The notion that the fortress building program was
drawing money away from the regular army is a faulty one; there is no evidence to
support this. Also, one should not confuse the French reserves of the early
Third Republic with those of the late Second Empire. Drawing upon
the lessons of the Franco-Prussian War and the poor performance of
the garde mobile, the law of 1872 addressed the quality of the
reserves. Realizing that reserves were the cheapest way of
maintaining a strong military, the law required that after five
years active service, conscripts enter the reserve, where they would
be required to do about two months service per year (past 30,
reservists were required to provide a months service). There would
be no shortage in the French army of NCOs if one included the
reservists (it was only post-1890 that prejudice against the
reserves became more prominent). Remember that revenge is an
underlying factor behind this war, this ran strong within the French
army from the highest General down to the lowliest private, the prejudice that
French troops would be less motivated than the German troops stems from hindsight to 1940, and not the late 1880s when there was a revival of French militarism and innovations comparable to the Napoleonic period.
In OTL they were itching for a war of revenge with Germany and combined with the improvements in the French army in the years following 1871 would have made for a deadly combination against a German army that had become complacent, more backward in its thinking. More on this below.
Furthermore, given the Third Republic's mania for public
education, the differences in schooling between the soldiers of both
armies would not have been all that great by the late 1880s.
On the administrative side, there existed great divisions,
surrounding the forcing out of Armold von Kameke from the War
Ministry, which only served to make worse the bitter rivalries that
had developed from the mid-1870s between the infantry, cavalry and
artillery (and, in the latter case, within its own arm).
The German army of the 1870s-80s was mired in the past concerning
its ideas when it came to the battlefield, which is why general
trends cannot be projected from 1864-71 to the mid- to late- 1880s.
The German army's history during this period was not a steady climb
to ever increasing efficency - anything but. In fact, the greatest
improvements in the German army came post-1906, not before.
Technopobic senior officers dominated all three branches, managing
to write their positively atavistic doctrines into the regulations.
Drawing the wrong lesson from St. Privat, the infantry was to attack
in massed company and battalion columns because management was
deemed easiest in such formations - of course, they also provided
un-missable targets in the age of repeating rifles; compounding the
problem, the Germans drew the wrong lessons from Mars-la-Tour, with
the infantry adopting the three wave tactics of the previous
century
The artillery situation in the German army was equally dismal and
very divided. The field artillery, still basking in the glory of
Sedan (a situation which was unlikely to happen again) consumed
virtually all the funding to the detriment of the heavy artillery.
Thoughtful officers who pointed to the lesson of Plevna were simply
disregarded or shunted off into perhaps the greatest dead end in the
German army of the time - the heavy artillery, relegated to
fortresses. The belief that the Germans would have enjoyed an
advantage in heavy artillery at the time of Boulanger is a faulty one, given it was
probably the most underfunded branch of the German army.
the Germans were living in the past - and many of them were
accepting of this based upon a chimera. One German military writer,
while noting that Germany's wealthy neighbors may have superior
equipment, weapons, technical education, and an armor of
fortresses ... their officer corps could not match Germany's in
warlike intelligence, independence, initiative and moral strength -
this clearly is a recipe for slaughter. German casualties likely
would have been disastrously high in a war with France at the time
of Boulanger, and not everyone in the German army was blind to this.
Von der Goltz, a thoughtful officer, observed the French maneuvers of
1878 for the General Staff and left impressed by how modern the
French army appeared, compared to when he had last seen it in 1870. He mused
that the tendency of the winner in a war to grow complacent has
overtaken the German army and realized that what had succeeded in
1870 was unlikely to work again - the French army was more up to
date than the German army; eight years later, French observers at
the German manuevers came to exactly the same conclusion as von der
Goltz had. Even Waldersee, who was the proponent of the preemptive
strike against France should Boulanger stage a successful coup,
admitted there were serious problems in the German army. There was
an inclination to return to antiquated battle formations (the
cavalry was perfecting Frederickian tactics) and, as he stated, the
more distance there is between us and our last war, the more
backward our judgement has become.
The French had a very good chance of defeating Germany at the time
of the Boulanger Crisis. And the result of a Franco-Prussian War in
1889-90 would have more likely resulted in a resounding French victory.
Furthermore, The German army at the time of Boulanger was hardly an unbeatable one. At its senior uniformed level, it was a virtual gerontocracy,
with 18 rather elderly corps commanders whom the aged Kaiser Wilhelm
refused to retire out of personal affection. The average age was 64
but a few were in their 70s, the oldest being 76 (the youngest was
49); they largely were averse to field service ( for obvious
reasons) and the French were well aware of this.