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The Last Gaiter Button: A Study of the Mobilization and Concentration of the French Army in the War of 1870 (Contributions in Military Studies)This is a study of the mobilization and concentration of the French Army in the War of 1870. Inevitably, it compares and the performance of the French to that of the Prussian Army, which had its own problems but by comparison was immeasurably superior in its planning and execution of the mobilization and concentration functions. The author begins his study by assessing the most significant factors impacting the conduct of war in the 19th century, the greatest of which was that the Prussians saw mobilization and concentration as preparatory to war, not what happens after war is declared. He moves then to an analysis of the structure of the French army in the late 1860's and seeks to explain why the French high command did not come to the same basic conclusions about adequate mobilization measures as did the Prussians.The major part of this monograph addresses the factors influencing French mobilization in July of 1870. Perhaps the most critical was how the army tried to mobilize reserve manpower, given a system in which the reservist's home, his equipping depot, and his tactical regiment were generally separated by large distances, so that conceivably, a reservist living in Le Mans was forced to report to Lyon to draw his equipment and then travel to Algiers to join his regiment which was to be deployed to Lorraine. Overlaying this nightmare were logistic atrocities that virtually immobilized deploying regiments, and the strategic and organizational blunders perpetrated by the man in overall charge, Napoleon III.So why were the French, hitherto military role model to the world, do so badly? Many reasons, not the least was the heritage of the first Napoleon. What worked for the uncle was good enough for the nephew who failed to realize that his uncle, although a great practitioner of the operational art, depended heavily on the ability of his marshals to muddle through situations that did not go according to plan. But technology and times had changed warfare since Austerlitz, and the nephew, his confidence reinforced by successful campaigns in the Crimea and Italy, failed to recognize the changes.
