From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Battle of Mulhouse (or Mülhausen), which began on August 9th 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 ceded to Germany after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. On the morning of August 7th, the French army quickly took the French-German border town of Altkirch and moved to the Rhine the following day, seizing the town of Mulhouse. The quick success of the offensive resulted in large victory celebrations in Paris, but on August 9th the German army launched a counter-attack. Unable to mount a concentrated defence, the French were forced to withdraw from Mulhouse.
