The armies of the Duke of Wuerttemberg and of the crown prince may be considered together, for they were combined in an effort to pierce the French line near the angle at Bar-le-Duc.  General Langle held on desperately against the repeated attacks of the Duke of Wuerttemberg.  Ground was lost and recovered, lost again and recovered, and every trifling vantage point of ground was fought for with a bitter intensity.  Though active, with all the other armies, on September 5 and 6, 1914, it was not until September 7 that General Langle found himself strained to his utmost nerve.  If he could hold, he could do no more, and when night fell on September 7, no person was more relieved than General Langle.  Yet the next day was even worse.  Instead of slackening in the evil weather, the German drive became more furious.  The exhausted Fourth Army fought as though in a hideous nightmare, defended their lines in a sullen obstinacy that seemed almost stuporous, and countercharged in a blind frenzy that approached to delirium.  It was doubtful if General Langle’s army could hold out much longer.  But, when General von Buelow was compelled to retreat, when General Foch turned his attention to General von Hausen’s Saxon Army, and when General Joffre found himself in a position to rush reenforcements and reserves to the aid of General Langle, a new color was given to the affair.  The defense stiffened, and as rapidly as it stiffened, so much the more did it become patent that the Duke of Wuerttemberg could not afford to be in an exposed position far in advance of all the other attacking armies.  Wednesday, September 9, 1914, revealed to the German center the need of falling back on the crown prince’s army, which was the pivot on which the whole campaign swung.

Meantime, the crown prince’s army had been steadily victorious.  The weak French army under General Sarrail had been pushed back, yielding only foot by foot, back, back, along the rugged hill country of the Meuse.  A determined stand was made to protect the little fort of Troyon, ten miles south of Verdun, for had the Germans succeeded in taking this, Verdun would have been surrounded.  No army and no generalship could have done more than the Third Army and General Sarrail did, but they could not hold their ground before Troyon.  On September 7, 1914, the way to Troyon was open, and the army of the crown prince prepared to demolish it.  Then came September 9, 1914, when the allied successes in the western part of the Marne valley allowed them to send reenforcements.  Thus the Third Army was perceptibly strengthened and hope for Troyon grew.  One day more, certainly two days more, and nothing could have saved Troyon, but with the whole German line in retreat, the army of the crown prince could not be left on the advance.

Incredible though it may seem, when the army of the crown prince besieging Troyon withdrew, that little fort was a mere heap of ruins.  There were exactly forty-four men left in the fort and four serviceable guns.  Even a small storming party could have carried it without the least trouble, and its natural strength could have been fortified in such wise as to make it a pivotal point from which to harry Verdun.