August 18, 1870 · Lorraine Theater
August 18, 1870
The bloodiest day of the Franco-Prussian War was fought on the plateau west of Metz, where Bazaine's Army of the Rhine held a strong defensive position anchored on the village of St. Privat in the north and Gravelotte in the south. Moltke attempted to envelop both flanks simultaneously. On the German right, frontal assaults against St. Privat by the Prussian Guard — advancing in close order across open ground against French chassepot rifles — were catastrophic: the Guard lost 8,000 men in twenty minutes in one of the most costly attacks in nineteenth-century warfare. The village only fell when Saxon forces completed the northern envelopment. On the German left at Gravelotte, equally costly frontal assaults eventually broke French resistance through sheer weight of numbers.
Commanders