Regiment. He was appointed to the command of the IX (Schleswig-Holstein) Corps in 1866. But having previously exercised both civil and military control in the Elbe duchies he was unwilling to be a purely military commander under one of his former civil subordinates, and retired from the army for a year. In 1868, however, Manteuffel returned to active service and on 18 September 1869 he received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Red Eagle. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 he commanded the I Corps under Steinmetz, distinguishing himself in the Battle of Borny-Colombey, and in the repulse of Bazaine at Noisseville. In October he succeeded Steinmetz in the command of the 1st Army, won the Battle of Amiens against Général de brigade Jean-Joseph Farre, and occupied Rouen. However he was less fortunate against Faidherbe at Pont Noyelles and Bapaume. In January 1871 he commanded the newly formed Army of the South, which he led, in spite of hard frost, through the Côte-d'Or and over the plateau of Langres, cut off Bourbaki's Army of the East with 80,000 men, and, after the action of Pontarlier, compelled it to cross the Swiss frontier, where it was disarmed. His immediate reward was the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross, and at the conclusion of peace he was made a member of the Order of the Black Eagle. When the Southern Army was disbanded Manteuffel commanded the Second Army and, from June 1871 until 1873, the army of occupation left in France, showing great tact in a difficult position. At the close of the occupation, the Emperor promoted Manteuffel to the rank of Field Marshal and awarded him a large financial grant, and about the same time Alexander II of Russia gave him the Order of St. Andrew. After this he was employed on several diplomatic missions, was for a time Governor of Berlin, and in 1879—perhaps, as was commonly reported, because he was considered by Bismarck as a formidable rival—he was appointed Imperial Lieutenant of occupied Alsace–Lorraine. He is remembered in Alsace–Lorraine as a very human, cultivated man, and as a conciliator whose fairness was often abused by some dominant figures. Opening the first session of the Landesausschuss (the regional assembly of Alsace–Lorraine), he announced his firm intention to gain full autonomy for Alsace–Lorraine, so that it could become a fully-fledged state of the German Empire. He died at Carlsbad,