German Army
from Saarbruecken. The affair was unimportant: it could lead to nothing,
unless the French had the means of following up the success. This they
had not; and the advance of the First and Second German Armies,
commanded by General Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles, was soon to
deprive them of this position.

Meanwhile the Germans were making ready a weighty enterprise. The
muster of the huge Third Army to the north of Alsace enabled their
General Staff to fix August 4 for a general advance against that
frontier. It fell to this army, under the Crown Prince of Prussia,
Frederick William, to strike the first great blow. Early on August 4 a
strong Bavarian division advanced against the small fortified town of
Weissenburg, which lies deep down in the valley of the Lauter,
surrounded by lofty hills. There it surprised a weak French division,
the vanguard of MacMahon's army, commanded by General Abel Douay, whose
scouts had found no trace of the advancing enemy. About 10 A.M. Douay
fell, mortally wounded; another German division, working round the town
to the east, carried the strong position of the Geisberg; and these
combined efforts, frontal and on the flank, forced the French hastily to
retreat westwards over the hills to Woerth, after losing more than
2000 men.

The news of this reverse and of the large German forces ready to pour
into the north of Alsace led the Emperor to order the 7th French corps
at Belfort, and the 5th in and around Bitsch, to send reinforcements to
MacMahon, whose main force held the steep and wooded hills between the
villages of Woerth, Froeschweiler, and Reichshofen. The line of railway
between Strassburg and Bitsch touches Reichshofen; but, for some reason
that has never been satisfactorily explained, MacMahon was able to draw
up only one division from the side of Strassburg and Belfort, and not
one from Bitsch, which was within an easy march. The fact seems to be
that de Failly, in command at Bitsch, was a prey to conflicting orders
from Me

John Holland Rose (1855-1942) was an influential English historian who wrote a famous biography of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and also wrote a history of Europe, entitled The Development of the European Nations. Rose was the basis for C. P. Snows fictional character M. H. L. Gay (see Years of Hope: Cambridge, Colonial Administrator in the South Seas, and Cricket by Philip Snow.)

Robert Grant may refer to: