George Albert Bazaine-Hayter

Who was George Albert Bazaine-Hayter?

George Albert Bazaine-Hayter, known as Albert, was a French general, son of Pierre-Dominique Bazaine and nephew of Marshal Bazaine, on whose General Staff he served in the French intervention in Mexico and during the Franco-Prussian War. He described the French position in 1870: "We had no preparation: no horses to haul the artillery reserves and the bridge equipment, no tools to dig the trenches; our machine guns arrived directly from the factories and those using them were not properly trained in their use; our artillery was inferior in number, in effectiveness and in reach, in summary, we were powerless against the Prussian artillery. Our battle formations, already old in 1859, were old-fashioned and stuck in a rut; our procedures and regulations had not been reviewed for over 30 years; our orders, brave beyond doubt, were ignorant, without doctrine and without initiative. These were the causes of our defeats, of all our defeats".

Despite his familial connection with the unfortunate marshal, he had a successful military career of his own and co-wrote a number of works on infantry tactics and the use of attacking tactics in infantry doctrine.