End of the Battle of the Mortagne

On 3 September 1914, according to the British chronology of the war, the Battle of the Mortagne in Lorraine came to an end. For ten days the French Second Army of General Noël de Castelnau and the First Army of General Auguste Dubail had repelled the German drive on the Trouée de Charmes, and then tried themselves to push the Germans back east. At the beginning of September the front between Nancy and the Vosges froze.

From victory to the trenches

The decisive clashes took place on 24–26 August at Gerbéviller and Rozelieures, where the French artillery stopped the German corps at the most dangerous moment. Later the fighting changed in character. The German Sixth Army of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and the Seventh Army of General Josias von Heeringen dug in on the heights between the Mortagne and the Meurthe and in front of Lunéville, which they still held. The French retook Gerbéviller and crossed the Mortagne, but their attacks on fortified positions brought them only small gains of ground at a heavy cost.

French historians usually confine the battle of the Trouée de Charmes itself to 24–26 August and treat the clashes of late August and early September as its continuation. The date of 3 September given by the British chronology marks the end of this phase of the fighting: the next day the Germans struck elsewhere.

A weakened but secure front

At the turn of August and September the commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, began taking whole corps from Lorraine and moving them by rail to the west, where he was preparing a counter-offensive against the German right wing approaching Paris. Castelnau and Dubail had to defend their sectors with smaller forces, made up largely of reserve divisions.

The German command, however, had no intention of letting up. Crown Prince Rupprecht assembled heavy artillery and prepared a new attack. This time the target was not the Trouée de Charmes but Nancy, the capital of French Lorraine, and the heights known as the Grand Couronné that defended it from the north-east. The new battle began on 4 September.

Significance

The Battle of the Mortagne secured the right wing of the French front. The Germans did not break the line of defence between Toul and Épinal and did not get into the rear of the armies retreating from the north. As a result Joffre was able to weaken the front in Lorraine and reinforce the armies that a few days later went into the Battle of the Marne.