Barbara Tuchman on the August 1914 Crisis in Lorraine

14 August 1914: Capture of Morhange

French war Plan XVII made the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine a central plank of French strategy. This much was known to Germany before the First World War began, and was consequently factored into the German Schlieffen Plan. One of the Battles of the Frontiers, the Invasion of Lorraine (also known as the Battle of Morhange-Sarrebourg) began with the French First and Second Armies entering Morhange on 14 August 1914, despite the failure of General Paul Pau's 8 August offensive at the Battle of Mulhouse, another key target near the Swiss border, with his "Army of Alsace." The French First Army, under General Auguste Dubail, intended to take Sarrebourg, east of Nancy, a strongly defended town, with General Noel de Castelnau's Second Army taking Morhange, similarly fortified. 

The task of defending these towns fell to Germany's Crown Prince Rupprecht. Initially, his strategy—consistent with Germany's Schlieffen Plan—was to give way and counterattack from a position of strength. His plan proved successful and he lobbied Moltke for permission to mount another assault, directed at Nancy to make a major breakthrough. Subsequently, the French Second Army, which was situated on a complex of hills northeast of Nancy, named the Grande Couronne, was under orders from Joffre to hold the line while his plans for a major battle along the Marne unfolded.

German Scheme of Attack

Barbara Tuchmon describes what ensued in The Guns of August:

OHL had convinced itself that a forcing of the Charmes Gap between Toul and Epinal was feasible and would obtain, in Tappen’s words, “encirclement of the enemy armies in grand style and in the event of success, an end to the war.” In consequence, the left wing under Rupprecht was retained in its full strength of twenty-six divisions, about equal to the diminished numbers of the three armies of the right wing. This was not the proportion Schlieffen had in mind when he muttered as he died, “Only make the right wing strong.”

On August 24, having massed 400 guns with additions brought from the arsenal at Metz, Rupprecht launched a series of murderous attacks. The French, now turning all their skills to the defense, had dug themselves in and prepared a variety of improvised and ingenious shelters against shellfire. Rupprecht’s attacks failed to dislodge Foch’s XXth Corps in front of Nancy but farther south succeeded in flinging a salient across the Mortagne, the last river before the gap at Charmes. At once the French saw the opportunity for a flank attack, this time with artillery preparation. Field guns were brought up during the night. On the morning of the 25th Castelnau’s order, “En avant! partout! à fond!” launched his troops on the offensive. The XXth Corps bounded down from the crest of the Grand Couronné and retook three towns and ten miles of territory. On the right Dubail’s Army gained an equal advance in a day of furious combat.

French Infantry on the Defense

. . . For three days of bloody and relentless combat the battle for the Trouée de Charmes and the Grand Couronné continued, reaching a pitch on August 27. Joffre on that day, surrounded by gloom and dismay elsewhere and hard put to find anything to praise, saluted the “courage and tenacity” of the First and Second Armies who, since the opening battles in Lorraine, had fought for two weeks without respite and with “stubborn and unbreakable confidence in victory.” They fought with every ounce of strength to hold the door closed against the enemy’s battering ram, knowing that if he broke through here the war would be over. They knew nothing of Cannae but they knew Sedan and encirclement.

Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August

By early September the German attack fizzled out. The line in the lower Lorraine that had been established would remain fixed for the remainder of the war. However, another crises would soon emerge in the northern Lorraine.  The failure of the Schlieffen Plan and the success of Joffre's counterattack on the Marne would lead to an unanticipated discontinuity in both the German and French lines. Tomorrow in Roads to the Great War, we will address what know in history as the "Lorraine Gap."