The Battle of the Marne

CHAPTER X

THE DEFENCE OF THE EAST

General Joffre’s Instruction of September 1 had prescribed that the whole offensive should pivot upon the right. The defence of the eastern front, as a wall protecting the western and central armies, and the pivot of their recoil—essential condition of the general success—was assigned to Generals de Castelnau and Dubail. The 2nd and 1st Armies had been severely punished at the outset of the campaign; and, evidently, a heavy task now lay before them. The second of the German princes, Ruprecht of Bavaria, with the last corps of the Bavarian Army, could not be given other than a principal rôle; and Heeringen, chief of the 7th Army, Prussian War Minister during a critical part of the period of preparation, was also a veteran of the Grand Staff, with which he had worked for more than thirty years. On September 6, the Grand Quartier General specified that Castlenau and Dubail should remain on their positions defensively till the end of the battle of the Marne. We have seen that, after the failure of the offensives of Morhange–Sarrebourg and Mulhouse, the two armies retreated rapidly, but in such a way that, taking up an angular formation from the Grand Couronné of Nancy southward to the Gap of Charmes, and thence eastward to the Donon, they were able, on August 25, to fall upon the two flanks of the advancing enemy with instant effect. There was then a pause, due in part to heavy fogs, for several days, in which either side prepared for a new encounter.

The circumstances differed considerably from those in the west. For their abortive offensives, the two armies had been given a distinct superiority of force on the eastern frontier; but, after the successful defence of the Gap of Charmes, this superiority had been drawn upon repeatedly by the Generalissimo to feed his main design. Thus, Castlenau had sent from the 2nd Army: on August 15, the 18th Corps, to Lanrezac, for the advance to the Sambre; on August 18 and September 4, the 9th Corps, to the 4th Army, from which it was detached to Foch’s Army of the centre; on September 3, the 15th Corps, to Sarrail; and on September 1, the greater part of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, to the space between the British and French 5th Armies. At the same time, Dubail, while absorbing gradually the body of Pau’s “Army of Alsace,” sent the 21st Corps, on September 4, to Langle’s left, and the 13th Corps, on September 9, to the region of Compiègne for the battle of the Aisne; after which, in the middle of September, when the great victory had been won, the 1st Army took over the whole of the Nancy front from the 2nd Army. These deplacements were necessary, and remarkably timed and executed; but they represent a not inconsiderable diminution of effective strength at a grave juncture. To compensate for their losses, the High Command could only send to the Lorraine Armies divisions of reserves. Their performance surpassed all French, and rather justified German, anticipations. It is, however, to be remarked that the opposed forces of the Bavarian Crown Prince and Heeringen underwent a similar transformation. In addition to their reserve divisions, they received between them, at the end of August and the beginning of September, something like 100,000 men of the Ersatz and Landwehr. An Ersatz Division of the Guard was engaged near Lunéville, and Bavarian and Saxon Ersatz Divisions appeared on the Upper Meurthe. A large part of the Bavarian and Rhenish Landwehr was also used in Lorraine. Heeringen’s Army, itself constituted in Alsace, moved northward after Dubail, and, when arrested on the Upper Mortagne and the Northern Vosges, detached two of its corps to the Bavarian Army for the crucial attack on the Grand Couronné. Metz, Strasbourg, and the garrison towns of Alsace were used as reservoirs on the German side, just as were Toul, Epinal, and Belfort on the French, until both antagonists had drawn their last possible reinforcement, and the invasion failed by exhaustion.

For the actions now to be followed, the opposed forces, from north to south, were as follows:

Uncertainty as to some German units, and the continual transfer on both sides, make an accurate comparison of strength impossible. M. Hanotaux74 estimates the French forces at their maximum at 532,000, and the German at 530,000 men. This was during the battle of the Gap of Charmes, and at the end of August. On September 4, Castlenau had lost 70,000 men or more, and the 1st Army was similarly reduced in the following days. On the other hand, Heeringen took the 15th Corps with him to the Aisne on September 7. It is probable that, during the crucial struggle before the Grand Couronné, Castlenau was considerably outnumbered; and the French were markedly inferior in artillery, even when the heavy fortress guns had been brought into the field.

So long as they stood on the defensive, however, the French had the great advantage of a range of positions naturally formidable, and improved by some passable field-works. General de Curières de Castlenau, a particular star of the old aristocratic-military school, was unorthodox in one vital matter. In a study written in the spring of 1914,75 he had concluded that the French concentration would be completed as soon as, or a little sooner than, the German. Nevertheless, he had declared for the strategical defensive; and, foreseeing a decisive battle on the Grand Couronné, the heights bordering the Gap of Charmes, and the west bank of the Mortagne, he had planned, for when the German attack should be worn down, the reaction north and south of the Forest of Vitremont which he was actually to conduct some months later. In this, Castlenau was one of the far-sighted few. The defensive idea favoured in the period when the military inferiority of France was most acutely felt had sunk into disrepute. “The system of offensive strategy, of ‘striking out,’ gained adepts, especially among the young officers,” says M. Hanotaux. “Certainly the system of a waiting strategy had not lost all its partisans: General de Castlenau represented a strong and reasoned doctrine when he advocated, for the east in particular, the offensive-defensive, and the preparation of a stand on the Meurthe at the outset, then on the Mortagne.” He was overborne in favour of the daring and gifted lieutenant and teacher who, in 1900, had insisted that “movement is the law of strategy,” that the shock must be sought, not waited for, and that, “in a war with Germany, we must go to Berlin by way of Mayence.”76 Instead of leading to Mayence and Berlin, the French march upon Morhange and Sarrebourg had led back to the Gap of Charmes and the Grand Couronné. Tragically justified, Castlenau now had his chance. For the first time, the invaders found themselves faced by entrenchments, wire-fields, gun-pits, and observatories prepared as well as the time available had allowed.

Such a line, extending 60 miles from near Pont-à-Mousson to the north-western spurs of the Vosges, might well have followed straightly the high western banks of the Moselle, Meurthe, and Mortagne, having the fortresses of Toul and Epinal close behind. The abandonment of the beautiful city of Nancy—a garrison town, but in no sense a fortress—had usually been contemplated in the event of war: that is, perhaps, why the Kaiser so ostentatiously prepared for his ceremonial entry. Castelnau was resolved against this sacrifice. No positions, he thought, could be better defended than the crescent of hills called the Grand Couronné, of which the two horns point north-east from Nancy and the Meurthe, as though in anticipation, the northern horn ending in the twin mounts of Amance (410 and 370 metres), and the southern in a ridge extending from the Rambétant (330 m.) to the Bois de Crevic (251 m.); while the space between the tips is covered by the forest-plateau of Champenoux. On the north, the Nancy crescent is supported by the Moselle Heights, from La Rochette (406 m.), above Bouxières, to Sainte Geneviève (382 m.); and the river is closed in by sharp and thickly-wooded slopes on both banks. On the south, beyond the River Sanon, the crescent is extended by the hills of Flainval and Anthelupt, and, within a wide loop of the Meurthe, by the great bulk of Vitrimont Forest, reaching near to the large town of Lunéville. Farther south, Dubail’s divisions stretched along the high western bank of the Mortagne, and then, at an obtuse angle from Rambervillers, into the passes of the Vosges giving upon Raon-l’Etape and St. Dié.

We will follow the attack as it came up from this southern region, beginning with what must be regarded as a heavy demonstration preparatory and secondary to the chief affair, that of the Grand Couronné. After the failure to penetrate the Gap of Charmes, Heeringen had been charged to break through, or to make a feint of breaking through, the French 1st Army toward Epinal. Reinforced by the 41st and 44th Divisions and four divisions of reserves, Dubail was well resisting this pressure when, on September 4, he was required to give up his 21st Corps. At the same time, Heeringen’s XIV Corps and other troops, from the valley of the Upper Meurthe, made a desperate effort to force the two mountain ways by which alone large bodies of men could reach the Moselle valley from the northern Vosges, namely, the road from Raon-l’Etape across the Col de la Chipote to Rambervillers, and thence to Charmes or Epinal by easy routes; and the road from St. Dié, through the mountain Forest of the Mortagne, to Bruyères, and thence to Epinal. Sharp fighting, in which the French lost heavily, especially in officers, took place on September 4 and 5 at the Chipote—a bare red hump barring the pass, surrounded by fir-clad cliffs—on the twin hills by Nompatelize, and on the lesser passes south of St. Dié. The real intention of the German Command was probably no more than to pin down Dubail’s forces; it could hardly hope to pierce such a depth of mountain fastnesses in time to affect the general issue.

On the left of the 1st Army, on September 5, the German XXI Corps drove Castelnau’s 16th and Dubail’s 8th Corps out of Gerbéviller and Moyen, and passed on to the west bank of the Mortagne; but the French recovered most of this ground the same evening. On the right, the 14th Corps had to abandon the Passé du Renard and several neighbouring hills south of Nompatelize; and the 41st Division was driven up the St. Dié valley to the crest above Mandray, and beyond. On the following day, these positions also were won back in a reaction that began to threaten the German line of communications in the St. Dié valley. From this moment, the combats of the Upper Meurthe slackened and gradually expired. The battle had been definitely deplaced to the north. Heeringen, with one of his active corps, was ordered to the Chemin des Dames, where he was to stop the threatening progress of the British Army—a most significant move; two remaining corps were about to be transferred to the Bavarian Command for the struggle before Nancy, the last and greatest effort on the east. On the night of September 7, the 8th Corps repassed the poisoned waters of the Mortagne at Magnières and St. Pierremont; and everything pointed to a sweeping advance, when Dubail was summoned by the General Staff to surrender another of his best units, the 13th Corps, to re-form his whole line, and to stand still with what remained. The danger-point now lay elsewhere.

Castelnau had hardly filled the spaces left by the removal of his 15th and 9th Corps when, in the early afternoon of September 4, a cannonade of a violence hitherto unknown broke over the positions of the 2nd Army before Mont Amance, across the eastern side of Champenoux Forest, by Réméréville, Courbessaux, Drouville, and Maixe, to the east edge of the Forest of Vitrimont. The first attack came upon the right of this front, waves of Bavarian infantry flooding upon the barricaded farms and hamlets and the trenched hillsides. Behind Serres and in advance of Maixe, the 39th Division was pressed back; but, as a whole, the front of the 20th Corps was little changed; and, on its right, the 16th Corps was not yet disturbed. While this hell-fire was being lit, Kluck was racing southward across the Marne and a regiment of Cuirassiers, in full array, was marching through the streets of Metz, under the eyes of the Emperor, who, after visiting the Verdun front, was waiting for the hour of his triumphal entry into Nancy.

At nightfall the conflict waxed more furious. The German plan, as it was presently revealed, was to burst through the opening of the Grand Couronné, and, while maintaining a strong pressure upon the southern horn of the crescent, to envelop the northern horn by a rapid push from Pont-à-Mousson up the Moselle valley, this move by fresh troops from Metz furnishing the precious element of surprise.77

Throughout the night of the 4th, the storm raged about the rampart of Nancy. Doubtless the German Command had chosen the way between the Champenoux Forest and the Rambétant as the least difficult for the first phase of its last effort; and, although night attacks are manifestly dangerous, the calculation in this case that the defenders would suffer most from confusion appears to have been justified. Boldly adventuring by dark forest paths and misty vales, the Bavarian Corps of Martini ejected the fore-posts of the 20th Corps from the hills near Lunéville, from Einville Wood, and the ridges between Serres and Drouville. Maixe and Réméréville were lost, retaken, and lost again. Erbéviller, Courbessaux, lesser hamlets, and farmsteads flamed across the countryside, a fantastic spectacle that deepened the terror of the remaining inhabitants, who had taken refuge in their cellars or the fields. General Fayolle’s reservists of the 70th Division stood bravely on the east edge of Saint Paul Forest and at Courbessaux. On their left the 68th lost Champenoux village at dawn, but recaptured it a few hours later; while, behind it, the 64th busied itself in completing another line of resistance from the important point of the Amezule gorge (on the highroad from Nancy to Château-Salins, midway between Laneuvelotte and Champenoux), by Velaine and Cerceuil, to the Rambétant.

Battle of the Grand Couronné of NANCY

Positions on Sept. 6, night

At midnight on the 4th, Prince Ruprecht endeavoured to broaden his attack southward by striking from Lunéville across the loop of the Meurthe. Here, the 74th Reserve Division was prepared, having dug three successive lines of trenches between Blainville and Mont. At Rehainviller and Xermamenil, the right bank of the Mortagne became untenable by reason of enfilade fire. The 16th Corps, therefore, withdrew to the west bank. Just before dawn on September 5, the XXI Corps succeeded in getting a small body of men across the river below Gerbéviller. During the afternoon, these were thrown back by a combined push of the 16th Corps from the north and the Dubail’s 8th Corps from the south. This success was confirmed and extended on September 6, when the 16th Corps passed the Mortagne, and drove the enemy out of Gerbéviller, and through the woods above the ruined town. Thus the line of the Mortagne, so essential to the French defence, was restored, and in such solid fashion that it might become the base of a thrust against the German flank about Lunéville.

None so happy was the outlook at Castelnau’s centre. During the morning of September 5, the Bavarians worked round the north end of Champenoux Forest as far as the foot of Mount Amance, where, after making five desperate assaults, they were stopped. In the evening, the 20th Corps was driven back to the line Vitrimont–Flainval–Crevic–Haraucourt–Buissoncourt: that is to say, half of the south horn of the crescent was overrun. The morrow witnessed a rally, the 70th Reserve Division touching Réméréville, the 39th Active carrying the village of Crevic and progressing toward Drouville, and the 11th reoccupying Vitrimont Forest. But the grey tide still beat upon the foot of Amance.

At this juncture, when it seemed that the plateau of Champenoux must be turned on both sides, and Castelnau’s centre pierced, a no less alarming threat appeared in the attempt to turn the whole Nancy system by the north. Two French reserve divisions had been set facing Metz on either side of the Moselle—the 73rd on the west, between Pont-à-Mousson and Dieulouard, the 59th before the Seille, from Loisy, by the sharp rise of Ste. Geneviève, to Meivrons, where it joined the 68th. A single battalion (of the 314th Regiment, 59 D.R.), and a single battery (of the 33rd, 9th Corps) were posted on the extremity, at Loisy and Ste. Geneviève, of this outer buttress of the Grand Couronné, when, at noon on September 5, amid a thunder of guns, columns of the German XXXIII Reserve Division were observed traversing Pont-à-Mousson, and marching south. The cannonade and the deployment occupied the rest of the day; and next morning the invasion seemed to have passed westward. In fact, it had made rapid way, although at material cost, on the left bank of the Moselle, passing Dieulouard and reaching Marbache, which is only 6 miles north of Nancy, and Saizerais, 8 miles from Toul. Few as they numbered, the guns and well-entrenched riflemen on the Ste. Geneviève spur, now an acute salient, were a thorn in the side of this success—a very troublesome thorn. At 7 p.m. a German force of about seven battalions debouched from the wooded lowland and began to mount the hillside. Hundreds of them had been mown down ere Captain Langlade and his eight remaining gunners would shift their hot pieces to a safer place behind. Commandant de Montlebert’s battalion conducted throughout the night a more than Spartan defence. Time after time, urged on by fife and drum, the grey ranks rose, only to break like spume in the moonlight before the trenches could be reached. It was one of the occasions when the deadly power of the “75’s” was shown to the full. At one o’clock in the morning the combat ceased: the assailants had withdrawn in a state of panic. They are said to have left 1200 dead behind them. The French battalion had lost 80 men.

A rare episode this: in general, the battle becomes more confused as the culmination is reached. Indeed, it is difficult to find an exact time or place of the climax. Each side saw its own trouble, but could hardly guess at the condition of the other. The last reserves of the 2nd Army were in play. Castelnau had warned the G.Q.G. that he might have to abandon Nancy, in order to cover Toul. The reply was an injunction to keep touch with Sarrail’s right in the direction of St. Mihiel, whither—failing Epinal, failing Charmes, failing Nancy—the enemy now seemed to be turning. On September 7, the German host gathered itself together for its last and greatest effort. The Emperor, escorted by his guard of Cuirassiers, left Metz by the Nancy highroad, crossed the frontier, and took his stand on a sunny hill near Moncel (probably by St. Jean Farm, at the corner of Morel Wood), to watch the bombardment of Mount Amance, which was to prepare the way for the breach of the French centre by way of the Amezule defile.78 The gap was duly rushed at the first attempt, made by about ten battalions of infantry, in the morning. The left of the 68th Division fell back to the foot of Mount Amance, the right to Velaine, and the 70th Division to Cerceuil. The 20th Corps, ordered to move north and menace the German flank, was pushed aside; and by noon, the Bavarians had full possession of Champenoux Forest. This bulwark gone, everything depended upon Amance. Most of the artillery on the Grand Couronné (which included twenty 5-inch cannon, and eight 6-inch mortars) hashed upon its approaches; and here the momentary triumph expired. The authority of the Crown Prince, the presence of the Emperor, could effect no more. Old Castelnau began to hope; hearing that the Metz troops had further advanced toward Toul as far as Rozières, he unhesitatingly took the 2nd Cavalry Division out of the line, and sent it off to the neighbourhood of St. Mihiel, whither it was to be followed next day by the 73rd Reserve Division.

The struggle dragged on with an increasing appearance of exhaustion and deadlock. On September 8, the Bavarians tried twice to break through the front of the 20th Corps, without success. Again they bent to the slopes of Mount Amance; the poilus let them approach, then staggered out of their holes, and, in a spasm of battle-madness, swept them back. La Bouzule Farm, dominating the narrowest part of the Amezule defile, and other strong points, changed hands repeatedly. On the right, in face of Lunéville, the 74th Reserve Division carried Rehainviller by assault, and the 32nd and 31st Divisions pressed from Gerbéviller nearly to the Meurthe—a severe pin-prick in the German left flank. On September 9 there were obscure fragmentary combats in the glades of Champenoux and St. Paul which we cannot attempt to follow. It will be safe to suppose that the German Command was now governed by the news from the west. Whether the Nancy front could have held without that aid, it is impossible to say. Though Castelnau ordered a counter-offensive all along the line, his men could respond only feebly.

In the evening an armistice of four hours was arranged for the collection of wounded and the burial of dead. The French claimed to have found 40,000 German dead on the ground; the total losses will probably never be known. The Kaiser had left his observatory; the rebel heart of Metz leaped to see his disillusioned return. The defenders of Nancy could not know this; but there was a visible sign of failure, now easy to interpret: at midnight on September 8, amid a heavy thunderstorm, a German battery, told off for the purpose, threw eighty shells into Nancy—67 explosive shells and 14 shrapnel, to be precise, according to the diary of the officer responsible79—a silly outrage like the first bombardments of Rheims.

The “smashing blow” was failing at the same moment on the Ourcq, on the Marne, at Fère Champènoise, and here before the hill-bastion of the eastern marches. News ran slowly through the armies in those days; but some invigorating breeze of victory must soon have reached the trenches in Lorraine. For Prince Ruprecht it remained only to guard his main lines of retreat, in particular the roads from Nancy, Dombasle, and Lunéville to the frontier; and, as his troops had dug themselves well in, this was not difficult. Three French columns of assault, composed of relatively fresh troops, and supported by the 64th and 68th Reserve Divisions, after a powerful artillery preparation, advanced on the morning of September 10 against the Amezule and neighbouring positions; but they could not make much headway. On the morrow the order was repeated, to better effect, especially on the wings. That night the German retreat in Lorraine began. Castelnau’s men gazed incredulous into spaces suddenly calm and empty. “Our soldiers,” says one of them, “hungry, harassed, haggard, could hardly stand upright. They marched like spectres. Visibly, we were at our last breath. We could hold out only a few hours more. And then, O prodigy, calm fell, on the 12th, upon the whole of the stricken field. The enemy gave up, retreated for good, abandoned everything, Champenoux, so frantically contested, and the entire front he had occupied. He fell back in dense columns, without even a pretence of further resistance.” The grand adventure was finished.