Verdun to the Vosges: Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France

by Gerald Campbell

I have already spoken of the voluntary evacuation by the French of the neutral zone along the frontier before the declaration of war. If it had not been for that political and pacific act of military self-abnegation, which, once hostilities began, carried with it the disadvantage that the enemy had to be dislodged from the passes before any advance was possible, the progress made would have been much greater. As it was, General Dubail’s forces had got far enough forward (coupled with the second occupation of Mulhouse by General Pau) to become a possible menace to Strassburg, and the Germans, seriously alarmed by the prospect, hurriedly began to push forward reinforcements for their armies in Alsace. The first of these reinforcements advanced in the direction of Sainte Marie aux Mines, and the French advanced posts in Villé, confronted by greatly superior numbers, were obliged to fall back on the main body. Otherwise the positions remained practically unchanged—till after Morhange—though in face of the arrival of these fresh troops the situation was not as promising for the French as it had been.

French Advance at Sainte-Barbe, Vosges.
From “En Plein Feu.” By kind permission of M. Vermot, Rue Duguay-Trouin, Paris.

Meanwhile, to the north of the Basses Vosges, in Lorraine, on the level ground between the Donon and Metz, de Castelnau’s army during this same fortnight had been even more successful. Beginning with the occupation by the French cavalry on August 6th of Vic and Moyen Vic, two small towns on the German side of the frontier, close to Château Salins and sixteen miles slightly north of east of Nancy, they had gone on from triumph to triumph. Except for the temporary occupation of Domèvre, Cirey, and Badonviller, between the Donon and Lunéville, and a quickly suppressed attempt at a German counter-offensive on August 10th and 11th, all the gains were on the French side. Their most considerable success was on August 15th, in the Blamont-Cirey-Avricourt district, where they routed a Bavarian Army Corps and part of the Strassburg garrison army, under the command of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. Four German field batteries were destroyed before they had time to open fire, and the enemy finally retired in confusion, leaving behind them eight mitrailleuses, twelve ammunition waggons, and a large number of guns badly damaged by the French shells.

The remaining triumphs were not, as a matter of fact, of great importance. Still there is no denying that they were triumphs, and, as a result of them, they pressed steadily forward, day after day, from one victory to another, till finally, on August 20th, they found themselves in front of Morhange, about fifteen miles on the further side of the frontier, with a line extending from the Seille well past Dieuse across the Marne-Rhine canal to a point south of Saarburg.

But that was the end. In front of Morhange and Saarburg a formidable series of entrenchments had been prepared, largely by the genius of the veteran general, von Haeseler, and behind them and in them the coming of the French was eagerly awaited by a greatly superior force of the enemy. The result was inevitable. It fell to the army of Lorraine, first of all the armies of France, to learn by bitter experience the great strategical lesson of the war—that no troops can stand up against modern weapons in the hands of soldiers properly disciplined and properly entrenched. The French were fighting in the open. They were taken unawares. They were unsupported by their artillery. In the splendid offensive movement in Champagne, on September 25, 1915, it is true that the Second and Fourth Armies advanced across the open exposed to the full fire of the German trenches for distances varying from one hundred to eight hundred yards, and then drove them back over a belt of country averaging a mile and a half in depth. But then they started from their own trenches, which, except in one or two places, were not more than two hundred yards from those of the enemy, they were supported by a very heavy artillery fire from their rear, and for three days and nights before they made their heroic dash the enemy’s trenches and wire entanglements had been heavily pounded and destroyed by an incessant deluge of explosive shells. The army that was defeated at Morhange had none of these advantages. They attempted the impossible. Their attack was extraordinarily brave, but it was foredoomed to failure, and their losses, considering the number of men engaged, were very severe. It is not surprising that after a time some of the troops exposed to the hottest fire flinched. They would have been superhuman if they had not. Possibly even some of their sternest critics would have done the same.

At all events, there the thing was, and I see no reason for slurring it over. On the contrary, the Battle of Morhange, which the Germans and Mr. Hilaire Belloc prefer to call the Battle of Metz, is, because of what came after it, as worthy of our attention as the retreat to the Marne, though it is not, as a rule, a popular subject of conversation with the French. They are, as it seems to me, unduly susceptible about it. The actual result of the engagement and the want of forethought which was its primary cause were certainly not subjects for congratulation. During the previous fortnight the army had been led on by one success after another, gained without very much difficulty, till they had come to imagine that their élan was irresistible and the opposition in front of them as unimportant as it seemed. Both the spirit of their advance and the cause of its abrupt and decided check were typically characteristic of the French and German methods of making war—as they were, or as most people thought they were, before the great war began. The French were like Mr. Gladstone. They were intoxicated with the exuberance of their own pugnacity. They were engaged in a holy cause, the recovery of the beloved province ravished from them in 1870. At each forward step they found themselves amongst their own people, and were fêted as deliverers, until they completely forgot the dangerous leaven of German-born Lorrainers among them, and the value of the information which they were able to carry back to the enemy’s lines. Without doubt the composition of their force was fully known to the Germans long before they suddenly found themselves confronted by the far superior numbers based on the carefully prepared positions at Morhange and Saarburg. The trap had been set and the path up to it baited with true German thoroughness, and the French romped into it with their eyes dazzled by the glare of their previous successes, exactly as they had been meant to do. When the fatal moment came the XVth Army Corps in the centre were too far in advance of the XXth on their left and the XVIth on their right. They had plenty of dash, these men of the south, too much, in fact, for in the ardour of their advance they had outrun the artillery which should have supported them. But when they came up against the solid barrier of the Bavarian Army Corps from Strassburg and Saarburg their bolt was shot. Even if they had been strong enough to break through the impossible odds and positions before them, they had not, in any case, the same compelling sentimental interest in the reconquest of Lorraine as the mass of men forming the armies of the east. They were far from their homes on the shores of the Mediterranean. Comparatively speaking, they were strangers in a strange land, and on some of them the feeling may have had a depressing effect. At first they fought as bravely as could be wished, but the odds and the slaughter (far heavier than any that had so far been seen in the war) and the general impossibility of the situation were too much for them, and at last they broke and fled. The French estimate of their total losses was something less than 10,000: the Germans (who certainly exaggerated) claimed to have taken that number of prisoners alone, besides over fifty guns.

That, as far as I can gather from men who took part in the battle and the subsequent retreat, is a fair general account of what happened at Morhange. If that is so, then shame is certainly not the feeling with which the disaster should be regarded. Both it and its causes belong essentially to the pre-war period. At some moment during the war the French army, as well as the French people, was born again. For the XVth Army Corps, and perhaps for other units in the armies of the east, the blood-drenched battlefield of Morhange was the agony-chamber of that new birth. On August 20th they were flying in confusion towards Lunéville and Nancy. But even while they fell back, almost as soon as they found themselves under the steadying influence of the 75’s of the XXth Corps and General Dubail’s left wing, the change began. Two or three days later, when they had been rested and reformed behind the curtain of the divisions with which they afterwards shared the defence of Nancy, they were different men. They were no longer the happy-go-lucky children of the south, brilliant in deed but deficient in the power of resistance. One battle had made them seasoned, stern, resolute men of war, ready to take their place by the side of the finest soldiers of France, because they were themselves, as they afterwards proved over and over again, in front of Nancy, and in the Argonne, an army of heroes. And that is why France should think of Morhange with pride.

The triumph of the armies that defended Nancy was preceded, like the victory of the Marne, by an overwhelming defeat and a painful retreat. Before the war every one was prepared to find the French brilliant in attack. But the whole world, themselves included, was almost equally sure that once their attack had been stemmed, the effect of enforced retreat would be to dash their spirits to the ground, and impair, perhaps irretrievably, their morale as fighters. As for the Germans, they had apparently calculated on a whole series of Morhange victories, leading right up to the gates of Nancy and of Paris. Like the rest of the world, they were wrong. Out of the fiery whirlwind of the two retreats came a still small voice, the voice of the New France, or rather the reincarnation of the undying spirit of the Old France, cleaner and saner and more vigorous than ever it had been in all its glorious history, because the nation knew that the task before it was the highest and most vital that it had ever been given to France to perform.

For the moment, however, whatever the future might have in store, the position of affairs could hardly have been more serious and alarming. In the north, Charleroi and the retreat to the Marne were still to come. But in the east of France the effect of Morhange was felt at once. Along the Château-Salins route, by Vic and Moyen Vic, by Avricourt and Cirey, by the Donon, the Saales and all the northern passes of the Vosges, past the scenes of their late successes, the beaten troops and the troops which had not been beaten came pouring back into France, closely followed by the pursuing Germans. And then, four days later, to fill the cup of disappointment to the brim, came the order from General Joffre that Mulhouse was to be evacuated. The crisis in Belgium and in France had become too acute. It was no longer possible to spare enough men to continue the occupation of Alsace on a line so far removed from the base at Belfort. They were wanted elsewhere. There seemed to be every chance that the enemy might even strike at Paris. It was necessary to shield the heart of the nation, and beyond a covering force large enough to screen Belfort all the troops in Alsace had to be withdrawn. For the time being all hopes of the offensive for the recovery of the two ravished provinces, which had begun with such fair promise, had to be given up, and, three weeks after the war had begun, France, on French soil, had to fight for her very existence.