On 18 August 1870 the German armies under General Helmuth von Moltke attacked Marshal François-Achille Bazaine's French Army of the Rhine on the high ground west of Metz, between the villages of Gravelotte and Saint-Privat. The French position was strong, and the Germans lost more than 20,000 men to about 12,000 or 13,000 French, but at nightfall Saint-Privat fell and Bazaine withdrew into the fortress of Metz. Trapped there, his army surrendered on 27 October.
Cut off from Verdun
France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870, and by mid-August the French had already been beaten at Froeschwiller and Forbach. Bazaine took command of the Army of the Rhine on 12 August as it fell back from Metz toward Verdun to join the rest of France's forces. On 16 August Prussian troops led by General Constantin von Alvensleben's III Corps caught it near Vionville, east of Mars-la-Tour, and blocked the road west; each side lost about 16,000 men.1 › Battle of Spicheren, 1870
Instead of breaking through, Bazaine pulled his army back on 17 August to a line of hills running north to south from Saint-Privat-la-Montagne to Gravelotte, a few miles west of Metz. The French now faced west, toward the road they had meant to take. Britannica puts Bazaine's army at about 140,000 men; Dennis Showalter, writing for HistoryNet, at 110,000 against fewer than 200,000 Germans; the French Ministry of the Armed Forces at 125,000 against 285,000.2
The ravine and the hill
On the morning of 18 August the Germans did not know exactly where the French line lay and had to turn to face it, so Moltke ended up sending his troops straight at a very strong position. In the south, General Karl von Steinmetz's First Army attacked across the Mance ravine near Gravelotte against French troops in prepared trenches. Showalter describes the ravine floor filling with dead and wounded men and horses and, late in the day, fresh troops sent down into it breaking into a panicked rout.3
In the north, the Prussian Guard and the Saxons of the Second Army under Prince Frederick Charles closed on Saint-Privat, held by Marshal François Certain Canrobert's VI Corps. Toward five in the afternoon the Guard attacked up the open slopes. The French ministry's history says it lost 240 officers and 6,500 men in half an hour; Showalter gives an assault force of 18,000 with almost 8,000 casualties by 6:30.4
Saint-Privat falls
The attack was renewed in the evening after German guns had set the village on fire. Saxons and guardsmen stormed into it, the Saxons from the north around 7:30, the surviving French defenders fought house to house and in the cemetery, and Canrobert's corps was forced back toward Metz at nightfall. Showalter notes that Bazaine kept his Imperial Guard in reserve and never committed it to save his right.5
The figures for the day differ only a little. Britannica counts more than 20,000 German and 13,000 French casualties; the French ministry about 20,000 Germans and 12,000 French killed or wounded; Showalter more than 20,000 against some 13,000. The next day, according to the ministry's account, King William I rode over the field and called the slopes of Saint-Privat the grave of his Guard.6
Shut in at Metz
Moltke, Britannica notes, was astonished that Bazaine used the night not to counterattack and reopen the road to Verdun but to fall back into Metz. The Germans had lost more men, but they had trapped the French army. Moltke left part of his forces to besiege Metz and marched with the rest against Marshal Patrice de Mac-Mahon, whose attempt to relieve Bazaine ended in the disaster at Sedan on 1 September.7
Bazaine's army never broke out. It capitulated on 27 October, and the ministry records that he handed over 173,000 men, three marshals and 1,400 guns. Under the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871, France lost Alsace and part of Lorraine. The ministry adds that William I wanted Saint-Privat itself kept in the new German Empire, and the village was handed over in exchange for a border change near Belfort. The war's opening battle, at Wissembourg, is the subject of our page for 4 August.8
Also on this day
- 1690: Battle of Staffarda. At Staffarda in Piedmont, the French army of Nicolas Catinat met the forces of Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, who had just joined the coalition against Louis XIV in the Nine Years' War.
