ABSTRACT
Historians have long asserted that French military reorganization between 1870 and 1890 was a notable success. The French military archives at Vincennes contain a different and altogether disquieting story—a tale of indecision, blundering, deliberate falsification, and colossal waste of resources in the two decades after the defeat of 1870. The retrospective comment of one historian that French military planners "looked to see what the Germans did and thus adopted the four-company battalion" may put the matter somewhat too simplistically. In educational and military matters, modernity acquired a distinctly teutonic aspect, and Germany was generally regarded as the tutor of Europe. The inferiority of the French infantry in training and tactics was particularly notable in comparison with German procedures. In the Great War, France was saved by improvisation more than by planning, by dirt trenches more than by concrete fortifications, by German faults more than by French virtues, and by the heroism of soldiers more than by the foresight of generals.
