The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World (32 page)

Moltke chose not to inform Wenninger that he had dispatched yet another emissary, Major Max Bauer, to Bavarian headquarters that very day. Bauer, strongly hinting that he was acting on Moltke’s behalf, came up with another grand scheme. After storming
la position de Nancy
, Sixth and Seventh armies were “‘simply’ to pass through Charmes Gap” between Toul and Épinal, strike the French flank, and “drive the remainder of the Army of the Vosges into the arms of the German Fifth Army” around Verdun. In this way, Bauer assured the Bavarians, they would “bring about the decision” in the war.
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Flabbergasted by yet a further radical change in plans by the OHL, Krafft queried Bauer, Moltke’s expert on artillery, as to how long it might take to reduce the fortifications at Nancy. “Oh well, after our experiences at Liège and Namur you should be able to reduce them within 3 days.”
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Bauer promised Rupprecht the remaining 150mm field artillery from the fortresses of Metz, Strasbourg, Germersheim, and Mainz. But since there were no draft horses available for transport, General Otto Kreppel, commander, Bavarian Field Artillery, had to secure railways to move the heavy batteries and twenty-six trains of shells to Nancy. Rupprecht sadly recorded that the Bavarian army had lost three hundred officers and ten thousand men by the end of August 1914.
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While Rupprecht and Krafft drafted plans for Bauer’s small Cannae in the south, Major von Xylander just happened to be in Luxembourg. There, he learned “purely by accident” that the OHL no longer had “any desire” to take
la position de Nancy
. Lieutenant Colonel Tappen confirmed the rumor and added that Sixth and Seventh armies were just to “fix” French forces in equal numbers in Lorraine. Hardly had Xylander caught his breath than Deputy Chief of the General Staff Hermann von Stein let it be known that he expected the Bavarians “merely” to attack the “Bayon bridgehead” on the Moselle River, halfway between Nancy and Épinal to the south. Perhaps as early as “tomorrow.”
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It was pure Alice in Wonderland. What was it to be? Reduction of the Nancy salient? The drive through the Charmes Gap? The attack on the Bayon bridgehead? Or all of the above? Rupprecht took matters into his own hands: On 31 August, he decided as theater commander and as scion of a royal house that he had no choice but to follow Wilhelm II’s order to storm the Grand Couronné de Nancy, the natural three-hundred-meter-high protective ridge that extended from the German border to northeast of Nancy.

Krafft von Dellmensingen immediately did what any other good chief of staff would have done: He drove to Luxembourg to run Rupprecht’s decision by the OHL. He found the mood there downright ebullient. Tappen led off. “Everywhere the enemy is retreating. … The entire western wing is advancing with greatest marching effort.”He envied the men of First and Second armies. “Those people are conducting a promenade around France!” There would be “no holding along the Marne,” he assured Krafft. The French would be herded off in a southeasterly direction and “driven against the Swiss border.”
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There was no need even to contemplate shuttling forces to northern France, Tappen concluded, as the right wing sweeping toward Paris would bring its crushing might to bear in a few days, perhaps even the very next day!
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