The French win decisively at Mars-La-Tour

Dorozhand

Banned
What if the French won a decisive victory at the battle of Mars-La-Tour by, uh, not being stupid :D

could this have changed the outcome of the war, or were the rotting faults of the French administration so bad as to make the eventual result inevitable regardless?
 
Oh dear, again one of these threads "if they weren't stoopid, lol".

First, battles or events due to stupidity and incompetence only are rare. I mean a rarity close to inexistance.

Second, the french victory wasn't used correctly for later operations, so why Bazaine decided to not advance to Verdun but stand in Metz?

-Lack of ressources ; the french army was badly prepared for war even if Bazaine overestimated greatly the situation.

-While the battle itself was a victory, it was a blow for french army that had approximatly the same losses than Prussians. While these ones could count on reinforcment, it was less sure for French.

-Strategically, the french army was poorly supervised. Bazaine didn't trust others, being jealous of his military power and with a propension to tiss intrigues. Here, blame bonapartism and will to put loyalism to emperor before competence.

Furthermore, Bazaine trust in defense and fortifications. Here we could see an inability to distinguish tactic and operative levels. Basically, the general was busy with HIS army and considered others generals had to care about theirs and it wasn't his job.

If it helps, think of it as a Battle of Fontenoy with Prussians of 1870 being in the same position than French of 1709.

That said, Bazaine was used as a scapegoat by both republican and bonapartist (first to blame the empire, second to avoid the blame on the ex-emperor) and the umpreparation, the orders of Nappy have a great responsability on this.

Now, what if Bazain attacked the II prussian army? It would have probably crushed it. But here, I don't see a definitive advantage for the french army : the war could have lasted more, and Bazaine would have stand in Verdun instead of Metz, allowing other french armies to advance and "jail" themselves in some places.

The numerical advantage of Prussian, their better use of infrastructures, the disorder in France (as Blanquist tentative of weapon captures the 14), the poor managment of french army would several other changes to allow the war to be statelmate (without talking of a victory).
 
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