Active Service
The Imperial Guard served with distinction in both the Crimean War and the Second Italian War of Independence of 1859, It did not participate in the Mexican Expedition of 1863-67 but remained on garrison duty in Paris. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 the Imperial Guard was present at the battles of Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte-St. Privat and the Siege of Metz. Although an elite corps which now numbered over 20,000, the Guard did not perform up to expectations in 1870. This was mainly due to poor judgement on behalf of its commanders, who at Mars-la-Tour committed guard units piecemeal rather than as than as a single entity in the tradition of the First Empire. At St. Privat two days later, the Guard was held back from battle by General Charles Bourbaki, to the bitterness of the line troops in the front line.
Read more about this topic: Imperial Guard (Napoleon III)
Famous quotes containing the words active and/or service:
“Things happen to us, all the time. It was like that for a century, and it is again. It’s not like here: People always do things, because you are born with it; you are brought up in this spirit, the active approach to life: “Stand up and go.” We were not. We were always passive in our lives.”
—Natasha Dudinska (b. c. 1967)
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)