Battle of the Meuse begins

On 25 August 1914 the French Fourth Army of General Fernand de Langle de Cary, beaten a few days earlier in the Ardennes, took up positions behind the Meuse, on the stretch from near Mézières to Stenay. On its right wing, in the area of Dun-sur-Meuse, the Third Army was withdrawing across the river. So began the Battle of the Meuse, one of the most important engagements of the Great Retreat. Over the following days the French defended the crossings against the advancing German armies, inflicting heavy losses on them.

After the defeat in the Ardennes

The French offensive in the Ardennes had ended in disaster. On 22 August, the bloodiest day in the history of the French army, the Third and Fourth Armies lost tens of thousands of men in clashes with the German Fourth Army of Duke Albrecht of Württemberg and the Fifth Army of Crown Prince Wilhelm. After the end of the Battle of the Ardennes both French armies withdrew southwards.

The Meuse was a natural line of defence. Here the river flows through a deep, winding valley, and on its left bank rise wooded hills from which the defenders could fire on the crossings. On the evening of 24 August the Fourth Army command issued orders that, once the last units had passed, the bridges over the Meuse and its tributary the Chiers were to be blown. On 25 August the sappers destroyed most of the crossings in the army’s sector. A few bridges were left intact for the time being, but mined.

Joffre’s instruction

That same day the commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, issued General Instruction No. 2. After the defeats in the Battle of the Frontiers he abandoned in it the plan for an immediate offensive. The French armies were to fall back gradually, holding the enemy with delaying actions, while on the left wing, in the Amiens area, a new army was to be formed that would strike the German flank at a favourable moment.

For the Fourth Army this meant a particularly important task. It stood in the centre of the front, between Lanrezac’s Fifth Army, withdrawing from the Sambre, and the Third Army, which was covering Verdun. Had the Germans broken its line on the Meuse, they could have cut the French front in two. Langle de Cary ordered his troops to resist vigorously every attempt to force the river.

First clashes

On 26 August the leading units of the German Fourth Army reached the Meuse. In the area of Donchery, west of Sedan, the Germans captured an undamaged bridge and began crossing to the left bank. Soon they also built pontoon bridges. On the Fourth Army’s left wing, near Rocroi, Saxon units of General Max von Hausen’s Third Army appeared, threatening the link with Lanrezac’s army.

The fighting soon spread along the whole line of the river. On 27 August the Germans went over to a general attack. They crossed on makeshift footbridges and bridges, among other places at Villers-devant-Mouzon and in the Stenay area. The French responded with counter-attacks. Near Stenay units of the Colonial Corps drove the Germans out of Luzy and Cesse, while XI Corps defended the La Marfée wood on the hills opposite Sedan.

What came next

On 28 August the Fourth Army launched a counter-attack, trying to push the Germans back across the Meuse. In several places it achieved local successes, but in the evening came the order for a further retreat to the line of the River Aisne. The disappointed soldiers had to abandon positions they had been defending successfully. That same day, on the left wing, the Moroccan Division fought a bloody action at Signy-l’Abbaye against Hausen’s troops, who were trying to drive a wedge between the Fourth and Fifth Armies.

Significance

The Battle of the Meuse did not hold up the Germans for long, but it fulfilled its purpose. After the defeats in the Battle of the Frontiers the French armies showed that they could defend themselves effectively and counter-attack. The Fourth Army’s resistance slowed the march of the German centre and prevented the front between the French armies from being torn apart at the most difficult moment of the retreat. From its left wing a new grouping was formed at the end of August under General Ferdinand Foch, later the Ninth Army, which played an important role in the Battle of the Marne.