The Battle of Amiens, also known as the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, was fought on 27 November 1870 between French and Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). It ended in a Prussian victory, forcing the French to retreat and allowing the Prussians to capture Amiens, France.
Background
After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War on 19 July 1870, the Prussian Army and the armies of its allies — the other states of the North German Confederation and the independent states in southern Germany — scored a series of victories over the French Army in eastern France. These culminated in the Battle of Sedan and the Siege of Metz. At Sedan, German forces encircled and destroyed the French Army of Châlons on 1–2 September 1870 and captured Emperor Napoleon III, prompting a Government of National Defense to form in Paris on 4 September 1870 and declare an end to the Second French Empire and the foundation of the French Third Republic. The capitulation of Metz on 27 October 1870 after a 70-day siege resulted in the annihilation of the French Army of the Rhine and completed the defeat of the Second Empire's army. The Government of National Defense vowed to raise a new army for the Third Republic and fight on.
Colonel Jean-Joseph Farre, was present at Metz but escaped when Metz surrendered and made his services available to the Government of National Defense, which appointed him military governor of Lille in the north of France. At Lille, he set to work raising units for a new French army in northern France. By the time Général de division Charles-Denis Bourbaki, the general-in-chief of the northern region, arrived to take command of the new army, named the Army of the North, Farre had raised 14 battalions of troops and six artillery batteries. Bourbaki and Farre continued to expand and train the army; promoted to général de brigade on 31 October 1870, Farre became its provisional commander — pending the arrival of a more senior officer to take command — when Bourbaki transferred to the Armée de l'Est at Rouen on 10 November 1870. The French hoped that the new Army of the North could advance successfully on Beauvais.
Among the German forces freed up by the capitulation of Metz was the Prussian First Army, a force of 43,000 men and 180 guns under the command of Generalleutnant Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel. In early November 1870, Manteuffel received orders from the Prussian Army chief of staff Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, to move northwestward into northern France, marching through the Oise and the Somme between Compiègne and Saint-Quentin, and to occupy Amiens and then march towards Rouen in order to strengthen the defenses along the northern flank of the German forces that had begun the Siege of Paris in September 1870. The Prussian staff believed that all the French troops in northern France were under the command of Bourbaki and formed a single, unified army covering the railroad which connected Rouen, Amiens, and Lille — in particular the section from Rouen to Amiens —with its right at Rouen, its center at Amiens, and its left at Lille.
Opening moves
Manteuffel's army halted at Rheims on 9 November 1870, but resumed its advance on 17 November, reaching Soissons on 19 November and Compiègne on 21 November. On 22 November 1870, Manteuffel sent a reconnaissance force forward which pushed as far as the Gentelles Wood near Amiens and reported that Bourbaki was present at Amiens. Bourbaki had, in fact, spent the previous day there before heading for Rouen. The Prussians had learned from the newspapers that Bourbaki had been relieved of his command of the Army of the North, but apparently believed that he would remain in command of it at least until the arrival of his successor, rather than turn over provisional command of the army to the relatively junior Farre. The Prussians supposed that, in his journey from Lille to Amiens and from Amiens to Rouen, Bourbaki had no other goal than to bring the left and right wings of his supposedly unified army together to concentrate around Amiens at the center of the line the Prussians thought he was maintaining in northern France. Leaving behind the 4th Brigade (under Generalmajor Karl von Zglinitzki) of the I Corps's 2nd Division to begin a siege of the French fortress at La Fère on 25 November, and without waiting for the rest of the 1st Army to concentrate its forces fully along the line of the Oise, Manteuffel decided to attack what he thought was Bourbaki's concentration of the Army of the North at Amiens with a portion of the 1st Army totaling 40,000 men. It consisted of the Prussian VIII Corps, a portion of the Prussian I Corps, a cavalry division, and 180 artillery pieces.