August 9, 1914

[jonnymacbrown]

Mülhausen 1914

The Battle of Mülhausen which began on August 9, 1914, was the opening attack of World War I by the French army against Germany. The battle was part of a French attempt to recover the province of Alsace, which the French had been forced to cede to the newly formed German Empire following France's defeat by Prussia and other independent German states in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

In command of the operation to take Mülhausen was General Bonneau, and he was assigned a detachment of the First Army, plus one cavalry and two infantry divisions. Ranged against him was the German Seventh Army under General von Heeringen.

Having crossed the frontier on the morning of 7 August, the French quickly seized the border town of Altkirch with a bayonet charge. However Bonneau, suspicious of the light state of the German defences, was wary of advancing much further for fear of stepping into a carefully laid German trap. However, under orders to move to the Rhine next day, Bonneau continued his advance, taking Mülhausen shortly after its German occupants had left the town.

The taking of Mülhausen, albeit without opposition, sparked wild celebrations in France. With the arrival of German reserves from Strasbourg, the Germans mounted a counter-attack on the morning of 9 August at nearby Cernay.

In the absence of reserves of his own, and unable to mount a concentrated defence, Bonneau began a slow withdrawal the same day. Joseph Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, hastily dispatched a reserve division to assist in the defence, but they arrived too late to save the town from recapture, Bonneau withdrawing towards Belfort, the only fort to have held out during the Franco-Prussian War, on 10 August in order to escape German encirclement.

Bonneau's withdrawal to Belfort was seen as both an actual and symbolic humiliation by Joffre, and his response was immediate. Charging Bonneau with a lack of aggression, he was promptly relieved of command.