Note 76 — Chapter X · THE DEFENCE OF THE EAST

M. Hanotaux (p. 76) regards this last part of the plan as “pure folly,” as “a few thousand resolute men holding the defiles, crests, and cliffs would break whole armies before Nancy was attained.” This appears to be an exaggeration; but it is highly probable that before Nancy, as before Mons and on other occasions at the beginning of the war, the German Armies lost, through the traditional belief in envelopment, what they might have gained by concentration on the central attack.