67

short time, renewed his attack in full force, and pressed forward to cross the canal, and so to force his way into Magenta. His troops, part of the Imperial Guard, the flower and pride of the French army, attacked with fierce and persistent courage, drove the Austrians from the bridges they held, and made good their footing beyond the canal; but their impetuous onset was ere long arrested. The enemy, reinforced by part of his 7th corps, soon to be strengthened by part of the 3rd, fell boldly on the weak French Division, resuming the offensive at all points. A furious struggle raged for some time, and though parts of the 3rd and 4th French corps, summoned hastily to the field, and late, removed gradually the overwhelming pressure, the position of the Emperor had become most critical. During those hours of peril, Macmahon had made no sign; he had been delayed in drawing his troops together, the country around was so intricate, and more than one voice in the Imperial staff asserted that the General, always a Royalist, was a traitor, or a second Grouchy at best. At last, however, Macmahon had his whole corps in hand; he pressed forward to Magenta, and fell boldly on, and the Austrians were driven by degrees from the town, after a resistance which must be pronounced feeble. The battle was over before night fell, and the uniting French divisions concentrated around Magenta by the morning of the 5th. It was a brilliant, if not a well prepared victory, and good judges have thought that if proper use had been made of the Austrian reserves a common defect in Austrian tactics-the result of the fight would have been different.

At Magenta about 54,000 Frenchmen overcame perhaps 58,000 Austrians; but the battle would have been hardly a defeat, save for the great number of Austrian fugitives, a sign of the discords of race in the Austrian army. The success of the Emperor was partly due to the superior energy of his choice infantry, and partly to Macmahon's attack; but Magenta was ill directed on both sides; and as a specimen of war, it only illustrates a truth proved by a hundred examples, how dangerous it is to attempt to unite a divided army on a given field, in the pre

*

*

Moltke, Campaign of Italy, 96. French translation.

sence of a concentrated enemy. Macmahon has been blamed by more than one critic for pausing in his march in the forenoon; and this certainly misled Napoleon, and gave the Austrians a favourable chance. But the greatest master of war in our time distinctly asserts * that he acted rightly in suspending his movement against a powerful enemy of whose real strength he had no knowledge; he showed prudence and skill in his conduct; and he attacked with determination when he had all his troops in hand. He was named Duke of Magenta by a grateful master, whom he had extricated from peril of no ordinary kind; and his conduct at Magenta, though less brilliant, resembled that of Désaix at Marengo. The warrior was the observed of all observers when the French entered Milan in triumph; fair hands strewed flowers and tapestry in his path; and the anecdote is well known how he caught up a child, amidst the shouts of exulting multitudes, and rode with his young burden through the delighted city. Macmahon had an honourable part in the battle that followed, but he did not decide Solferino, as he had done at Magenta. This great fight was another chance encounter, without any marked results on the field, though it virtually brought the war to a close. The Austrians, about 160,000 strong, and with a large superiority of force in guns, but ill arranged, and with several corps in the rear, were attacked, as they advanced from the Mincio, by the French, somewhat superior in numbers, but possessing the advantage of rifled cannon; and after a confused and bloody conflict, the Austrian centre fell back when Solferino was lost, and the whole Austrian army was driven from the field. Macmahon held the right centre of the French in the battle, on the great plain to the south of the hills, and the manner in which he handled his infantry and a large mass of horsemen sent to his support, was justly praised by judges on the spot. The brunt of the conflict, however, fell on the Imperial Guard and on the 4th corps of Niel, on the French right; and it was mainly decided by the superior fire of the rifled French artillery, brought

*

Ibid., 85. 'Le général crut donc utile de réunir d'abord ses forces avant d'entrer dans un engagement sérieux. Il eut une vive inquiétude, bien fondú reste, d'être attaqué luimème.' See also p. 101-2.

boldly to the front, while the Austrian batteries were, to a great extent, left useless in the rear and altogether paralysed.

The operations of the leaders, on either side, in the Italian campaign of 1859, were marked by shortcomings and do not show genius; and the attentive strategist who followed them at his desk, at Berlin, has carefully pointed out how defective they were, and has indicated how imperfect, in many respects, was the organisation of the contending armies. In the eyes, however, of the idolaters of success, the French army had reached the extreme of excellence, and Macmahon was held up to admiration as one of the greatest of chiefs. Having been placed on the roll of the Marshals of France, the Duke of Magenta was sent, in 1861, to the coronation of King William of Prussia; and this embassy, a sign of the irony of fate, was made notable for its magnificent display, and for a grand exchange of courtesies between Berlin and Paris. Macmahon was ere long on his old field of fame, and having been made Governor General of Algeria in 1864, was absent from France during the eventful period which witnessed Sadowa and the sudden rise of Prussia. It has been said that this was a kind of splendid banishment, the penalty of legitimist sympathies; but if the Marshal was, perhaps, not consulted in the project for the reorganisation of the French army, brought forward by Niel in 1868, and made fruitless by routine and faction-a calamitous passage in the history of France, for the military power of Prussia was but too manifest -he certainly enjoyed the full confidence of a kindly-hearted master since he had won Magenta. His proconsulship fell on a disastrous time; the colony was wasted by disease and dearth; the Arabs and Kabyles more than once stirred, and the experiment, tried by Napoleon III., largely to replace military by civil power, and to make free citizens of wild nomade tribes, proved, as was to be expected, a costly failure. The rule of Macmahon was chiefly noted for his splendid hospitality to the foreign visitors, especially to the English, received at his levées; his wife, a great lady of an old regime family, was a very brilliant and charming Vice-Queen; but he performed the duties of his office well, and he was judicious and wise in opposing steadily the fanaticism of an over zealous bishop, who tried to proselytize at

the hazard of a religious war. Fortune up to this time had smiled on the Marshal, but she was now to show how false is her smile, and the warrior was to prove, by most striking instances, how immense is the difference between a mere brilliant soldier, and a general in chief of a high order, on a really grand theatre of European warfare.

At the outbreak of the great war of 1870-1, Macmahon was placed at the head of the 1st corps d'armée, the flower of the French troops in Algeria. The Emperor had confided to the Marshal his plan-borrowed from that of Napoleon in 1815-of separating the hostile armies by a bold advance; but we do not know if it had his lieutenant's approval. Macmahon was not in any sense responsible for the maladministration of the Imperial army, for its disorganised state when it reached the frontier, for its dissemination upon a wide arc, when an offensive movement was deemed impossible; all this must be laid to the charge of Napoleon III., and of negligence and incapacity in the French War Office. It is more than doubtful, too, if the Marshal was to blame for the perilous exposure of the single division of Abel Douay overwhelmed at Wissembourg; this has been suggested by the Prussian Staff, but General Ducrot, in the French camp, has said the exact contrary. The responsibility of Macmahon begins on the 5th of August, and certainly it was sufficiently great. On that day he was given the command of the whole French right wing on the verge of Alsace, the 1st corps, the 5th and part of the 7th ; † he knew that Douay's division had been routed on the 4th, and he knew, though imperfectly, so deficient was the exploring power of the French cavalry, a service which they had almost forgotten, that the Third Army. of the Crown Prince of Prussia, could not be distant, and was in great force. He drew together the troops he had in hand, the 1st and part of the 7th corps, and he sent a message to Failly, the chief of the 5th corps, in the first instance, to come to his aid, with the two divisions that Failly disposed of at the time. He countermanded

*

Prussian Staff History, Part I., Vol. I., p. 122. Ducrot, in reply, 'Wissembourg.'

+ The remaining part of the 7th corps was also given to Macmahon, but it was leagues away at Belfort.

*

however, this message, on the 6th, at least did not insist on his previous order, and directed Failly to send one division only; he was ignorant in fact of the real strength of his enemy, and was contemplating a bold offensive movement on the flank and rear of the Third Army; and this fatal error was the cause of a great deal that followed. The Marshal, however, hearing that the Germans were at hand, drew up his army in a position of most formidable strength, against foes not in overwhelming numbers, and resolved, if challenged, to accept battle. The stream of the Sauer ran before his front, his line was protected by fortified posts and villages on eminences difficult to subdue, but giving opportunities to counter attacks, essential for a determined defence; and if assailants on his flanks might become dangerous, in the event of powerful couverging attacks, they formed obstacles of a most imposing kind. Macmahon, confident it is said of the result, Messieurs, les Prussiens, je vous tiens,' he exclaimed to his staff-placed the five divisions he had on this line, unaware that he was about to encounter an army fully three-fold in strength.

These movements led to the great fight of Wörth, most glorious to the arms of France, though fatal. The Crown Prince, in command of five† corps d'armée, had intended to defer the attack for a day, until his forces had been fully collected, but the eager zeal of subordinates hurried on a conflict, ill directed at first, and altogether premature, as happened more than once on the German side in the war. In the early morning of the 6th of August, the 5th Prussian corps fell on the French centre; and its efforts were supported by the 2nd Bavarian corps issuing from the woodlands on Macmahon's left. These attacks, however, proved wholly fruitless; the superiority, indeed, of the

* This has been denied by apologists of the Marshal, but there can be no doubt on the subject. Compare Prussian Staff History, Part I., Vol. I., p. 145. General Derrécagaix's 'La Guerre Moderne,' Tome 2, p. 179, and Failly, Operations et Marches du 5me Corps, p. 12.

+ For accounts of the battle of Wörth compare the Prussian Staff History, Part I., Vol. 1, pp. 147, 192; General Derrécagaix, La Guerre Moderne, Tome 2, pp. 178, 205, and Hamley's Operations of War, p. 396, 403. Ed. 1889.