THE
FRENCH FRONTIER
FROM
VERDUN TO THE VOSGES.
CHAPTER VII
THE FRENCH OFFENSIVE
There is no denying the importance of the German territorial gains in Belgium and France, even with the smaller acquisitions of the French in Haut Alsace as a set-off. But the effect which they will have on the final results of the war has been much exaggerated, not only by the Germans, but by the States which call themselves neutral, the wavering small Powers in the Balkans, and our own faint-hearted pessimists at home. All of these people habitually forget or ignore that practically the whole of this advantage was gained in the first month of the war, and that since then the tide has hardly ever stopped flowing, however slowly, the other way. Once the immediate effects of the first surprise shock had spent themselves and the war had settled down into its long-distance stride, it was the Allies who, army for army, proved themselves the better men. Other things being equal—and what inequality is likely to arise in the future is in our favour—the conclusion is that little by little the enemy will inevitably be driven to his own side of the frontier which he has violated and invaded. If before that time comes there is any serious talk of peace proposals and neutral intervention, based on the relative positions of the combatants on the western front, it will be difficult for the would-be peacemakers to go on ignoring all that has happened since the first month of the war.
Looked at from this point of view, the offensive in Alsace and Lorraine, with which the campaign on the eastern frontier opened, was not the mistake which it was considered at the time by many of General Joffre’s French and English and German critics. France could not in honour invade her great neighbour to the north of Longwy, because of the neutral barriers of Luxembourg and Belgium. But to the south of that point, or at least south of the obstacle of Metz and its defences, she could and did. Along the line where the frontiers of France and Germany march there were no considerations of loyalty to treaty obligations to deter her from attacking instead of waiting to be attacked. And that was the course on which General Joffre decided. His offensive was twofold. The advance north of the barrier of the Vosges failed. But south of them, in front of the Trouée de Belfort, intersected by the Rhine-Rhone canal and the tributaries of the Doubs and the Ill, it so far succeeded that the scene of action has remained ever since in the enemy’s country. The consequent moral and strategical gains to France are enormous. The position of the Germans would have been infinitely better than it was (even without taking into account the possibility of a consequent further advance) if they had been able to dig the almost stationary line of trenches which they have occupied since the middle of September, 1914, in the soil of France instead of in the Sundgau.
After the French had mobilized their armies, their great difficulty was that they could not be sure where to expect the main attack. For many years the military experts and prophets of both countries had asserted confidently that it would come by way of Belgium; on the other hand, it was a traditional belief of the great mass of the French public that it would be made through Lorraine. Both routes were possible, both had to be taken into account, but to a certain extent, from a lingering belief in Germany’s honour as well as out of deference to the popular expectation (which, on sentimental and political grounds the French Government could hardly afford to ignore), greater provision was made for resisting the possible invasion on the eastern frontier than further north.
It came, as a matter of fact, by both routes at once, but of the two main assaults, which culminated at Charleroi and Nancy on the same day, the more important and dangerous was that delivered in Flanders, where the French had relatively the smaller defensive force.
In the north the first meeting between the French and German armies did not take place till August 15th at Dinant. In the east they were in continual contact from the first day of the war. At first, in this sector of the front, things went well for our allies. In front of the three great fortresses of Belfort, Epinal, and Toul, the vanguards of three armies began at once to strike towards the frontier, the first into Alsace, by the plain of the Sundgau, the second through the passes of the Vosges, and the third across the boundary river, the Seille, into the flat country between the Vosges and Metz.
On the exposed part of the frontier guarded by these armies the opening period of the war lasted for three weeks. At the end of that time, on August 24th, the French were in apparently desperate straits. Their extreme left was driven back at Charleroi, in the centre they were just beginning, with a defeated army, the defence of Nancy, and on the right they had been obliged by the imminent danger on the left, to withdraw their forces from Mulhouse for the second time. But up till then, or at least till the disaster at Morhange on August 20th, they had on the Eastern sector done much better than they probably expected. The Verdun army, though not strong enough to adopt an effectively vigorous offensive, had been able to keep the enemy from attacking its forts, and south of Metz the commands of de Castelnau and Dubail had advanced well into German territory.
In the Metz, Verdun, Longwy triangle, bisected by the valley of the Orne running directly east from Verdun to the Moselle, the fighting was at first not very important. Conflans, Maugiennes, Spincourt, and several other towns and villages were early victims of German savagery, both sides scored moderate local successes, and the net result was that the enemy secured no advantage except what was due to their surprise invasion of the strip of territory from which the French withdrew their troops on the eve of the war. They would have advanced further and more quickly (as they confidently expected to do) but for two unforeseen obstacles. In the first place, there was the Verdun field-force, which, instead of falling back under the protection of its forts, persisted in coming out into the open; in the second, there was Longwy. Its defender, Colonel Darche, had only one battalion under his command, and consequently was not strong enough to follow the example of the Verdun field-army. But with his slender force he could and did hold up a whole German army till August 27th, three weeks after the Crown Prince had arrogantly summoned him to surrender. That officer’s failure to take the town at the first time of asking was a bitter disappointment to the Germans, as his army was intended to form the connecting-link between the two great offensives through Belgium and Lorraine, and orders had actually been given to German reservists to report themselves at Verdun in the second week of August. It was the first of the many misfortunes which have since dogged his footsteps, and it is not surprising that it brought him into disfavour with his Imperial father. For the heroic resistance of Longwy, like the defence of Liége and of Nancy, was one of the determining incidents of the early part of the war.
In the meantime, while Verdun and Longwy were proving that “its dogged as does it,” to the south of them the characteristic élan of the French troops was having its fling from the Moselle to Mulhouse, along a front of over a hundred miles. The strengthening of the forces in this region and the consequent weakening of the armies on the Belgian frontier was partly, as I have said, due to political considerations. But there were also sound military reasons for this distribution of the available forces, and for the subsequent French offensive in Alsace and Lorraine. For forty-four years the garrison and field armies of the rival pairs of fortresses—Verdun and Metz, Toul and Saarburg, Epinal and Strassburg—had been waiting like kennelled watchdogs, ready, once they were let loose, to fly at one another’s throats. Primarily the French troops were intended not for attack—which was the German métier—but for defence. Both by training and tradition they were the frontier force of the Republic. In time of peace they held the post of honour on the vulnerable border-line between Luxembourg and the Swiss frontier, always ready for war,