LORRAINE - The Battle of Morhange - 1914

The memorial is dedicated to the 26e Régiment d'Infanterie (26e R.I.).

The inscription is barely legible:

Manhoué lies along the Seille river, which formed in Lorraine a part of the Franco-German border.

On 14 August 1914 the 26e R.I. crossed the river, captured Manwald, and lost near this spot their first soldiers, their "two boys".

We continue north-eastward via the D 21A and the D 74, via Oron to Frémery.

Just before the entrance of the village of Frémery we park our car at the Ossuaire Franco-Allemand de Frémery. 

The Ossuaire Franco-Allemand de Frémery, the Franco-German Ossuary, contains no individual graves, but two ossuaries, one for German soldiers and the other for French soldiers.

The German mass grave contains the human remains of 13 unknown soldiers.

The French mass grave contains the human remains of 176 French officers and soldiers of the 146e Régiment d'Infanterie. All these men, buried here, were killed nearby on 20 August 1914.

Left, under the yellow flowers, lies the German mass grave, right the French ossuary.

In the centre stands a "Monument Aux Morts", mentioning the names of the victims of the 146e R.I..

As we shall discover, the 146e R.I. counted on 20 August 1914 many losses on the battlefield of Frémery, Oron and Chicourt.

From the entrance of the Ossuaire Franco-Allemand de Frémery a view westward over the Lorraine landscape. Right: the Haut du Mont (378 m.)   - (Not to be confused with the height with the same name near Charmes-Lorraine.)

Before we continue our route, I invite you to read the first illustrated frame with concise historical background information about the Battle of Morhange.

The Battles of the Frontiers - The Battle of Lorraine -  14 August - 13 September 1914

The Battle of Morhange was only one of the several battles fought during the period of 14 August until 23 September in Alsace and Lorraine.
During the period of mobile warfare of the Battles of the Frontiers, the German Armies advanced in Belgium according to the Schlieffen Plan to Brussels, Namur and Mons.

In Alsace-Lorraine Joffre deployed three Armies to execute his Plan XVII, or Plan 17, to win back the territories France had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

Although the Alsace Army was at first rather successful in the Alsace Sundgau, the fighting in Alsace Lorraine and the Northern Vosges did not develop at all according to the French plans for the 1st Army and 2nd Army. 

The Battle of Lorraine - 14 August – 13 September 1914

The French historians call this period of 14 August – 13 September 1914 in Lorraine the Battle of Lorraine. It was in fact a sequence of several battles in almost the same area during 4 weeks; the Battle of Morhange, the Battle of the Trouée de Charmes, including the Battle of Rozelieures, the Battle of the Mortagne, and the Battle of the Grand Couronnée, east of Nancy. The Battle of Rozelieures resulted also in the first French victory of the Great War. 

South-east of Nancy the French 1e Armée of Général Dubail fought during these battles in the Alsace Vosges and Général Bonneau’s Army of Alsace in the Alsace Sundgau (later Général Pau) against the 7. Armee of General von Heeringen. In the Vosges the 1e Armée would fight another battle, the Battle of the Haute-Meurthe, which lasted from 24 August until 11 September. 

The Opponents in Lorraine

... fought against the units of the Bavarian 6. Armee, commanded by Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern, Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria.

... just when we have passed the village we detect at the northern verge of the D 20 ...

... the Oron Memorial dedicated to the 146e R.I. and the 43e R.I. Coloniale.

... are buried in a later period in a mass grave at the Nécropole Nationale de Riche. Four men are unknown.

At the rear the memorial offers this panorama north-westward over the battlefield. At dawn of 20 August 1914 units of 5th Bavarian Infantry Division attacked from these hills on the horizon. After only three hours these units captured the villages of Frémery, Oron and Chicourt.

In the next frame I focus on the backgrounds of the Battle of Morhange and the subsequent "Schlacht in Lothringen".

14–20 August 1914 - The Battle of Morhange

From the south the 1st Army attacked Saarburg. From Toul and Nancy Général de Castelnau’s 2nd Army attacked and reached Château-Salins, Morhange, and Dieuze.

Crown Prince Rupert's mission was to engage the French forces and to keep these fixed in the centre, giving room to the advance of the right wing of the German Army, which as part of the Schlieffen Plan, encircled his opponents in the north-west.

The Bavarian troops proved to be better marksmen than the French, inflicting heavy casualties on the French infantry. 

Fortifications of Morhange (German: Mörchingen)

20-23 August 1914 - The French Retreat - Die Schlacht in Lothringen

After six days, on 20 August, the fierce counter attacks of Prince Rupert’s units forced the 2nd Army to withdraw.

The Bavarians counterattacked and recaptured Château-Salins, Morhange and Dieuze.

The Battle of Morhange ended with a successful German victory. According to the estimations of French historians the French Army counted at least 5,000 fallen soldiers and thousands of men wounded, the Bavarian Army counted 2,500 dead and thousands of men wounded. 

 The next morning two battalions of the 21st Bavarian Infantry Regiment (B.I.R. 27), supported by artillery, attacked from the height at the right, the Bois de Neufchère, and chased the French from Chicourt Wood down over these fields.  View at the height of Neufchère Wood (approx. 305 m.)

We visit east of the village of Chicourt the Franco-German Nécropole Nationale of Chicourt.

In front lies the French plot, in the rear the German plot.

This Bavarian memorial also mentions some French officers and 128 French soldiers.

This height of 302 m., where this memorial stands, offers a wide panorama over the Morhange battlefield and over the sites, which we will visit later on our route.

Rather extra-ordinarily, this interesting information panel offers background information and it also mentions some locations of combats and the involved units!

In August 1914 the 2nd Bavarian Army Corps of General von Gersattel guarded the Morhange region. View in the direction of Morhange.

Units of the French 11e Division d'Infanterie under General Balfourier formed the opponents of the Bavarians in this sector. View in the direction of Zarbeling and Lidrezing.

View in the direction of Conthill and Riche. On the horizon: the Haute de Koeking (330 m.)

View in the direction of Pévange and Haboudange. In this western sector units of the 3rd Bavarian Army Corps under General von Martini clashed with units of the 39e D.I. of General Dantant.

We return to our car and we continue our route along the northern outskirts of Morhange to ...

The Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof of Morhange (German: Mörchingen) contains the human remains of 4,754 German soldiers. There are 1,965 individual graves (sometimes shared by more victims) and two communal graves containing the human remains of 2,788 soldiers, of whom 72 men are unknown. 

The German War Cemetery of Morhange was created by the German military administration in August 1914 during the Battle of Morhange as part of the already existing German garrison cemetery. As the war progressed, the number of dead rose to about 250. After the war, the French military authorities exhumed the French war dead and took them to their own cemetery. Subsequently, a wide-ranging collection followed of the German war dead, left in the fields of 89 municipalities. They were fighting here in the during the period of 20 - 23 August 1914 and early September. Before the collection they were often buried temporarily at the place of their death. Later were added the men fallen during the trench war battles of the years of 1915-1918 or who died of their wounds in the military hospitals.

The majority of these soldiers, buried here, belonged to military units from Bavaria.

But also members of other units are buried here; from Thuringia, Brandenburg, Alsace, Lorraine, Silesia, West Prussia, Hesse-Cassel, Mecklenburg and Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover and Brunswick.

Sometimes soldiers fallen in different periods of the war share a grave. I detected also some graves of soldier musicians.

The two communal graves containing the human remains of 2,788 soldiers.

On the northern side of the cemetery is the 1871-1918 German garrison cemetery.

The beauty of these memorials and their inscriptions invite me to step for a short while out of the period of the summer of 1914 and to show you some samples. The grave of a rifleman, who died in 1906.

The grave of a Hannover Uhlan, a cavalryman. There used to be a plaque with more information.

The grave of rifleman, who died in 1895, with a remarkable decoration: ...

We leave the cemetery and in our minds we return to the period of August 1914.

At the east side of the road we visit the Nécropole Nationale of Riche. 

A "Monument Aux Morts" towers over the cemetery.

The northern ossuary possesses two panels with names and two different inscriptions. The left panel mentions the same names and soldiers, mentioned at the Oron memorial, and who fell on 20 August at Oron. The right panel mentions 1,533 names of soldiers, fallen during other periods of the war.

The southern ossuary contains the human remains of 186 soldiers. 

The  Russian mass grave with an unknown number of Russian soldiers, most likely also with a higher number of victims than buried in the individual graves here.

At the time of the revolution in October 1917 and after the mutinies of the Nivelles Offensive, the brigades were broken up and retired from the front.

Some Russian officers, together with some volunteers, then formed a "Russian Legion for Honour", and continued fighting until the Armistice in French uniform, as part of the Moroccan Regiment. 

The plot of graves of the 158 Russian soldiers. The memorial chapel in the background was closed, alas.

From the Russian plot we walk to the northern edge of the cemetery (right).

From the edge of the cemetery I made this teleview northward of the Memorial of the Battle of Morhange at Morhange, which we visited some moments ago.

At dawn of 20 August units of the B.I.R. 23 and of the Bavarian Jägerbataillon 1 attacked from the east and north-east Conthil, then occupied by units of the 37e R.I.

Around 8 o'clock the Bavarians occupied the village definitely. French artillery fire delayed for a while the westward progress of the Bavarians.

We continue south-eastward via the D 79C via the hamlet of Zarbeling to Lidrezing.

In Lidrezing, along the Rue Principale, we find the "Espace de 69e R.I." with this remarkable memorial for the dead, also commemorating eight ...

The Nécropole Nationale of Lidrezing contains the human remains of 549 French soldiers.
There are 116 individual graves and two communal graves, together containing the human remains of 433 men.
The officers and soldiers, buried here, were all killed on 20 August 1914. Soon after the battle German troops created this cemetery.

View in the direction of Conthil (left), Zarbeling and to the church tower of Lidrezing (centre), and Rodalbe (right).

From the Haut de Koeking we continue southward via the D 999 to Dieuze.

In Dieuze we visit at its north-eastern outskirts the large Dieuze Military Plot of the civilian cemetery.

Besides a large plot of Polish war graves of the Second World War the Carré Militaire of Dieuze also contains the human remains of 1,357 men of four different nationalities, who died during the Great War. 122 Germans, 263 French men, and 7 Russians are buried here. 947 Romanians are buried in a separate plot. 

The German army created in 1914 the German cemetery of Dieuze for their own dead and for the dead of the French forces during the period of 17 - 23 August 1914.

During the fighting at Dieuze about 300 soldiers from both sides fell or died of their wounds in the hospitals. This number increased to 1918 to over 500. After the war, the French military authorities transferred the German victims resting in individual graves to the cemetery in Morhange. The French victims were transferred to the cemetery near Cutting.

A rather extra-ordinary feature, there are two communal graves, together containing the human remains of both French and German soldiers, buried together in these mass graves. Generally you will find on the Franco-German war cemeteries two separate mass graves, each made for one nationality.

Before we go up the stone stairs we notice this rather modern memorial dedicated ...

French troops occupied Dieuze on 17 August 1914 having met no resistance of the then still withdrawing Germans.

The majority of the fights of 20 August 1914 happened more to the north-east of Dieuze. On that day Dieuze itself stayed out of the heat of the battle. Its French occupants were forced to withdraw or they were lost in the fights around Bidestroff. 

From the end of August Dieuze would serve temporarily as the headquarters of the "Oberkommando" of the German 6th Army.

Here I turn my back to detect the two densely vegetated communal graves, marked here with small circles.

I feel rather annoyed by the height of the grass and the poor state of the unkempt plants on the graves.

The left communal grave where German and French soldiers rest together, ...

... again an unknown number of German soldiers, unknown due to the unkempt plants.

Of the more than 100,000 Romanian Prisoners of War, many Romanian soldiers were transported from Romania to P.O.W. camps in German states like Alsace and Lorraine. 2,344 of them died during their captivity in Alsace and Lorraine.

On 27 August 1916 Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary and the other Central Powers of Germany and Bulgaria. On the night of 27 August, three Romanian armies, the First, Second and Northern Army, were deployed according to the Romanian Campaign Plan (The "Z" Hypothesis). The armies launched attacks through the Carpathians and into Transylvania. Initially the only opposing force was the Austro-Hungarian First Army, which was steadily pushed back toward Hungary. The rapid Romanian advance alarmed the Central Powers. Sizable German forces began arriving at the scene. The Austro-Hungarians also sent four divisions to reinforce their lines, and by the middle of September, the Romanian offensive was halted. The Russians loaned them three divisions for operations in the north of Romania, but otherwise very few supplies.

Counter Offensive of the Central Powers; the Romanian Campaign

Romanian Casualties

The total of Romanian casualties of this campaign is estimated at 250,000 men.

According to German sources of the period the Romanians lost at least 774 Officers, 107,900 P.O.W.’s , 448 artillery guns, and 186 machine-guns. According to other sources the number of fallen Romanian soldiers is estimated on a number between 75,000 and 100,000 men.

According to the inscriptions on memorials at the Romanian Military Cemetery of Soultzmatt, Vosges, ...

North-west of the village we visit the Nécropole Nationale of Vergaville.

Some 3 km. from here the units of the XVe Corps d'Armée, the 112e and 141e R.I. supported by the 6e Bataillon Chasseurs Alpins (6e B.C.A.), occupied on 19 August the village of Bidestroff. These units took up position north of the village.

View from the cemetery entrance north-eastward to les Trois Monts and Bidestroff.

We leave Vergaville and we continue our route north-estward along the D 22 ...

On a height, called le Reichacker, towers the Memorial for the 29e and 30e Divisions d'Infanterie.

Every stone cross in the base symbolizes a unit involved in the combats around Bidestroff (German: Biedersdorf). Each cross possesses a carved abbreviation of a unit.

If you ever pass this memorial, take some time to study also the interesting rear side of the base of this memorial.

Beneath the bronze sword a bronze plaque offers an interesting map of the battlefield. It mentions also the numbers of the German and French units, involved in the combats here around Bidestroff.

View from the memorial south-westward.

Supported by artillery, units of the 29e D.I. , the 6e B.C.A., the 112e and 141e R.I., occupied on 19 August the village of Bidestroff and positioned themselves on a line, some 3 km. to the north.

In the morning of 20 August the Bavarians attacked this sector of Dieuze - Bisping. The units of the German 42nd Infantry Division occupied Bidestroff. 

North of Cutting the Bavarian 11th Infantry Reserve Brigade attacked parallel to the D38 in the direction of Dieuze. The B.R.I.R. 10 attacked Cutting and the junction of L'Esperance decimating the French 32e D.I. and other units of the 63 B.I. 

The 1st Bavarian Reserve Infantry Brigade attacked Bisping, where the French 61e B.I. positioned itself the day before. The Bavarians needed two massive attacks to succeed to overpower the French around 16.00 hrs. From here the Bavarians would rapidly chase the French troops south-westward to the border. 

This map detail below shows the positions at 6 o'clock , just before of the Bavarian attacks of 20 August in this area.

... a junction south of Cutting, called l'Espérance. We park our car to visit the Nécropole Nationale of Cutting.

During the early war period the French Army lost many officers, even generals. This is the grave of Général Commandant Paul Diou, Commander of the 63e Brigade d'Infanterie, ...

... who was wounded on this battlefield near Cutting, and who died of his wounds on 23 August 1914 in Dieuze.

The left communal grave contains the human remains of 257 officers and soldiers, of whom 254 (!) are unknown.

The right ossuary contains the human remains of 283 officers and soldiers, of whom 280 are unknown.

From the junction at l'Esperance we continue south-eastward to the community of les-Belles-Forêts, to Bisping.

Here we visit the Franco-German Nécropole Nationale of Bisping, which possesses two separate plots, a German and a French plot.

View from one of the two German communal graves in the direction of the French plot. 

There are 70 individual graves and two communal graves, together containing the human remains of 528 men of whom 134 are unknown.
The officers and soldiers, buried here, were killed during all periods of the war, but the large majority of them fell in the area around the cemetery during the period of 20 - 23 August 1914.

The Franco-German War Cemetery Bisping was created by the Germans in April 1915 for the German and French dead from the combats in and around Bisping during the period of 20 - 23 August 1914. Later in the war victims were added from the defensive battles against the attacking French forces during the trench warfare period of 1915 - 1918. The soldiers and officers, buried here, belonged to units, whose home base was predominantly in Bavaria, but also in Alsace, Lorraine, Württemberg and Mecklenburg. After the war, the French military authorities transferred more human remains from local areas, where these soldiers had temporarily a makeshift grave.

Many graves bear the date of 20 August 1914.

The Nécropole Nationale of Bisping contains the human remains of 392 men.
There are 50 individual graves and two communal graves, together containing the human remains of 342 men.

The officers and soldiers, buried here, were killed during all periods of the war, but the large majority of them fell in the area around the cemetery during the period of 18 - 20 August 1914.

After the war, the French military authorities transferred more human remains from local areas, where these soldiers had temporarily a makeshift grave.

The left ossuary contains the human remains of 145 officers and soldiers, of whom 101 are unknown.

The right ossuary contains the human remains of 185 officers and soldiers, of whom 137 are unknown.

From Bisping we follow in one giant leap the high-speed advance of the Bavarians westward to one of the locations along the French border, where they would stop their hunt of the French troops, the French border town of Nomeny and to the next village of Mailly-sur-Seille.

In the centre of Nomeny at the roundabout on the east side of the Seille river along the Rue Georges Clemencau...

... we find this memorial with a statue of a mortally wounded Chasseur Alpin ensign-bearer.

On the western side of the Seille, over the bridge, is another memorial commemorating the events of 20 August 1914.

On 20 August 1914 units of B.I.R. 2, B.I.R. 4 and B.I.R. 8 bombarded Nomeny, invaded the town, burned it down, and killed 55 civilians.

From this memorial we continue northward, parallel to the river, to the junction of the D 913 the D 44. Here we find this post-war demarcation stone, which symbolizes the farthermost point of the German advance.

We continue north-eastward via the D44 to Mailly-sur-Seille on the west bank of the meandering Seille. In the village we find some concrete relics of the German presence after 20 August 1914; a large 1915 shelter bunker.

In a private garden stands a bunker with a concrete breastwork around it.

And on the western side of the village we find this German observation tower, fortified with 1915 concrete.

With these two last views of the observation post we finish here at Mailly-sur Seille our tour over the battlefields of the Battle of Morhange and the successful Bavarian counter offensive, “Die Schlacht in Lothringen”.