Battle of Spicheren, 1870: the Red Hill and the road to Metz

France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. Within three weeks German armies were closing on the border. General Charles Frossard's French II Corps stood at Saarbrücken, on the German side of the Saar, but on the night of 5 August, judging his position there too exposed, he pulled back without waiting for permission to the heights of Spicheren, just south of the town, and entrenched there.²

The same day, 6 August, was a black one for France. About 100 km away, in Alsace, another French army was defeated at Froeschwiller-Woerth, two days after the first serious clash at Wissembourg.³

A battle no one had ordered

Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian general staff, did not expect a battle that day. In his own history of the war he explains that the First Army under General von Steinmetz had pushed south-west towards the Saar more than headquarters intended, so that its columns crossed those of the Second Army at Saarbrücken. There were plenty of troops near the town, but no one had arranged for them to arrive together.⁴

The 14th Division under General von Kameke reached Saarbrücken around noon. Kameke knew the French had left the heights beyond the river and decided to occupy them. When his cavalry was met by heavy fire from the Spicheren heights, he assumed, from the way the French had behaved so far, that he faced a retreating rearguard and attacked at once. According to the Républicain lorrain account, the French guns on the Red Hill (Rotherberg) opened fire at about 11:30, until Prussian batteries came up and silenced them.⁵

The Red Hill

Moltke admits that the French position was exceptionally strong. In the center the Red Hill rose as a steep, almost sheer spur, the slopes on either side were thickly wooded, and on the left the buildings of the Stiring-Wendel ironworks formed a strongpoint of their own. The first Prussian brigade, under General von François, attacked both flanks. On the left the 39th Regiment fought into the Gifert wood; on the right the 74th took the Stiring wood. Strong French counterattacks soon pushed them back.⁶

At about 3 p.m. a battalion of the 74th, led by François himself, climbed the cliff of the Red Hill and drove the French chasseurs from their forward trenches with clubbed rifles and bayonets. François fell, hit by five bullets, but his men clung to the narrow spur. By now the 14th Division was stretched over about three and a half miles, its left beaten back in the Gifert wood and its right hard pressed at Stiring.⁷

Marching to the guns

What saved the Prussians was the readiness of their generals to join a fight they had not planned. Moltke praises how Zastrow of the VII Corps, Alvensleben of the III and Goeben of the VIII all sent troops towards the sound of the guns, and some brigade commanders set off before they received orders. From about 4 p.m. the heads of the 5th and 16th Divisions came in, and General von Barnekow led reinforcements up the Red Hill to the fusiliers, who had almost run out of ammunition. Even so, at 5 p.m. a counterattack by a division and a half on the French left at Stiring wiped out the Prussian gains there.⁸

On the French side the help never came. Frossard asked in vain for reinforcements from Marshal Bazaine, whose divisions stood less than 20 km away. Moltke notes the strange hesitation of the French divisions in the rear: three were sent forward, and only two arrived, after the battle was over. In the evening Goeben's 16th Division climbed through the Spicheren woods and drove the French from the saddle by the Red Hill, and the threat of the 13th Prussian Division advancing on Forbach along the Rosselle valley persuaded Frossard to order a retreat. By about 9 p.m. the French were sounding the retreat across the plateau.⁹

A costly victory

The attackers paid more than the defenders. Moltke gives 4,871 Prussian and 4,078 French losses, almost the same as the 4,869 and 4,077 in the Républicain lorrain account. Moltke stresses that the Germans were never stronger than the enemy on the field, that only thirteen batteries could be brought into action and that the ground kept their cavalry out of the fight; he also found it significant that many French were taken prisoner unwounded. The often quoted figures of about 28,000 French against some 70,000 Germans compare Frossard's corps with the whole of Steinmetz's First Army.¹⁰

Frossard's corps withdrew towards Sarreguemines and Puttelange, and the French army fell back on Metz. Moltke admits that the battle was not planned and was later criticized as fought in the wrong place, but argues that a tactical victory rarely fails to fit a strategic design: it kept the French II Corps from slipping away unharmed and put the Prussians in touch with the main French army. Within two weeks that army was shut up in Metz, and after the war Spicheren and Forbach became part of the German Empire until 1918.¹¹