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 Luneville, ten miles inside the French border.

About the same time the French reoccupied Muelhausen, after three days’ fighting around the city.  Another French army was reported to be within nineteen miles of Metz, But before the end of the month the French had been compelled to evacuate both their former provinces.  They continued during September, however, to make frequent assaults on the German frontier positions, but without regaining a sure foothold on German soil, the bulk of their efforts being devoted to the defense of their own frontier strongholds.

FIGHTING AROUND NANCY

An official dispatch from the foreign office in Paris, dated August 28, said: 

“Yesterday the French troops took the offensive in the Vosges mountains and in the region between the Vosges and Nancy, and their offensive has been interrupted, but the German loss has been considerable.

“Our forces found, near Nancy, on a front of three kilometers, 2,500 dead Germans, and near Vitrimont, on a front of four kilometers, 4,500 dead.  Longwy, where the garrison consisted of only one battalion, has capitulated to the Crown Prince of Germany after a siege of twenty-four days.”

FRENCH TRAPPED IN ALSACE

The German view of early operations in Alsace-Lorraine was given in the following dispatch September 2 from the headquarters of the general staff at Aix-la-Chapelle: 

“The French forces were trapped in Alsace-Lorraine.  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.  Through the passes in the Vosges mountains they poured, horse, artillery, foot—­all branches of the service.  Strasburg was to fall and so swift was the French movement that lines of communication were not guarded.

“Then the German general staff struck.  Their troops from Saarburg, from Strasburg and from Metz, under the command of General von Heeringen,