Fortresses of the German Confederation

The eastern side of Germany has been additionally fortified by the erection of a strong citadel at Posen; and the southern was to be still further protected by the formidable works in course of construction at Brixen in the Tyrol.

Since the Kingdom of Württemberg had no engineering corps King William I appointed Moritz Karl Ernst von Prittwitz, a Prussian major, as the supervisor to oversee the building the fortresses.

Major Theodor von Hildebrandt was appointed to oversee the building of fortresses around Neu-Ulm on the Bavarian side of the Danube.

[2][better source needed] At the Treaty of Paris in 1815 the four victorious powers Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia and the Russian Empire named the cities Mainz, Luxembourg and Landau to fortresses of the German Confederation on 3 November 1815.

The Federal Matriculation Fund (Bundesmatrikularkasse) was established for the maintenance of the fortresses, financed by fees of the member states and 60 million francs of French reparations.

On 3 March 1831 the Federal Assembly defined that the wartime crew should have a strength of 4,000 Bavarians to be completed by 2,300 men of the reserve division.

The construction for a fortress around Landau had begun in 1688 according to plans of Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban and was continued in the 18th century.

After long-winded negotiations he succeeded in convincing the King of Bavaria in August 1838, and in 1839 the Austrian attorney of the Federal Military Commission, of the plans.

But a definite decree about the construction of the federal fortresses of Rastatt and Ulm only was made under the impact of the Rhine crisis.

The main fortress surrounded the city of Baden and consisted of three forts (Ludwigfeste, Leopoldfeste and Friedrichfeste), which could be defended independently.

The focus of the defensive front laid in the west, south and east parts, while the north side was covered by the terrain.

It was built as one of the biggest fortresses in Europe under the administration of the Prussian construction manager Moritz Karl Ernst von Prittwitz und Gaffron.

It surrounded the cities of Ulm in Württemberg and Neu-Ulm in Bavaria and had 16 detached forts and an extensive moat system.

Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and the neighbouring States of the Confederation would then, under cover of those fortresses, keep the enemy in check for a time, until further German reinforcements could be summoned.

Its especial importance consists in the fact that it gave greater strength to what was thought to be the almost impregnable position of Landau-Germersheim, and that it flanked every passage of the Rhine on the Alsace side.

[5] Ulm with magnificent strategic position, no less than the technical completion of its works, place it beyond a par with any other fortress in Europe (excepting perhaps Verona).

Ulm, moreover, had an immense entrenched camp, capable of holding 100,000 men; an army concentrated there could take the offensive in many directions.

[6] Strategically, Ingolstadt was not so well placed as Ulm; it was, however, a second string for a German a bow, as it would have to be taken to open the path to the Danube.

Of these, six—Wesel, Cologne, Coblenz, Mainz, Germersheim, and Landau, were the real Rhine fortresses; the remaining three — Luxemburg and Saarlouis in the South, and Jülich in the North of the German Rhineland, shelter it in some measure against the French, Belgian, and Dutch frontier.

The grouping of these fortresses, and the fact that the first named places are much stronger than the latter, shows that the German system of fortification was founded on quite different principles than that of the French in the north east.

[8] This object had been attained by the erection of the chief fortresses on the Rhine: Cologne, Coblenz, Mainz, and Germersheim, as great entrenched camps.

There Landau and Germersheim close the valley of the Rhine on the left hand completely on the Strasbourg side, as on this point 100,000 men could easily have held their own for a long time against very superior numbers.

But by this date no great strategic importance was attached to Luxemburg, by the German artillery officer who composed the report in the German Quarterly Review, because of its somewhat isolated position, and because, despite its strength, by 1859 it was rather outdated, and its strategic position was neutralized by the proximity of the French fortresses of Thionville, Metz, Verdun, Longwy, and Montmédy.

[11] A series of articles have recently appeared in the German Quarterly Review, from the pen of a Prussian Artillery Officer, to show the relative strength of France and Germany in the eventuality of a great European war.

These articles have created considerable sensation in all military circles on the Continent, and have just been reprinted in the shape of a pamphlet by Cotta, the eminent publisher at Stuttgart.