The Second Weltkrieg: the Return to France
On November the 30th, under cover of heavy rain, the Imperial First Army, six divisions strong, landed on the undefended beaches of Marseille.
Within hours they were in control of the city and its vital harbour. The Empire had returned to France.
With a toehold on the mainland, the First Army rapidly spit into smaller corps which spread out in every possible direction in order to capture as much territory as possible before the Commune was able to react. Behind them flowed all the reinforcements that the Empire could possibly commit to battle.
The Empire could not match the Commune in numbers so commanders were ordered to push as hard as possible until they encountered significant resistance, at which point they were to dig in. With winter fast approaching, the weather would favour the defenders.
By Christmas, the area of France liberated had grown significantly - with Imperial forces threatening the key industrial centre of Lyon and having joined up with Italian Forces in Toulon.
But the Germans were swiftly sweeping south. It was obvious to everyone that the only chance the Empire had was to seize enough of southern France to give it a strong hand at the post-war bargaining table with Germany. In order for this strategy to succeed, Lyon had to be prevented from falling into German hands.
So, on New Year’s Eve, the First Army launched a massive assault on Lyon with seven divisions - the largest force of Imperial troops on the entire continent.
Following the meeting of Imperial and German lines just south of Vichy in the new year - effectively creating an immense pocket of Commune troops to the east of Lyon - it was decided that, despite the winter weather, a breakout to the west had to be attempted if there was to be any chance of reaching Bordeaux before the Germans. On the 5th of January the 37th Corps, consisting of five divisions under General Noque, launched an assault on Toulouse. What would later be called the Breakout had begun.
Just over a week later, with the aid of Italian troops Toulouse fell, opening the way to the west. At the same time, bitter urban fighting continued to rage in Lyon to the north while successive joint French-Italian attacks failed to capture Avignon.
In the west the Italians took advantage of a gap in the lines to push into Agen while the 37th Corps launched an attack on the Communard soldiers defending Tulle.
However, the focus of everyone would remain on Lyon where brutal urban fighting, in freezing conditions, was resulting in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war - with many of the thousands of casualties being civilians. Several volumes have been dedicated to the Battle of Lyon - covering such events from the siege of the Cathedral to the levelling of the Basilica. While there is not sufficient space here to cover the battle in detail, suffice it to say that, prior to the battle, the city had a population estimated at 600,000 including refugees and contained some of the finest examples of renaissance architecture in southern France. After the battle, the civilian population was 200,000 and much of the city had been reduced to rubble.
This massive, on-going tragedy, however, was about to be overshadowed by the events of the 24th to the 26th.
The 37th Corps, having been bested in the mountainous terrain of Tulle, began by launching a massive offensive against Perigeux. With Communard troops drawn into the battle, a division of mechanised cavalry exploited a gap in the Commune’s lines to capture the undefended city of Bordeaux - forcing the Commune’s government to flee the city just as they had fled Paris a few months earlier.
Buoyed by their success, the cavalry pushed further, capturing the minor port of La Rochelle, before coming under heavy attack and being forced to retreat to Bordeaux.
Though the cavalry defending Bordeaux were able to beat off an attempt to dislodge them, the Italian troops guarding the narrow corridor leading to the city were coming under fierce pressure from the larger Communard forces.
Perhaps critically, the generals were distracted from the increasingly precarious position of the forces holding Bordeaux by the news on the 30th that, after a month of bitter fighting, Lyon had fallen to the forces of the Empire.
However, just a day later, disaster struck. The Italians defending the Agen corridor were overrun by the Communards, leaving 15,000 Imperial soldiers trapped in Bordeaux and outnumbered and surrounded on all sides.
Two days later, after a valiant last stand, the defenders of Bordeaux were overrun and the survivors forced to surrender. So ferocious was the fighting, and so strong was the determination on both sides to take no prisoners, that, of the 15,000 Imperial soldiers who had entered Bordeaux, only 5,000 would be left alive to face captivity.