Terrible Swift Sword (52 page)

While traveling together, Sheridan and Bismarck became friends. Sheridan admired the very qualities in Bismarck that Grant, Sherman, and others had praised in Sheridan: efficiency, practicality, energy, and the ability to work hard. They swapped hunting stories—Sheridan describing his expeditions in the Rocky Mountains, and Bismarck, his hunting trips in Finland.

Their friendship gave them the liberty of frankness. After the German cavalry debacle at Gravelotte, Sheridan bluntly told Bismarck, “Your infantry is the best in
the world, but it was wrong of your generals to advance their cavalry as they did.” In his
Personal Memoirs
, Sheridan expressed surprise that the general who ordered the cavalry attack was not sacked.
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The Germans were besieging a French army in the fortress at Metz when a second French army attempted to march to its relief. It was also surrounded, at Sedan. Near Sedan, Sheridan watched the Germans smash a French cavalry attack and drive the French army back to its trenches. A courier emerged under a white flag, bearing a note from the French emperor to King William: “Not having been able to die in the midst of my troops, there is nothing left me but to place my sword in your Majesty's hands.”

The next day, September 2, Sheridan watched as Napoleon III rode out of Sedan in a landau and met Bismarck at a cottage a mile from Donchery. After an hour's discussion, the emperor agreed to surrender. The formal ceremony was held at Chateau Bellevue, where Sheridan watched Prince Frederick Charles, who had shared his stale bread, distribute a basketful of Iron Crosses to officers.
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Napoleon's capitulation rang down the curtain on France's Second Empire, but the fighting did not end. The besieged army at Metz held out until the end of October. Tens of thousands of other French troops who had been fighting in the provinces raced to defend Paris. King William's armies surrounded the capital with 240,000 troops. Four months of starvation and shelling lay ahead before the capital surrendered on January 28, 1871.
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MEANWHILE, FRENCH GUERRILL AS—known as
francs-tireurs
, or free shooters—ambushed German patrols and supply trains, sniped at them in villages, and murdered soldiers. This was a new phenomenon for the Prussians, and they were at a loss over how to address it; in their experience, armies fought one another, while civilians watched from the sidelines. The Prussians' frustration spilled over one night at a dinner attended by Sheridan, Bismarck, and members of the Prussian high command.

When Sheridan's opinion was sought, he surprised his hosts by asserting that civilians should be roughly handled during wartime. During the American Civil War, Prussian observers had deplored the mass casualties and the tactical operations aimed at civilian property. But Sheridan was now forcefully advocating the targeting of noncombatants' belongings. “The people must be left nothing but their eyes to weep with after the war,” Sheridan told them.

Dr. Busch wrote that Sheridan told his dinner audience, “The proper strategy consists in the first place in inflicting as telling blows as possible upon the enemy's army, and then in causing the inhabitants so much suffering that they must long for peace, and for their government to demand it.” Hang the insurgents and burn their villages, he advised.

Sheridan's words took many of his listeners aback; Busch thought them “somewhat heartless . . . . but perhaps worthy of consideration.” They made sense, however, to Bismarck, who wanted a quick end to the war, fearing that if it continued for too long, France might rally and even find allies. He later told Dr. Busch, “The more Frenchmen suffered from the war the greater would be the number of those who would long for peace, whatever our conditions might be.”

Bismarck adopted punitive measures against villages and suspected
francs-tireurs
. Henceforth, German troops, when fired upon, should “shoot down every male inhabitant” in that village. When reports reached Bismarck that German prisoners were being tortured and executed, he exhorted the army to hang or shoot all suspected
francs-tireurs
and to burn the villages that sheltered them—just as Sheridan had recommended. At Hericourt, a Prussian patrol burned the town after partisans fired on them. Near Orleans, three villages were reduced to ashes after guerrillas carried out ambushes and cut German telegraph wires. There should be “no laziness in killing,” Bismarck exhorted.
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AFTER SPENDING SEVERAL WEEKS with Bismarck and the Prussian army command, Sheridan distilled his experiences in a letter to President Grant. He confessed to having “my imagination clipped” after observing the armies at Gravelotte and Sedan and the “many errors” he had seen committed by trained European troops.

“The men engaged on both sides were so scattered that it looked like thousands of men engaged in a deadly skirmish without any regard to lines, or formations,” Sheridan told Grant. The French soldiers fought poorly. “I must confess to having seen some of the ‘
tallest'
running at Sedan I have ever witnessed,” he wrote. “All my boyhood fancies of the soldiers of the great Napoleon have been dissipated, or else the soldiers of the ‘little Corporal' have lost their élan in the pampered parade soldiers of the man of Destiny.”

Sheridan admired the Germans' professionalism and fighting spirit—and was especially impressed by the infantrymen, who were “as fine as I ever saw, the men young and hardy in appearance, and marching always with an elastic stride.” In his
Personal Memoirs
, Sheridan wrote that the German infantrymen left open intervals between files, “especially intended to give room for a peculiar swinging gait, with which the men seemed to urge themselves over the ground with ease and rapidity.”

But he criticized the Germans' use of cavalry. Besides deploring the hopeless attack at Gravelotte, he sounded much as he had during his contretemps with General George Meade over the Cavalry Corps's role in the Overland Campaign: the Prussians had used their mounted forces to guard flanks and supply trains rather than as an independent force to destroy the French cavalry and communications lines.

American troops would have performed as well as the Germans under similar conditions, Sheridan said. “I can but leave to conjecture how the Germans would have gotten along . . . . through the swamps and quicksands of northern Virginia.” “There is nothing to be learned here professionally,” Sheridan told Grant, “but it is a satisfaction that such is the case. There is much however which Europeans could learn from us.”
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SHERIDAN AND FORSYTH EMBARKED on a grand tour of Europe. In Brussels, they paid respects to the Belgian king and queen. In Vienna, they dined with the prime ministers of Austria and Hungary. In Constantinople, they observed the women of the sultan's harem promenading in carriages on the esplanade. When the harem passed Sheridan and Forsyth, some women engaged in “a mild flirtation”—waving amber beads and “throwing us coquettish kisses.” The sultan permitted Sheridan to inspect some of his troops during a review.
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Grant's letter of introduction gave Sheridan entrée to the king and queen of Greece and to Victor Emmanuel, the king of Italy, who happened to be an avid hunter. He invited Sheridan to hunt in the royal game preserve. After shooting buffalo on the Great Plains, Sheridan found Victor Emmanuel's preserve to be quite tame; from a stand, he killed four deer at fifteen paces. Urged to slaughter more, Sheridan, not wishing to disappoint his host, racked up seven more kills.

After visits to Milan, Geneva, Nice, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, Sheridan and Forsyth reached Paris in time to watch the Germans' triumphal entry into the capital, where the temporary government that succeeded Napoleon III had finally capitulated. The war, which claimed 320,000 lives on both sides, resulted in a peace treaty requiring France to forfeit Alsace-Lorraine, arousing intense resentment toward Germany. The Germans then withdrew—to crown King William I as emperor of a united Germany—and Paris's citizens revolted, sweeping away the conservative National Assembly and establishing the Paris Commune.

Sheridan and Forsyth left Paris in early March 1871 and visited England, Scotland, and Sheridan's ancestral home, Ireland. By then, other US Army generals had come to France to observe the war; they included Horatio Wright, Ambrose Burnside, and William Hazen.
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Sheridan returned to the United States on May 24, 1871, ten months after beginning his leave of absence.
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UPON RETURNING TO CHICAGO, Sheridan learned that his brother Michael and his staff surgeon, Morris Asche, had organized a hunting expedition to the Great Plains in September and October for a glittering assembly of press moguls and business tycoons. They included James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the
New York Herald
; Charles Wilson, publisher of the
Chicago Evening Journal
; Anson Stager,
president of Western Electric; Colonel Daniel H. Rucker, the army's assistant quartermaster general and Sheridan's future father-in-law; and New York financier Leonard Jerome, the future grandfather of Winston Churchill.
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Like the African safaris that would one day be all the rage for millionaires, celebrities, and aristocrats, buffalo hunts attracted the well-heeled adventurers of the 1870s. Sheridan's mission was to lead his guests to plentiful buffalo, deer, and antelope and to make sure that they killed a satisfactory number. But he knew it was just as important that his “tourists” also be entertained and sumptuously wined and dined.

For the makings of the celebratory feasts to be enjoyed along the way, sixteen wagons were filled with food, tents, supplies, and liquor, with one wagon used solely for hauling ice. The passengers, and their cooks, assistants, and baggage, rode in three army ambulances.
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For entertainment, Sheridan sent for his favorite scout, twenty-five-year-old William Cody, inspiring what would one day become known as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Sheridan had made Cody's acquaintance in Kansas three years earlier, when Cody rode sixty-five miles through Indian-controlled territory, from Fort Larned to Fort Hays, to deliver an important dispatch to Sheridan. The message required an order to be delivered immediately to Fort Dodge, ninety-five miles away. When the scouts at Fort Hays declined the dangerous mission through Indian country, Cody volunteered. After resting four to five hours, he rode to Fort Dodge. There, after resting six hours, he returned to Fort Larned with more messages, then rode back to Fort Hays, covering 350 miles in less than sixty hours. Impressed by Cody's fearlessness and stamina, Sheridan hired him as a scout for the 5th Cavalry. In just one year, Cody fought in nine battles with Indians—more action than most soldiers saw during a career on the plains—and became chief scout.
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Eager to please his mentor, Cody was decked out in light buckskins and a sombrero and riding a snow-white horse when he greeted Sheridan and his guests at Fort McPherson, Nebraska. Before the entourage left the fort, the 5th Cavalry staged a review. Then, the caravan, with a one-hundred-man cavalry escort, set out for Fort Hays.
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All day long, the guests and their escorts slaughtered buffalo and whatever other game animals crossed their paths. Whenever a buffalo was killed, the party opened a bottle of champagne and toasted the successful hunter. At night, the hunters gathered around a blazing fire on the prairie, and Cody regaled the visitors with exciting stories about fighting the Indians. He advised them to take a shot of bourbon before breakfast, as he said Westerners did.

The tipsy, trigger-happy visitors littered the plains between Fort McPherson and Fort Hays with six hundred buffalo carcasses—taking the tongues and humps and
leaving the rest to rot—along with the remains of hundreds of antelope, elk, and wild turkeys, and empty champagne bottles. Sheridan, an excellent shot and skilled hunter, bagged his share of game while drawing rough maps and sketching land features in his notebook. The guests returned home with warm feelings for Sheridan and the army—sentiments that would later translate into pro-army editorials and business contracts.
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THE SUCCESSFUL FALL 1871 hunt became the template for a more ambitious expedition. President Grant asked Sheridan to accompany Russia's Grand Duke Alexis, the twenty-one-year-old third son of Czar Alexander II, on another expedition. Alexis was on a goodwill tour of the United States, and Grant wished to show his gratitude for the czar's support of the Union during the Civil War. In January 1872, Sheridan and his staff met the grand duke and his retinue at Omaha's railroad station. From Omaha, the hunting party traveled west in high style on a special Union Pacific Railroad train to North Platte, Nebraska.

Sheridan had enlisted the commanders of the departments of the Platte and the Missouri to provide intelligence and supplies for the expedition. The meticulous planning resembled the preparations for a military campaign. Brigadier General John Pope, commander of the Department of the Missouri, monitored the southern buffalo herds' movements and telegraphed Sheridan with daily updates. Colonel Forsyth was in charge of mess arrangements, while Major General Edward O. C. Ord, commander of the Department of the Platte, converted Omaha Barracks into a supply depot for the hunt. Hundreds of army personnel were assigned to making sure the grand duke was well fed and entertained—and that he killed a buffalo.

Cody had been wildly popular with the guests of the previous hunting party, and so Sheridan arranged for him and one hundred Brule Sioux from Spotted Tail's band to be on hand. Another addition to the hunting party was Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, the army's flamboyant war hero and Indian fighter.
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