



Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Moti Ben-Ari and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)









    THE
    FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
    OF
    1870--71


    BY
    FIELD-MARSHAL
    COUNT HELMUTH VON MOLTKE


    TRANSLATION REVISED BY
    ARCHIBALD FORBES


    _WITH A MAP, NOTES, AND ORDERS OF BATTLE_


    LONDON
    JAMES R. OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO.
    45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
    1893
    [_All rights reserved_]




NOTE.


The translation has been thoroughly revised for the sense as well as in
regard to technical military terms and expressions. To the name of every
German general officer mentioned in the text has been affixed, within
brackets, his specific command, a liberty which the reader will perhaps
not resent, since the interpolation is intended to facilitate his
clearer understanding of a narrative condensed by the author with
extreme severity.

In further aid of elucidation there has been occasionally inserted, also
within brackets, a date, a figure, or a word.

A few footnotes will be found, which may perhaps be excused as not
wholly irrelevant. In the Appendix have been inserted the "Orders of
Battle" of both sides, as in the first period of the war.

                                                       A. F.




PREFACE.


Field-Marshal von Moltke began this history of the War of 1870--1 in the
spring of the year 1887, and during his residence at Creisau he worked
at it for about three hours every morning. On his return to Berlin in
the autumn of that year, the work was not quite finished, but he
completed it by January, 1888, at Berlin,