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, placed it in my hands, and never again alluded to the subject.