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Realizing that the French temperament was more likely to be swayed by sentiment than by stern adherence to the rules of actual warfare, the German staff selected its own battle line and waited. The French did not disappoint. They rushed across the border. They took Altkirch with little opposition. Then they rushed on to Muelhausen.
They buried their dead when they had time, piling fifteen or twenty in a shallow pit." On August 9 the advance guard brigade of the French right wing, under General Pau, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, invaded Alsace, fought a victorious action with an intrenched German force of equal numbers and occupied Muelhausen and Kolmar.
Good news of further French advances in Upper Alsace and the recapture of Muelhausen make Parisians cheerful. The death of the Pope during the present tension is scarcely noticed. All thoughts and expectations are centered on Belgium, where the great battle is impending.
Rails running on top of the cars permit troops to fire from the roof of the cars. For opening railway communications this "battleship on wheels" is unexcelled. The scene is a village on the outskirts of Muelhausen, in Alsace. A lieutenant of German scouts dashes up to the door of the only inn in the village, posts men at the doorway and entering, seats himself at a table.
The news of the French entry into the province lost in 1871 was received all over France with wild enthusiasm. The mourning emblems on the Strasburg monument in Paris were removed by the excited populace and replaced by the tricolor flag and flowers in token of their joy. Muelhausen was soon after retaken by the German forces, only to be recaptured later by the French and then evacuated once more.
On the day of the first French occupation of Muelhausen France declared war against Austria in consequence of the arrival of two Austrian army corps on the Rhine to assist the main German army. After the French occupation of Muelhausen a large German army was sent to the front in Alsace-Lorraine and succeeded in dislodging the French from that city, but not without severe fighting.
Two weeks after the war began the French defeated a Bavarian corps in Alsace and for awhile General Pau more than held his own in that former province of France. On August 21 the Germans drove back the French who had invaded Lorraine, and occupied Lunéville, ten miles inside the French border. About the same time the French reoccupied Muelhausen, after three days' fighting around the city.
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