page_title: List of military engagements of World War I
section_title: Battle of the Frontiers
hierarchical_section_title: List of military engagements of World War I / Western Front / Battle of the Frontiers
caption_attribution_description: French Calvary going to front, Paris
context_page_description: List of military engagements of World War I encompasses land, naval, and air engagements as well as campaigns, operations, defensive lines and sieges. Campaigns generally refer to broader strategic operations conducted over a large bit of territory and over a long period of time. Battles generally refer to short periods of intense combat localised to a specific area and over a specific period of time. However, use of the terms in naming such events is not consistent. For example, the First Battle of the Atlantic was more or less an entire theatre of war, and the so-called battle lasted for the duration of the entire war.
context_section_description: The early French initiative, to capture territory lost to the Germans in the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War, which France started, was played out in a series of frontier battles between the Germans and the French, known collectively as the Battle of the Frontiers. The battles at Mulhouse, Lorraine, the Ardennes, Charleroi, and Mons were launched more or less simultaneously, and marked the collision of the German and French war plans, the Schlieffen Plan and Plan XVII, respectively.
  Battle of Mülhausen
  The Battle of Mülhausen was the opening attack by the French against the Germans. The battle was part of a French attempt to conquer the province of Alsace, which had been lost as a consequence of having lost the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, as it had a majority of ethnic Germans. A French force under General Louis Bonneau detached from the French First Corps and invaded the frontier on August 8, 1914. Opposing them was the German 7th Division. The capture of the area, preordained by the French Plan XVII, was to boost national pride—and to provide a guard force for the flank of subsequent invasions.
  The French quickly captured the border town of Altkirch with a bayonet charge. Bonneau, suspicious of the little German resistance, was wary of a carefully planned German trap. However, under orders the next day he advanced to Mülhausen, capturing it with little effort, for the Germans had already abandoned it.
  In France, the conquering of the German city Mülhausen, without a fight, was celebrated greatly. However, with the arrival of German reserves from Straßburg, the tides were turned, and the Germans mounted a counter-attack on nearby Cernay. Unable to mount an all-encompassing defense, and unable to call on reserves of his own, Bonneau began a slow withdrawal from the region. Support troops hastily sent by the French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre arrived too late to prevent Bonneau from retiring. Joffre was immensely angry with Bonneau, charging him with a "lack of aggression" and immediately relieving him of command. Realizing the psychological magnitude of the loss, he assembled a force, led by Paul Pau, which tried unsuccessfully to recapture the province.
  Battle of Lothringen
  The invasion and recapture of Lorraine formed one of the major parts of the French pre-war strategy, Plan XVII. The loss of Lorraine (and Alsace; see above) to the Prussians in the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War was seen as a national humiliation by the public and military alike, and was at the forefront of their minds for the next war against the Germans.
  The battle was initiated by the French First and Second armies. The First, led by General Auguste Dubail, intended to take Sarrebourg, whilst the Second, led by General Noel de Castelnau, intended to take Morhange. Both towns were well fortified, and the task of defending them fell to Crown Prince Rupprecht, who had overall control of the German Sixth and Seventh armies.
  Rupprecht adopted a strategy in which he would fall back under the French attacks, then counter-attack once he lured the French all the way to his fortifications. As the French army advanced, it met stern resistance in the form of German artillery and machine-gun fire. Army Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke authorized a more aggressive tactic soon after, and on August 20, the German army started to roll back the French. Caught by surprise and without the assistance of entrenched positions, the Second Army was pushed back quickly, eventually into France itself. A gap was exposed between the forces in Mulhouse and those in Lorraine; the forces in Mulhouse were withdrawn to keep the gap from being taken advantage of by the Germans.
  Diverging from the Schlieffen Plan, Rupprecht received reinforcements and attacked the French line near the Trouée de Charmes; however, through the use of reconnaissance aircraft, the French spotted the German buildup, and were able to build an adequate defence. Thus the German gains were minimized, and were eradicated by a following French counter-assault on the 25th. Fighting continued there until
caption: French heavy cavalry on the way to battle, Paris, August 1914.
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