Battle of Sedan (1870): Napoleon III Captured by Prussia

The Battle of Sedan was fought on 1 September 1870 around the fortress town of Sedan in north-eastern France during the Franco-Prussian War. German armies encircled the French Army of Châlons, and on 2 September Emperor Napoleon III surrendered with about 100,000 men. The defeat brought down the Second Empire within two days and is still remembered as one of the most complete victories of the nineteenth century.

Background: the march to relieve Metz

The war had gone badly for France from the start. After defeats in Alsace and Lorraine in early August 1870, Marshal Bazaine’s Army of the Rhine was trapped in the fortress of Metz following the battles of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte–St Privat.

Marshal Patrice de MacMahon assembled a new army of around 120,000–130,000 men at Châlons. Napoleon III, ill and no longer in overall command, accompanied it. MacMahon wanted to fall back on Paris, but under political pressure from the government in Paris he set off north-east in an attempt to reach Metz along the Belgian frontier.

The plan was risky. It meant marching across the front of the advancing German armies, close to neutral Belgium, with tired and poorly organised troops, many of them reservists and recently formed units. The government of Empress Eugénie and the war minister, General Charles Cousin-Montauban, Count of Palikao, feared that a retreat to Paris would bring revolution in the capital.

The march was slow and badly supplied. Moltke learned of it and turned two German armies northwards: the Third Army under Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia and the Army of the Meuse under Crown Prince Albert of Saxony. After a French defeat at Beaumont on 30 August, MacMahon’s army fell back on Sedan, a small fortress town in a bowl of hills on the River Meuse.

The battle of 1 September

Fighting began early on 1 September at Bazeilles, a village south-east of Sedan, where Bavarian troops fought French marine infantry from house to house. Alphonse de Neuville later made one of these defences famous in his painting The Last Cartridges.

Early in the morning MacMahon was wounded by a shell fragment. His successor, General Auguste Ducrot, ordered a retreat westward towards Mézières, the only route not yet closed. Shortly afterwards General Emmanuel Félix de Wimpffen, newly arrived from Algeria, produced a commission from the war minister giving him command. He cancelled Ducrot’s order and planned instead to break out eastward. The confusion cost precious hours.

Meanwhile German columns swung around both flanks. By around midday Prussian troops from the north and west met near the village of Illy, closing the ring. German artillery, with several hundred guns, poured fire into the crowded French positions.

The French cavalry made a series of desperate charges near Floing to break through the German lines. General Jean-Auguste Margueritte was mortally wounded leading the first; General Gaston de Galliffet led the later charges. All were shot down. King Wilhelm I, watching from a hill, is reported to have admired their bravery.

The surrender

By mid-afternoon the French army was packed into the town and its surroundings under constant shellfire. Napoleon III ordered the white flag to be raised. He sent King Wilhelm a short letter in which he wrote that, not having been able to die among his troops, he could only place his sword in the king’s hands.

Wimpffen negotiated overnight with Moltke and Bismarck at Donchery but obtained no concessions. Early on 2 September Napoleon himself drove out to meet Bismarck, hoping for better terms, and the two spoke at a weaver’s cottage near Donchery. The capitulation was signed at the Château de Bellevue near Frénois that morning, and in the afternoon Napoleon met King Wilhelm there.

Key people

• Napoleon III: Emperor of the French, who accompanied the army and surrendered.
• Patrice de MacMahon: commander of the Army of Châlons, wounded early in the battle.
• Emmanuel Félix de Wimpffen: took command after MacMahon and signed the capitulation.
• Helmuth von Moltke: Prussian chief of staff who planned the encirclement.
• Otto von Bismarck: negotiated with Napoleon III on 2 September.

By the numbers

Figures are commonly cited estimates and vary between sources.

Consequences

News of the disaster reached Paris on 3 September. The next day crowds invaded the Legislative Body, and republican deputies led by Léon Gambetta and Jules Favre proclaimed the Third Republic at the Hôtel de Ville. Empress Eugénie fled to England. The new Government of National Defence refused to make peace on German terms.

The war therefore went on. German armies advanced on the capital and began the Siege of Paris on 19 September. Napoleon was held at Wilhelmshöhe Palace near Kassel until March 1871, then went into exile in England, where he died at Chislehurst on 9 January 1873.

Legacy

In the German Empire, 2 September was celebrated as Sedan Day (Sedantag), an unofficial national holiday with parades and school ceremonies, until 1918. Streets named Sedanstrasse can still be found in many German towns.

Around Sedan the battle is still visible in the landscape. At Bazeilles the house defended by the marine infantry is preserved as a small museum known as the House of the Last Cartridge, and an ossuary nearby holds the remains of French and German soldiers killed in the fighting. Memorials on the plateau above Floing recall the cavalry charges. For the families of the dead on both sides, Sedan was not a triumph or a humiliation but a day of heavy loss.

In France, Sedan became a byword for military catastrophe and for the failings of the Second Empire, whose founder had seized power in the coup of 1851. The name gained a second grim meaning in May 1940, when German forces broke through the French front at Sedan at the start of their invasion of France.

Myths and facts

Myth: Napoleon III commanded the French army at Sedan. Although the emperor was present, he had handed over command of the army in August and was suffering badly from a painful bladder stone. The decisive orders came from MacMahon, Ducrot and Wimpffen; Napoleon’s main personal decision was to order the surrender.

Myth: the French were simply outfought. French soldiers fought hard, and their Chassepot rifles were better than the German infantry weapon. The defeat came mainly from strategy: a politically driven march into a trap, poor intelligence, conflicting orders and the overwhelming German artillery.

Fact: the cavalry charges were admired by their enemies. King Wilhelm is widely reported to have exclaimed “Ah, the brave men!” (in French, “Ah! les braves gens!”) as he watched the charges at Floing. The phrase became a lasting symbol of French courage in defeat.

Timeline

• 1870, 23 August: MacMahon’s army leaves the Reims area to march towards Metz.
• 1870, 30 August: French defeat at Beaumont.
• 1870, 1 September, morning: Fighting at Bazeilles; MacMahon is wounded.
• 1870, 1 September, midday: German forces close the ring near Illy.
• 1870, 1 September, afternoon: French cavalry charges at Floing; the white flag is raised.
• 1870, 2 September: Capitulation signed; Napoleon meets Bismarck and King Wilhelm.
• 1870, 4 September: The Third Republic is proclaimed in Paris.

Why it matters

Sedan ended the reign of France’s last monarch and brought the Third Republic into being. It also showed the power of Moltke’s methods of encirclement and confirmed that the new Germany would emerge as the dominant power in continental Europe.