In Gravelotte, a museum revisits a lesser-known war that reshaped Europe

Over the past several years, I’ve made about a dozen reporting trips to France, many involving battlefields, cemeteries and other sites connected to American participation in the two world wars.

Driving home to Germany on the Autoroute de l’Est, I would occasionally notice a tourist sign referring to another conflict, the Franco-Prussian War. Recently, I decided to stop and find out more about this epic engagement, which forged modern Germany.

A short distance from the highway, in the village of Gravelotte about 6 miles west of Metz, the Museum of the War of 1870 and the Annexation tells the story of a conflict whose consequences transformed Europe.

The United States remained neutral in the war, but for Americans, the museum offers some fascinating context providing the backstory to the twin European cataclysms the following century in which their country participated.

An armed horseman holds a gun to a man’s head in a detail from “A Confrontation,” an 1886 painting by French artist Paul-Emile Boutigny displayed at the Museum of the War of 1870 and the Annexation in Gravelotte, France. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)

Gravelotte was at the center of the fighting during the Franco-Prussian War. As the museum explains, more than 200,000 troops took part in the Battle of Gravelotte-St. Privat on Aug. 18, 1870, with about 40,000 killed, wounded or missing.

The carnage left such an impression in France that it entered the language. “Ca tombe comme a Gravelotte,” which roughly translates to, “It’s coming down like at Gravelotte,” became an expression for heavy rain, a barrage of projectiles or a succession of misfortunes.

The scale of violence is difficult to miss inside the museum. Among its most striking exhibits are surviving fragments of the Panorama of Rezonville, an enormous painting by French artists Edouard Detaille and Alphonse de Neuville depicting another battle fought nearby two days before Gravelotte.

Fragments of the Panorama of Rezonville — a painting by French artists Edouard Detaille and Alphonse de Neuville, which depicts a battle of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 — are displayed at the Museum of the War of 1870 and the Annexation in Gravelotte, France. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)

An information panel at the Museum of the War of 1870 and the Annexation in Gravelotte, France, describes how African soldiers fought for France during the war. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)

The original panorama stretched more than 100 yards and was displayed in the late 19th century in a circular setting intended to immerse spectators in the battle. It was later cut into pieces.

At Gravelotte, fragments are displayed around an oval room, surrounding visitors with realistic images of exhausted soldiers, horses and the dead and wounded. Of everything I saw in the museum, it came closest to conveying the human scale of the fighting.

Various uniforms, weapons, artworks, documents and other related objects fill the roughly 10,000 square feet of permanent exhibition space. And there is a lot to read.

This isn’t a museum filled with interactive displays, but the information panels, presented in English, French and German, cover much more than battlefield tactics.

I was particularly interested in sections dealing with African troops who fought for France and the difficulties faced by foreign journalists trying to cover the conflict.

British and American correspondents reported from the war, sometimes at considerable risk. A New York Tribune correspondent in Metz was arrested with other journalists in August 1870 on suspicion of being a Prussian spy, threatened with death by a French general and ultimately ordered out of the country.

The museum also follows what happened after the fighting stopped.

Prussia’s victory helped bring about the unification of Germany, with the German Empire proclaimed at Versailles in January 1871. France was forced to cede Alsace and part of Lorraine, including Metz, to the new empire.

The grave of a French soldier who fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 is located in the Franco-German military cemetery, opposite the Museum of the War of 1870 and the Annexation in Gravelotte, France. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)

The museum examines how German rule transformed the region politically, culturally and physically until the territory reverted to French rule after World War I.

Those consequences are what make this relatively obscure war particularly interesting. The conflict helped create a powerful unified Germany in the center of Europe and left France embittered by the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.

It also demonstrated features of warfare that would become grimly familiar in the next century: mass armies moved by rail, increasingly lethal rifles and artillery, and casualties on an enormous scale.

There’s more to discover outside the museum. Opposite the building stands the Hall of Remembrance, a German memorial inaugurated by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1905 and surrounded by a Franco-German military cemetery.

From there, visitors can walk through the former battlefield, where monuments and plaques mark positions and commemorate the soldiers who fought here.

For Americans traveling through this corner of France in search of the more familiar battlefields of 1914-18 or 1939-45, Gravelotte offers something different: a look at an earlier war whose traces were still shaping Europe when those larger catastrophes unfolded.

Nineteenth-century military uniforms are displayed at the Museum of the War of 1870 and the Annexation in Gravelotte, France. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)

On the QT

Address: 11 Rue de Metz, 57130 Gravelotte, France

Hours: Open February 7 to December 13. Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Costs: Adults 7 euros, reduced tariff 5 euros, free for children 12 and under and people with reduced mobility and their accompanying person.

Information: Phone: +33 3 87 33 69 40; E-mail: musee.1870@culture.moselle.fr; Online: https://moselle-culture.fr/site/musee-de-la-guerre-de-1870-et-de-lannexion