The Battle of Le Mans is a battle between German and French troops during the Franco-Prussian War . It can be said that with the defeat in this battle, the French lost Western France .
| Battle of Le Mans | |||
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| Main Conflict: Franco-Prussian War | |||
 The Battle of Le Mans (artist ) | |||
| date | January 10 - January 12, 1871 | ||
| A place | Le Mans , France | ||
| Total | Victory of Prussia. | ||
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(artist )
After the capture of Orleans, Friedrich Karl Nikolai (Prince of Prussia) moved his troops further west. Antoine Chanzi, a French general, stationed approximately 150,000 soldiers. His troops were in Le Mans. Most of the pre-war professional French soldiers were already defeated at Sedan , captured at Metz or besieged in Paris . Therefore, the Shanzi army was mainly from poorly trained reservists, as well as hastily drafted civilians, who, moreover, were armed with outdated weapons (the entire army had only 4000 rifles, many of them loaded from the muzzle). Despite the large numerical superiority, the Shanzi army could not resist the battle-hardened German army. Friedrich Karl knew about this, therefore, without hesitation, fought the enemy.
(drawing from the article " Le Mans "
" Military Encyclopedia of Sytin ")
The French were demoralized and poorly equipped. Almost all the ammunition of the French army was saturated with rain and snow . Chanzee, seeing the sad example of Metz and Paris, did not want to hide behind the walls of the city and ordered to dig trenches in front of Le Mans. The battle began with an attack by German troops on the left flank of the French. An attempt to counterattack the French on the left flank failed. German artillery stopped the counterattack, and at that time the Germans dealt a strong blow to the right flank of the French army. Shanzi troops began to retreat randomly. The French commanders tried to stop the panic retreat, but failed.
The battle ended in disaster for France. Now almost all of Western France was under German control. And despite the fact that Shanzi still had a lot of soldiers, they were already completely incompetent and depressed.