Armed with the East

The Armée with the East was the official designation of a French Armée at the time of the Guerre of 1870.

Objectives

It occurs with Bourges, starting from the division of the Armée with the Loire and is packed after a fashion during its course in direction of the North-East (Chalon on the Saone, Besancon). It aims to cut the backs and the lines of communication of the Prussian , and to the passage, to deliver Belfort, where Colonel Denfert-Rochereau was locked up with his troops in the citadel. After having unloaded the large one of his troops in the small station of Clerval (small town in the north of Besancon), the general Bourbaki engages his countryside in the East. First stage: to seize Villersexel (Haute-Saône)…

Battles

The January 8th 1871, the Bataille of Villersexel is committed. The following day, she knows her apogee by a victory of the French troops. Under the command of the intuitive general of Werder, the Prussians withdraw themselves from Villersexel (because for Werder, this city does not have anything strategic), and migrate in direction of Montbeliard. The Prussians are installed then on a geographical line which follows a small river: the Lizaine. With the south, Montbeliard-Héricourt, with north, Frahier. The arrival of the Prussian troops thus join the quotas which occupy already all the Country. De Werder calculates (rightly) the plan of Bourbaki which is to move on Belfort in order to take again the city and to deliver the French garrison…

But enlized in Villersexel in problems of organization and supply of all kinds, the Army of the East is unable to continue its adversary quickly. Thus making profitable this inaction, the Prussian troops take foot on left bank of Lizaine (or " luzine" small river which is thrown to Montbeliard in " Allan"). This river, although not very important, form a natural obstacle. Moreover, the embankment of the railway line which follows Lizaine (of Montbeliard with Héricourt) offers an unexpected shelter for the Prussians. The Prussians benefit from its two days of respite (January 10th and 12th) to place soldiers all along Lizaine. Pieces of ordnance are installed on the heights: in Chalonvillars (to defend Chenebier and Frahier), with Mount-Of Vaud (to hold Héricourt) and, in Montbeliard (with the hands of the Prussians since November 1870), at the level of Large-Wood and on what one will call later the Batteries of the Park. The German soldiers benefit from the defensive value of Lizaine whose width oscillates between 6 and 8 meters and the depth nearly one meter. They make jump the majority of the bridges, stuff explosives the others, arrange the roads to make pass the supply… The French, on their side, are on a difficult wooded ground. Thus, of Montbeliard with Frahier (the HT-Saone), a frontline of approx. 20 km is strongly defended.

January 14th, the first French quotas arrive in the area of Arcey (10 km in the south-east of Montbeliard). After some skirmishes with Prussian advanced stations, the Army of the East arrives on the heights of Montbeliard. The plan of Bourbaki consists of a frontal attack deployed on 19 km.

Composed of 140.000 men, the army is heteroclite and impromptu. The enemy is composed of approx. 52.000 men. The climate at this beginning of battle is extremely rigorous. It snows, and it snowed abundantly during the previous days; the night temperature reached -20°. Whereas the Prussians found shelters by requisitions, the French troops bivouac in wood and the sunken lanes. In spite of the acts of bravery achieved in the area of Villersexel, it is an army exhausted and badly equipped which is able to fight on the face of Lizaine (e.g. one completely misses irons with ice for the horses). The first engagements engage in front of the towns of Héricourt and Montbeliard. The troops penetrate in Montbeliard and attacks the castle to dislodge there the Prussians who draw with the heavy weapon. The small village of Béthoncourt in the North-East of Montbeliard knows a painful combat during which succumb of the battalions the Savoyard ones and zouaves. But the bloodiest fights proceed in front of Héricourt and Chagey. During three days, the engagements on the line of Lizaine know keen confrontations.

Reprocess

January 18th, no decisive opening not having been marked, the Bourbaki general decides to suspend the engagements and to operate the retirement of his troops in direction of the south, towards Besancon. The delivery of Belfort will thus have failed. But taken tortures some by a new army (Manteuffel), the Army of the East east forced to deviate its walk in direction of Pontarlier. This retirement on the plate of Haut-Doubs, in the severe cold and snow, is comparable with the table of the " raft of the Jellyfish ". The soldiers, famished, exhausted, decimated by the cold, were nothing any more but the shade of themselves. By a negligence of the negotiators, the army of the East is not included/understood under the conditions of the Franco-German armistice signed on January 28th, 1871. Driven back at the Swiss border, the Army of the East was taken with the trap. Bourbaki will then try to commit suicide. it will leave the command of the Army to the general Clinchant, his assistant main thing. This last will negotiate the Convention of the Canopies with the Swiss general Hans Herzog who envisages the internment of his Army in Suisse, after it is disarmed with the crossing of frontiers. From, 87.847 whose 2467 officers will start to pass the border, mainly with the Verrières.

This tragedy was immortalisée in the form of an exceptional circular panorama carried out by the Swiss painter, Castres, and its collaborators, whom one can see in Lucerne (Swiss). the circular panorama Bourbaki is appeared as a rotunda of a diameter of more than 40 Mr. It exists little of panoramas of this kind in the world. Realized on the basis of draft many drawn during this war, it is the historical testimony of a exceptional documentary quality. This work constitutes a document with the memory of the first great humanitarian action of the Swiss Red Cross, and the policy of neutrality of the Confederation. The very particular topic - one can even say single panorama - is the incommensurable misery of the wounded, famished and cold soldiers who passed the Swiss border on February 1st, 1871. After having carried out a great number of projects, the Castres painter thus associated with the idea of war, not the concept of victory, but the concept of pain. The selected framework: a sad landscape of winter gray-white, immense coverages of snow, made it possible to accentuate the carefully described human tragedy. It is in interminable columns that the soldiers cross the fields of view of the visitors….

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