CHAPTER XI

SUMMING-UP

The battle of the Marne closed a definite phase of the Great War, and perhaps——in so far as it was marked by open and rapid movement, and as it finally exposed certain gross military errors——a phase of warfare in general. A fresh examination of the plans of the preceding years and the events of the preceding month immensely enhances the interest of the whole development; for it shows the real “miracle of the Marne” to have been an uprush of intelligence and patriotic will in which grave faults of strategy and tactics were corrected, and the victory to be the logical reward of a true conception, executed with unfailing skill through a new instrument created while the conditions of the struggle were being equalised. In whatever sense we may speak of a “greatest” battle of history, this was assuredly, of all clashes of force, that in which reason was most conspicuously vindicated.

Insanely presumptuous as was her ambition of reducing France, Russia, and Britain, Germany had at the outset some remarkable advantages. Chief among these must be counted the power of surprise, due to her long secret preparation, and a complete unity of command in face of dispersed Allies. The German forces concentrated on the west were not numerically superior to those of France, Britain, and Belgium; their effective superiority was considerable. Half of the active corps, which alone the French expected as troops of shock, were doubled with thoroughly trained reserve formations, giving a mass of attack of 34 corps, instead of 22, a difference larger than the two armies of the enveloping movement. Their strength was also increased by a clear superiority in several branches of armament and field service (the French field-gun and the use by the Allies of the French railways being notable exceptions), and in some particulars of tactical practice, especially the prudent use of field defences. The basic idea being to strike France down before Russia and Britain could effectually interfere, speed was a principal condition of success; and the plan of the Western campaign was probably the only one on which it could be realised. One-third of the whole force was to hold the old Franco-German frontier in a provisional defence, while one-third attacked through Luxembourg and the Belgian Ardennes, and the remainder was thrown across the Meuse and the open plain of Flanders, toward the French capital. This unprecedented enlargement of the offensive front, the outstanding feature of the plan, secured the most rapid deployment of the maximum forces; it alone could yield the great element of surprise; it alone provided the opportunity of envelopment dear to the German military mind. Its boldness, aided by terrorism in the invaded regions, astounded the world, and so seemed to favour the scheme of conquest. It might ultimately provoke a full development of British power; even in case of failure, it would cripple France and Belgium for many years. Its immediate weakness arose from the wide extension of forces not larger, except at certain points, allowing no general reserve and no large reinforcement, and from the necessity of great speed. The plan ignored many possibilities, from the Alps to Lille; once in motion, however, it could not be considerably or rapidly changed. Berlin, confident in the superiority of the war-machine to which it had devoted its best resources and thought, believed there would be no delay and no need of change.

France had been inevitably handicapped by the need of renouncing any initiative that could throw doubt upon her moral position, by the independence of her British and Belgian Allies, and by uncertainty as to Italy. This last doubt was, however, quickly removed; the Belgian Army delayed the invasion by a full week; and our “Old Contemptibles” gave most precious aid. A united Command at that time might have done little more than strengthen the instrument and confirm the doctrine whose imperfections we have traced. The instrument was inferior not only in effective strength, not only in some vital elements of arms and organisation, but in the system and spirit of its direction. The doctrine of the offensive, general, continuous, and unrestrained, had become an established orthodoxy during the previous decade, when the Russian alliance and the British Entente were fixed, when service was extended to three years, the 75 mm. gun was perfected, and a new method of railway mobilisation promised that the armies would be brought into action at least as rapidly as those of the enemy. Before a shot was fired, it had prejudiced the military information services——whence the scepticism of the Staff as to a large German movement west of the Meuse, and as to the German use of army corps of reserve in the first line; whence the ignorance of the German use of aeroplanes and wired entrenchment. No answer was prepared to the German heavy artillery. While unable to create the means to a successful general offensive, the French Command had discounted, if not positively discredited, modern methods of defence and delaying manœuvre, methods peculiarly indicated in this case, since France had the same reasons for postponing a decision as Germany had for hastening it. The only hope of the Allies at the outset lay in a combination of defence and manœuvre: there was no adequate defence, and no considerable manœuvre, but only a general headlong attack on a continuous line. Of the consequences of this lamentable beginning, an accomplished and sober French officer says: “It is just to speak of the Battle of the Frontiers as calamitous, for this battle not only doomed to total or partial ruin nine of our richest departments: insufficiently repaired by the fine recovery on the Marne, it weighed heavily upon the whole course of the war. It paralysed our strategy. From September 1914, our High Command was necessarily absorbed in the task, first, of limiting, then of reducing, the enormous pocket cut in our territory. Ever obsessed by the fear of abandoning to devastation a new band of country, we were condemned for nearly four years to a hideous trench warfare for which we were infinitely less prepared and less apt than the invader, and that we were able to sustain only by force of heroism.”[79] Any one of the errors that have been indicated would have been grave; in combination, they are accountable for the heavy losses of the three abortive inroads into Alsace, Lorraine, and the Ardennes, and for the dispositions which necessitated the long retreat from the north. That the German armies suffered in these operations is, of course, to be remembered; but for France it was more urgent to economise her strength. In strategy infatuated, in tactics reckless, in preparation unequal to the accomplishment of its own designs, the then French Command must be held responsible in large measure for the collapse of the national forces in the first actions of the campaign.

Joffre, who had been named Generalissimo designate three years before, almost by accident, who was an organiser rather than a strategist, had inherited, with the imperfect instrument, the imprudent doctrine and plan. There was not the time, and he was hardly the man, to attempt radically to change them; nor has he yet recognised in words that there was any large strategical error to correct. But the facts speak clearly enough: from the evening of August 23, when the general retreat from the north was ordered, we enter upon a profoundly changed situation, in which the native shrewdness and solid character of the French Commander-in-Chief are the dominant factor. The defence that should have been prepared could not be extemporised. The armies must be disengaged and re-formed. A large sacrifice of territory was therefore unavoidable. To delay the critical encounter till the balance of forces should be rectified was the first requirement. On August 24, Headquarters issued a series of tactical admonitions, prelude to a clean sweep of no less than thirty-three generals and many subordinate officers. Next day followed the “General Instruction” in which will be found the germ of the ultimate victory. The rule of blind, universal, unceasing offensive disappeared, without honour or ceremony; arose that of manœuvre; informed, elastic, resourceful, prudent but energetic.

At once there was precipitated a conception which governed not only the battle of the Marne, but the whole after-development of the war. There must be no more rash adventures on the east; from Belfort to Verdun, the front would be held defensively, with a minimum of strength, to fulfil the purpose for which its fortifications were built, and to protect the main forces, which would operate henceforth in the centre and west. The importance of the north-west coast, and the fact that Kluck was not approaching it, plainly suggested the creation of a new mass of manœuvre on this side to menace the German flank: this new body was Maunoury’s 6th Army. These two features of the Allied riposte——defence on the east, offence from the west——were to be permanent. The French centre must be strengthened to bear the impact of Bülow, the Saxons, and the Duke of Würtemberg. Foch’s Army, created to this end, to come in between those of d’Espérey (Lanrezac’s successor) and de Langle, had the further effect of preserving the full offensive strength of the 5th Army. For these purposes, large numbers of men had to be transferred from the east to the west and centre. Joffre at first hoped to stand on the Somme, and then on the Oise. But the new forces were not ready; the defence of the east was not secured; the British Army was momentarily out of action; Kluck threatened the Allied communications; the line was a hazardous zigzag. The Generalissimo would not again err on the side of premature attack.

The pursuit was not an unbroken course of victory for the invaders. Before the Gap of Charmes, on August 24–26, Castlenau and Dubail administered the first great German set-back of the war. At the same time, the Prince Imperial received a severe check at Etain; and, although Smith-Dorrien’s stand at Le Cateau on August 26 disabled the British Force for some days, it did much to save the Allied left wing. On August 28, the German IV Army was sharply arrested at Novion Porcien; and next day took place the combats of Proyart and Dun-sur-Meuse, and the battle of Guise. In these and many lesser actions, the spirit of the armies was prepared for the hour when the issue should be fairly joined.

The Fabian strategy was soon and progressively justified. Weaknesses inherent in the German plan began to appear. Every day of their unsuccessful chase aggravated the problem of supplying the armies, removed them from their heavy artillery, stretched and thinned their infantry lines, weakened their liaison, bred weariness and doubt (which were too often drowned in drink), while the French, on the contrary, were shortening their communications, and generally pulling themselves together. “It is the old phenomenon of the wearing down of forces in case of an offensive which we here encounter anew,” says Freytag-Loringhoven. Two or three corps had to be left behind to mask Antwerp and to besiege Maubeuge; the Grand Staff could not altogether resist the Russian scare. There was increasing dislocation: in particular, Kluck had got dangerously out of touch with Bülow. And there was something worse than “wearing down” and dislocation. “Perhaps our programme would not have collapsed,” the historian Meinecke imagines,[80] “if we had carried through our original strategical idea with perfect strictness, keeping our main forces firmly together, and, for the time, abandoning East Prussia.” This cannot be admitted. So far from being pursued more strictly, the original German idea soon could not be pursued at all. Its boldest feature had become inapplicable to circumstances more and more subject to another will. On September 1, when the Somme had been passed, and while Joffre was ordering the extension of the retreat to the Seine and the Aube, Moltke was engaged in changing radically the direction of the marching wing of the invasion, Kluck’s I Army. Failing successively on the Sambre, the Somme, the Oise, and finally stultified by the superior courage that staked the capital itself upon the chance of a victorious recoil farther south, the greatest of all essays in envelopment ended in a recognised fiasco.

With the appearance on the southern horizon of the fortress of Verdun and the city of Paris, and the entry of the Allied armies between them as into a corridor, the whole problem, in fact, was transformed. The German Command suddenly found itself in face of a fatal dilemma. As Paris obstructed the way of Kluck, so Verdun challenged the Prussian Crown Prince. To enter the corridor without first reducing these two unknown quantities would be to risk serious trouble on both flanks; to stay to reduce them would involve delay, or dispersal of force, either of which would be disastrous. The course of argument by which the Grand Staff decided this deadly question has not been revealed. They chose the first alternative. Kluck was ordered to pass south-eastward of the one “entrenched camp,” the Imperial Crown Prince south-westward of the other, both, and the three armies between them, to overtake the Allies and force them to a frontal encounter, while a fresh effort was made to break through the eastern defences. A heavy price must be paid for such large re-establishments and changes of plan in face of an alert enemy. Kluck has been too much blamed for what followed. He may have been guilty of recklessness, over-reaching ambition, and specific disobedience. But here, as in the Battle of the Frontiers, it is the authors, not the executants, of the offensive operation who must be held chiefly responsible for consequences that are in the logic of the case.

Joffre’s hour had come. He had laboured to win three elements of an equal struggle lacking in the north: (_a_) a more favourable balance of numbers and armament——this was gained by the “wearing down” of the enemy, and the reinforcement of the Allied line, in course of the retreat, so that the battle of the Marne commenced with something more than an equality, and ended with a distinct Allied superiority in the area of decision; (_b_) a favourable terrain——this was reached on the classic ground between the capital and the middle Meuse, under cover of the eastern armies, and subject to the dilemma of Paris–Verdun; (_c_) a sound strategic initiative. For this, the 6th Army had been prepared, and the 5th kept at full strength. The failure of the enveloping movement and the change of the German plan provided the opportunity. To reduce the distended front of the invasion, at one time no less than 140 miles (Amiens to Dun-sur-Meuse), to one of 100 miles (Crécy-en-Brie to Revigny), Kluck had boldly crossed the face of the 6th Army, and on the evening of September 5 presented a moving flank of more than 40 miles long to Maunoury, French, and d’Espérey’s left. Joffre seems to have hesitated for a moment as to whether it were best to continue the retreat, as arranged, to the Seine, and then to have given way to Gallieni’s importunity. “We cannot count on better conditions for our offensive,” he told the Government.

The order of battle was issued on the evening of September 4. “Advantage must be taken of the adventurous situation of the I German Army (right wing),” it started: this was to be the factor of surprise. Positions would be taken on the 5th in order that the general movement might begin at dawn on the following day. The 6th Army and the British were to strike east on either side of the Marne, toward Château-Thierry and Montmirail respectively, while the 5th Army attacked due northward: thus, it was hoped, Kluck would be taken in flank and front, and crushed by superior force. The central armies (9th and 4th) would move north against Bülow, the Saxons, and the Duke of Würtemberg; and Sarrail would break westward from Verdun against the exposed flank of the Crown Prince. The function of Foch’s, the smallest of the French armies concerned, and of de Langle’s, the next smallest, must be regarded as primarily defensive, the chief offensive rôle being entrusted to d’Espérey’s, by far the strongest, and Maunoury’s, with the small British force linking them. Sarrail had not the means to exploit his advantage of position. The essence of the plan lay in the rectangular attack of the left.

The design was perfect: Kluck’s columns, stretched out from the Ourcq to near Esternay, should have been smashed in, the western part of the German communications overwhelmed, the other armies put to flight. These results were not obtained; the whole battle was, indeed, compromised, before it was well begun, by the unreadiness of the Allied left and the precipitancy of General Gallieni. When Lamaze’s reservists stumbled upon Schwerin’s outposts north of Meaux, at midday on September 5——eighteen hours before the offensive was timed to open——Maunoury had only three divisions in line, and on the following day he had only two more. Kluck had instantly taken alarm; his II Corps was actually on its way back to the Ourcq while the main body of the Allied armies was commencing their grand operation. The benefit of surprise was thus sacrificed; and Kluck was able to move one after another of his corps to meet Maunoury’s reinforcements as they arrived upon the field. Certain French partizans of the then Governor of Paris have attempted to shift the responsibility for this miscarriage to the shoulders of the British Commander-in-Chief. The Expeditionary Force deserves more scrupulous justice. It had retired and was re-forming behind the Forest of Crécy, at the request of General Joffre, when the order of September 4 arrived. The positions therein named to be reached on the following day (Changis–Coulommiers) were unattainable, being too far away, and solidly held by the enemy. The instructions for Marshal French were to attack eastward toward Montmirail on the 6th; neither to him nor to the French Staff was it known till the afternoon of that day that Kluck was withdrawing across the Marne. No need appeared of helping Maunoury until September 7. By that time the Field-Marshal had again changed his direction at Joffre’s request, facing north beside d’Espérey, instead of east beside Maunoury; and, from the moment when Kluck’s withdrawal was discovered, rapid progress was made.

The German Staff now seems to have completely lost control of its two chief Commanders. The fatal fault is plainly exhibited in Bülow’s “Bericht zur Marneschlacht”——significantly, withheld from publication for five years. Though weakened by a premature start, unreadiness, and imperfect co-ordination, the French attack on the Ourcq necessarily produced not merely a local shock, but a disturbance reverberating eastward by what has been called its “effect of suction.” To double this with the strain of Bülow’s continued offensive——disastrously successful in the surprise of Fère Champènoise——was the most reckless gambling. With the I Army pulling north-west, the II Army pulling south-east, and 60 miles between the points where they were seeking a decision, how could anything more than a pretence of liaison be kept up? But it was precisely before this interval that Joffre had aligned a full third of the strength of the French crescent——the 20 divisions of the French 5th and British armies. In the separation of the two masses of the German right, and the entry between them of this powerful body, lies the governing cause of the victory.

All the rest is a prodigy of endurance. The battle of the Ourcq was no sooner joined than it resolved itself into a race of reinforcements, and a stubborn, swaying combat over a few miles of open farmland, with little of manœuvre, save reciprocal attempts at envelopment by the north. The story of the battle of the Marshes of St. Gond is the epic of Foch’s obstinacy, of Humbert’s defence of the pivot on the Sézanne plateau, the loss of the swampy barrier and Mont Août, the agonising breakdown about Fère Champènoise on September 8, and the devices of the following day to close the breach. Between these points of strangulation, the real offensive arm of the Allies progressed with comparative ease. On the night of September 8, when d’Espérey’s 3rd Corps entered Montmirail, it was exactly midway between them. On the morning of the 9th, when the British 1st and 2nd Corps passed the Marne, Kluck and Bülow were more definitely divided. At noon, Smith-Dorrien and Haig were on the Lizy–Château-Thierry road; and in the evening d’Espérey’s 18th Corps held Château-Thierry. No last-moment success of the enemy on the Ourcq or in Champagne could have greatly affected the course of this development. The necessity of a retreat of the three Western armies was probably accepted by the German Grand Staff in the morning of September 9; but it may be that a considerable success by either or both of the Crown Princes on that day would have modified the decision as regards the rest of the front. At 11 a.m. Betz was evacuated; and during the afternoon great convoys were seen hurrying from the Ourcq to the Aisne. Bülow’s orders, inspired by fear of flank attack by d’Espérey’s 10th and 1st Corps, rather than by the 42nd Division, seem to have been given about 3 p.m. Fère Champènoise was abandoned in the evening, and Foch’s anxiously prepared manœuvre could not be carried out. The 6th and 9th Armies were too much exhausted to attempt a serious pursuit till next morning; and the German right reached the Aisne without inordinate losses.

Every part of the French line had contributed to this result, every other army had been cut or kept down to serve the major opportunity. And, if it stood relatively immobile, no less heroism and resource were shown on the eastern than on the western wing of the Allied crescent. Sarrail and de Langle were able to keep a rectangular disposition like that of Maunoury and the B.E.F., forcing the Crown Prince to fight on a double front; but they had not even a numerical equality of force with which to exploit it. The 4th Army, in holding foot by foot the Ornain-Saulx valley from Vitry to Sermaize, and the 3rd in its defence of the long salient of the Meuse, were also weighed upon by this peculiar anxiety: a comparatively small force might pierce their frail river guard, or the wall of the Lorraine armies might collapse beside them. They were helped to success by three errors of omission on the part of the German armies concerned: (1) Verdun was not directly attacked, the Crown Prince being confident that it would fall automatically while his cavalry were reaching Dijon; (2) the attempt to force the Meuse at Troyon was feeble and tardy; (3) the thinly-covered gap on Langle’s left was not discovered until the 21st Corps had been brought up. All along the line, the fighting was of a sustained violence. The 15th Corps arrived from Lorraine on September 8 just in time to save the junction of the 3rd and 4th Armies. It was, however, not till noon on the 11th that the Duke of Würtemberg abandoned Vitry; and only on the night of the 12th did the Prince Imperial order a retreat which definitely relieved Verdun, and reopened the Châlons road and railway.

In resting his plan upon a defence of the eastern pivot of the retreat and the recoil, Joffre was accepting an accomplished fact. The great attack upon the Couronné of Nancy began on the evening of September 4, thirty-six hours before the Allied offensive. It may be supposed, therefore, that the German Staff had decided to get the Bavarian Army into a position in which it could co-operate effectively with the Imperial Crown Prince when he came up level on the west. Heeringen’s push from the St. Dié region toward Epinal, and the attack on the Mortagne, were probably intended to hide this design, and to pin down Dubail’s forces. The promptitude with which Heeringen was sent off to the Aisne, on the night of September 6, that is, as soon as the danger of Kluck’s position was realised, is significant. In itself, the presence of the Kaiser during the Bavarian attack on the Grand Couronné proves nothing. His ceremonial entry into Nancy would have grievously hurt French pride; but the sacrifice of the city had always been contemplated, Toul being the real redoubt of the Moselle defences. The prize was to be larger; the prestige of three royal personages was to be satisfied. The Crown Princes of Prussia and Bavaria, ingeniously linked, had been so directed that in the crisis they had the whole Verdun–Toul system between them, and apparently at their mercy. The assault of the Amezule defile and Mount Amance was reciprocal to the adventure which Sarrail arrested 50 miles farther west.

For five days and nights the battle raged about the entrenched crescent of the Nancy hills, with fiery wings outspread to Gerbéviller on the south-east, and Rozières on the north-west. No more dreadful struggle can be recorded. The German effort ceased on the night of September 9; and on the 11th the general withdrawal to the old frontier began. Like Foch, Langle, and Sarrail, Castlenau had won through by the narrowest of margins; but his, pre-eminently, was a victory of foresight and preparation. With all their power of heavy artillery (and here the resources of Metz and Strasbourg were at hand), it is remarkable that the German Staff never attempted to repeat in Lorraine the _coup_ of Liège. As the French respected Metz, they respected Verdun; and the manœuvre of the double approach to Toul, from east and west, proves their fears. These were, as we now know, well justified. “It is certain,” says Freytag-Loringhoven, “that the old-fashioned fortresses are worthless, and, moreover, that the earlier notion, handed down from the Middle Ages, that positions have to be secured by means of fortresses, must be discarded.... But it will not be possible to dispense with certain previously prepared fortified points at places where only defensive tactics can be employed. The fortifications of the French eastern frontier, above all Verdun and the Moselle defences, have demonstrated how valuable these may be.... It is a question of constructing not a continuous system of fortifications, but a succession of central points of defence, and this not in the shape of fortified towns, but of entrenchment of important areas” (pp. 64–6). And again: “The intention was to effect an envelopment from two sides. The envelopment by the left wing was, however, brought to a standstill before the fortifications of the French eastern frontier, which, in view of the prompt successes in Belgium, it had been hoped to overcome.... The defensive tactics of the chiefs of the French Army were rendered very much easier by the support these fortifications gave to their wing, as well as by the possibility of effecting rapid transfers of troops afforded by a very convenient network of railways, and a very large number of motor-wagons upon good roads (pp. 79–80)..... The war has proved that the assertion often made in time of peace, that the spade digs the grave of the offensive, is not correct” (p. 97).

* * * * *

One day, toward the end of the battle, I came upon a ring of peasants digging a pit for the carcasses of two horses that lay near by. They had already buried fourteen others, but seemed happy at their gruesome task——just such sententious fellows as the master took for his models in a famous scene. One of them guided me uphill to a small chalk-pit, at the bottom of which a mound of fresh earth, surmounted by a couple of sticks tied crosswise with string, marked the grave of two English lads unnamed. A thicket shaded the hollow; but all around the sunshine played over rolling stubble-fields. Ere the grave-diggers had finished, a threshing-machine was working at the farm across the highway. Some men were ploughing the upper ridge of the battlefield; and, as I left, a procession of high-prowed carts, full of women and children sitting atop their household goods, brought back home a first party of refugees. The harvest of death seemed already to give way to the harvest of life.

First of many still-born hopes. The Christmas that was to be the festival of peace passed, and another, and another. Interminably, the war prolonged itself through new scenes, more ingenious forms of slaughter, new abysms of pain, till the armies had fallen into a temper of iron endurance. But, even in such extremities, the heart will seek its food. Month after month, by day and night, coming from beleaguered Verdun or the gateways of Alsace to reach the Oise and Flanders, I passed down the long sparkling valleys of the Marne; every turn grew familiar, and their green folds whispered of the gain in loss and the quiet within the storm. Like all religion, patriotism, for the many, speaks in symbols; what symbol more eloquent than the strong stream, endlessly renewed to cleanse, to nourish, and to heal? Through those stony years, most of the convoys crossed the Marne at some point——lumbering carts, succeeded by wagons white with a slime of dust and petrol; fussy Staff cars and hurried ambulances; gun-trains, their helmeted riders swaying spectrally in the misty air of dawn; columns of heavy-packed infantry, dreaming of their loves left in trembling cities far behind. In turn, all the armies of France, and some of those of Britain, America, and Italy, came this way; and into their minds, unconsciously, must have fallen something of the spirit of the Marne, and of those frightened apprentices of the war who first saved France, and dammed an infamous aggression.

So much the poilus knew; that comfort supported them. Most of the high company of Joffre’s captains were still with them, winning fresh laurels——Foch, Petain, and Haig, Castlenau, Humbert, Langle, Sarrail, Franchet d’Espérey, Mangin, Guillaumat, Pulteney, Nivelle, Maud’huy, Micheler, and many another. Soon the world at large understood that this strange overturn of fortune was the base of all subsequent victories in the same good cause. More than this——that a man had conceived, designed, organised, and controlled it, and so earned enduring fame——might be vaguely felt, but could not be certainly known until the passage of time allowed it to be said that, as surely as there were warts on Cromwell’s nose, there were shadows to the lights of the record of victory. At length, a true picture is possible; and instead of a play of blind forces, or a senseless “miracle,” we see a supremely dramatic revolt of outraged reason, nobly led, and justly triumphing.

The German conspiracy failed on the Marne not by any partial fault or executive error, but by the logic of its most essential characteristics. It was a masterpiece of diabolical preparation: it failed, when the quickly-awakened French mind grappled with it, from dependence upon a rigid mechanism, and the inability of its authors to adjust it to unexpected circumstances. It was a wager on speed——for the enveloping movement bore in it the germs of the ultimate disturbance; that is to say, it presumed the stupidity or pusillanimity of the Republican Command, and this presumption proved fatal. These faults were aggravated by disunion among the army leaders and disillusion among the men, while the Allies were inspired to an almost perfect co-operation. Already delayed and weakened in Belgium, the invading armies saw their surplus strength evaporating in the long pursuit, their dislocated line caught in a sudden recoil, and to be saved from being rent asunder only by closing the adventure. In the disastrous moment when Kluck and Bülow turned in opposite directions, the proudest war school in the world was beaten, and humiliated, by a stout burgess of Rivesaltes. Long before the war itself became hateful, this thought worked bitterly. Criminals do not make the best soldiers. Moltke was cashiered, with him Kluck and Hausen, and we know not how many more. It was the twilight of the heathen gods.

In the long run, mankind cherishes the reasonable, in faith or action; and, of the barbarous trial of war, this is all that remains in the memory of future ages. The Marne was a signal triumph for Right, won, not by weight of force or by accident, but by superior intelligence and will. That is its essential title to our attention, and its most pregnant meaning for posterity. So immense a trial was it, and a triumph so vitally necessary to civilisation, that all the heroic episodes of our Western history pale before it, to serve henceforth for little, faint, but comprehensible analogies; in the French mind even the _epopée_ of the great Emperor is at last eclipsed. The combatants themselves could not see it thus. Afterwards, the war and those doomed to continue it became sophisticated——governments and the press told them what to expect, and followed them with praise and some care. In this first phase, there is a strange _naïveté_; it is nearly all headlong extemporisation; masses of men constantly plunged from one into another term of the unknown. The “front” was never fixed; there were few of the features of combat later most characteristic——no trenches or dugouts, no bombs or helmets, no poison-gas, no mines, no Stokes guns, no swarm of buzzing ’planes across the sky, no field railways, few hot meals, and fewer ambulance cars. The armies did not come up to their tasks through zones devastated by the enemy, and then reorganised by engineers into so many monstrous war-factories. The forests they crossed were undisturbed, the orchards blossoming, the towns intact. They knew nothing of “camouflage”: on the contrary, they saw and sought the individual foe, and by him were seen individually. Very often, and quickly, they came to bodily grips; commonly, the conflict ceased, or slackened, at sunset. What would afterward have seemed a moderate bombardment terrorised them, for it was worse than anything they had heard of.

In sum, with less of horror and less of protection, they felt as much as, and more freshly than, those who followed. War had not yet become habitual——there was neither the half-sceptical stoicism nor the profound comradeship of later days. Only a month had passed since this first million lads had left home. Every hour had brought some new shock. Resentment was fresh and fierce in them. No romantic illusion fed it; but deep offence called to the depths of dignity of an aged nation for answer, and the answer came. There stood the Boche, arrogant and formidable, polluting the soil of Brie and Champagne, the heart of France——what argument could there be? They did not think of one spot as more sacred than another, as, afterwards, thousands fell to hold Ypres and Arras, Soissons, Rheims, and Verdun. Like the process, the inspiration was simpler. The fields of the Marne were France, the land that had nurtured them, its freedom and grace of life and thought, the long Latin heritage, the virtues that a new Barbarism had dared to dispute and outrage. For this great all, they gave straightway their little all.

Rivers of blood, the old, rich Gallic blood that mingled Roman experience and Mediterranean fire with the peasant vigour of the North, tempered through centuries of labour and exaltation. The best must needs suffer most; and France, historic guardian of ancient treasuries, standard-bearer of European civilisation, must suffer in chief for the weaknesses of the Western world. To those who knew her, there was ever something of worship in their love, as in our regard for the fullest type of womanhood. The earth thrilled with anger to see her so foully stricken, and breathed freely only when her sons had shown the pure nobility of their response. No frenzies of meliorism, no Carmagnoles of murderous ambition, no Danton or Robespierre, no La Vendée and no Buonaparte have marred the story of the defence of the Third Republic. Democracy, Reason, slow-growing Law, are justified of their children.

Men raised by such achievement into an immortality of human gratitude, the young limbs and hearts so swiftly girded up, so soon loosed upon eternity, should evoke no common mourning.

“Knows he who tills this lonely field, To reap its scanty corn, What mystic fruit his acres yield?”

Not their own soil only, they enriched with their blood, but the universal mind. In saving the best in dream and reality that France means to the world, they saved the whole future, as short reflection upon the alternative will show. The victory of the Marne sealed the brotherhood of France and England, and did much toward bringing America and the Dominions into the comity of nations. It was the basis of the completer victory to follow, and of the only possibilities of future peace and liberal progress. For ever, this example will call to youth everywhere——“that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have lived in vain.” May there not again be need to pass through such a Gehenna; but it is surer that the world will only be made “safe for democracy,” or even for elementary order, by the vigilance and chivalry of each oncoming generation. For these, for ever, ghostly bugles will blow through the woods and hamlets of the Marne.

“_Ames des chevaliers, revenez-vous encor? Est-ce vous qui parlez avec la voix du cor? Roncevaux! Roncevaux! dans ta sombre vallée L’ombre du grand Roland, n’est-elle pas consolée?_”

NOTES AND REFERENCES

[1] Many volumes of soldiers’ notes and recollections have been published, and some of them have high literary merit. One of these is _Ma Pièce, Souvenirs d’un Canonnier_ (Paris: Plon-Nourrit), by Sergeant Paul Lintier, of the 44th Artillery, who shared in the defeat of Ruffey’s Army near Virton, in the south-eastern corner of Belgium, 35 miles north of Verdun. It was almost his first sight of bloodshed, and with an artist’s truthfulness he records all the confusion of his mind.

“The battle is lost,” he writes on August 23, “I know not how or why. I have seen nothing. It is a sheer nightmare. We shall be massacred.... Anguish chokes me.... This boiling mass of animality and thought that is my life is about to cease. My bleeding body will be stretched upon the field. I see it. Across the sunny perspective of the future a great curtain falls. I am only twenty-one years old.... What are we waiting for? Why do not our guns fire? I perspire, I am afraid ... afraid.”

This mood gradually passes away. A few days later he is trying to explain the change: “One accustoms oneself to danger as to the cruellest privations, or the uncertainty of the morrow. I used to wonder, before the war, how the aged could live in quietude before the immanence of death. Now I understand. For ourselves, the risk of death has become an element of daily existence. One counts with it; it no longer astonishes, and frightens us less. And, besides, every day trains us to courage. The conscious and continuous effort to master oneself succeeds at length. This is the whole of military bravery. One is not born brave; one becomes so.” And this stoicism is softened and spiritualised by a new sense of what the loss of France would mean.

Another notable narrative of this period of the war is _Ce qu’a vu un Officier de Chasseurs-à-Pied_ (Paris: Plon-Nourrit), by Henri Libermann, The writer was engaged on the Belgian frontier farther west, near where the Semoy falls out of the Ardennes into the Meuse, the region where the Saxons and the IV Army joined hands on the one side, and, on the other, the 5th French Army, Lanrezac’s, touched all too lightly the 4th, that of de Langle de Cary. Some French officers have quartered themselves in an old convent, picturesquely set upon a wooded hill. They do not know it, but, in fact, the cause is already lost from Dinant to Neufchâteau. All they know is that a part of the 9th Corps is in action a few miles to the north. The guns can be heard; the villagers are flying in panic; the flames of burning buildings redden the northern sky.

“In the convent parlour, the table is laid with a fine white cloth, decorated with flowers, bottles covered with venerable dust, cakes whose golden crust gladdens the eyes. A brilliant Staff, the Commandant, a few chasseur officers. The Sisters hurry about, carrying dishes. ‘A little more fowl, my dear Commandant,’ says the Brigadier; ‘really, it is delicious. And this wine——Pontet-Canet of ’74, if you please!’ All of us are grateful to the good Sisters, who are such delicate cooks. At dessert, as though embarrassed by an unhappy impression shared by all the guests, the General speaks: ‘Rest tranquil, gentlemen. Our attack to-morrow morning will be overwhelming. Debouching between hills 832 and 725, it will take in flank the German Corps which is stopping our brave 9th, and will determine the victory.”

Hardly has the toast of the morrow’s triumph been drunk than a heavy step is heard outside, the click of spurs, and then a knock on the door. A captain enters, in helmet and breastplate, a bloody bandage across his forehead, dust thick upon his uniform, perspiration rolling down his face. He has ridden from Dinant with news of the defeat, and secret instructions. The Uhlans are near. Nevertheless, the officers go to bed. During the night they are aroused by an increasing clamour of flying peasants outside the convent. There are soldiers among them, wildly crying: “The Prussians are coming, _sauve qui peut_!” An infantry regiment had camped, the previous evening, in the village of Willerzie. “They arrived late, tired out. No thought but of rest, no scouts or outposts. On the verge of the neighbouring forest, grey-coated horsemen appeared. The sentinels fired a few shots, and they retired into the wood. The regiment then went to sleep in its false security. About 11 p.m., however, three searchlights flashed along the village streets. ‘_Schnell, schnell!_ _Vorwärts, vorwärts!_’ A terrible fusillade broke out around the houses; and, as our infantrymen, hurriedly wakened, ran to arms, a thick rain of bullets fell upon them. In a few instants, terror was transformed into panic, panic into rout. At this moment the regiment was flying, dispersed in all directions, pursued by the ‘hurrahs’ of the victorious Germans.”

THE GERMAN OBJECTIVE

[2] The question whether the Eastern thrust was integral in the original plan cannot be absolutely determined on the present information; but it is significant that at the outset the German forces on the East were inferior to the French.

M. Gabriel Hanotaux (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, November 15, 1916) thinks that the German right, centre, and left were aiming at the region of Troyes, Kluck from the north-west, Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria from the east, and the Imperial Crown Prince from the north. “The direction of the Prince of Bavaria appears from an order seized on the enemy giving as objective Rozelieures, that is to say, the Gap of Charmes; the direction of the Crown Prince is revealed by an order of September 6 giving Dijon as objective for his cavalry.”

Lt.-General von Freytag-Loringhoven (_Deductions from the World War_. London: Constable. 1918) says: “The intention was to effect an envelopment from two sides. Envelopment by the left wing of the [German] Army was, however, brought to a standstill before the fortifications of the French eastern frontier.”

A German brochure on the battle of the Marne——_Die Schlachten an der Marne_ (Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. 1916), by a “German Staff Officer” who was evidently an eye-witness, and probably a member of the staff either of General von Kluck, or of General von Moltke, chief of the Grand Staff from the beginning of the war till after the battle, says the plan was to rest on the defensive from the Swiss frontier to the Donon, while the mass of the armies rolled the French up south of the Seine, and Reserve and Landwehr Corps advanced to the coast to stop the landing of British troops. “By all human provisions, this plan might have been carried out by the end of September 1914.”

A French translation of this interesting booklet (_Une Version Allemande de la Marne_. Brussels et Paris: G. Van Oest et Cie. 1917) includes also a critical study by M. Joseph Reinach, a part of which is given to the results of an examination of the maps taken on German dead, wounded, and prisoners in the beginning of the war. These Staff maps fall into four categories, of which three date from the mobilisation or earlier, and so throw light on the original plan of campaign, while one set was distributed at a later date. The former are: (1) sets of maps of Belgium——the whole country——in seventy sheets, reproducing the Belgian “60,000th” Staff map, and dated 1906, another evidence of premeditation. (2) The north-east of France, from the French “80,000” map, with names in French, but explanations in Italian, dated 1910. These had evidently been printed for the use of Italian troops, but, when Italy declared itself neutral, had been distributed to German officers from motives of economy. (3) The north and north-east of France in 87 sheets, _not including Paris_, dated from 1905 to 1908, and distributed to German officers on the eve of the mobilisation. These are based upon the French “80,000” map, with some variations and special markings. They include the whole of the eastern and northern frontiers from Belfort to Dunkirk; the significant thing is their limits on the west and south. On the west they include the regions of Dunkirk, St. Omer, Arras, Amiens, Montdidier and Beauvais, but not those of Calais, Boulogne, Abbeville, and Rouen. At 30 or 40 miles north of Paris, they turn eastward, including the sectors of Soissons and Rheims, but excluding those of Paris and Meaux. They then turn south again, including the Chalôns, Arcis, and Troyes sheets; and the southern limit is the regions of Troyes, Chaumont, and Mirécourt, (4) Finally, there is a set of 41 sheets supplementary to the last named, printed in 1914, and either distributed at a later date, or intended for armies other than those of the first invasion. These included Calais and the Channel coast, Rouen, Paris, Meaux, to the south thereof the regions of the Orleanais, Berry, the Nivernais, including the great manufacturing centre of Le Creusot, the north of Burgundy, Franche Comté, the Jura, and the Swiss frontier from Bâle to near the Lake of Geneva.

In his _L’Enigme de Charleroi_ (Paris: L’Edition Française Illustrée, 20 Rue de Provence. 1917), M. Hanotaux expresses the belief that, at the outset, the German Command, regarding England as the chief enemy, intended its armies to cross northern Belgium, “straight to the west and the sea, with Dunkirk and Calais as immediate objective,” and that the French resistance diverted them from the coastal region. The evidence of the maps appears to the present writer more convincing than the reasoning of M. Hanotaux.

THE OPPOSED FORCES

[3] It is not necessary here to state the evidence in detail; but these figures may be accepted as substantially correct. I am indebted to a British authority for criticism and information. Besides the 4 Landwehr Divisions in course of formation during the last days of August, there were a number of Landwehr Brigades, which, however, had no artillery and were not organised for the field. By the first week of September, the XI Corps and Guard Reserve Corps had gone to the Russian front; but the 4 Landwehr Divisions named above had come in as effective. The “Metz Army Detachment” may be counted as adding a division.

[4] The transport of “covering troops” began at 9 p.m. on July 31, and ended at noon on August 3. On the Eastern Railway alone, 538 trains were required. The “transports of concentration,” from August 5 to 18, engaged 4300 trains, only a score of which were behind time. After Charleroi, between August 26 and September 3, the removal of three army corps, five infantry divisions, and three cavalry divisions from Lorraine to the Central and Western fronts was effected by 740 trains, while the railways were largely swamped by other military movements and the civilian exodus.

[5] For fuller explanations on this point, see _Le Revers de 1914 et ses Causes_, by Lt.-Col. de Thomasson (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1919). Of the volumes published in France up to this date on the first period of the war, this moderate and closely-reasoned essay by an accomplished officer is one of the most valuable.

General Verraux (_L’Oeuvre_, June 1, 1919) refers to this weakness and confirms my general conclusion: “Despite the inferior organisation of reserves, with our 25 Active Corps, the 80 corps battalions of reserves, the Belgians and the British, we had, if not a numerical superiority, almost an equality with the German forces, deducting those on the Russian front.”

M. Victor Giraud, a competent historical writer, in his _Histoire de la Grande Guerre_ (Part I. ch. iii. Paris: Hachette. 1919) gives other details, leading to the same conclusion.

[6] _Etudes et Impressions de Guerre_, vol. i, (Paris: Tallandier. 1917). General Malleterre, commanding the 46th Regiment, 3rd Army, was seriously wounded in the battle of the Marne. Taking up the pen on his recovery, he became one of the ablest French commentators on the war.

[7] “No enterprise, perhaps,” says a French military publication, “is as purely French as the conquest of the air. The first free balloon, the first dirigible, the first aeroplane all rose from our soil.” However, “the war surprised our aviation in an almost complete state of destitution. Our 200 pilots, almost all sportsmen, possessed between them a total of two machine-guns. A few squadrillas, without clearly-defined functions, sought their places on the front.” Aerial artillery ranging, photography, and observation had been envisaged, and, more generally, chasing and bombardment; but there was hardly a beginning of preparation.

France had at the beginning of the war 24 squadrillas, each of five or six machines, all scouts, of a speed from 50 to 70 miles an hour. M. Engerand says that “Germany entered the campaign with 1500 aeroplanes; we had on the front only 129.” Captive balloons had been abandoned as incapable of following the armies in the war of movement then almost exclusively contemplated. “Events proved our mistake,” says the official publication already quoted. “Enemy balloons followed the rapid advance of the armies of invasion. Ascending immediately behind the lines, they rendered the adversary indubitable services at the battle of the Marne. Then we hurriedly constituted balloon companies; and in 1915 we followed the German model of ‘sausage’ balloons.”

_Mons and the Retreat_, by Captain G. S. Gordon, a British Staff officer (London: Constable. 1918), contains some information of the Royal Flying Corps in August and September 1914. The Corps was founded in April 1912. At the beginning of the war, it included six squadrons, only four of which could be immediately mobilised, with a complement of 109 officers and 66 aeroplanes. These, however, did excellent work from the beginning. The writer says: “If we were better scouts and fighters, the Germans were better observers for the guns. The perfect understanding between the Taubes and the German gunners was one of the first surprises of the war.”

DE BLOCH’S PROPHECY AND FRENCH’S CONFESSION

[8] De Bloch, who had been a large railway contractor in the Russo-Turkish War, and a leading Polish banker, published the results of his experiences and researches, in six volumes, under the general title _La Guerre_, during the last years of the nineteenth century, and afterwards established a “Museum of War and Peace” at Lucerne to illustrate the subject. His chief thesis was that, owing to the technical development of military instruments and other factors, an aggressive war between States of nearly equal resources could not now give the results aimed at; and there is no longer any doubt that he foresaw the main track of military development as few soldiers did. The following sentences from a sketch of the writings and conversations of de Bloch, published by the present writer in 1902, will serve to show that he anticipated some of the governing characteristics of the Great War:

“The resisting power of an army standing on the defensive, equipped with long-range, quick-firing rifles and guns, from ten to twenty times more powerful than those of 1870 and 1877, expert in entrenching and the use of barbed wire and other obstacles, and highly mobile, is something quite different from that which Napoleon, or even later aggressors, had to face. Not only is it a much larger force, the manhood of a nation; it is also a body highly educated, an army of engineers. Its infantry lines and battery positions will be invisible. Reconnaissances will be easily prevented by protecting bands of sharpshooters; and no object of attack will offer itself to the invader till he has come within a zone of deadly fire. The most heavy and powerful shells, which are alone of use against entrenched positions, cannot be used in great number, or brought easily into action. Artillery shares the advantage of a defensive position. If the attackers have a local superiority, the defenders can delay them long enough to allow of an orderly retirement to other entrenched positions. The attacker will be forced to entrench himself, and so the science of the spade reduces battle to sieges. Battle in the open would mean annihilation; yet it is only by assault that entrenched positions can be carried.

“Warfare will drag on more slowly than ever. While an invading army is being decimated by sickness and wounds, and demoralised by the heavy loss of officers and the delay of any glorious victory, the home population will be sunk in misery by the growth of economic burdens, the stoppage of trade and industry. The small, elastic, and manageable army of the past could make quick marches, turning movements, strategical demonstrations in the widest sense. Massed armies of millions, like those of to-day, leaning on long-prepared defences, must renounce all the more delicate manifestations of the military art. Armies as they now stand cannot manœuvre, and must fight in directions indicated in advance. The losses of to-day would be proportionately greater than in past wars, if it were not for the tactical means adopted to avoid them. But the consequence of distance and dispersion is that victorious war——the obtaining of results by destroying the enemy’s principal forces, and thus making him submit to the conqueror’s will——can exist no more.”

With all its errors of detail, de Bloch’s picture, drawn when the aeroplane and the petrol motor-wagon, “wireless” and the field-telephone, poison-gas and barrage fire were unknown, was a true prophecy, and all the belligerents paid dearly for neglecting it.

For somewhat similar prognostications by a French officer, see _Comment on pouvait prévoir l’immobilisation des fronts dans la guerre moderne_ (Paris: Berger-Levrault), being a summary of the writings of Captain Emile Mayer, whose first studies date from 1888.

[9] He adds: “and that if, in September, the Germans had learned their lesson, the Allies would never have driven them back to the Aisne.” This is a more disputable proposition. On the Sambre, the French were immediately driven back; on the Ourcq, the Germans held out for four days, and retired partly because their supply services had given out. To a very large extent they had certainly learned their lesson; and for nearly four years thereafter they bettered it on the Aisne hills.

The quotations are from the volume _1914_, by Field-Marshal Viscount French of Ypres (London: Constable. 1919), an important body of evidence, passages of which, however, must be read critically. Lord French in his narrative repeatedly insists upon the slowness with which the need of a “transformation of military ideas,” owing to the factors named, was recognised. “It required the successive attempts of Maunoury, de Castelnau, Foch, and myself to turn the German flanks in the North in the old approved style, and the practical failure of these attempts, to bring home to our minds the true nature of war as it is to-day.”

Of the end of the battle of the Marne, he writes (ch. vii.): “We had not even then grasped the true effect and bearing of the many new elements which had entered into the practice of modern war. We fully believed we were driving the Germans back to the Meuse, if not to the Rhine; and all my communications with Joffre and the French generals most closely associated with me breathed the same spirit.... We were destined to undergo another terrible disappointment. The lessons of war, as it is to-day, had to be rubbed in by another dearly-bought experience, and in a hard and bitter school.”

There is both courage and _naïveté_ in the following tardy profession of the belief de Bloch had expounded fifteen years before: “Afterwards, we witnessed the stupendous efforts of de Castelnau and Foch; but all ended in the same trench! trench! trench! I finished my part in the battle of the Aisne, however, unconverted, and it required the further and more bitter lesson of my own failure in the North to pass the Lys River, during the last days of October, to bring home to my mind a principle in warfare of to-day which I have held ever since, namely, that, given forces fairly equally matched, you can ‘bend,’ but you cannot ‘break,’ your enemy’s trench line.... Everything which has happened in the war has borne out the truth of this view; and, from the moment I grasped this great truth, I never failed to proclaim it, although eventually I suffered heavily for holding such opinions.”

CRITICISMS AND DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH STAFF

[10] M. Victor Giraud, in his _Histoire_, writes: “The French troops were neither armed nor equipped as they should have been.... Neither in the liaison of arms, nor in the rôle of the artillery, nor in the possibilities of aviation or trenches, had the army very clear ideas; it believed only in the offensive, the war of movement, which precisely, to-day more than ever, calls for a superiority of armament, if not also of effectives.... France could and should have remembered that it was the country of Vauban and de Sère de Rivière.... There was no longer any faith in permanent fortification, but only in the offensive, which was confused with the offensive spirit.”

Pierre Dauzet, _Guerre de 1914_. _De Liège à la Marne_, p. 29 (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle. 1916). “I shall not exaggerate much in saying that in many regiments the recruits incorporated in October 1913 commenced the war next August without ever having shifted a spadeful of earth or dug the most modest trench” (Thomasson, p. 19).

[11] Two commanders of armies, 7 of corps, 20 infantry divisionaires, 4 commanders of cavalry divisions. In some army corps, the commander and his two divisional generals were removed (Thomasson, p. 12).

[12] _Etudes_, p. 66, note. And again (p. 88): “The offensive idea had become very clear and very formal in our minds. It had the place, so to say, of an official war doctrine. The lesson of the Russo-Japanese war and the Balkan wars seemed to have disturbed the teaching of the War School and the governing ideas of our Staff. At the moment when the war opened, there was a sharp discussion between the partisans of the offensive _à outrance_ and those who, foreseeing the formidable manœuvre of Germany, leaned to a more prudent, more reasoned method, which they described _as defensive strategy and offensive tactic_.”

[13] In _“L’Erreur” de 1914_. _Réponse aux Critiques_ (Paris and Brussels: G. van Oest. 1919), General Berthaut is reduced to the suggestion that some of these phrases were intended “to stimulate the ardour of the young officers,” but that “the Command was not at all bound to take them literally.”

General Berthaut was sub-chief of the French General Staff, and director of the geographical service, from 1903 to 1912; and his defence of the ideas prevailing up to the eve of the war deserves careful reading, unsatisfying as it may be found on many points. It is mainly intended to justify the Eastward concentration, and to controvert those who think the business of an army is to defend the national territory foot by foot. The general appeals to the weight of military authority (which, as we shall see, is less one-sided than he suggests): “From 1875 to 1914, we had 40 Ministers of War; we changed the Chief of Staff sixteen times; changes were still more numerous among sub-chiefs of Staff, heads of bureaux and services. Several hundred officers of all arms, returning periodically to their regiments, contributed to the Staff work of the army. Yet the directive idea of our defence never varied. Such as it was in 1876, so it was revealed in 1914.” Throughout this time, concentration was foreseen and prepared behind the upper courses of the Meuse and Moselle with a view to positions being held in the upper valleys of the Marne, Aube, and Seine. The idea that the French eastern frontier was infrangible, General Berthaut considers “extremely exaggerated.” If it had not been adequately held, the Germans would have turned thither from the north. The violation of the neutrality either of Switzerland or Belgium was, however, beyond doubt. To cover the whole frontier was impossible; and, “incontestably,” the armies had to be turned in one mass toward the east. Trenches are “an effect, not a cause, of the stabilisation of fronts.” The general has a very poor opinion of fortresses, the only one to which he attributes great importance being Metz! Liège was “a practically useless sacrifice”; Maubeuge “stopped nothing.” These opinions seem to the present writer untenable; and General Berthaut admits that the reaction against fortification “went too far” (p. 182). He may be said to damn the three French offensives with faint praise. The move into Alsace “could not be of any military interest,” and was “a political affair.” The Lorraine offensive was “necessarily limited,” as a distant objective could not be pursued between Metz and Strasbourg. As to Charleroi, France was bound to make a demonstration on behalf of Belgium and “to satisfy public opinion.” Much of General Berthaut’s apologia is vitiated by his assumption that France had necessarily to face a superiority of force.

One of the critics General Berthaut started out to controvert is M. Fernand Engerand, deputy for Calvados, whose articles (particularly in _Le Correspondant_, December 10, 1917, and subsequent numbers) have been reprinted in a volume of 600 pages: _Le Secret de la Frontière, 1815–1871–1914_. _Charleroi_ (Paris: Editions Bossard, 43 Rue Madame. 1918). The French plan of campaign, says M. Engerand, was “humanly impossible. Nothing happened as our High Command had foreseen; there was surprise all along the line, and, what is gravest, surprise not only strategic but intellectual, the reversal of a doctrine of war. After the magnificent recovery of the Marne, we may without inconvenience avow that never has there been so complete a self-deception. The error was absolute and, worse, deliberate, for never was an attack more foreseen, more announced, more prophesied than that of August 1914. Strategists of the old school had not only predicted it for forty years, but had given us the means of parrying it; their ideas were scouted and their work was destroyed.”

M. Engerand quotes, in particular, Lt.-Colonel Grouard on the impossibility of an immediate French offensive beyond the frontiers (see Grouard, _La Guerre Eventuelle_, 1913; and _L’Art de la Guerre et le Colonel Grouard_, by C. de Bourcet, 1915). Grouard foresaw, among other things, that “the army of the German right, marching by the left bank of the Meuse, would pass the Sambre in the neighbourhood of Charleroi, and direct itself toward the sources of the Oise.” M. Engerand’s chapters contain a summary of the three French offensives. His general comment is: “No unity of command, separate and dislocated battles, no notion of information and safeguards before and during the combat, systematic misconception of the ground and defensive means, defective liaison between the corps and between artillery and infantry, no manœuvre, but only the offensive, blind, systematic, frantic. If we were defeated, is it an exaggeration to say that it was less by the enemy than by a false doctrine?”

Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, on these points, quotes warning notes from General Collin’s _Transformation de la Guerre_, written in 1911, and refers to the case of Lt.-Col. Berrot, who, in 1902, had exposed “the dangerous theories that had been deduced from the Napoleonic wars,” and who “was disgraced pitilessly, and died while yet young.”

THE SURPRISE IN THE NORTH

[14] Early French writers on the war found it difficult to make up their minds whether there had, or had not, been a surprise in the North. See _Histoire de la Guerre de 1914_ (ch. “Septembre”), by Gabriel Hanotaux. This work, the most ambitious of the kind yet attempted, is being published in fortnightly sections and periodical volumes, of which the first deals with the origins of the war, the next three with the frontier battles, and the following ones with the battles of the retreat and preliminaries of the battle of the Marne (Paris: Gounouilhou, 30 Rue de Provence).

M. Hanotaux says: “The project prepared by the German Staff of an offensive by Belgium was not a secret. All was public and confessed. There was no surprise in the absolute sense of the word. But there remained an unknown quantity: would the probable hypothesis be realised?” Later, however, he says: “The long-prepared manœuvre consisted in crushing us by the carefully veiled onslaught not of 12, but of 25, army corps, so that the surprise was double for us: the most eccentric movement and the most unexpected numbers.... It was this combination of circumstances, foreseen and unforeseen, that the French Command had to parry: political necessity, surprise, numbers, preparation, munitions.” And, again: “The invasion of Belgium _by the left bank of the Meuse_ certainly surprised the French High Command” (“La Manœuvre de la Marne,” _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, March 15, 1919).

M. Reinach, usually so clear and positive, was also ambiguous on this point (_La Guerre sur le Front Occidental_, vol. i.). It suffices he says, to glance at the map: “Nature herself traced this path (Flanders and the Oise). Innumerable armies have followed it, in both directions, for centuries” (p. 30). Nevertheless, the French Staff, though it had “followed for many years the German preparations for an offensive by Belgium” (p. 57), remained in an “anguish of doubt.”

Much evidence with regard to the events of the first phase of the war is contained in the reports of the French “Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy,” 1918–19, the special task of which was to consider why the Briey coalfield was not defended. On May 14, 1919, General Maunoury testified to disaccord existing between commanding officers at the beginning of the campaign, failure to co-ordinate efforts, and ignorance of some generals of the plan of concentration. On the same day, General Michel said that, in 1911, when he was Vice-President of the Superior War Council, that is, Generalissimo designate, he submitted a plan of concentration based upon a certitude of the whole German invasion passing by Belgium and of the need of the principal French action being directed to the North. The plan was rejected, after being examined by General Brun, M. Berteaux, and M. Messimy.

General Percin, at the same inquiry (May 24, 1919), spoke of “intrigues” and a “real palace revolution” in 1911 to replace General Michel, as future Commander-in-Chief, by General Pau, the offence of the former being to have foretold that the Germans would advance by the left bank of the Meuse, and that they would at once engage their reserves. According to General Percin, in the spring of 1914 General de Castelnau said: “If the Germans extend their fighting front as far as Lille, they will thin it so much that we can cut it in two. We can wish for nothing better.” There is other evidence of this idea prevailing in the General Staff: apparently it arose from underestimates of the effective strength of the invasion.

Marshal Joffre gave evidence before the Commission on July 5, 1919, but his reported statements do not greatly help us. He defended the concentration under “plan 17,” which, he said, was operated much more to the north than in previous plans, nearly all of these foreseeing concentration south of Verdun. The French Staff was chiefly concerned to give battle only when it had its full forces in hand. The 3rd Army had a quite particular function, that of investing Metz. The plan made before the war was not absolute, but was a directive modifiable according to events. Officially, it stopped short at Hirson; but the Staff had foreseen variants to second the Belgian effort. In March 1914, the Staff had prepared a note in which it had foreseen the invasion by Belgium——a plan providing for eventualities. It was, therefore, absurd to pretend that it had never foreseen the invasion by Belgium. The Briey district was under the cannon of Metz, and could not be included in the region of concentration. The loss of the “battle of the Frontiers” was due to the fact that the best units of the German Army presented themselves on the feeble point of our front. On the French side there were failings. Generals who had great qualities in peace time failed under stress of war. He had had to take action against some who were his best friends, but believed he had done his duty. Asked by the chairman with how many rifles he commenced the war, Marshal Joffre replied, “with 2,300,000.” Lille, he said, could not be defended.

Field-Marshal French (_1914_, ch. i.) says: “Personally, I had always thought that Germany would violate Belgian neutrality, and in no such half-hearted measure as by a march through the Ardennes.”

[15] In an article on the second anniversary of the first battle of the Yser, the _Temps_ (Oct. 30, 1916) said that, before the war, Belgium was more suspicious of England and France than of Germany. “If our Staffs had wished to prepare, for the defence of Belgium, a plan of operations on her territory, these suspicions would have taken body and open conflict occurred. Nothing was foreseen of what happened, and nothing was prepared.”

Field-Marshal French says: “Belgium remained a ‘dark horse’ to the last, and could never be persuaded to decide upon her attitude in the event of a general war.... We were anxious she should assist and co-operate in her own defence.” On August 21, he received a note from the Belgian Government remarking that the Belgian field army had from the commencement of hostilities “been standing by hoping for the active co-operation of the Allied Army,” but was now retreating upon Antwerp.

M. Engerand (_Le Drame de Charleroi_) says that on July 29, General Lanrezac had sent to General Joffre a report on the likelihood of an enveloping movement by the left bank of the Meuse; that after the German Chancellor’s defence, on August 4, of the violation of Belgian neutrality, the Belgian Government asked France for aid; that the French Minister of War had of his own initiative offered to send five army corps, “but, on August 5, our Councillor of Embassy at London, M. de Fleurian, informed the Belgian Minister that ‘the French Generalissimo did not intend to change his strategic plan, and only the non-co-operation of the British Army would oblige him to extend the French left.’ The Sordêt Cavalry Corps, on and after August 6, reported to the General Staff that 13 German Corps, in two armies, were intended to operate west of the Meuse, and that ten others were ready to advance on the east of the river. On August 7, Lanrezac addressed to the Grand Quartier General another report on the danger to our left; and on the 14th he expressed his conviction that there would be a strong offensive west of the Meuse directly to General Joffre, who did not credit it.”

Major Collon, French military attaché at Brussels, and afterwards attached to French Headquarters, has published the following facts in a letter to the Swiss Colonel Egli (_Temps_, September 19, 1918): Although the Army of Hanover (Emmich’s Army of the Meuse) was mobilised from July 21 and concentrated in Westphalia from July 26, it was not till August 3, after the publication of the German ultimatum, that France offered Belgium her eventual military aid. This was declined; but on August 4, when the violation of the frontier occurred the offer was accepted in principle. On August 5, General Joffre authorised the Sordêt Cavalry Corps to move to the Semoy. It began its march on the 6th, and on that night Major Collon arrived at Belgian Headquarters with a view to assuring the co-ordination of the French and Belgian operations.

[16] “This plan was at once weak and supple. It was feeble because General Joffre, who established it, ‘saw too many things,’ in the words of the Napoleonic warning.... He knew as well as any one the feebleness of his plan. It was imposed upon him. He sought at least to make it supple” (Reinach, _op. cit._ pp. 58–9).

In an article reviewing this volume (_Petit Parisien_, June 16, 1916), M. Millerand, who became Minister of War a few days after the events in question, endorsed this opinion: The French Staff “had to foresee, did foresee, the two hypotheses——that of Belgium, certainly, but also that of Lorraine. Hence general dispositions whose suppleness did not escape weakness, a concentration for two ends.” The word “Belgium” here is ambiguous: it is clear that an attack by Western Belgium was not foreseen. The vice of the concentration was not that it faced two ends, “Belgium” and “Lorraine,” but that it essentially faced the end of a Lorraine offensive, whereas what was essentially needed was a northern defensive.

General Bonnal remarks: “The project of offensive operations conceived by Bernhardi in 1911 in case of a war with France deserved close study by us, which would probably have led to modifications in our plan of concentration while there was yet time” (_Les Conditions de la Guerre Moderne_, p. 115. Paris: De Boccard. 1916).

General Palat writes: “The French concentration was vicious. Better conceived, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of our compatriots from the tortures of the invasion and occupation” (_La Revue_, Dec. 1, 1917).

“The unknown quantity on the side of Belgium,” says Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, “condemned us at the outset to a waiting strategy. The idea of at once taking the offensive madly overpassed the boldest conceptions of Napoleon” (p. 54). “A well-advised command would have understood that it was folly to launch at once all its army to attack troops of the value of the Germans; that the offensive should have been made only on certain points of the front, with a sufficient numerical superiority, and for this purpose the forces must be economised; that, in brief, the beginning of hostilities could only be favourable to us on condition of a superior strategy such as was shown in the preparation for the battle of the Marne, but not in the initial plan or in the first three weeks of the war” (177–8).

[17] See Hanotaux, _Histoire Generale de la Guerre_; Engerand, “Lorraine–Ardennes” (_Le Correspondant_, April 25, 1918); Paul H. Courrière, “La Bataille de Sarre-et-Seille” (_La Revue_, Jan. 1, 1917); Gerald Campbell, _Verdun to the Vosges_ (London: Arnold)——the author was correspondent of _The Times_ on the Eastern frontier; Thomasson, _loc. cit._

[18] See Hanotaux, “La Bataille des Ardennes, Etude Tactique et Strategique” (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Feb. 15, 1917); Engerand, as above; Ernest Renauld, “Charleroi–Dinant–Neufchâteau–Virton” (_La Revue_, Oct. 1916——inaccurate as regards the British Army); Malleterre, _Un Peu de Lumière sur les Batailles d’Août—Septembre 1914_ (Paris: Tallandier).

[19] See _L’Illustration_, March 16, 1918: _La Défense de Longwy_, by P. Nicou.

THE ABANDONMENT OF LILLE

[20] The military history of Lille, is curious. See _Lille_, by General Percin (Paris: Grasset). M. Engerand, in his chapter on “The Abandonment of Lille,” says that a third of the cannon had been removed earlier in the year, but that on August 21, when General Herment took command, there remained 446 pieces with enough ammunition and 25,000 men, not counting the neighbouring Territorial divisions of General d’Amade. Though Lille had been virtually declassed on the eve of the war, General Percin, the Governor (afterwards cruelly traduced on the subject) and General Herment were anxious, and had begun preparations, to defend it. The municipal and other local authorities protested to the Government against any such effort being made; and at the last moment, on the afternoon of August 24, when the retreat from the Sambre had begun, the Minister of War ordered the abandonment of the town and the evacuation of the region. German patrols entered the city two days later, but it was only occupied at the beginning of October. It has been argued that, with Lille and Maubeuge held on their flanks, and the Scarpe, Scheldt, and Rhonelle valleys flooded, the Allied forces might have delayed the enemy long enough to permit of a definite stand on the line Amiens——La Fère-–Laon-–Rheims. General Berthaut rejects any such idea, and says that inundations would have required forty days.

[21] French’s _1914_.

[22] See _La Grande Guerre sur le Front Occidental_, especially vol. iv., by General Palat (Paris: Chapelot, 1918–19).

M. HANOTAUX AND THE B.E.F.

[23] For details, see Hanotaux, _Histoire General_ and _L’Enigme de Charleroi_ (Paris, 1917); Maurice, Thomasson, Engerand, _loc. cit._; Sir John French’s _Dispatches_ and _1914_; Lord Ernest Hamilton, _The First Seven Divisions_; _La Campagne de l’Armée Belge_, from official documents (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1915); _L’Action de l’Armée Belge_, also official; Van der Essen, _L’Invasion Allemande_. For some information in this chapter and the subsequent note with regard to the British Army, I am indebted to the military authorities.

[24] Speaking of the attack of the 20th Division (10th Corps) at Tamines, M. Hanotaux (_Histoire_, vol. v. p. 278) says it advanced with feverish ardour only to fall upon solidly held defences. “Our officers had always been told that, on condition of attacking resolutely and without hesitation, they would surprise the enemy and easily dispose of them. But the Germans everywhere awaited them firmly on solid positions flanked with innumerable machine-guns, before which most of our men fell.” Of the “insensate immolation” of the 3rd Corps at Chatelet, M. Engerand says: “Without artillery preparation, and knowing that they were going to a certain death, these picked troops threw themselves on the enemy infantry, solidly entrenched on the edge of the town; in a quarter of an hour a half of their effectives had fallen.” He adds that the upper command of the Corps was relieved the same evening.

[25] “It was expected that the British Army would take its place on the 20th, but it arrived only on the 22nd. On the 20th, it was still far behind in the region of Le Nouvion–Wassigny–Le Cateau. If it had been in place on the 20th, the Allied Army would have found itself constituted at the very moment when the Germans entered Brussels.” This last phrase is at least singularly ambiguous: Von Bülow was not in Brussels, but only a day’s march from the Sambre, on the 20th. But, if the British had then been at Mons, the Allied Army would not have been “constituted,” for Lanrezac’s forces were far from being all in place on that day. “It is true,” said M. Hanotaux a little later, “that the French Army was not all in place _on the 22nd_, and that the Territorial divisions were in rather mediocre conditions as to armament and _encadrement_” (_L’Enigme de Charleroi_, p. 52). It is Bülow’s appearance on the Sambre a day before Lanrezac was ready that makes the French historian credit the enemy with “the principal advantage, the initiative.”

After the reference to Brussels, M. Hanotaux continues: “The rôle reserved to the British Army was to execute a turning movement of the left wing, advancing north of the Sambre toward Mons, in the direction of Soignies–Nivelles; it was thought it would be there before Kluck,” It was there a day before Kluck. “Unfortunately, as the _Exposé de Six Mois de Guerre_ recognises, it did not arrive on the 20th, as the French Command expected.... In fact, it was only in line on the 23rd” (pp. 49–50). M. Hanotaux repeats himself with variations. The Allied Armies suffered, he says, not only from lateness and fatigue, but from lack of co-ordination in the High Command. “It is permissible to-day to say that the Belgian Command, in deciding to withdraw its army into the entrenched camp of Antwerp, obeyed a political and military conception which no longer conformed to the necessities of the moment. Again, the British Army appeared in the region only on the 23rd, although the battle had been engaged for two days and was already compromised between Namur and Charleroi. The rôle of turning wing which the British Army was to fulfil thus failed at the decisive hour” (pp. 53–4). M. Hanotaux mentions (p. 77) the receipt by Sir John French, at 5 p.m. on August 23, of “a telegraphic message qualified as ‘unexpected,’” announcing the weight of Kluck’s force and the French retirement, but omits to say that this message came from the French Generalissimo. He adds that the British commander gave the order to retreat at 5 p.m., Lanrezac only at 9 p.m., omitting to explain that the French retreat was, in fact, in operation at the former hour, while the British retreat only began at dawn on the 24th, after a night of fighting. “By 5 p.m., on Sunday the 23rd, when Joffre’s message was received at British Headquarters”——says Captain Gordon, on the authority of the British War Office (_Mons and the Retreat_)——“the French had been retiring for ten or twelve hours. The British Army was isolated. Standing forward a day’s march from the French on its right, faced by three German Corps with a fourth on its left, it seemed marked out for destruction.”

In strong contrast with M. Hanotaux’s comments——repeated, despite public correction, in his article of March 1919 cited above——are M. Engerand’s references to the part played by the British Expeditionary Force. First, to its “calm and tenacious defensive about Mons, a truly admirable defence that has not been made known among us, and that has perhaps not been understood as it should be. It was the first manifestation of the form the war was to take; the English, having nothing to unlearn, and instructed by their experiences in the South African war, had from the outset seized its character.... It shows us Frenchmen, to our grief, how we might have stopped the enemy if we had practised, instead of the infatuated offensive, this British defensive ‘borrowed from Brother Boer.’” Then as to the retreat: “The retreat of the British followed ours, and did not precede it. It is a duty of loyalty to say so, as also to recognise that, in these battles beyond the frontiers, the British Army, put by its chief on the defensive, was the only one, with the 1st French Army, which could contain the enemy.” M. Engerand, who is evidently well informed, and who strongly defends General Lanrezac, says that Sir John French told this officer on August 17, at Rethel, that he could hardly be ready to take part in the battle till August 24.

Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, while regretting that the British did not try to help Lanrezac on the 23rd, admits that an offensive from Mons would have been fruitless and might have been disastrous (pp. 216–8).

M. Hanotaux’ faulty account of the matter appears to be inspired by a desire to redistribute responsibilities, and to prove that, if the British had attacked Bülow’s right flank, the whole battle would have been won. This idea will not bear serious examination. The French Command cannot have entertained this design on August 20, for it must have known that the British force was two days behind the necessary positions. When it came into line before Mons, on the evening of the 22nd, it was certainly too late for so small a body of troops to make an offensive movement north-eastward with any prospect of success. Had it been possible at either date, the manœuvre which M. Hanotaux favours might conceivably have helped Lanrezac against Bülow; but it would have left Kluck free to encircle the Allies on the west, and so prejudiced, at least, the withdrawal and the subsequent successful reaction. It might well have created a second and greater Sedan.

In dealing with these events, M. Hanotaux, by adding the strength of Lanrezac’s Army, d’Amade’s Territorial divisions, the British Army, and the garrisons of Namur (General Michel, 25,000 men), Maubeuge (General Fournier, 35,000 men), and Lille (General Herment, 18,000 men), arrives at the remarkable conclusion that “the Allied armies, between August 22 and 25, opposed to the 545,000 men of the German armies a total figure of 536,000 men.” This figure is deceptive, and useless except to emphasise the elements of Allied weakness other than numbers. So far as the later date is intended, it has no relation to the battle of Charleroi–Mons. At both these dates, and later, when the Allies were in full retreat, and both sides had suffered heavy losses, the Allied units named were so widely scattered and so disparate in quality that it is impossible to regard them as a single force “opposed” to the three compact masses of Kluck, Bülow, and Hausen. The deduction that General Joffre had on the Sambre “Allied forces sufficient to keep the mastery of the operations” is, therefore, most questionable.

The actual opposition of forces on the morning of August 23 was as follows: Lanrezac’s Army and the Namur garrison, amounting to an equivalent of five army corps, or about 200,000 men, had upon their front and flank six corps of Bülow and two corps of Hausen, about 320,000 men. The little British Army, of 2½ corps, had immediately before it three of Kluck’s corps, with two more behind these.

General Lanrezac published in the _New York Herald_ (Paris edition) of May 17 and 18, and in _L’Oeuvre_ of May 18 and 22, 1919, dignified replies to certain statements of Field-Marshal French. To the latter’s remark that the B.E.F. at Mons found itself in “an advanced position,” he answers that the battle shifted from east to west, and “on the evening of the 23rd, the 5th Army had been fighting for forty-eight hours, while the British were scarcely engaged.” Doubtless owing to Lord Kitchener’s original instruction that it would not be reinforced, the B.E.F. kept, during the later part of the retreat, “two days’ march ahead of the 5th Army, and obstinately maintained this distance, stopping only on the Seine.” “It was rather French who uncovered my left than I who uncovered his right.” General Lanrezac disowns any critical intent in saying this: “In my opinion, in the tragic period from August 22 to September 4, 1914, the British did all they could, and showed a magnificent heroism. It was not their fault if the strategic situation forbade our doing more.”

In regard to the original French plan of campaign, General Lanrezac refused to put himself in the position of being both judge and party, but added: “The Commander-in-Chief had a plan; he had elaborated it with the collaboration of officers of his Staff, men incontestibly intelligent and instructed, General Berthelot among others. Nevertheless, this plan, as I came to know it in course of events, appeared to me to present a fundamental error. It counted too much on the French centre, 3rd and 4th Armies, launched into Belgian Luxembourg and Ardennes, scoring a prompt and decisive victory which would make us masters of the situation on the rest of the front.” “So it was that General Berthelot, on August 19, told M. Messimy that, if the Germans went in large numbers west of the Meuse, it was so much the better, as it would be easier to beat them on the east.”

THE FALL OF MAUBEUGE

[26] Four years passed ere a detailed account of the defence and fall of Maubeuge was published (_La Verité sur le Siège de Maubeuge_, by Commandant Paul Cassou, of the 4th Zouaves. Paris: Berger-Levrault). There are, in the case of this fortress, points of likeness to and of difference from that of Lille. In June 1910 the Ministry of War had decided that Maubeuge should be regarded as only a position of arrest, not capable of sustaining a long siege; and in 1913 the Superior War Council decreed that it should be considered only as a support to a neighbouring field army. It then consisted of an enceinte dating from Vauban, dominated by an outer belt of six main forts and six intermediate works about twenty years old, furnished with 335 cannon, none of which carried more than 6 miles. The garrison consisted of an infantry regiment, three reserve and six Territorial regiments. In the three weeks before the siege began, 30,000 men were engaged in digging trenches, laying down barbed wire, and making other defences.

The siege was begun by the VII Reserve Corps, a cavalry brigade, and a division from another corps, about 60,000 men, on August 25. On that and two following days effective sorties were made. On the 29th the bombardment began. One by one the forts were smashed by heavy guns and mortars, including 420 mm. pieces throwing shells of nearly a ton weight, firing from the safe distance of 9 or 10 miles. On September 1, all the troops available made a sortie, and a regular battle was fought. Some detachments reached within 250 yards of the German batteries, only to be mown down by machine-gun fire. After this two German attacks were repulsed. On September 5, however, the enemy got within the French lines, and on the 7th the place had become indefensible. At 6 p.m. the capitulation was signified, and on September 8, at noon, the garrison surrendered, General von Zwehl saying to General Fournier: “You have defended the place with a rare vigour and much resolution, but the war has turned against you.” The German Command afterward claimed to have taken at Maubeuge 40,000 prisoners, 400 guns, and a large quantity of war material.

[27] Statement of M. Messimy before the Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy, May 30, 1919, reported in the Paris Press the following day. In his evidence, M. Messimy blamed Joffre for not having been willing, in August 1914, to recognise the danger on the side of Belgium. Undoubtedly, he added, it was a fault of the French Command in 1912 and 1913 not to contemplate the prompt use of reserves, and to fall back on the Three Years’ Service law, “which no one would defend to-day.” M. Messimy argued that the doctrine of the offensive _à outrance_ was common to the French and German Armies, and was at that time universal in military circles.

_Joffre, Première Crise du Commandement_, by Mermeix (Paris: Ollendorff. 1919), is a careful and unprejudiced study of the changes, ideas, and personal antagonisms in the French Army Commands during the first period of the war. It concludes with a section in which “Attacks upon Joffre” and “Explanations collected at the G.Q.G.,” are set forth on opposite pages.

[28] See note at top of p. 249.

[29] G. Blanchon, _Le General Joffre_, Pages Actuelles, 1914–5, No. 11 (Paris: Bloud et Gay).

[30] M. Arthur Huc, editor of the _Dépêche de Toulouse_, in which journal the interview was printed, March 1915.

[31] Statement by General Messimy at the Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy, April 28, 1919.

[32] For details, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,” _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, November 15, 1916; Engerand, _loc. cit._; a vindication of General Dubail, by “Cdt. G. V.”: “La 1re Armée et la Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,” _La Revue_, January 1, 1917; Barrés: “Comment la Lorraine fut Sauvée,” _Echo de Paris_, September 1917.

[33] See p. 34. The mismanagement of this battle was the subject of evidence at the Metallurgical Commission of Inquiry on May 15, 1919.

[34] Miles, _Le General Maunoury_, Pages Actuelles, No. 49.

[35] French, _1914_, ch. iv. The Hon. J. W. Fortescue (_Quarterly Review_, Oct. 1919), defending Smith-Dorrien, charges Lord French with “clumsy and ludicrous misstatements,” and questions the figures in the text.

[36] _Meine Bericht zur Marneschlacht_ (Berlin: Scherl), notes, written in December 1914, on the operations of the II Army to the end of the battle of the Aisne. Bülow charges Kluck with not having informed German G.H.Q. of the gathering of Maunoury’s forces and the action of Proyart.

For the battle of Guise, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de Guise–St. Quentin,” _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, September 1, 1918.

[37] For his report of a stormy interview with Lord Kitchener at the Embassy in Paris on September 1, see _1914_, ch. v. This account has, however, been strongly questioned by Mr. Asquith (speech at Newcastle, May 16, 1919), who says that Lord Kitchener did but convey the conclusions of the Cabinet, which had been “seriously disquieted” by Sir John French’s communications.

[38] See _Foch_, by Réné Puaux, and, above all, Foch’s own works, _De la Conduite de la Guerre_ (3rd ed., 1915), _Les Principes de la Guerre_, 4th ed., 1917 (Paris: Berger-Levrault).

[39] “I see no inconvenience,” Joffre replied, “in your turning back to-morrow, 28th, in order to affirm your success, and to show that the retreat is purely strategic; but on the 29th every one must be in retreat.”

[40] For details of the last stages of the retreat and pursuit, see _La Marche sur Paris de l’Aile Droite Allemande_, by Count de Caix de Saint Aymour (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle); Gordon and Hamilton, _op. cit._; and _La Retraite de l’Armée Anglaise du 23 Août 1914_, by Ernest Renauld, _Renaissance_, November 25, 1916.

On September 3, General Lanrezac was removed from the command of the French 5th Army——“because his views were contrary to a complete liaison with the British Army,” says M. Hanotaux (_Rev. des Deux Mondes_, March 1919); but this is a partial and inadequate statement. As we have seen, Lanrezac had been at issue with G.Q.G. from the beginning of the campaign.

M. Hanotaux quotes a note sent to the Minister of War, M. Millerand, on September 3, by General Joffre, who, “finding that the rapid recoil of the British Army, effected too soon and too quickly, had prevented Maunoury’s Army from coming into action in good conditions, and had compromised Lanrezac’s left flank,” described his intention thus: “To prepare a new offensive in liaison with the British and with the garrison of Paris, and to choose the battlefield in such a way that, by utilising on certain parts of the front prepared defensive organisations, a numerical superiority could be assured in the zone chosen for the principal effort.”

[41] An anonymous writer, “ZZZ,” in the _Revue de Paris_, September 15, 1917, says that Field-Marshal French’s communication was made on September 1 to the French Government——probably it was a result of the Kitchener interview——and was transmitted to Joffre by the Minister of War, who, subject to the full liberty and responsibility of the Generalissimo, favoured the idea of resistance on the north and north-east of Paris.

[42] _Petit Parisien_, June 16, 1916.

[43] _Le Livre du Souvenir_, by Paul Ginisty and Arsène Alexandre, pp. 75–6.

PARIS AND THE GERMAN PLAN

[44] Major-General Sir F. Maurice, in his brilliant study, _Forty Days in 1914_ (London: Constable. 1919), speaks, however, of the German Staff assuming “that Paris had only a moral and not a military value.” General Maurice refers to the city as being “at the mercy of the enemy,” and emphatically condemns Kluck for failing to occupy it, and so “sacrificing substantial gains in favour of a grandiose and ambitious scheme which, as events proved, could not be realised” (p. 139). Despite General Maurice’s great authority, I see no reason to change the conclusions in the text with regard to the points here discussed. There are several important factors which he does not mention, particularly the influence of the appearance of the new 9th Army, under Foch, at the French centre, and the equalisation at this time of the German and Allied forces. Kluck was the victim of necessity rather than of any grandiose ambition; and as for the Staffs, it was more Joffre’s strategy than “Prussian conceit and self-sufficiency” that “marred the execution of a well-laid plan.”

Says Mr. Joseph Reinach (_La Guerre sur le Front Occidental, 1914–15_, ch. v. sec. 7): “Bernhardi has classed the capitals of Europe in two categories: those whose capture has a decisive importance from the military point of view, like Paris and Vienna, and those whose importance is much smaller. To take Paris, what glory! to enter Paris, what a gage! But the same Bernhardi, the master of all the German generals, and before him all the greatest captains, all the oracles of the military art, Moltke, Jomini, insist that the aim of war must be fixed as high as possible, and this aim is the complete ruin of the enemy State by the destruction, the putting out of action, of its armies. Only an enemy completely disarmed will bow to the will of the conqueror.... The opinion that prevailed with the German Staff is that to attack Paris before having finished with the Allied Armies would be a fault entailing very serious consequences.... The event does not prove that this opinion was mistaken.”

[45] This message, first published by _Le Matin_, February 27, 1918, was dispatched by Mr. Gerard, United States Ambassador in Berlin, on the morning of September 8, to his colleague in Paris, Mr. Myron Herrick, who received it late on the same evening. It read as follows: “Extremely urgent. September 8. The German General Staff recommends that all Americans leave Paris via Rouen and Le Havre. They will have to leave soon if they wish to go.——GERARD.” It is added that the message was sent on the pressing wish of the German Staff, and that it was doubled, one copy going via Switzerland, and the other via Rome.

When this document was penned, the struggle had been proceeding on the Ourcq for two days and a half; Kluck had withdrawn nearly all his forces from the Marne; and the British and d’Espérey’s Armies were advancing rapidly northward. How, in these circumstances, could the German General Staff imagine that they could arrange “soon” a triumphant entry into Paris? There is one, and only one, fact in the military situation that they could build upon. At 5 a.m. on September 8, the right wing of Foch’s Army had broken down, and was in full retreat toward Fère Champènoise. If they really accepted this as such a promise of victory as to justify the warning to the Americans of Paris, the German Staff must have been in an infatuated state of mind.

It is possible, however, that the message was only a reckless piece of propaganda on their part, intended, at a critical moment, to awe the neutrals of America, Switzerland, and Italy, and to frighten some good Americans out of Paris. In no case can a warning conveyed on September 8 countenance the idea that the entry into Paris was originally intended to occur before a decisive victory had been won.

[46] In the _Gaulois_, “Une Cause de la Defaite Allemande sur la Marne.”

[47] M. Reinach states this, adding: “There was, it seems, an exchange of messages between the Staff and Kluck. Finally, theory prevailed” (_La Guerre_, p. 145; _Commentaires de Polybe_, vol. iv. p. 198).

According to an article in the _Renaissance_, September 2, 1916, Kluck had previously favoured the advance on Paris, quoting a reply of Blücher to Schwartzenberg in 1814: “It is better to go to Paris; when one has Paris, one has France.” At a council held at German Headquarters after the battle of Guise and St. Quentin, says the writer, Kluck went over to the advice of Moltke.

[48] M. Hanotaux (_Histoire Illustrée_, especially ch. xxxvii., and in the _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, March 1919) has his own picturesque theory of these events, supported by rather frail evidence. It is, briefly, that there was an antagonism between Kluck, who wished to complete his enveloping movement, and Bülow, who after Guise had persuaded the Grand Staff to renounce it in favour of a frontal action against the French centre in which he would be the chief actor. After Charleroi and after Guise, Bülow had had to call Kluck to his aid. They were natural antagonists, the junker and the popular soldier. Moltke and the Staff hesitated between them, and then decided for Bülow. Bülow was to lead the attack; Kluck was ordered to remain between the Oise and the Marne to watch the region of Paris. But he refused to be thus thwarted of his victory, and rode impetuously on toward Provins, overrunning Bülow’s slower approach. Maunoury’s attack caught him _in flagrante delicto_. All this is plausible enough except the statement that Kluck was ordered to remain north of the Marne. Had he done so, the same result would have been produced two or three days sooner.

M. Hanotaux also states that Marwitz’s three cavalry divisions had been ordered on September 1 to carry out a raid to the gates of Paris, destroying railways as they went, but that “Kluck had other views” (_La Manœuvre de la Marne_).

[49] The author of _Die Schlachten an der Marne_ says: “Kluck knew there were troops to the left of the British, but did not know their exact strength.”

In his book _Comment fut sauvé Paris_, M. P. H. Courrière cites the following order issued by General von Schwerin at dawn on September 5, and afterwards found on the battlefield: “The IV Reserve Corps continues to-day the forward march, and charges itself, north of the Marne, with the covering of the north front of Paris; the IV Cavalry Division will be added to it. The II Corps advances by the Grand Morin valley below Coulommiers, and directs itself against the east front of Paris.”

[50] General von Freytag-Loringhoven says: “It was proved on the Marne that the age of armies numbering millions, with their improved armament and widely extended fronts, engenders very special conditions.... The envelopment of the whole host of the enemy is a very difficult matter” (_Deductions_, pp. 79–80).

[51] M. Maurice Barrés, _Echo de Paris_, June 1, 1916. But General Maunoury had telegraphed at midnight on August 31 to General Joffre reporting that Kluck seemed to be leaving the direction of Paris.

[52] General Cherfils describes the extent of Gallieni’s authority as being in a state; of “nebulous imprecision.” The position appears to have been this: The entrenched camp of Paris, under the old regulations, was under the control of the Minister of War, not the Generalissimo, who could claim the services of a part of the garrison if he left enough men to assure the safety of the city, subject to a protest by the Governor, but could not touch its munitions or supplies. On his appointment as Military Governor of Paris (August 26), Gallieni had asked that the garrison, then consisting of four divisions of Territorials, should be reinforced. The 6th Army was accordingly placed under his orders. On the same day, the entrenched camp was placed, by the Minister, M. Millerand, under the superior orders of General Joffre. There was thus a threefold command, Maunoury being under Gallieni, and Gallieni under Joffre.

General Bonnal (_Les Conditions de la Guerre Moderne_, p. 56) says that it was “in virtue of his own initiative, based on the powers of the Governor of a place left to its own forces,” that Gallieni ordered Maunoury, on the morning of September 4, to prepare to take the offensive.

For particulars of Gallieni’s communications with General Joffre and Sir John French, see the work named, the same author’s long article in the _Renaissance_, September 4, 1915, and an article in that review on September 2, 1916. According to the last named, it was at 2.50 p.m. on September 4 that the Commander-in-Chief authorised the advance of Maunoury’s Army; and Gallieni’s orders were that it was to bring its front up to Meaux on the next day, and to “attack” on the morning of the 6th.

Gallieni’s control over Maunoury’s Army ceased when, by the development of the battle of the Ourcq, it passed out of the region of the entrenched camp of Paris. In August 1915, the old rules on the “Service de Place” were altered to give the French Commander-in-Chief absolute authority over fortresses and their governors, and full power to dispose of their resources.

[53] “La Bataille de l’Ourcq”; Paul H. Courrière, in the _Renaissance_, September 1, 1917.

[54] In his dispatch of September 17, 1914, Sir John French does not mention any visit or message from General Gallieni, and only speaks of receiving General Joffre’s request to turn about, made during their interview on Saturday, September 5. In his volume _1914_, he does mention the visit, but attributes to Gallieni the statement that Maunoury would move east toward the Ourcq “on Sunday the 6th.” This suggests that the move actually made on the 5th was not at the time known at British Headquarters.

[55] _Die Schlachten an der Marne_ (p. 107 of French edition).

SOME BOOKS ON THE BATTLE

Chaps. VI.-X. For further details of the actions traced in these chapters, see the works of Marshal French, Von Bülow, M. Hanotaux, Generals Mallaterre, Canonge, and Palat, M, Victor Giraud, Lord Ernest Hamilton, Mr. G. Campbell, and others named above, and the following:

“Guides Michelin pour la visite des Champs de Bataille” (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1917–18).

Vol. I. _L’Ourcq_ (_Meaux–Senlis–Chantilly_).

Vol. II. _Les Marais de Saint Gond_ (_Coulommiers–Provins–Sézanne_).

Vol. III. _La Trouée de Revigny_ (_Chalôns–Vitry-Bar-le-Duc_).

Excellent guides, containing good chronological summaries of the fighting on the left, centre, and right, with maps and other illustrations.

_La Bataille de la Marne._ By Gustave Babin (Paris: Plon. 1915). With 9 plans. One of the first day by day narratives of the battle, based on Staff information.

_La Victoire de la Marne._ By Louis Madelin, with 2 plans. A well-written sketch by a historian who was on the Staff at Verdun (Paris: Plon. 1916).

_Avant-propos Stratégiques._ By Col. F. Feyler, the well-known Swiss military writer (Paris: Payot. 1916).

_Les Campagnes de 1914._ By Champaubert (General Malleterre).

Collections of the French official bulletins published by Payot, and reports of the French Devastation Commission by Hachette.

_Les Champs de l’Ourcq._ By José Roussel-Lepine (Paris: Plon. 1919). Especially good in its descriptions of the Ourcq countryside.

_La Rôle de la Cavalerie Française_ à l’aile gauche de la première bataille de la Marne. By J. Hethay (Paris. 1919). Includes an account of the strange raid of the 5th Division, 1st Cavalry Corps, into Villers-Cotterets Forest and region of La Fertê-Milon, ordered by General Bridoux on the morning of September 8. It was driven hither and thither for several days, at last escaping in fragments to the west; but it created some little alarm and disturbance on Von Kluck’s lines of communication.

_Les Marais de Saint Gond._ By Charles le Goffic (Paris: Plon. 1916). A standard work on this part of the battle.

“Mondemont.” Article by “Asker,” in _L’Illustration_, July 3, 1915. Many valuable articles will be found in the files of this weekly journal.

_La Victoire de Lorraine._ By A. Bertrand (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1917).

_Morhange et les Marsouins de Lorraine._ By R. Christian-Frogé (Berger-Levrault. 1917).

_Sous Verdun._ By M. Genevois (R. Hachette. 1916).

_Die Schlacht an der Marne._ By Major E. Bircher, of the Swiss General Staff. Contains a bibliography of 150 works and a number of useful maps and plans (Berne: Paul Haupt).

[56] _Avec Charles Péguy de la Lorraine à la Marne_, by Victor Boudon (Paris: Hachette). Péguy, a sort of mystical Tory-Socialist, or, as M. Lavisse says, “Catholic-Anarchist,” was author-editor of _Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine_.

[57] M. Hanotaux (p. 126) says that Gallieni’s order of September 4 was “an order for deployment, not for the offensive,” and he adds that the Governor intended that the cavalry should feel the way. There is no evidence of cavalry activity on the 5th; and it is manifest that the encounter before St. Soupplets was a complete surprise for the 6th Army.

[58] Sir John French, in his dispatch, says: “I should conceive it to have been about noon on the 6th September, after the British Forces had changed their front to the right, and occupied the line Jouy le Chatel–Faremoutiers–Villeneuve le Comte, ... that the enemy realised the powerful threat that was being made against the flank of his columns moving south-east, and began the great retreat which opened the battle.” This is a significant mistake. We now know that Bülow sent a first warning of an Allied concentration towards the west on the afternoon of September 5 to Kluck, who by then had his own information from the IV Reserve Corps. A few hours later Kluck was fully aware of his danger; and, as he has since stated to an interviewer, decided “in five minutes” how to meet it.

Field-Marshal French (_1914_, ch. 5), wrongly, I think, considers that Kluck “manifested considerable hesitation and want of energy.”

GENERAL BONNAL AND THE BRITISH ARMY

[59] Several French volumes hint the first criticism, and it is expressed very definitely by General Bonnal in the article already referred to on the battle of the Ourcq in _La Renaissance_ of September 4, 1915. The substance of General Bonnal’s charge is as follows:

“Unfortunately, the British Army, rather hesitant after its checks at Le Cateau, Landrecies, and Compiègne, lost time in displacements dictated by prudence, and did not give the 6th Army in time all the help desirable.” Maunoury had asked for it at noon on Sept. 4; and the Generalissimo’s directions of that night anticipated the British being at Coulommiers and Changis on the evening of the 5th. But, on the afternoon of the 4th, the head of Sir John French’s Staff had announced to Gallieni for that night “an order of movement the result of which was to distance the British Army at once from the 6th and the 5th Armies.” (If this movement was not the further retirement asked for by General Joffre, we do not know what is meant.) “Marshal French occupied during the 5th positions north and south of Rozoy, facing east. But this disposition placed the British Army much to the rear, to the west, of the line first fixed, and permitted the German II Corps, reported in the morning at Coulommiers, to repass the Marne and escape to the north-west. Fearing its appearance on the Ourcq, General Gallieni wrote on the 6th to Marshal French praying him at once to advance in accordance with the orders of General Joffre. On his side, the latter telegraphed to General Maunoury, on the 6th, asking him constantly to support the British left. In consequence, the chief of the 6th Army sent to Meaux the same evening the 8th Division (4th Corps), which had just detrained at Paris.” (This division actually came in on the morning of the 6th.) “If the presence of the 8th Division on his left did not determine Marshal French immediately to take the offensive” (what this means we do not know, for the British offensive had commenced on the morning of the 6th), “it was because at this moment he was much concerned as to the pretty considerable interval between his right and the left of the 5th Army. Yet this interval was watched by the Cavalry Corps of General Conneau.”

“On the evening of the 6th, the British Army reached the line of the Grand Morin, in contact on its right with the 5th Army. Unfortunately this contact was so close that the British Army thought it necessary to march level with and on the same lines as the 5th, which had great difficulty in assuring its route, having to drive before it four corps of Von Bülow’s Army.”

General Bonnal concludes his criticism with a not very amiable homily on the insufficient training of the old British Army, and the inadequacy of its Staff work. Generals not trained as in France and Germany had, he says, a tendency “to practise the linear order,” to move their troops in deployed formation, supporting their flanks on neighbouring bodies, and taking a thousand precautions that lead to delay. That is why “the British Army, composed of officers and men full of strength, vigour, and energy, took more than two days to cover the 20 kilometres between the Grand Morin and the Marne, when, on the 6th, they ought to have marched on the nearest enemy.”

For similar comments, see “La Bataille de la Marne, Recit Succinct,” by General Canonge (_Le Correspondant_, September 25 and October 10, 1917), with details of the battle.

One sentence of M. Hanotaux is more to the point than all these criticisms and suppositions: “No doubt, if the encounter had not been produced, a little prematurely perhaps, in the region of St. Soupplets–Penchard, at noon on the 5th, the whole army of Von Kluck would have been south of the Marne in the evening; while Maunoury would have taken it in reverse on the north bank. Kluck would then have been closed in” (_Histoire_, ch. 38, p. 184).

An interesting attempt to justify Gallieni against Joffre, and to challenge the latter’s strategy at this time, will be found in _La Genèse de la Bataille de la Marne_, by General H. Le Gros (Paris: Payot). He quotes Joffre as complaining to the Government (on Sept. 4) that Gallieni was seeking to “push him into a premature offensive.”

SCENES AT FARTHEST SOUTH

[60] Four days later, in the village inn at Pezarches, Madame, an upstanding woman of about thirty, told me of the following incident:

“On Sunday morning my mother had gone to church, and I remained at home with my father and my little boy. My father left us to get some tobacco. Going out for a moment with the child, I saw a group of horsemen in the street, and said to myself: ‘We are saved. It is the Belgians!’ When I returned, to my surprise, they were in the house, sitting in my room and in the café. An officer asked me to cook him a couple of eggs. I noticed that one of the men was wounded, and asked whether it was painful. He nodded, and I went to the kitchen. There I saw, on the window-sill, a spiked helmet. I nearly fainted! So they were Germans! I managed to take in the eggs. Then the officer asked me, very politely, to show him my left hand, and, pointing to the wedding-ring, said: ‘You are married?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, trembling. ‘Your husband is a soldier?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You have a child?’ ‘No, I have no children,’ I said, ‘But I saw him. You are hiding him because you have heard that the Germans cut off the hands of French children. That is false. We never hurt women or children. Bring your little boy.’ But, as I persisted that it was not my child, he said no more. He and the others paid in German money for what they had, and left. A quarter of an hour later the firing began.”

[61] _1914_, ch. 4.

[62] _Le Petit Journal_, September 9, 1917.

[63] In Courtacon, I found eighteen of the two dozen small brick houses completely destroyed by fire, after having been sacked. The pretext given was that villagers had betrayed the German troops——part of the Guard Cavalry Division——to the Allies. The single room of the village school presented an unforgettable exhibition of malice. Dirty straw, remnants of meals, torn books, and broken cartridge cases littered the floor. Piles of half-burnt straw showed that a hurried attempt had been made to destroy the building; there were two such piles under the bookcase and the tiny school museum, which consisted of a few bottles of metal and chemical specimens. Amid this filthy chaos, the low forms, the master’s desk, and wall-charts inculcating “temperance, kindness, justice, and truth,” stood as they had done on the day before the summer holidays. As I turned to leave, I saw, written across the blackboard in bold, fine writing, evidently as the lesson of that day, the words: “_À chaque jour suffit sa peine_”——“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” as our English version has it. Under this motto, all unconscious of it, these brutes had slept and wakened to their incendiary work——men of a nation that boasted itself the pioneer in Europe of elementary schooling. Could any recording angel have conceived a more biting irony?

[64] M. Madelin says that 7000 German corpses were found. The figure may be doubted.

[65] Le Goffic, _Les Marais de St. Gond_.

[66] _Au Centre de la Bataille de la Marne_, by the Abbé Neret, Curé of Vertus, who gives the hours named.

[67] I rely upon the article by M. le Goffic, “La Defense du Mont Août,” in _La Liberte_, September 7, 1918, embodying the narrative of an eye-witness, who mentions the following curious details: “A black cow, maddened by the bombardment, charged the trenches, leaped aside when a shell burst, sniffed the smoke, and stamped in the shell-holes. Slowly, a shepherd, a big, careless ruffian, climbed the slope with his five white sheep. For a moment he stopped level with us, 500 yards to the right. As though by accident, his five sheep were on his left, on our side; and immediately shells began to arrive in fours, the range lengthening each time by a hundred yards. But we were not in range.” This perhaps rather imaginative correspondent thinks that the Germans mistook dead for living Frenchmen on the slopes of Mont Août, and that that is why they did not seek to occupy it.

THE MYTH OF THE 42ND DIVISION

[68] General Canonge, in his historical sketch, confirms my own inquiries. The embryo of the myth is to be found in the “Official Résumé,” published on June 8, 1915, in the _Bulletin des Armées_, according to which, on the evening of September 9, Foch’s Army, “moving from west to east toward Fère Champènoise, took in flank the Prussian Guard and the Saxon Corps which were attacking south-east of this locality. This audacious manœuvre decided the success.” This was presently elaborated, with various romantic decorations.

[69] Canonge, after two inquiries on the spot, and with written evidence in addition, says that the 42nd Division left Broyes between 2 and 3 pm., reached Linthelles about 5 p.m., stopped there, and then bivouacked in the zone Linthes–Linthelles–Ognes–Pleurs, passing the night there “in general reserve,” and moving away only about 5 a.m. on September 10. Fère Champènoise, he adds, was evacuated by the Germans, after an orgie of 24 hours, at about 5.30 p.m. on the 9th, but was traversed during the greater part of the night by German troops coming from Connantre and Gourgancon. Connage thinks that, “on sight of the troops of the 42nd Division, those of General Dubois, certain now of support, advanced, and the Division then stopped and turned back to night-quarters.” Bülow, he believes, had ordered his retreat at 3.30 p.m. The first French detachment entered Fère Champènoise at 7 a.m. next day.

[70] Giraud (_Histoire_, p. 166) gives a rather different report of this dialogue. I rely upon an article in _L’Illustration_ of Jan. 9, 1915, containing a long passage from the diary of “an officer who was the soul of the defence”——doubtless, Captain Heym himself.

[71] Colonel Feyler’s _Avant-Propos Stratégiques_ (Paris: Payot. 1915) are particularly valuable for a pitiless analysis of the “moral manœuvre” represented in early German accounts of the first part of the campaign.

[72] Major-General Maurice says: “I am convinced that history will decide that it was the crossing of the Marne in the early hours of the 9th by the British Army which turned the scale against Kluck and saved Maunoury at a time of crisis.... That an army which on August 23 had been all but surrounded by an enemy who outnumbered it by two to one should have fought its way out, retreated 170 miles, and then immediately turned about and taken a decisive part in the battle which changed the course of the campaign of 1914, is as wonderful an achievement as is to be found in the history of war” (_Forty Days_, pp. 183–4).

[73] Hanotaux, _Histoire Illustrée_, vol. vii. pp. 132–8.

[74] _Idem_, pp. 172–5.

[75] Foch, _Des Principes de la Guerre_.

[76] 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.

[77] “Choses Vues à Metz,” _Revue Hebdomadaire_, December 18, 1915. Colonel Feyler quotes from the _Lokal Anzeiger_ of Berlin the following commentary on one of the Kaiser’s earlier appearances at the Front: “The presence of the Emperor demonstrates clearly what a development events have taken.... The Emperor would never have gone into France if those responsible had envisaged the possibility of the German Army being thrown back beyond the frontier. His presence among his troops in enemy country will not fail to produce a deep impression in Germany as well as abroad.”

[78] Quoted in _Un Village Lorrain en Août—Septembre 1914. Réméréville_, by C. Berlet.

[79] Lt.-Col. Thomasson, _Le Revers_, introduction.

[80] Professor Friedrich Meinecke, of Freiburg University, in the _Frankfürter Zeitung_, December 31, 1916.

INDEX

Air Forces, German and Allied, 18, 27, 126, 140, 141, 167, 241–2

Aisne, German stand on the, 187–8, 192–3

Alsace, French advance and withdrawal in, 2, 29, 56, 212

Amade, General d’, 28, 35, 65, 66, 72

Americans urged to leave Paris, 82, 260

Amiens occupied by Von Kluck, 72, 80

Antwerp, 40, 44, 88, 105

Ardennes, Belgian, French offensive into, 24, 31–3, 36

Armaments, German and Allied compared, 14, 215

Artillery, German and French, 17, 18, 215; at Namur and Maubeuge, 40, 257; in the battle of the Marne, 104, 126, 128, 146, 180, 201, 210

Battlefield described, 106–9, 113–4, 143–4, 170–1, 203–7

Bavarian Corps, Prince Ruprecht and, 30, 56, 61–3, 87, 197–213

Belgium, the surprise in, 12–13, 21, 26–7, 34, 36, 38, 41, 45, 49, 54, 215, 247–51

Belgium’s contribution, 15, 27, 32, 37–41, 43–4

Berthaut, General, defends the French Staff, 245–6

Bloch, Jean de, forecasts of, 19, 242–4

Briey coalfield, 33, 248, 249

British Expeditionary Force, 34–44, 65–9, 80–1, 99, 118–26; advance to the Marne begun, 123; the Marne crossed, 131, 140–1; a determining factor, 185, 188–9, 224–5; M. Hanotaux’ criticisms, 253–5, 259; General Bonnal’s criticism, 265–6

Bülow, General von, 32, 36–43, 66, 68–9, 81, 85, 100; compromised by Von Kluck’s retreat, 129, 134, 135–7; attack upon the French centre, 135, 142, 146–64; disorder and retreat, 165–8, 190–3

Castelnau, General de, 27, 29–31, 62–3, 71, 104, 197–213, 248

Cateau, Le, battle of, 1, 65–6, 68

Cavalry, rôle of the, 16, 27, 66, 67, 104, 125, 134, 192–3, 264

Châlons reoccupied, 193

Charleroi, battle of, 37–43

Charmes, Gap of, defence of, 31, 56, 61–3

Château-Thierry reoccupied, 141

Command, unity of, 25, 40, 216

Concentration, first French, and re-grouping, 27–8, 251

Coulommiers occupied by the British, 124

Couronné, Grand, of Nancy, defence of, 63, 199, 205–12, 228–9, 269

Crown Prince, the Imperial, 32–3, 63–4, 70–1, 89, 103, 169–72, 178–82, 195

Dubail, General, 27, 29, 30–1, 62–3, 104, 197–8, 200, 203

Eastern defences, French, 12, 31, 44, 56, 61–4, 89–90, 170, 197, 229

Emperor, the German, 84, 205, 209, 269

Espérey, General Franchet d’, 37, 40–1, 100, 122; advance to the Marne begun, 137; Marne crossed, 141–2; helps Foch, 139, 142, 156; a determining factor in the victory, 189–91; on the Aisne, 193

Fère Champènoise lost, 157; reoccupied, 167

Foch, General, his teaching, 22, 24, 50, 160, 202; at head of 20th Corps, 30, 62; of 9th Army, 61, 69–70, 101, 138; battle of St. Gond, 142–54; the centre broken, 155–64; projected manœuvre and German retreat, 161–2, 165–8, 190, 193, 268

Forces, German and Allied, compared, 15–16, 30, 32–3, 41, 65; on eve of the battle of the Marne, 97–105, 137, 144–5, 169, 171–2, 176, 177–8, 198–201, 215–6, 240–1, 255

Fortifications, modern, function of, 21, 229, 245

French, Sir John, 18, 32, 35, 36, 39–43, 66–7, 69, 72, 73; communications with Gallieni and Joffre, 93–4, 121–3; battle order, 111; farthest south, 119, 121; the pursuit, 188; criticisms of, 253–6, 258, 265–6

Gallieni, General, 47, 49, 77–9, 81, 83, 90, 133; order to 6th Army on September 4, 92–3; communications with Joffre and French, 93–4; battle of the Ourcq; his precipitancy, 116–7, 121–3, 134, 224; Generals Cherfils and Bonnal on, 262

Gaps in German and Allied lines, 69, 85, 111, 136–7, 145, 166, 189, 192–3, 225–6

Generals removed, French, 20, 49, 52, 245; German, 83, 233

Gond, St., marshes of, 143 _et seq._, 191, 226

Guise, battle of, 68–9

Haig, General Sir D., 37, 64, 66, 99, 141, 193

Hanotaux, M., controverted, 41–3, 252–5

Hausen, General von, and the Saxon Corps, 32–3, 35, 38–41, 69, 71, 101, 135, 145, 155–9, 165–6, 171, 172, 175, 191, 193

Heeringen, General von, 30, 61–3, 192, 197, 199, 200, 203–4

Humbert, General, at Mondemont, 149, 152–4

Italian Frontier, 15, 25, 28

Joffre, General, moves 5th Army and B.E.F. to Sambre (August 16), 35–6, 42; “most unexpected” news, 41; career and character, 46–53; second new plan of campaign, 54–61; tactical lessons, 58; watches eastern frontier, 62, 64, 197; forms 6th Army, 65; helps the B.E.F., 65–8; forms 9th Army, 70; extends the retreat, 73–5; orders for general offensive, 74–5, 93–7, 111, 121; M. Millerand on, 77; gains and superiority of forces, 104–5; and Gallieni’s precipitancy, 116, 119, 121–3; and the decisive movement between Kluck and Bülow, 135, 189; on the victory, 195–6; the author of the victory, 218–29, 233; before Commission of Inquiry, 249; General Lanrezac on, 256; M. Messimy on, 257

Kitchener, Lord, and Field-Marshal French, 69, 258, 259

Kluck, General von, 32, 38–44, 66–9, 72–3, 79 _et seq._, 97; withdraws Corps across Marne against Maunoury, 118, 122–4; his farthest south positions, 119–120; results of retreat, 135–7, 141, 185; reaches the Aisne, 187; his two fatal movements, 220–2; Kluck and Bülow, 261

Landwehr and Ersatz employed on front, 15–16, 128, 199

Langle de Cary, General de, 28, 32–3, 48, 70, 102, 169–75, 193

Lanrezac, General, 27, 32, 35–43, 49, 67–8, 250, 255–6, 258

Launois, battle of, 70

Lille, fortress of, 34, 249, 252

Longwy, siege of, 33–4, 44

Lorraine, first French offensive in, 29–31

Machine guns, 18, 58, 115, 117, 253

Maud’huy, General, 30, 100, 138, 140, 193

Mangin, General, 37, 100, 138

Maps, German, evidence of the, 240

Maubeuge, 34, 44, 87, 105, 252, 256–7

Maunoury, General, 32, 63–5, 72–3, 77, 80–1, 85, 93, 97, 116, 122, 124, 126–30, 132–4, 184–8, 248

Michel, General, and the French Staff, 47, 49, 248

Mondemont, 143–4, 148–54

Mons, battle of, 37–43, 253–6

Montmirail reoccupied, 140

Morhange–Sarrebourg, battle of, 30–1

Namur, siege and fall of, 27, 38, 40

Nancy bombarded, 211

Nivelle, Colonel, 127

Offences, German, against rules of war, 80, 117, 124, 192, 194–5, 211, 212–3, 267

Offensive, French doctrine of the, 21–24, 58, 201–2, 216, 218, 245–7, 251

—— from the Somme–Laon–Craonne, proposed, 58–60, 65, 71

Ourcq, battle of the, 114–8, 126–35, 184–7

Paris, the defence of, 55, 73, 76–9, 259–60; the German dilemma, 82–8, 109, 221

Pau, General, 29, 47, 48, 198, 248

Percin, General, 248, 252

Petain, General, 100, 138

Plans of campaign: the German, 10–14; disturbed after Guise, 68–9; the dilemma of Paris–Verdun, 84–91, 109–10, 214 _et seq._, 239–40; the French, 28–9, 31, 36, 49–50, 54–61, 73–5, 88–9, 105, 110, 216 _et seq._

Proyart, action at, 68

Railways, efficiency of French, 15, 57, 241

Reserves, German and Allied, 16, 21, 198–9, 245

Retreat, the long, scenes on, 1–9, 72–3, 78, 237–8; necessity of, 54–5; advantages of, 57; prolonged, 72–4; end of, 81, 109, 119; general German, ordered September 9, 185

Revigny lost, 179; recovered, 194

Rheims reoccupied and bombarded, 192

Russian victories, influence of, 44, 75, 87

Sambre, German victory on the, 36–43

Sarrail, General, 48, 89, 103, 169–72, 175–82, 195

Sermaize, destruction of, 194

Smith-Dorrien, General, 38, 64, 66, 99, 141

Taxi-cabs and the battle of the Ourcq, 130–1

Toul, German advance toward, 208

Trenches: German superiority, 18, 31, 33, 35, 58, 114, 217, 253; Field-Marshal French on, 18, 244; Castelnau’s defences, 201–2

Troyon, Fort, defence of, 180–3

Verdun, 32, 56, 71, 74, 89, 108, 169–71, 176–82, 195, 221

Vosges, fighting in the, 203–4

War Council, French Higher, 47–51

“Wireless,” German, picked up, 134

Würtemberg, Duke Albrecht of, 32, 70, 102, 169–75, 193

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD. EDINBURGH

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

In this version of this eBook, dashes between multiple locations and within numeric ranges are shown as en-dashes (–), which are longer than hyphens (-) but shorter than double-em-dashes (——), which are used for visual clarity where the original book used single em-dashes as delimiters.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Page 99: “Ronar’ch’s” is a misprint for “Ronarc’h’s”.

Page 272: The Index reference to General Gallieni and the battle of the Ourcq did not include a page number.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Battle of the Marne, by George Herbert Perris