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Testimony of the Witnesses - "There is nothing to be learned here professionally."
When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, in the summer of
that year, President U.S. Grant asked Lt. Gen. Phil Sheridan if he would serve
as the official American observer during the war.
Sheridan
readily agreed, and indicated that he would like to observe the operations of
the Prussian Army. Receiving the
president’s assent on July 25th, two days later Sheridan sailed for Europe. By mid-August he was in the field, hobnobbing
with the likes of King Wilhelm of Prussia (who had been at Waterloo, and thus could
always top anyone’s war stories), Otto von Bismarck, and the great Helmut von
Moltke. Sheridan saw much of the war, including the
Battle of Gravelotte (August 18, 1870), which the Prussians seized after a
desperate fight, sealing the French Army in Metz in the decisive action of the war. In January of 1871, Sheridan accompanied the Prussians when they entered
Paris.
After the war Sheridan
wrote a report for Grant, reporting "There is nothing to be learned here
professionally," a statement on which he elaborated in his Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan
(New York: 1888), writing,
Following the operations of the German
armies from the battle of Gravelotte to the siege of Paris, I may, in
conclusion, say that I saw no new military principles developed, whether of
strategy or grand tactics, the movements of the different armies and corps
being dictated and governed by the same general laws that have so long
obtained, simplicity of combination and manoeuvre, and the concentration of a
numerically superior force at the vital point.
Apparently
"Little Phil" was so busy observing the war that he failed to notice
the little things that made for the Prussian-German victory, such as the
general staff system, with its detailed and constantly updated mobilization and
deployment plans and railroad section, its conscription-based compulsory
military service system, with active, reserve, and Landwehr components, and so forth, which permitted them to defeat
the more experienced, veteran long-service professional French Army, which
lacked these.
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