Page 364 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

346 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

direction of Tonnerre and Auxerre.
And, indeed, the situation on that side was becoming serious. After the
defeat of d’Aurelle de Paladines in Orléans, Frederic Charles had taken the
offensive in the direction of Nevers and Bourges; the VII th Corps coming
from Metz had been positioned in Châtillon to cover the communications of
prince Frederic Charles and eventually help Werder in the case of an always
feared offensive by the French troops of the east; Belfort was attacked.
General Moltke believed that the French wanted once again to march on
Paris via Montargis and that was for a moment Gambetta’s intention; he
therefore ordered the VII th Corps to occupy Auxerre and strengthened it,
and he also removed the II nd Corps from the siege and sent it to join the VII
th . But the French project to act from Montargis on Fontainebleau, on
December 19, was put aside and Gambetta directed his thoughts to the east-
ern theatre of operations, where it was possible to force the enemy to raise the
siege of the Capital by threatening his communication lines with his home-
land.

THE GREAT FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN THE EAST

The plan of the operations. – On December 8, Garibaldi sent his Chief of
Staff, colonel Bordone, to Bordeaux to explain a plan to the minister of war,
Freycinet, according to which he believed that an efficacious action could be
undertaken in the east. At that moment Garibaldi had 16.000 men at his
orders. With those forces, duly strengthened by General Crémer’s troops that
had to be put at Garibaldi’s orders. By other Regiments of mobilisés and sup-
ported by a sufficient amount of artillery, so that the Army could total about
40.000 men, a system had to be established to cover the area from the plain
of Langres to the Vosges.
A newly established army, that had to be formed with all the best and
more solid troops of the French armies put into the field, supported by a for-
midable artillery, had to march north from Dijon, from Gray and from
Vesoul to reoccupy the region of the Vosges and cut the communications
among the Prussian armies operating between Paris and the Rhine. It had to
be expected that, as a consequence of that manoeuvre that recalled that of
Napoleon I in 1814, the Prussians would raise the siege of Paris and Belfort.