The Marne, 1914

by Holger H. Herwig

  The battle for Nancy reached its climax on 7 September. The Bavarians advanced out of the north from the Pont-à-Mousson Gateway and three times furiously stormed the north front of the Grand Couronné with flags unfurled and bands playing. The village of Sainte-Geneviève and the Mont Toulon ridge commanding the southern side of the gateway witnessed brutal bayonet charges throughout the night. If they could be taken, the way would be opened for the Bavarians to march up the Moselle to Nancy, storm the vital Mont d’Amance defensive works from the rear, and shatter the entire French defensive network on the Moselle Plateau.68

  The German assault almost worked. Several units from 314th IR of General Kopp’s French 59th RID accidentally abandoned Sainte-Geneviève, nicknamed the “Hole of Death” by its defenders.69 But by 8 September, the French had retaken the village, thanks in large measure to the gallant counterattacks of Balfourier’s XX Corps and the fact that the Bavarians had not detected the French withdrawal. More than eighty-two hundred German dead littered the battlefield; Baden XIV Corps suffered ten thousand casualties. The forests around Nancy had seen desperate bayonet charges. At one place, in the dark of night two Bavarian soldiers of Gebsattel’s III Corps had bayoneted each other; next morning a patrol found their bodies thus “nailed” to two trees.70

  General von Gebsattel had finally experienced the battle he’d yearned for so desperately. It was not at all the glorious venture that he had imagined. His corps had advanced into an “undoubtedly cleverly prepared battlefield” studded with “far-ranging French guns.” Bavarian artillery had been unable to gain any “significant advantage” because its spotters could not detect the sources of hostile fire. Each night, the enemy had moved its units from one “well prepared position into another.” His own infantry had been unable to close with the French. “Everywhere trenches and advance guards and rear-echelon reinforcements.”71 It was siege-style warfare at its worst.

  Violent fighting also occurred in the Forest of Champenoux. Kopp’s 59th RID and d’Aubignosc’s 68th RID were hard-pressed between its ridges. Rupprecht drove his troops on to encircle them. Castelnau wavered again—in part no doubt enervated by the news that his son had died in battle several days earlier at Morhange. Joffre called to rally Second Army. “I will try to hold out where I am,” Castelnau responded. But the prospect was not bright. “I feel that my army will be lost.” He again suggested “retreating immediately behind the Moselle.” And again, Joffre demurred. “Do nothing of the kind. Wait twenty-four hours. You do not know how things are going with the enemy. He is probably no better off than you are.” Joffre’s Order of the Day was blunt: “You must not abandon the Grand Couronné, and I formally order you to hold your present positions.”72

  Again, Castelnau dug in. More, on 10 September, amid thunder and rain, he ordered an “energetic” attack by 59th RID and 68th RID in the Forest of Champenoux and on La Bouzule, northeast of Nancy, by Taverna’s XVI Corps eastward out of Belchamp against Lunéville, and by Balfourier’s XX Corps against Réméréville.73 Ever so slowly, French pressure began to take its toll. German artillery, bound to rail beds due to the lack of draft animals, was too inflexible to support infantry charges. The French 75s, on the other hand, were highly mobile and able to move up with the infantry. By the next day, French fliers reported the Germans abandoning Lunéville, leaving behind huge stores of arms and ammunition as well as countless wounded in field hospitals. Second Army pushed forward—into Fraimbois, Réméréville, Nomeny, and Pont-à-Mousson. French cavalry rode virtually uncontested into Einville-au-Jard, Serres, and Morville-sur-Seille. Dubail’s First Army advanced northward into abandoned ground. The line of the Meurthe had been secured and Nancy spared occupation.74 Castelnau was promoted grand-officier de la Légion d’honneur on 18 September 1914.

  The Battle of the Grand Couronné was as great a defeat for the Germans as Morhange had been for the French. There would be no triumphant entry into Nancy. There would be no breakthrough across the Moselle. There would be no small Cannae between Toul and Belfort. Instead, the Germans had suffered their first true setback in 1914. And the butcher’s bill was savage. While neither side cared (or dared) to publish official figures, several unit diaries allow at least a glimpse into the frightful slaughter. On 11 September, Bavarian 14th IR lost a thousand men while retreating. Over the past week, 10th IR had suffered 70 percent casualties and 13th IR, around 50 percent. The Forest of Fraimbois was littered with the corpses of half-starved men and horses.

  On the German southern left flank, Adolf Wild von Hohenborn, commanding 30th Division, XV Army Corps, wrote his wife that his troops were also withdrawing. He was delighted at finally being able to leave what he called “the pigsty Épinal.” The battlefield was littered with the dead, stripped of valuables and some even of clothing. “The woods are full of corpses,” he wrote. “The French dead lie in their trenches [packed] like sardines. The smell is so putrid that at [Saint-] Benoît the French built a bonfire to burn their dead.”75

  WHAT HAD HAPPENED to the German assault? It had hardly been a “complete vindication of German tactical doctrine and training,” as a recent book on the Battle of the Frontiers claims.76 Apart from the fact that Rupprecht and Krafft von Dellmensingen had ordered a frontal infantry attack against a heavily fortified city without days of preliminary artillery bombardment, other areas of the front had demanded the OHL’s immediate attention. Already by the second day of the offensive against the Grand Couronné, rumors of British landings on the Continent caused panic in Luxembourg. Moltke decided at once to create a new northern army, to remove General von Heeringen from the south to command it, and to assign one corps each from Sixth Army (Xylander’s I Corps) and Seventh Army (Bertold von Deimling’s XV Corps) to the new formation. He ordered Rupprecht to dispatch Ernst von Heydebreck’s 7th CD as well. To the horror of his royal superior, Heeringen released XV Corps without asking or even informing Rupprecht.77 And when Lieutenant Colonel Tappen demanded the immediate transfer of two corps from Lorraine to east of Paris on 5 September, Krafft von Dellmensingen became despondent. “For us, the entire matter is most unfortunate. If that occurs [removal of the two corps], we will never overcome this passivity.”78 Crown Prince Rupprecht once more lectured the OHL that any withdrawal from Nancy now would be “highly detrimental to the morale of the troops.”79

  Wilhelm II arrived at Bavarian headquarters at this critical moment. He assured Rupprecht that he would personally “inhibit” any withdrawal of forces from Sixth Army. More, the pressure on the French from German Fourth and Fifth armies to the north would make itself felt within two to three days, with the result that “the enemy will be forced to give up [the battle] along the line of the Mosel.”80 But Rupprecht had lost all confidence in the kaiser’s role as Supreme War Lord. He was shocked by what he termed Wilhelm II’s “crass dilettantism” and “deficient knowledge” of the situation at the front.81

  Rupprecht received more bad news from an irate General Ludwig von Sieger, chief of field munitions, who had arrived at Dieuze on 6 September to put an end to what he considered to be Sixth Army’s “wasteful” expenditure of shells. Sieger now threatened to remove some of Rupprecht’s heavy artillery if the attack on Nancy continued to stall. Before leaving Luxembourg, Sieger had mean-spiritedly barked at the Bavarian military plenipotentiary: “If they refuse to attack they hardly need that many artillery pieces.”82 And when Sieger on 8 September diverted six munitions trains bound for Sixth Army to Fifth Army—that is, from the Bavarian to the Prussian crown prince—royal relations reached their nadir. Rupprecht, “extremely angry,” threatened to resign. Krafft agreed that this was yet another example of “haughty, brutal and encroaching Prussianism,”83 but pleaded for his chief to remain at his post, citing the devastating impact that such a step would have both at home and abroad. Rupprecht agreed—on condition that he get an accounting from the OHL.

  Krafft von Dellmensingen knew that the action against Nancy had unraveled and that the Bavarians would be bla
med for the failure. He therefore penned a lengthy memorandum for posterity. Therein, he stressed the issue of troop morale. “Abandonment of the attack is a heavy moral blow for which we will not take responsibility.” He crowed that he had not “fallen” into Sieger’s “trap” by having the Bavarians concede failure. “The OHL all by itself must shoulder the responsibility for the entire idiocy of this on-again and off-again with regard to besieging Nancy.”84 He deplored how much modern warfare had degenerated in just one month. “This trench-and siege war is horrible!”85 It reminded Rupprecht of another conflict—the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05).

  There remained one final act to be played out in the tragicomic opera that was Lorraine. Crown Prince Rupprecht traveled to Luxembourg to appeal his case to Moltke and Tappen. Neither was willing to order the heir of the Reich’s second largest kingdom to break off the assault on Nancy. Instead, they simply steered him toward that decision by restricting his supply of artillery shells. Moltke slyly informed Rupprecht to his “great surprise” that he could “proceed with the attack”—just as long as he suspended all other offensives, that he used his ammunition sparingly, and that he agreed to return all heavy artillery within six to nine days.86

  That very moment, without informing Rupprecht, the last of the OHL’s emissaries was on his way to Sixth Army headquarters. Major Erich von Redern, Tappen’s chief of staff, painted a bleak picture of the war for Krafft. Russian units from Archangel had arrived in Britain and were on their way to northern France. “Hindus from India” had landed in southern France and likewise were headed for the front. To combat them, the OHL needed to draw down its forces in Lorraine. “It would be preferable,” Redern stated, for Sixth Army “to break off contact with the enemy east of the Mosel” and to “recall” those units. Some could be redeployed to secure the line Metz-Strasbourg; the rest would be sent north. “The operations” at Nancy, Redern allowed, “had reached a dead point.”87 Upper Alsace was to be evacuated so that the Rhine Valley could be held. Krafft had no option but to call off the attack on the Grand Couronné. And to send Bavarian I Corps up north as requested.

  One can only imagine Rupprecht’s bitterness when, upon his return from Luxembourg, Krafft apprised him of the gist of Redern’s instructions. In an angry telephone call from Dieuze to Luxembourg, Rupprecht demanded to know which advice to follow, Redern’s or Tappen’s? This brought a final piece of obfuscation: Redern’s directives were valid, but Rupprecht could continue the assault on Nancy!88 A disillusioned Rupprecht formally suspended operations against Nancy. “They have totally lost control of their nerves at the OHL,” he noted in his war diary.89 He then ordered the bridges over the Meurthe River and all rail and communications centers destroyed.

  THE BATTLE OF THE Frontiers in Lorraine ended in bitter recriminations (that were to last through the postwar period). Moltke’s staff convinced themselves that Sixth Army had allowed Joffre to “dupe it” into believing that far greater numbers of French forces opposed them than in actuality; that Sixth Army simply had lacked the will to advance; and that by his “inaction” Rupprecht had brought great stress to the armies north of him. “As punishment for this incompetence,” the OHL decreed, “Sixth Army needed to be disbanded.”90

  The Bavarians rose to the occasion in kind. Krafft von Dellmensingen decried the lack of clear direction from the OHL in general, and from Tappen in particular. He repeated his earlier accusation that Tappen had been nothing more than a “cipher” whom Erich Ludendorff had chosen as his successor “to keep the seat warm” at the Second Section for his return.91 General von Wenninger stuck a dagger in the heart of the federal structure of the German army when he spoke of the unfortunate “anti-Bavarian” Kollegium that dictated operations: Tappen was a Prussian, Hentsch a Saxon, and Groener a Württemberger.92

  The price for the command chaos in Lorraine was bloody stalemate. It was paid by the troops. While there never was a precise calculation of losses for the German armies in Alsace and Lorraine, Bavarian army historian Karl Deuringer “guesstimated” total casualties for the infantry at 60 percent and those killed at 15 percent. Since the Germans deployed fifty infantry brigades (three hundred thousand soldiers) in the area of the most violent battles between Pont-à-Mousson and Markirch, Deuringer calculated sixty-six thousand men killed or wounded, with seventeen thousand paying the ultimate price.93 Given the savage nature of the fighting, one can hardly expect French losses to have been less.94

  The German army’s official ten-day medical reports (Sanitätsberichte) bear out Deuringer’s findings. For Sixth Army, they set the casualty figure for August at 34,598—almost the size of a fully mobilized army corps—and the number of dead at 11,476. For September, half of which Sixth Army spent in transit from Lorraine to Belgium, the casualty total remains high at 28,957 (including 6,687 killed).95 Most of this is due to the intense fighting around the Grand Couronné. Surprisingly, given that it was half the strength of Rupprecht’s Sixth Army, Heeringen’s Seventh Army suffered equally in terms of raw numbers: 32,054 casualties (10,328 killed) in August and 31,887 (10,384 killed) in September. On a percentage basis, Heeringen’s unit of “weekend warriors” lost 70 percent of its original mobilized strength killed or missing in August, compared with 50 percent for Rupprecht’s regulars.96

  The Battle of the Frontiers in Lorraine had been central to neither the German nor the French deployment plan. It had simply gathered momentum and taken on a life of its own, at one time absorbing almost one-third of the forces on either side. Joffre had spied a chance for a frontal breakthrough of the Moselstellung between Metz and Thionville, with hopes of thereafter rolling up the German left wing and falling into the flank of Wilhelm’s Fifth Army around Verdun. When that offensive failed, Moltke, for his part, had sought a German breakthrough of the Trouée de Charmes between Toul and Épinal, with hopes of a follow-up drive north against French Third and Fourth armies east of Vitry-le-François. Both designs failed to reach their objectives, and by early September the front in Lorraine had degenerated into trench warfare. Both Rupprecht and Heeringen had been reassigned to command newly constituted armies in northern France and Belgium. The southern flank was divided into a host of third-rate army detachment commands. The main decision would have to come elsewhere.

  THE INABILITIES OF CROWN Prince Rupprecht, Crown Prince Wilhelm, and Max von Hausen to achieve their small Cannaes, combined with Bülow’s inexplicable failure to pursue Lanrezac’s badly knocked Fifth Army after Saint-Quentin, shifted the German center of gravity back to its original axis: First Army driving on Paris. Neither Alexander von Kluck nor his chief of staff, Hermann von Kuhl, was in high spirits at the end of August. Although as a reward for Le Cateau, Moltke on 27 August had restored First Army’s independence, Kluck and Kuhl resented Bülow’s constant demands for accountability, his ceaseless cries for assistance, and his petty reminders to maintain contact on the flanks. Twice—at Mons and at Le Cateau—they had allowed the British to elude them. In disgust, Kuhl, fearing that First Army might be pulled apart in an endless pursuit, decided to let the BEF go wherever it wanted on its southwesterly trajectory.

  But could the German right wing in general and First Army in particular still achieve the primary mission? Alfred von Schlieffen had demanded a ratio of 7:1 between the German right and left wings, and Moltke still one of 3:1. The reality at the end of August 1914 was that while the left flank in Alsace-Lorraine (Sixth and Seventh armies) had a strength of 331,597 men, the right flank in northern France (First and Second armies) had just 372,240, or about one corps more. What was now the German center in the Ardennes and the Argonne (Third, Fourth, and Fifth armies) was greatest at 474,050 soldiers.97 With specific reference to the critical pivot wing, during the initial battles of the war the Schwenkungsflügel (First, Second, and Third armies) had enjoyed an advantage of 100 infantry battalions and 175 artillery batteries over French Fifth Army and the BEF; by the time it reached the Marne, that ratio had been reversed, with the French left wing (Ni
nth, Fifth, and Sixth armies) superior to the German right wing (First and Second armies, and half of Third Army) by 200 battalions of infantry and 190 batteries of artillery.98

  More, First Army was no longer the “strike” force that it had been at the start of the campaign, when it had put 217,384 men and 748 guns in the field. By the end of the month, it had lost 2,863 killed or missing, 7,869 wounded, and 9,248 ill.99 The large number in the latter category was due to heat exhaustion, sunstroke, foot sores, and hunger. Most corps were down to half of their full strength by early September. And the farther First Army advanced, the more its supplies lagged behind. By 4 September, its railhead at Chauny was 140 kilometers behind the fighting front. Its motor transport companies had been driven so hard that 60 percent of their wood-rimmed trucks had broken down by the time First Army reached the Marne. There were on hand far fewer than the 924 fodder wagons required to haul two million pounds of hay and oats daily to its eighty-four thousand horses.100 And given that the German army had gone to war with its reserves (Landwehr and Ersatz) in the line, it would be weeks if not months before suitable replacements were ready to fill the manpower holes. Leaving II Corps to besiege Antwerp and VII Reserve Corps to invest Maubeuge had further reduced First Army’s combat strength to just 174,000 “rifles.”

  The soldiers of First Army were spent: tired, hungry, thirsty, and wounded. They had marched five hundred kilometers, often as much as thirty or forty per day, in searing heat. They had fought major battles with the British as well as with French rear guards. “Our men are done up,” one of Kluck’s infantry commanders noted. “They stagger forward, their faces coated with dust, their uniforms in rags. They look like living scarecrows.” They sang as they marched, mainly to keep from falling asleep. “They drink to excess but this drunkenness keeps them going.”101 Walter Bloem, a company commander with 12th Brandenburg Grenadiers, wrote likewise of his men.