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The Army of Alsace advanced cautiously, as part of the main French offensive the Battle of Lorraine, by the First and Second armies into the province of Lorraine. The French reached the area west of Mulhouse by 16 August and fought their way into the city by 19 August. The German survivors were pursued eastwards over the Rhine and the French took 3,000 prisoners. Joffre ordered the offensive to continue but by 23 August, preparations were halted as news of the French defeats in Lorraine and the Ardennes arrived. On 26 August, the French withdrew from Mulhouse to a more defensible line near Altkirch, to provide reinforcements for the French armies closer to Paris. The Army of Alsace was disbanded, the VII Corps was transferred to the Somme area in Picardy and the 8th Cavalry Division was attached to the First Army, to which two more divisions were sent later. The German 7th Army took part in the counter-offensive in Lorraine, with the German 6th Army and was then transferred to the Aisne in early September.

A few border skirmishes took place after the declaration of war and German reconnaissance patrols found that the French had a chain of frontier posts, supported by larger fortified positions further back; after 5 August more patrols were sent out as French activity increased. French troops advanced from Gérardmer to the Schlucht Pass, where the Germans retreated and blew up the tunnel.[10] Joffre had directed the First and Second armies to engage as many German divisions as possible, in order to assist French forces operating further north. The French VII Corps with the 14th and 41st divisions, under the command of General Bonneau, advanced from Belfort to Mulhouse and Colmar 35 kilometres (22 mi) to the north-east. The French advance was hampered by the breakdown of the supply service and many delays but seized the border town of Altkirch 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south of Mulhouse with a bayonet charge.

The German defenders were forced back from high ground west of Mulhouse, on both banks of the Doller and into the Mulhouse suburbs, where a house-to-house battle took place. The streets and houses of Dornach were captured systematically and by the evening of 19 August, the French again controlled the city. After being overrun, the Germans withdrew hastily through the Hardt forest to avoid being cut off and crossed the Rhine pursued by the French, retreating to Ensisheim, 20 kilometres (12 mi) to the north. The French captured 24 guns, 3,000 prisoners and considerable amounts of equipment.[17] With the capture of the Rhine bridges and valleys leading into the plain, the French had gained control of Upper Alsace. They proceeded to consolidate the captured ground and prepared to continue the offensive, but this outcome fell far short of the support that the Army of Alsace had been expected to provide. The German 7th Army was left free to threaten the right flank of the French First Army, which moved troops to the right flank. On 23 August, preparations were suspended as news arrived of the defeats in Lorraine and Belgium and the next day the VII Corps was ordered to move to the Somme. On 26 August, the French withdrew from Mulhouse to a more defensible line near Altkirch, to provide reinforcements for the French armies closer to Paris. The Army of Alsace was disbanded and the 8th Cavalry Division was attached to the First Army, two more divisions being sent later.

Joseph Joffre, who had been Commander-in-Chief of the French army since 1911 and the Minister of War, Adolphe Messimy met on 1 August, to agree that the military conduct of the war should exclusively be the responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief. On 2 August, as small parties of German soldiers crossed the French border, Messimy told Joffre that he had the freedom to order French troops across the German but not the Belgian frontier. Joffre sent warning orders to the covering forces near the frontier, requiring the VII Corps to prepare to advance towards Mühlhausen (French: Mulhouse) to the north-east of Belfort and XX Corps to make ready to begin an offensive towards Nancy. As soon as news arrived that German troops had entered Luxembourg, the Fourth Army was ordered to move between the Third and Fifth armies, ready to attack to the north of Verdun. Operations into Belgium were forbidden, to deny the Germans a pretext until 4 August, when it was certain that German troops had already violated the Belgian border. To comply with the Franco-Russian Alliance, Joffre ordered an invasion of Alsace-Lorraine on for 14 August, although anticipating a German offensive through Belgium.

Joffre began to dismiss commanders in early August, beginning with the VII Corps commander Bonneau and by 6 September had removed two army, ten corps and 38 divisional commanders, by transferring them to Limoges ("Limogé"). The VII Corps in the south was reinforced by two divisions, a cavalry division and the First Group of Reserve Divisions. The corps was renamed the Army of Alsace, to relieve the First Army of concern about Alsace during the operations in Lorraine. Two corps were removed from the Second Army and became a strategic reserve.Joffre met Sir John French on 16 August and learned that the British could be ready by 24 August, Joffre also arranged for Territorial divisions to cover the area from Maubeuge to Dunkirk. The German siege of the Liège forts ended on 16 August and the 1st and 2nd armies with twelve corps and the 3rd Army with four corps, began to advance behind cavalry screens. On 18 August, Joffre ordered the Fifth Army to prepare for a German offensive on both banks of the Meuse or to meet a small force on the north bank. The Fifth Army began to move towards Namur, in the angle of the Meuse and Sambre rivers on 19 August, which required a march of 100 kilometres (62 mi) by some units.

On 5 August, Joffre ordered an offensive by the VII Corps, on the right flank of the First Army, to begin on 7 August towards Mulhouse. The capture of the 2nd Army order of battle on 7 August, convinced Joffre that the strength of the German forces on the flanks had left the centre weak and vulnerable to an offensive towards Neufchâteau and Arlon. On 8 August, Joffre issued General Instruction No. 1, containing his strategic intent, which was to destroy the German army rather than capture ground. The offensive into Alsace and that by the First and Second armies into Lorraine, would pin down German forces and attract reinforcements, as the main offensive further north drove in the German centre and outflanked the German forces in Belgium from the south. Joffre expected that the attack into the German centre would meet little resistance. The First and Second armies would advance south of the German fortified area from Metz–Thionville, with the Fourth Reserve Group guarding the northern flank near Hirson, to watch the Chimay Gap and deflect a German attack from the north or east. The strategy assumed that the main German force would be deployed around Luxembourg and from Metz–Thionville, with smaller forces in Belgium. On 9 August, an intelligence report had one German active corps near Freiburg close to the Swiss border, three near Strasbourg, four in Luxembourg to the north of Thionville and six from Liège in Belgium, towards the north end of Luxembourg, which left five corps un-located. The French general staff inferred that they were between Metz-Thionville and Luxembourg, ready to advance towards Sedan or Mézières.

Joffre set 14 August as the date when the First and Second armies were to invade Lorraine between Toul and Épinal, south of the German fortified area of Metz-Thionville. The First Army was to attack in the south with four corps, towards Sarrebourg 60 kilometres (37 mi) east of Nancy and Donon 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Sarrebourg. Passes in the Vosges to the south of Donon were to be captured before the main advance began. The Second Army was to attack towards Morhange 45 kilometres (28 mi) north-east of Nancy, with two corps north of the First Army and three advancing successively behind the left flank of the corps to the south, to counter a German attack from Metz. The French offensive was complicated by the two armies diverging as they advanced, on difficult terrain particularly in the south, the combined fronts eventually being 150 kilometres (93 mi) wide. The advances of the First and Second armies were to attract German forces towards the south, while a French manoeuvre took place in Belgium and Luxembourg, to pierce a weak point in the German deployment and then destroy the main German armies.

The terrain in the fortress zone was difficult to observe, because many ravines ran between the forts. Interval defences had been built just before the battle but were insufficient to stop German infiltration. The forts were also vulnerable to attack from the rear, the direction from which the German bombardments were fired. The forts had been built to withstand shelling from 210-millimetre (8.3 in) guns, which were the largest mobile artillery in 1890 but concrete used in construction was not of the best quality and by 1914 the German army had obtained much larger 420mm howitzers, (L/12 420-millimetre (17 in) M-Gerät 14 Kurze Marine-Kanone) and Austrian 305mm howitzers (Škoda 305-millimetre (12.0 in) Mörser M. 11). The Belgian 3rd Division (Lieutenant-General Gérard Léman) defended Liège.[9] Within the division, there were four brigades and various other formations with c. 36,000 troops and 400 guns. The Army of the Meuse consisted of the 11th Brigade of III Corps (Major-General von Wachter), the 14th Brigade of IV Corps (Major-General von Wussow), the 27th Brigade of VII Corps (Colonel von Massow), the 34th Brigade of IX Corps (Major-General von Kraewel), the 38th Brigade of X Corps (Colonel von Oertzen) and the 43rd Brigade of XI Corps (Major-General von Hülsen).The cavalry component consisted of Höherer Kavallerie-Kommandeur II (II Cavalry Corps Lieutenant-General Von der Marwitz, consisting of the 2nd (Major-General Von Krane), 4th (Lieutenant-General Von Garnier) and the 9th (Major-General Von Bulow) cavalry divisions. The Army of the Meuse (General von Emmich) had c. 59,800 troops with 100 guns and howitzers, accompanied by Erich Ludendorff as an observer for the General Staff.

The main French offensive in the south began on 14 August when the First Army advanced with two corps into the Vosges and two corps north-east towards Sarrebourg and the two right-hand corps of the Second Army of General de Castelnau advanced on the left of the First Army. One corps and the Second Group of Reserve Divisions advanced slowly towards Morhange in echelon, as a flank guard against a German attack from Metz. The First Army had captured several passes further south since 8 August, to protect the southern flank as the army advanced to Donon and Sarrebourg. Despite warnings from Joffre against divergence, the army was required to advance towards the Vosges passes to the south-east, eastwards towards Donon and north-east towards Sarrebourg. German troops withdrew during the day, Donon was captured and on the left flank an advance of 10–12 kilometres (6.2–7.5 mi) was made. At dusk the 26th Division of the XIII Corps attacked Cirey and were engaged by artillery and machine-guns and repulsed with many casualties. On 15 August, the Second Army reported that German long-range artillery had been able to bombard the French artillery and infantry undisturbed and that dug-in German infantry had inflicted many casualties on the French as they attacked.

The German 4th Army under Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg, and 5th Army of Crown Prince Wilhelm had moved slower than the 1st, 2nd and 3rd armies and the French offensive towards them was reported on 21 August. The French armies had few maps and were unaware of the size of the German force opposite, as the Third Army brushed aside small German detachments. On 22 August in the Third army area, the V Corps attacked dug-in German troops at Longwy at 5:00 a.m. in thick fog and heavy rain, with no artillery support. As the fog lifted, German artillery caught the French guns in the open and silenced them. A German counter-attack routed a French division and the corps was not rallied until the evening. To the north the IV Corps also advanced in fog and encountered German troops dug in near Virton and was forced back also with a division routed. On the southern Flank the VI Corps was pushed back a short distance. In the Fourth Army area the II Corps on the right flank managed to keep level with the Third Army to the south but was not able to advance further. The Colonial Corps on the left was defeated at Rossignol, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south of Neufchâteau, and had 11,646 casualties but the 5th Colonial Brigade on the left easily reached Neufchâteau before being repulsed with many casualties. Further north XII Corps advanced steadily but the XVII Corps beyond was outflanked and the 33rd Division lost most of its artillery. On the northern flank the XI and IX corps were not seriously engaged.

Charbonneau explained that the defeat of the Colonial Corps was caused by faulty reconnaissance, the ineffectiveness of advanced guards in causing delay to advancing German units and that French offensive tactics neglected the importance of obtaining a superiority of fire, which had led to reckless attacks. The quality of the German opponents was not mentioned but German reconnaissance had been effective, communication between commanders and subordinates had not broken down, mutual support between neighbouring units had occurred and German artillery had provided continuous close fire support.[9] At Neufchâteau, the French colonial infantry had been out-gunned and outnumbered by German units, which had been able to engage all their forces quickly. The French XII Corps had a greater number of guns but was not able to overcome two German infantry battalions. German artillery had engaged the Colonial Brigade from close range but when in a hastily occupied defensive position, the French had nullified much of the German artillery-fire; French troops caught in the open had been annihilated. Both sides had attempted to gain fire superiority before advancing and once this had been achieved by the Germans, they had been able to manoeuvre without severe casualties.

The French commanders were ordered by Joffre to continue the offensive on 23 August as early as possible, since his strategy depended on the success of the Third and Fourth armies. Ruffey replied in the morning that the attack could not begin until his divisions had reorganised and in the early afternoon found that the Germans had forestalled another advance, by pushing the V Corps in the centre back for 8 kilometres (5.0 mi), which led to the rest of the army falling back level. In the Fourth Army area, the 33rd Division of XVII Corps was routed and the rest of the corps had retired during the night of 22/23 August. The 5th Colonial Brigade withdrew from Neufchâteau before dawn on 23 August, exposing the right flank of XII Corps, which also fell back. By the end of 23 August, the survivors of the Third and Fourth armies were back to their jumping-off positions except for the XI and IX corps on the northern flank.

Joffre issued instructions on 18 August but held back the Third and Fourth armies because air and cavalry reconnaissance found few German troops opposite the two armies, only a large force moving north-west 40–50 kilometres (25–31 mi) away. On 19 August the Fourth army of General Fernand de Langle de Cary was ordered to occupy the bridges over the Semois but not to advance into Belgium until the German offensive began. A premature attack would advance into a trap rather than give time for the Germans to empty Luxembourg of troops before the French advanced. On 20 August the German armies in the south attacked the French First and Second armies and next day the Third and Fourth armies began their offensive. The Fourth Army crossed the Semois and advanced towards Neufchâteau and the Third Army of General Pierre Ruffey attacked towards Arlon, as a right flank guard for the Fourth army. South of Verdun, the Third army was renamed Army of Lorraine and was to watch for a German offensive from Metz, which left the remainder of the Third Army free to concentrate on the offensive into Belgium. The French armies invaded Belgium with nine infantry corps but ten German corps and six reserve brigades of the 4th and 5th armies lay between Metz and the north of Luxembourg. The German 4th Army under Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg, and 5th Army of Crown Prince Wilhelm had moved slower than the 1st, 2nd and 3rd armies and the French offensive towards them was reported on 21 August. The French armies had few maps and were unaware of the size of the German force opposite, as the Third Army brushed aside small German detachments. On 22 August in the Third army area, the V Corps attacked dug-in German troops at Longwy at 5:00 a.m. in thick fog and heavy rain, with no artillery support.

As the fog lifted, German artillery caught the French guns in the open and silenced them. A German counter-attack routed a French division and the corps was not rallied until the evening. To the north the IV Corps also advanced in fog and encountered German troops dug in near Virton and was forced back also with a division routed. On the southern Flank the VI Corps was pushed back a short distance. In the Fourth Army area the II Corps on the right flank managed to keep level with the Third Army to the south but was not able to advance further. The Colonial Corps on the left was defeated at Rossignol, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south of Neufchâteau, and had 11,646 casualties but the 5th Colonial Brigade on the left easily reached Neufchâteau before being repulsed with many casualties. Further north XII Corps advanced steadily but the XVII Corps beyond was outflanked and the 33rd Division lost most of its artillery. On the northern flank the XI and IX corps were not seriously engaged.

国民投票でEU離脱が決まったのに 「離脱は無効だ」とか「離脱派にだまされた」とか「投票をやり直せ」とか「ロンドンを独立させてEUに加盟し直すべきだ」などと騒いでいます 挙句には離脱票を投じた人たちも「こんな事になるとは思わなかった…」とか「やっぱり離脱すべきではない」などと言い出す始末… イギリス人てのはこんなに往生際が悪い民族だったのですか？ 自分たちが選んだ道にすら従えない様な人たちなのでしょうか？

By 20 August, the Fifth Army (General Charles Lanrezac) had begun to concentrate on a 40-kilometre (25 mi) front along the Sambre, centred on Charleroi and extending east to the Belgian fortress of Namur. On the left flank, the Cavalry Corps (General André Sordet) linked the Fifth Army with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Mons. The French had 15 divisions, after transfers of troops to Lorraine, facing 18 German divisions from the 2nd Army (General Karl von Bülow) and 3rd Army moving south-west from Luxembourg towards the Meuse. Although Lanrezac knew retreat to be necessary from the beginning of the war and warned against the danger of the German sweep through Belgium, his superior, General Joseph Joffre, believed that France should follow the offensive Plan XVII, regardless of what happened in Belgium, discounted Lanrezac's warnings and ordered the Fifth Army to attack across the Sambre. Before Lanrezac could act on the morning of 21 August, the 2nd Army launched the Battle of Charleroi with assaults across the Sambre, establishing two bridgeheads which the French, lacking artillery, were unable to reduce. The Germans attacked again on 22 August, with three corps against the entire Fifth Army front. Fighting continued on 23 August when the French centre around Charleroi began to fall back.

At the Battle of Mons the BEF had some 80,000 men, comprising the Cavalry Division, an independent cavalry brigade and two corps, each with two infantry divisions. I Corps was commanded by Sir Douglas Haig and was composed of the 1st and 2nd Divisions. II Corps was commanded by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and consisted of the 3rd and 5th Divisions. Each division had 18,073 men and 5,592 horses, in three brigades of four battalions. Each division had twenty-four Vickers machine guns – two per battalion – and three field artillery brigades with fifty-four 18-pounder guns, one field howitzer brigade of eighteen 4.5-inch howitzers and a heavy artillery battery of four 60-pounder guns.

Late on 22 August, reports arrived that the British had occupied the Canal du Centre crossings from Nimy to Ville-sur-Haine, which revealed the location of British positions, except for their left flank. On 23 August, the 1st Army began to advance north-west of Maubeuge, to a line from Basècles to St. Ghislain and Jemappes. The weather had turned cloudy and rainy, which grounded the 1st Army Flieger-Abteilung all day, despite an improvement in the weather around noon. News that large numbers of troops had been arriving at Tournai by train were received and the advance was suspended, until the reports from Tournai could be checked. The IX Corps divisions advanced in four columns against the Canal du Centre, from the north of Mons to Roeulx and on the left (eastern) flank, met French troops at the canal, which was thought to be the junction of the British and French forces. The corps commander, General von Quast, had ordered an attack for 9:55 a.m. to seize the crossings, before the halt order was received. The two III Corps divisions were close to St. Ghislain and General Ewald von Lochow ordered them to prepare an attack from Tertre to Ghlin. In the IV Corps area, General Sixt von Armin ordered an attack on the canal crossings of Péruwelz and Blaton and ordered the 8th Division to reconnoitre from Tournai to Condé and to keep contact with Höhere Kavallerie-Kommando 2 (HKK 2, II Cavalry Corps).

I Anzac Corps would carry the advance along the ridge while, on their left, II Corps would keep in line, systematically reducing the Thiepval salient. Initially the task fell to the 4th Australian Division, which had already suffered 1,000 casualties, resisting the final German counter-attack but both the Australian 1st and 2nd Divisions would be called on again, followed once more by the 4th Division. When the Australian ordeal on Pozières ridge was over in September, they were replaced by the Canadian Corps who held the sector for the remainder of the battle. The O.G.

A shot or two fired out in the desert to the south-east of their position put the long piquet line of the 1st and 2nd Light Horse Regiment (1st Light Horse Brigade) on alert about midnight, when the 3rd Light Horse Regiment (1st Light Horse Brigade) was called up to the front line. The Austrian, German and Ottoman advance paused after finding the gullies held by the light horsemen, but at about 01:00, a sudden heavy burst of fire along the whole front began the attack of the considerably superior Ottoman and German forces, and by 02:00 they had in many places advanced to within 50 yards (46 m) of the Australian line.