Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/19

 Garde Mobile stood originally at 500,000, as we have stated; in 1870 it was given officially at 420,000, but it does not appear that even 20,000 men thereof had been really utilized at the end of August. Such of its members as had been called up at that date were exclusively in the eastern fortresses; for it is not possible to count the Parisian battalions which conducted themselves at Chalons in such a fashion that they had to be recalled to Paris as being not only useless, but dangerous.

From all these figures it results that the whole nominal force of the French army, regular troops, reserves, and Mobiles included, amounted to about 985,000 men; and Maréchal le Bœuf has stated in his evidence that, out of this general total, 567,000 really serviceable men could be relied upon; but, if we allow for the sick and the non-combatant services, which would represent on this latter total 74,500 men, and also for the gendarmerie and the troops absolutely required in the interior and in Alberia, the number to be so deducted may be put altogether at 130,000. There would therefore remain only 437,000 men to bring into line, from which again we must deduct the number of the reservists who did not join. So that, whichever way we turn the question, it seems indisputable that the total forces of every kind which could be seriously employed against the enemy at the first commencement of the campaign could not have much exceeded 300,000 fighting men, only five-sixths of whom were on the frontier. It should be repeated that these figures cannot be absolutely relied upon, for some of them are hypothetical and the rest are extracted from a mass of contradictory official evidence; they seem, however, to present a reasonable appearance of truth.

The matériel was in an even worse state than the men. General Suzanne, who, in 1870, was director of matériel at the ministry of war, informed the parliamentary commission that, when the war broke out, France possessed 21,000 cannons, of which 10,000 were field-pieces. So she did; but, unfortunately, these numbers included, as Duke d'Audiffret Pasquier observed in his speech to the commission on 13th June 1873, "cannons of the time of Louis XIV., and the artillery of Gribeauval;" all the old smooth-bore guns were also counted in it as forming part of the disposable armament. Furthermore, though there really were 4,000 rifled field-guns, only 2,376 of them possessed carriages and limbers; the others were all lying on the ground. And even this reduced quantity could not be utilized, for the number of horses required for them was 51,548, with a corresponding supply of harness; so that, as only 31,904 horses were forthcoming, it was not possible to send more than 150 batteries (900 guns) to the army of the Rhine; and even this number included mitrailleuses, so cutting down the cannon, properly so called, to 850. As, however, we have shown that the army of the Rhine was limited to 244,00 men, it follows, after all, that, in consequence of its numerical weakness, the theoretical number of four guns to each 1,000 men was really reached. It should be added that there was harness for 47,000 horses; it was therefore found possible, by making limbers and buying horses, to turn out eighty more batteries by the latter half of August, just in time to send them to Sedan to he taken by the Prussians.

The story of the muskets is of the same nature. The official reports showed that there were 3,350,000 of them in hand on 1st July 1870, and it was argued that, with so vast a supply, an army of 900,000 men would fight for several months. But it turned out that only one million of those muskets were chassepots, that 1,750,000 of them were percussion-guns, and that the rest were modified Miniés (tabatières). As an example of the fashion in which these arsenal statements were made up, it may be mentioned that 57,000 of those very guns had been sold as old iron, for six shillings each, and were in process of delivery to the buyer; but they continued to be counted as available for service in the event of war! The result was that, after the first month, there were virtually no chassepots left, and that the contest had to be carried on with such inferior weapons of varied types as it was found possible to make or buy.

The stock of ammunition was so insufficient that only about 120 cartridges existed for each chassepot: in the very first battles of the campaign the supply was exhausted, and special manufactures had to be set up.

As for uniforms and kits, it was supposed that far more than enough were in store; but they ran short immediately, and contracts for every sort of article had to be made in all directions before the month of August was half over.

Of food it may be said that scarcely anything was ready. There were 38,500,000 of biscuit-rations for the army, but no stocks had been laid up in the fortresses; in Metz, for instance, according to the evidence, there was a quantity of corn and 