The Battle of Morhange (French: bataille de Morhange; German: Schlacht bei Mörchingen) was one of the first major battles of the First World War during its initial phase (the Battle of the Frontiers). It took place between 19 and 20 August 1914 on a front stretching for nearly 30 kilometers involving the villages of Morhange and Dieuze in the present-day Moselle department, then German territory.
The battle pitted the French 2nd Army, commanded by General Édouard de Castelnau, against the German 6th Army, commanded by Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria. The French 2nd Army comprised three main units: the 20th Army Corps commanded by General Ferdinand Foch, the 15th Army Corps and the 16th Army Corps. After a difficult week of advancing through German Lorraine, resulting in considerable losses among the French ranks, the exhausted soldiers approached the Battle of Morhange. On 19 August, Castelnau gave the order to attack the German army the following day therefore he and his men were forced to retreat to Nancy.
On 20 August, conflicting instructions disrupted the initial plan: while Foch was supposed to remain in place to guard the flank of the rest of the army, he too attacked Morhange. The French offensive, deceived by the enemy who initially feigned a retreat, was ultimately halted by a well-organized German rear defensive line, and the battle was extremely bloody.
Meanwhile, in the southeast of what is now the Moselle department, the Battle of Sarrebourg pitted the French 1st Army under General Augustin Dubail against the German 7th Army. Both battles ended in French defeats against the troops of Rupprecht of Bavaria, now nicknamed the "Victor of Metz".
Following the Battle of Morhange, controversies arose in France regarding General Foch's conduct and the precise role he played. The shortcomings of the high command were then blamed on the "soldiers from the south", particularly those of the 15th Corps.
Background
The Nied-Saar trap
Although mobilization measures had been undertaken, France entered the war without a true operational plan. Plan XVII was in reality only a plan for the mobilization and concentration of the French Armed Forces prepared in 1913. It owes its name to the fact that it was the 17th such plan since the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The French commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, simply indicated in the secret directive he signed on 7 February 1914, that he intended to launch two offensives in eastern France at the outset of hostilities, aimed at reconquering all or part of the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. However, such a manoeuvre was not without any risk. The German Empire had established the formidable fortresses of Strasbourg, and the Moselstellung between Thionville and Metz. Together with the Northern Vosges mountain range, the fortifications formed a kind of trap, creating what was known as the "Delme Corridor," into which it was extremely perilous to venture. This danger had been clearly outlined by various French strategists, notably Lieutenant-Colonel Grouard, but the General Staff believed that, with adequate resources, these offensives were possible. Consequently, Plan XVII envisioned massing two large armies in the region, supported by reserve units, totaling twenty-four divisions, representing one-third of the French Army.
German strategists had long anticipated that, in the event of war, the French would attempt, regardless of the circumstances, to recapture their lost provinces of Lorraine and Alsace. They therefore undertook significant fortification works and trained their troops in anticipation of French offensives in this region. They believed that such operations would be doomed to failure and would offer them the opportunity for a counter-attack that could turn into a decisive battle in their favor. Combined with their planned encirclement through Belgium, as outlined in the Schlieffen Plan, this counter-attack would allow them to achieve the swifter and more complete annihilation of the French armies. In 1912, the German General Helmuth von Moltke devised a plan to lure the French into the Land of Ponds between Morhange and Fénétrange, exposing them to flank attacks launched from the Forts of Metz on the left and from the Vosges Mountains on the right: this would become the "Nied- Saar trap", named after the two rivers forming the bottom of this geographical snare. The combination of this plan, along with a series of risky decisions made by the French high command in the days leading up to the Battle of Morhange, offered the Germans an opportunity for victory that exceeded all their expectations.
The beginnings of the French offensive in the East
Even before the Battle of Morhange began, the French suffered an initial setback that should have made them more wary. From the early days of WW1 on 3 August, Joffre ordered a first operation aimed at breaking through the Belfort Gap and the Oderen Pass, entering German territory, and conquering Alsace towards Colmar. This action was entrusted to the 7th Army Corps, which, as a covering corps, was at full strength from 3 August. The first phase of this operation was encouraging for the French as by 7 August they had already taken Thann, Masevaux and Altkirch. On the afternoon of 8 August, the 14th Infantry Division entered Mulhouse without a fight. The next day the German response was extremely brutal with a double counter-attack led by three divisions; one on Cernay and the others on Illzach and Riedisheim The German 7th Army forced the two French divisions to withdraw on 10 August under the protection of the fortified region of Belfort.
However, this initial setback did not deter General Joffre from moving on to the main phase of his plan. This obstinacy astonished the Germans. As the head of operations for the Bavarian 6th Army, General Hermann Mertz von Quirnheim, noted: “I cannot imagine that the French will repeat on a larger scale in Lorraine the folly they have just committed in Upper Alsace… but if they do indeed march east of Metz in great numbers, it would not take much skill on our part to bring about their downfall”. On 14 August 1914, General Augustin Dubail's 1st Army marched towards Sarrebourg and the Donon mountain, while General de Castelnau's 2nd Army began its advance towards Morhange. The army he commanded comprised three main units: the 20th Army Corps, commanded by General Ferdinand Foch; the 15th Army Corps, commanded by General Espinasse; and the 16th Army Corps, commanded by General Louis-Émile Taverna. He also had at his disposal the 2nd group of Reserve Divisions, commanded by General Léon Durand, whose mission was to hold the Grand-Couronné massif, protecting the city of Nancy. Initially, due to the risks involved in such an offensive, the 2nd Army was planned to have a total of five army corps. However, from 9 August, concerned about German movements in Belgium, the Commander-in-Chief General Joffre decided to withdraw the 18th and 9th Army Corps and move them north to theSomme, which had initially been assigned to General de Castelnau, who in a note to General Headquarters, protested against this measure, which, according to him, distorted the Lorraine operation he was to lead. In his private correspondence, he was even more severe: “My army has been deprived of two fine and valuable units that constituted one of the most precious elements of my confidence,” he wrote to his son. “[…] I am therefore outraged to see such fantasies arising in such serious matters under the influence of purely imaginary deductions. I know what kind of fevered mind this sudden change comes from. I have always warned those in authority against these daydreams. I deeply and painfully regret not having been heeded. It is an affront to common sense. It will cost us dearly". It was therefore with significantly diminished forces and artillery that the French crossed the Seille on 14 August, which marks the border between France and Germany, as established by the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1871.
The French were unaware that they were being met by a large German force under the command of Crown Prince Rupprecht, the heir to the Bavarian throne. He had two powerful armies at his disposal: the Bavarian 6th Army, which he commanded himself, and the German 7th Army under General Josias von Heeringen. Together, they comprised eight army corps reinforced by five divisions from the Metz General Reserve. This battle force, totaling 25 divisions, was supported by 1,800 guns, a large proportion of which were heavy artillery. The Crown Prince had been instructed to allow the French to advance as far as possible into the Nied-Saar trap before counter-attacking and destroying them. But, fortunately for the French, Rupprecht of Bavaria would not have the patience to let them penetrate as far as the German Generalissimo von Moltke had hoped. He was eager for victory, as evidenced by the proclamation he sent to his troops: “Soldiers of the Sixth Army! Higher considerations have compelled me to restrain your warlike zeal. The time for waiting and retreat is over. We must advance now; our hour has come. We must conquer, and we will conquer!” In reality, by counter-attacking the French before.
The Battle of Morhange
Prelude to the battles
For a week, between 14 and 20 August 1914, the French 2nd Army under Castlenau easily advanced into the Lorraine region, then-German territory since 1870. Forming the 2nd army's left flank, General Foch's 20th Corps moved forward without difficulty across a landscape of hills and meadows.Such facilitated the march of its regiments. In contrast, the 15th and 16th Corps, who were poorly trained in large-scale maneuvers, struggled to organize coordinated movements and appropriate combat formations in terrain unpleasantly dominated by ponds and marshland. This resulted in "indescribable disorder", as 2nd Army General de Castelnau said to his Corps commander General Taverna. From the outset, the French encountered numerous pockets of resistance from small German units which proved remarkably effective in this marshy environment. The crossing of the village of Moncourt turned into a bloodbath to the point that brigade commander General Gasquy was forced to request to retreat. The 2nd Army headquarters then relieved him as commander of his brigade. He had ordered it to charge with bayonets fixed against German machine guns entrenched in fortified shelters. General de Castelnau deplored the soldiers' lack of training and the fact that his officers had no understanding of modern warfare. He issued numerous warnings, demanding that enemy positions no longer be attacked head-on, but rather outflanked after a massive artillery barrage. While his instructions were well followed by the 20th Foch's Corps, a unit long prepared for modern warfare, as demonstrated by the capture of the village of Donnelay-Juvelize, the 15th and 16th Corps, on the other hand, suffered heavy losses.
After this week of extremely difficult progress, the soldiers would approach the Battle of Morhange exhausted and traumatized by the losses that had already severely decimated their ranks. On 19 August, the nature of the fighting changed abruptly. The Germans were no longer content with harassing operations, then withdrawing. They now aggressiely confronted the French and utilized powerful heavy artillery. Only an army-wide battle could allow the French advance to continue. Castelnau anticipated this for the following day and had prepared for it with his staff. In the impending battle, the Germans had the advantage of terrain as they were positioned along a ridge stretching from Morhange to Fénétrange in positions prepared in advance. They had notably marked the firing paths for their machine guns and artillery. Moreover, they were concealed from view by the French, who were unable to spot them with their aircraft due to the poor weather conditions that made any overflight impossible.
Added to these advantages was a powerful element of surprise. The French General Headquarters (GQG) made a serious error in its assessment of the forces involved. Generally speaking, it underestimated the number of major German units in the Western theatre of operations. Indeed, it estimated that it had between thirteen and fifteen army corps to fight, whereas in reality there were nearly twice that number. It located no more than six in the East. In fact, there were eight, not counting several Ersatz divisions. Yet, Commander Cartier, head of ciphers at the Ministry of War, had tried to warn the General Headquarters of a worrying enemy concentration near Castelnau. According to his intelligence, no fewer than four army corps were massed between Metz and the Vosges Mountains. But the General Headquarters disregarded this information. He maintained this offensive, even though the situation had changed considerably in recent days. The German entry into Belgium radically altered the strategic parameters of this operation. The objective was no longer to defeat the Germans in Lorraine to reoccupy part of this lost province, but simply to tie down the German troops massed in the Metz fortress to prevent them from reinforcing the other German armies engaged in Belgium. Consequently, this offensive was not only dangerous but had become pointless. The same result could have been achieved by advancing only a few kilometers beyond the border, as far a Château-Salins, while being prepared to retreat in case of too strong an encounter.