléans to wait for reinforcements.¹¹

Why it could not last

Time was against France. The surrender of Metz on 27 October had freed the Prussian Second Army of Prince Frederick Charles, which was already marching west. When d'Aurelle tried to break through to Paris, whose garrison attacked at Champigny on 2 December, he was beaten at Beaune-la-Rolande on 28 November and at Loigny and Artenay on 2 and 3 December, and Orléans was lost again on 5 December. Coulmiers remains one of the few battles of the war that France won. Three years earlier, a French brigade had fought for the Pope on the other side of the Alps at Mentana.¹² › Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande, 1870