Armée de l'Est

The Armée de l'Est (Army of the East; German - Ostarmee; also Second Loire Army; nicknamed the Bourbaki armee, after its first commander General Charles Denis Sauter Bourbaki) was a French army which took part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. It was formed towards the end of the war out of the remains of the Loire Army, paramilitaries (Freischärlern) and new recruits.

History
The task of the army should be the relief of the besieged fortress of Belfort and the interruption of the German supply lines. However, it suffered a defeat at Belfort in the battle of the Lisaine. The retreat of the South went chaotically and slowly, the army was surrounded in the area of Pontarlier, close to the Swiss border.

General Bourbaki was relieved of his duties and made a suicide attempt. The new General Justin Clinchant asked in Switzerland for military asylum. From 1 to 3 February 1871 87,000 men transgressed at Les Verrières the Swiss–French border and were interned for six weeks. The Swiss General Hans Herzog (1819–1894), Swiss general during the border occupation 1870–71, oversaw the internment of the defeated Bourbaki army. The transition of the Bourbakiarmee is shown on the Bourbaki Panorama in Lucerne.

Although General Herzog had as best he could placed his troop contingents (of the already partly demobilized army) reassigned to the places where the French were crossing the border, these units probably would have had little chance against the German pursuers of the French, led by the German General Edwin von Manteuffel. And there was theoretically quite a motive for such an attack: Prussia had waived his rights for Neuenburg in the Neuenburgerhandel in 1856/57 after mediation by the European powers. Neuenburg, which was where the Bourbaki troops entered Switzerland, had been a Prussian principality until 1857.

The inclusion of 87,000 by hunger and cold drawn soldiers (3% of the then Swiss population), which had to be housed, medically treated and guarded, placed major demands on the young Swiss federal state. The internees were distributed to 190 localities in all cantons except the Ticino, because it was not reasonable to send the internees over the snow-covered Gotthard in January - the railway through the Gotthard was only opened in 1882. In addition to military, government and relief agencies also the civilian population was helping a lot in supporting the strangers. Most of them did not only need medical treatment but also new clothes and shoes. Some hundred of them were too weak to survive the ordeal and were buried on Swiss ground.

The humanitarian mission contributed to the self-confidence and identity of the young Switzerland.