Battle of the Grand Couronné begins

On 4 September 1914 the Battle of the Grand Couronné, also called the Battle of Nancy, began in Lorraine. The German Sixth Army of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria attacked the chain of hills shielding Nancy, the capital of French Lorraine, from the north-east. They were defended by the weakened Second Army of General Noël de Castelnau. The battle was fought at the same time as the great Battle of the Marne and was to decide whether the Germans could break the French front from the east.

The hills before Nancy

The Grand Couronné, the “great crown”, is a semicircle of wooded hills and plateaux rising above the valley of the Meurthe north-east of Nancy. The key points were the hill with the village of Amance, the forest near Champenoux and, further north, the hill of Sainte-Geneviève above the Moselle, near Pont-à-Mousson. Nancy, which lay close to the German border, had not been a fortress before the war and had no ring of forts. In August 1914 the hills were rapidly fortified with trenches, wire entanglements and artillery positions.

Rupprecht’s new offensive

At the end of August the French had halted the German pursuit in Lorraine and in the Battle of the Mortagne had kept the Germans away from the Trouée de Charmes. The German command did not, however, give up operations in this sector. Crown Prince Rupprecht, reinforced with part of the Seventh Army and heavy artillery, was given the task of breaking the defences at Nancy and crossing the Moselle. It was hoped that victory would force the French to pull troops out of the west or open the way to the rear of their armies.

Castelnau was in a difficult position. The commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, was taking corps after corps from him and shifting them west, where he was preparing the counter-offensive on the Marne. At the end of August General Ferdinand Foch, until then commander of XX Corps, also left to take command of a new army. The Grand Couronné heights were defended largely by reserve divisions made up of older age groups, supported by the crack XX Corps from Nancy.

The first days of fighting

On the afternoon of 4 September the German artillery began a heavy bombardment of the French positions. It was one of the most powerful artillery bombardments of the first weeks of the war. During the night the German infantry attacked along the whole front from Pont-à-Mousson to the area of Lunéville. The night attacks drove the French from some of their forward positions, but the main line of defence held.

Over the following days the Germans renewed their assaults. The heaviest fighting was in the forest near Champenoux, which changed hands several times, and on the slopes of Amance. According to French accounts, on 6 September several thousand heavy shells fell on the hill of Amance alone in the space of a few hours. The French field artillery, firing from concealed positions on the hills, inflicted heavy losses on the attackers.

The Kaiser waits for Nancy

For the Germans the capture of Nancy mattered not only militarily. It was one of the most important French cities near the border, a symbol of French Lorraine, part of which Germany had taken after the war of 1870–1871. Kaiser Wilhelm II came to the front. Sources differ on the details. According to some he watched the bombardment of 4 September; according to others he was at Sixth Army headquarters in Dieuze a few days later. In France the story quickly spread that the Kaiser waited near the front with squadrons of Guard cuirassiers in white uniforms, ready for a triumphal entry into the captured city. The entry never took place.

Crisis at Sainte-Geneviève

The most dangerous moment of the battle came on the night of 6/7 September. On the northern wing, on the hill of Sainte-Geneviève, French reserve units fell back without orders. The Germans, however, failed to exploit this opportunity and themselves withdrew from the hill, which the French promptly reoccupied.

Conflicting accounts have grown up around Castelnau’s decisions in these days. Castelnau, who had lost a son at Morhange a few weeks earlier, prepared as a precaution a plan to withdraw the army behind the Moselle, which would have meant giving up Nancy. According to the version widespread in English-language literature, on 7 September he was ready to issue the order to retreat, but his staff contacted Joffre, who ordered the positions to be held for at least another 24 hours. Some French historians regard this version as a legend. In their view Castelnau decided on his own to defend Nancy, and Joffre, warned of his plans, approved in advance a possible retreat should it prove necessary. One thing is certain: Nancy was not given up.

End of the battle

The outcome of the fighting in Lorraine was ultimately decided on the Marne. On 8 September the chief of the German general staff, Helmuth von Moltke, began taking troops away from Rupprecht, as they were needed on the threatened right wing. The German attacks weakened. On the night of 9/10 September German long-range artillery shelled the centre of Nancy, killing several inhabitants. From 10 September the troops of the Sixth Army, screened by torrential rain, began to withdraw eastwards. On 12 and 13 September the French entered Lunéville and Pont-à-Mousson without a fight, and the front settled on the river Seille, near the pre-war border.

The dates given for the end of the battle vary, from 11 to 13 September. French authors often take 11 September, when the German attacks ceased, others 13 September, when the French regained the lost ground.

Significance

The defence of the Grand Couronné was one of France’s more important victories of 1914. Nancy remained in French hands throughout the war, although it lay just behind the front line. Holding the right wing allowed Joffre to move west the troops that decided the victory on the Marne, and at the same time it tied down in Lorraine large German forces that the Germans lacked before Paris. Castelnau became one of the most popular French generals. The battle also foreshadowed a new kind of war: the advantage of defenders in fortified trenches, supported by artillery, proved stronger than the momentum of the attackers.