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Updated: June 15, 2025
Longwy the poor, old-fashioned fortress in the northeast corner of France had hardly enough guns for a big rabbit-shoot, and hardly enough garrison to man the guns. The conquering Crown Prince afterward took it almost as easily as a boy steals an apple from an unprotected orchard. It was the first star in his diadem of glory. But Verdun, though near by, was not the second.
On the 20th the Prussian guns opened on Longwy; on the 23rd it surrendered. On the 30th the siege of Verdun was begun, Verdun which Louis had so nearly reached the year before. It was generally known that the fortress could not stand more than a few days. Between it and Paris there was only the Argonne, a few miles of hilly passes, and then 100 miles of open country.
He was disheartened by disaster, but his wife cried out that she would perish with him, and the judges granted her prayer. She strove to give him comfort and courage along the way, and they were guillotined together. From Longwy the Prussians advanced upon Verdun, which surrendered September 2, after one day's bombardment, and there was not a rampart between them and the capital.
"Fortune de la guerre," reconciled the gallant captains of the garrison to the change; and they fully enjoyed the contrast between a night on the ramparts, and the hours spent at the Prussian generalissimo's splendidly furnished table. The ball which followed exhibited a crowd of the belles of Longwy, all as happy as dress and dancing could make them.
It had two small iron beds and it was secure from wet and cold. "You take that," said Jacques, pointing to the bed on the right. "It belonged to Fritz who was the hostler here with me. He went to the army at the first call and was killed at Longwy. Fritz was a German, a Saxon, but he and I were friends. We had worked together here three years. I'd have been glad if the bullets had spared him.
The French made a strong attack on the Metz region on the same day, October 22, 1916, employing twenty-four machines. They claimed that these dropped 4,200 kilograms of bombs on blast furnaces at Hagodange and Pussings north of Metz, and also on the railway stations at Thionville, Mezures-les-Betz, Longwy, and Metz-Sablons. German aeroplanes dropped several bombs on Lunéville.
The main objectives were the centre of the chemical industry at Mannheim and Frankfort; the iron and steel works at Briey and Longwy and the Saar Basin; the machine shops in the Westphalian district and the magneto works at Stuttgart; the submarine bases at Wilhelmshaven, Bremerhaven, Cuxhaven, and Hamburg, and the accumulator factories at Hagen and Berlin.
On the 30th the hostile army arrived before Verdun, invested it, and began to bombard it. Verdun taken, the road to the capital was open. The capture of Longwy, and the approach of so great a danger, threw Paris into the utmost agitation and alarm.
The French had begun, after the recuperation following upon the war of 1870, an elaborate and very perfect system of fortification along their German frontier that is, along the new frontier which divided the annexed territory of Alsace-Lorraine from the rest of the country. They had taken it for granted that the next German attempt would be made somewhere between Longwy and Belfort.
Meanwhile my plans for further use of the American forces contemplated an advance between the Meuse and the Moselle in the direction of Longwy by the First Army, while, at the same time, the Second Army should assure the offensive toward the rich coal fields of Briey. These operations were to be followed by an offensive toward Château-Salins east of the Moselle, thus isolating Metz.
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