MORHANGE
On the map the main ridge of the Hautes and Basses Vosges (and the
boundary line of that part of the frontier) follows almost exactly the
shape and position of a small manuscript “q.” At the head of the curl of
the “q” is the Donon, and at its lower curve the Col de Saales, with the
town of St. Dié a trifle to the west of it.
Through the valley represented by the curl the river Bruche flows
north-east past St. Blaise and Schirmeck, and then turns nearly due east
past the fort of Mutzig, to Strassburg.
Following down the stroke of the “q,” the principal passes, from north
to south, crossed by roads which even the snows of winter do not often
make impassable, are the Col de Sainte Marie aux Mines, the Col de
Bonhomme, the Col de Schlucht (from near which the north branch of the
river Fecht flows past Stossweiler to Munster), the Col de Bramont (from
which the valley of the Thur descends past Wesserling and St. Amarin to
Thann and Cernay), and the Col de Bussang, and at the southern extremity
of the stroke is the Ballon d’Alsace.
Since the beginning of the war there has been a continuous series of
violent struggles for the possession of nearly the whole of this string
of important positions on the crests of the range. Some of them the
French have gained and kept; some they have taken and lost, and then
regained; some they have taken and lost, and not succeeded in recovering
up to the present moment. They have always kept their footing secure on
the summits of the southern part of the range from the Ballon d’Alsace
to the Col de Schlucht. From the Col de Bonhomme and the Col de Sainte
Marie aux Mines, which they captured at the beginning of the campaign,
they were compelled to retire in the fourth week of August, 1914, but
they recaptured these passes after the Battle of the Marne. The whole of
the curl of the “q,” from the Donon to the Col de Saales, and also the
valley of the Bruche, which the French won and held for the first
fortnight of the offensive, were then evacuated and have remained ever
since in the hands of the enemy. All efforts to dislodge them from that
sixteen-mile stretch of the frontier have failed, and their continued
presence there has been and is a distinct nuisance to our Allies.
For the present, however, we are concerned only with the events which
took place in this region during the successful opening of the French
offensive, up to the Battle of Morhange, and the second retirement from
Mulhouse. By August 7th, largely thanks to the effective fire of the
Fort of Servance, on the north-west of the Ballon d’Alsace, our Allies
were complete masters of the Ballon itself and of the Col de Bussang,
five miles further north, and, as we have already seen, had sent a force
down the valley of the Thur to Thann. By the evening of the 8th, they
were astride the Bonhomme and Sainte Marie aux Mines passes, and by
twelve o’clock next day, after a violent struggle which lasted all
night, the town of Sainte Marie aux Mines was commanded by the fire of
their guns. Almost at the same time another French column began a
resolute attack on the Col de Saales. On August 12th, supported by a
well-directed artillery fire which swept the rear of the German
position, the infantry advanced impetuously to the attack, and the enemy
retired from Saales in disorder, leaving behind them in the hands of the
French four guns, a large amount of equipment, and eight hundred
prisoners, most of them belonging to the 99th regiment of the line,
which formed part of the garrison of Saverne and was brought into public
notice shortly before the war by the exploits of the notorious
Lieutenant Forstner.
Early the next morning the French followed up their attack by advancing
in the valley of the Bruche in the direction of St. Blaise, where they
were opposed by a strong German force consisting of the 99th and its
sister corps the 132nd, two batteries of 77’s, and one of
field-howitzers, and a company of machine-guns. The engagement began
with a brisk artillery combat, which resulted in the complete silencing
of the enemy batteries by the shrapnel of the 75’s. Most of the horses
of the gun-teams and a large proportion of the artillerymen were killed,
and the guns, deserted by the survivors, were taken by the French,
practically undamaged. During the early part of the action some German
machine-guns placed in the tower of the St. Blaise Church did a
considerable amount of damage, but as soon as their position was
discovered the 75’s made short work of the tower and all it contained.
Just before nightfall a battalion of French chasseurs—the 1st, I
believe—charged the German positions with fixed bayonets and in half an
hour had driven the enemy out and settled themselves down for the night
in the captured trenches. Besides eight guns, four mortars, six
mitrailleuses, ninety horses, and over five hundred men, the spoil
included the colours of the 132nd Regiment, which were taken by a
private of the 5th company of the Chasseurs battalion—the first trophy
of the kind that was secured during the war. Among the many Germans
killed was a general of division.
So far, with the exception of this last engagement, the fighting in the
Vosges had mainly consisted of affairs of outposts, though the
occupation of the passes was obviously a strategical gain of great
importance. From August 15th onwards, though only for a few days, the
offensive was pushed steadily forward in stronger force and a good slice
of German territory was occupied. The possession of the Donon and the
Col de Saales, commanding the valley of the Bruche, enabled the French
to occupy Schirmeck, seven or eight miles north of Saales, while another
column branched off to the right and took Villé on the road to
Schlestadt. There was, in fact, a general advance along the valley of
Bruche and the other valleys running down into the plain of Alsace.
Prisoners and war material were captured in considerable numbers, in
some places the plain itself was reached, and the chief difficulty of
the officers was in restraining their men, who were quite unaffected by
the losses which they had suffered, from going too far ahead.
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.
[Illustration:
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.