⚔️🔒Battle of Mars-la-Tour, France, 16 August 1870
Mars-la-Tour was fought for a single operational prize: the road to Verdun. After the frontier defeats of early August 1870, Marshal Bazaine sought to withdraw the French Army of the Rhine from Metz toward Verdun to reestablish contact with the French field armies.
German reconnaissance and aggressive marching collided with this movement near Mars-la-Tour and Vionville, producing a meeting engagement in which a relatively small Prussian force fixed a much larger French army in place.