The Battle of the Frontiers comprised battles fought along the eastern frontier of France and in southern Belgium, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The battles resolved the military strategies of the French Chief of Staff General Joseph Joffre with Plan XVII and an offensive adaptation of the German Aufmarsch II deployment plan by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. The German concentration on the right (northern) flank, was to wheel through Belgium and attack the French in the rear.
Belgian troops, with machine-guns pulled by dogs, photographed during the Battle of the Frontiers
Headline in Le Soir, 4 August 1914
French capture of Mulhouse, 8 August 1914
Initial moves, 7–20 August 1914
The Battle of the Trouée de Charmes or Battle of the Mortagne was fought at the beginning of the First World War, between 24 and 26 August 1914 by the French Second Army and the German 6th Army, after the big German victory at the Battle of the Frontiers, earlier in August.
German objective
The Monument of Lorraine, which celebrates the outcome of the engagements of August–September 1914