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WAR BOOKS
THE BATTLE OF THE RIVERS
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HOW THE WAR BEGAN. By W. L. COURTNEY, LL.D.,
and J. M. KENNEDY.
THE FLEETS AT WAR. By ARCHIBALD HURD.
THE CAMPAIGN OF SEDAN. By GEORGE HOOPER.
THE CAMPAIGN ROUND LIEGE. By J. M. KENNEDY.
IN THE FIRING LINE. Battle Stories told by British Soldiers
at the Front. By A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK.
GREAT BATTLES OF THE WORLD. By STEPHEN
CRANE, Author of "The Red Badge of Courage."
BRITISH REGIMENTS AT THE FRONT. The glorious
story of their Battle Honours.
THE RED CROSS IN WAR. By M. F. BILLINGTON.
FORTY YEARS AFTER. The Story of the Franco-German
War. By H. C. BAILEV. NVith an introduction by W. L.
COURTNEY, LL.D.
A SCRAP OF PAPER. The Inner History o{ German
Diplom.-vcy. By E. J. DILLON.
HOW THE NATIONS WAGED WAR. A companion volume
to " How the War Began," telling how the world faced Armageddon
and how the British Army answered the call to arm?. By J. M.
KENNEDY.
AIR-CRAFT IN WAR. By ERIC STUART BRUCE.
HACKING THROUGH BELGIUM. By EDMUND DANE.
FAMOUS FIGHTS OF INDIAN NATIVE REGIMENTS.
By RE(;iNALD HODDER.
THE RETREAT TO PARIS. By ROGER INGPEN.
THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE. By MARR MURRAY.
THE SUBMARINE IN WAR. By C. W. DOMYILLE FIFE.
MOTOR TRANSPORTS IN WAR. By HORACE WYATT.
THE SLAV NATIONS.
KEELING ISLAND. By
FROM HELIGOLAND TO
ARCHIBALD HURD.
WITH THE
GREY
WITH THE ROYAL
E. C. VIYIAN.
FRENCH EASTERN ARMY. By \Y. E.
ARMY MEDICAL CORP. By
AT THE
WITH THE SCOTTISH REGIMENTS
FRONT. By E. C. VIYIAN.
THE FIRST CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIAN POLAND. By
P. C. .-^TANDiNG.
THE BATTLE OF THE RIVERS. By EDMUND DANE.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
THE BATTLE OF
THE RIVERS
BY
EDMUND DANE
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXIV
PREFATORY NOTE
On a scale before unknown in Western
Europe, and save for the coincident operations
in the Eastern theatre of war, unexampled in
history, the succession of events named the
"Battle of the Rivers" presents illustrations of
strategy and tactics of absorbing interest. Apart
even from the spectacular aspects of this lurid
and grandiose drama, full as it is of strange and
daring episodes, the problems it affords in the
science of war must appeal to every intelligent
mind.
An endeavour is here made to state these
problems in outline. In the light they throw,
events and episodes, which might otherwise
appear confused, will be found to fit into a clear
sequence of causes and consequences. The
events and episodes themselves gain in grandeur
as their import and relationship are unfolded.
Since the story of the retreat from Mons has
been told in another volume of this series, it is
onlv in the following pages dealt with so far
as its military bearings elucidate succeeding
phases of the campaign.
The Battle of the Rivers
CHAPTER I
THE GERMAN PLANS
"About September 3," wrote Field Marshal
Sir John French in his despatch dated a fort-
night later/ "the enemy appears to have changed
his plans, and to have determined to stop his
advance south direct upon Paris, for on Sep-
tember 4 air reconnaissances showed that his
main columns were moving in a south-easterly
direction generally, east of a line drawn through
Nanteuil and Lizy on the Ourcq."
In that passage the British commander sum-
marises an event which changed the whole
military aspect of the Great War and changed
it not only in the Western, but in the Eastern
theatre of hostilities.
What were the German plans and why were
they changed?
In part the plans were military, and in part
political. These two aspects, however, are so
1 Despatch from Sir John French to Earl Kitchener
of September 17th, 1914. For the text of this see
Appendix.
8 The Battle of the Rivers
interwoven that it is necessary, in the first place,
briefly to sketch the political aspect in order
that the military aspect, which depended on the
political, may be the better understood.
The political object was to reduce France to
such powerlessness that she must not only agree
to any terms imposed, but remain for the future
in a state of vassalage to Germany, Further,
the object was to extract from France a war fine
so colossal ^ that, if paid, it would furnish Ger-
many with the means of carrying on the war
against Great Britain and Russia, and, if not
paid, or paid only in part, would offer a pretext
for an occupation of a large part of France by
German troops, indefinite in point of time, and,
formalities apart, indistinguishable from annexa-
tion. By means of that occupation great re-
sources for carrying on the war might, in any
event, be drawn in kind from the French popula-
tion and from their territory, or drawn in cash
in the form of local war levies.
In a passage quoted by M. Edouard Simon,^
the late Prince von Bismarck once spoke of the
difficulty he met with at the end of the war with
France in 1871, in restraining the cupidity of
the then King of Prussia and in "mixing the
water of reflection with the wine of victory."
^ The contemplated fine has been alleged to be 4,000
millions sterling, coupled with the formal cession of all
North Eastern France. This statement was circulated by
Reuter's correspondent at Paris on what was asserted
to be high diplomatic authorit)'. Such a sum sounds in-
credible, though as a pretext it might possibly have been
put forward.
^ Simon : TJie Emperor William and his Reign.
The German Plans 9
There was at the time, in Germany, much dis-
cussion as to the amount of the War Fine. The
staggering total of 15,000 milhons of francs (600
million pounds sterling) was freely asserted to
be none too high. Fear of possible war with
Great Britain mainly kept within bounds this
desire of plunder, and led the Emperor William
to accept, reluctantly, tHe 5,000 million francs
afterwards paid.
There can be no doubt, however, that it became
a settled opinion with the Government, and also,
even if to a less extent, a conviction with the
public of Germany that, enormous as it was, the
levy upon France in 187 1 was insufficient. That
opinion was sharpened by the promptitude,
almost contemptuous, with which the French
people discharged the demand, and brought the
German military occupation to an end.
The opinion that the War Fine of 1871 had
been too small inspired the political crisis of
1875, caused by a threatened renewal of the
German attack. The pretext then was that
France was forming, with Austria and Italy, a
league designed to destroy the new German
Empire. The true cause of hostility was that
France had begun to reorganise her army. In-
tervention by the Cabinets of London and St.
Petersburg averted the peril. The German
Government found itself obliged to put off a
further draft upon "opulent France"^ until a
more convenient season.
This discovery that neither Great Britain nor
' This phrase is that of General F. von Bernhardi.
A*
10 The Battle of the Rivers
Russia was willing to see France become the
milch cow of Germany dictated the policy which
led later to the Triple Alliance. Consistently
from this time to the end of his life the Emperor
William I. assumed the part of guardian of the
peace of Europe. The Triple Alliance was
outwardly promoted by Germany with that
object.^
Jkleanwhile, every opportunity was taken to
strengthen the German military organisation.
^ After the Berlin Congress in 1878, Prince Gor-
tschakov mooted the idea of an alliance between Russia
and France. In iSyg Bismarck, in view of such a
development, concluded the alliance between Germany
and Austria. Italy joined this alliance in 1883, but on
a purely defensive footing. The account given of the
Triple Alliance by Prince Bernhard von Biilow, ex-
Imperial Chancellor, is that it was designed to safe-
guard the Continental interests of the three Powers,
leaving each free to pursue its extra-Continental
interests. From 1815 to 1878 the three absolutist
Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, had aimed at
dominating the politics of the Continent by their entente.
For many years, however, German influence in Russia
has been giving way before French influence. This is
one of the most important facts of modern European
history. The Triple Alliance was undoubtedly designed
to counteract its effect. Germany, with ambitions in
Asia Minor, backed up Austria, with ambitions in the
Balkans. Both sets of ambitions were opposed to the
interests of Russia. Russia's desertion of the absolutist
entente for the existing entente with the liberal Powers
of the West has been due nevertheless as much to the
growth of constitutionalism as to diplomacy. The
entente with Groat Britain and France is popular. On
the other hand, the entente with Germany and Austria
was unpopular. The view here taken that one of the
real aims of the Triple Alliance was the furtherance of
Prussia's designs against France is the view consistent
with the course of Prussian policy. For Prince von
Biilow 's explanations, see his Imperial Germany.
The German Plans ii
Only by possession of an invincible army could
the German Empire, it was contended, fulfil its
peace-keeping mission.
This growth of military armaments imposed
on Germany a heavy burden. Was the burden
borne merely for the sake of peace, or for the
sake of the original inspiration and policy ?
Few^ acquainted with the character of the
Germans will credit them with a tendency to
spend money out of sentiment. The answer,
besides, has been given by General von Bern-
hardi.^ He has not hesitated to declare that the
object of these preparations was to ensure victory
in the offensive war made necessary by the
growth of the German population, a growth
calling for a proportionate "political expansion."
Outside Germany the so-called revelations of
General von Bernhardi took many by surprise.
That, however, was because, outside Germany,
not many know much of German history, and
fewer still the history of modern Prussia.
It was realised, when General von Bernhardi
published his book, that the original inspiration
and policy had never been changed. On the
contrary, all the efforts and organisation of
Prussia had been directed to the realisation of
that policy, and the only alteration was that, as
confidence in Prussia's offensive organisation
grew, the policy had been enlarged by sundry
added ambitions until at length it became that
grotesque and Gothic political fabric known as
Pan-Germanism.
1 F. von Bernhardi: The Next War: see Introduction.
12 The Battle of the Rivers
"The military origin of the new German
Empire," says M. Simon, "is of vast importance;
it gives that Empire its fundamental character ;
it establishes its basis and its principle of ex-
istence. Empires derive their vitality from the
principle to which they owe their birth."
The fact is of vast importance because, just as
the British Empire had its origin in, and owes
its character to, the embodiment of moral force
in self-government, so the German Empire had
its origin in, and owes its character to, the em-
bodiment of material forces in armies, and existed,
as General von Bernhardi says, for the employ-
ment of that force as and whenever favourable
opportunity should present itself.
The political inspiration and purpose being
clear, how was that purpose, as regards France,
most readily and with fewest risks to be realised ?
It was most readily to be realised by seizing
Paris. As everybody is aware, the Government
of France is more centralised than that of any
other great State. Paris is the hub of the
French roads and railways; Paris is also the hub
of French finance; Paris is at once the brain and
the heart of the country; the place to which all
national taxes flow; the seat from which all
national direction and control proceed. It was
believed, therefore, that, Paris occupied, France
would be stricken with political paralysis.
Resistance might be offered by the provinces,
for the area of France is roughly equal to the
area of Germany, but the resistance could never
be more than ineffectual.
The German Plans 13
Such was the plan on its political side. What
were its military features ?
A political plan of that character plainly called
for a swift and, if possible, crushing military
offensive. Rapidity was one of the first essen-
tials. That affected materially the whole military
side of the scheme. It meant that to facilitate
mobility and transport, the equipment of the
troops must be made as light as possible. Hence
all the usual apparatus of field hospitals and
impedimenta for encampment must be dispensed
with. It meant that the force to be dispatched must
be powerful enough to bear down the maximum of
estimated opposition, and ensure the seizure of
Paris, without delay. It meant again that the
force must move by the shortest and most direct
route.
If we bear in mind these three features —
equipment cut down to give mobility, strength
to ensure an uninterrupted sweep, shortest route
— we shall find it the easier to grasp the nature
of the operations which have since taken place.
The point to be kept in mind is that what
the military expedition contemplated was not
only on an unusual scale, but was of an
altogether unusual, and in many respects novel,
character.
The most serious military problem in front of
the German Government was the problem of
route. The forces supposed to be strong enough
Germany had at her disposal. Within her
power, too, was it to make them, so far as
meticulous preparation could do it, mobile. But
14 The Battle of the Rivers
command of the shortest and most direct route
she did not possess.
That route we know passes in part through
the plain of northern Belgium, and in part
through the parallel valley of the Meuse to the
points where, on the Belgium frontier, there
begin the great international roads converging
on Paris. All the way from Liege to Paris
there are not only these great paved highways,
but lines of main trans-continental railroads.
The route, in short, presented every natural and
artificial facility needed to keep a vast army fully
supplied.
Here it should be recalled that two things
govern the movements of armies. Hostile
opposition is one; supplies are the other. In
this instance, the possible hostile opposition was
estimated for. It remained to ensure that neither
the march of the great host, as a whole, nor the
advance of any part of it should at any time
be held up by waiting for the arrival of either
foodstuffs, munitions, or reinforcements, but that
the thousand and one necessaries for such an
army, still a complex list even when everything
omissible had been weeded out, should arrive,
as, when, and where wanted.
Little imagination need be exercised to per-
ceive that to work out a scheme like that on such
a scale involves enormous labour. On the one
side were the arrangements for gathering these
necessaries and placing them in depots; on the
other were the arrangements for issuing them,
sending them forward, and distributing them.
The German Plans 15
Nothing short of years of effort could connect
such a mass of detail. If hopeless confusion
was not almost from the outset to ensue, the
greatest care was called for to make it certain
that the mighty machination would move
successfully.
A scheme of that kind suited the methodical
genius of Germany, and there can be no doubt
that the years spent upon it had brought it to
perfection. It had been worked out to time table.
Concurrently, arrangements for the mobilisation
of reserve troops had become almost automatic.
Every reservist in the German Army held in-
structions setting out minutely what to do and
where and when to report himself as soon as the
call came.
Now this elaborate plan had been drawn up
on the assumption of an invasion of France by
the route through Belgium. That assumption
formed its basis. Not only so, but the extent
to which the resources of Belgium and North-
east France might, by requisitioning, be drawn
upon to relieve transport and so promote rapidity,
had been exactly estimated.
It is evident, therefore, that the adoption of
any other route must have upset the whole pro-
posal. In any other country the fact of the
Government devoting its energies over a long
period of time to such a scheme on such a footing
would appear extraordinary, and the more extra-
ordinary since this, after all, was only part of
a still larger plan, worked out with the same
minuteness, for waging a war on both frontiers.
1 6 The Battle of the Rivers
The fact, however, ceases to be extraordinary
if we bear in mind that the modern German
Empire is essentially military and aggressive.
Obviously, the weak point of plans so
elaborate is that they cannot readily be changed.
Neither even can they, save with difficulty, be
modified. Even in face, therefore, of a declara-
tion of war by Great Britain, the plan
had to be adhered to. Unless it could be
adhered to, the invasion of France must be
given up.
Bearing in mind the labour and cost of pre-
paration, the hopes built upon the success of the
invasion, and the firm belief that the opposition
to be expected by Belgium could at most be but
trifling, it ceases to be surprising that, though
there was every desire to put off that complica-
tion, a war with Great Britain proved no deter-
rent.
Further, the construction by the French just
within their Eastern frontier of a chain of forti-
fications extremely difficult to force by means of
a frontal attack, and quite impossible to break
if defended by efficient field forces, manifestly
suggested the plea of adopting the shorter and
more advantageous route on the ground of
necessity. In dealing with that plea it should
not be forgotten that the State which elects to
take the offensive in war needs resources superior
to those of the State which elects to stand, to
begin with, upon a policy of defence. Those
superior resources, save in total population, Ger-
many, as compared with France, did not possess.
The German Plans 17
In adopting the offensive, therefore, on account
of its initial miUtary advantages, Germany was
risking in this attack means needed for a pro-
longed struggle. It was necessary in con-
sequence for the attack to be so designed
that it could not only not fail, but should
succeed rapidly enough to enable the attack-
ing State to recoup itself — and, possibly, with a
profit.
The conditions of first rapidity, and second
certainty, formed the political aspects of the plan,
and they affected its military aspects in regard
to first numbers, secondly equipment, thirdly
route.
But there were, if success was to be assured,
still other conditions to be fulfilled, and these
conditions w-ere purely military. They were : —
(i) That in advancing the line of the in-
vading armies must not expose a flank,
and by so doing risk delay through local
or partial defeat.
(2) That the invading armies must not lay
bare their communications. Risk to their
communications would also involve delay.
(3) That they must at no point incur the
hazard of attacking a defended position
save in superior force. To do so would
again risk repulse and delay.
Did the plan drawn up by the German General
Staff fulfil apparently all the conditions, both
political and military, and did it promise swift
success ? It did.
1 8 The Battle of the Rivers
The plan, in the first instance, covered the
operations of eight armies, acting in combina-
tion. These were the armies of General von
Emmich; General von Kluck; General von
Biilow; General von Hansen; Albert, Duke of
Wurtemberg; the Crown Prince of Germany;
the Crown Prince of Bavaria ; and General von
Heeringen. Embodying first reserves, they com-
prised twenty-eight army corps out of the forty-
six which Germany, on a war footing, could put
immediately into the field.^
Having reached the French frontier from near
the Belgian coast to Belfort, the eight armies
were to have advanced across France in echelon.
If you take a row of squares running across a
chessboard from corner to corner you have such
squares for what is known in military phrase-
ology as echelon formation.
Almost invariably in a military scheme of that
character the first body, or "formation" as it
1 Of the remaining corps, five were posted along the
frontier of East Prussia to watch the Russians. The
rest were held chiefly at Mainz, Coblentz, and Breslau
as an initial reserve.
The now definitely ascertained facts regarding the
military strength of Germany appear to be these :—
25 corps and one division of the
active army mustering ... 1,530,000 men
21 corps of Landwehr mustering 1,260,000 men
Total ... 2,790,000 men
In addition, there were raised 12 corps of Ersatz
Reserve, and there were also the Landsturm and the
Volunteers, whose numerical strength is uncertain.
These troops, however, were not embodied until later
in the campaign.
The German Plans 19
is called, of the echelon is reinforced and made
stronger than the others, because, while such a
line of formations is both supple and strong, it
becomes liable to be badly disorganised if the
leading body be broken. On the leading body
is thrown the main work of initiating the thrust.
That leading body, too, must be powerful
enough to resist an attack in flank as well as in
front. 1
Advancing on this plan, these armies would
present a line exposing, save as regarded the first
of them, no flank open to attack. Indeed, the
first object of the echelon is to render both a
frontal and a flank attack upon it difficult.
Had the plan succeeded as designed, we should
have had this position of affairs : the eight
armies would have extended across France from
Paris to Verdun by the valley of the Marne, the
great natural highway running across France
due east to the German frontier, and one having
both first-rate road and railway facilities. It was
hoped that by the time the first and strongest
formation of this chain of armies had reached
Paris and had fastened round it, the sixth,
1 The leading- army, that of General von Kluck, con-
sisted of 6 corps ; and the second army, that of General
von Billow, of 4 corps. The others were formed each
of 3 corps, making- an original total of 28 corps.
Following the disaster at Li^ge, however, the army
of General von Emmich was divided up, and the view
here taken, which appears to be most consistent with
the known facts, is that it was, after being re-formed,
employed to reinforce the armies of Generals von Kluck
and von Biilow. That would make the strength of the
German force, which marched through northern Bel-
gium, 780,000 men.
20 The Battle of the Rivers
seventh, and eighth armies would, partly by
attacking the fortified French frontier on the
east, but chiefly by enveloping it on the west,
have gained possession of the frontier defence
works.
The main French army must then have been
driven westward from the valley of the Marne,
across the Aube, brought to a decisive battle in
the valley of the Seine, defeated, and, enclosed
in a great arc by the German armies extending
round from the north and by the east to the
south of Paris, have been forced into
surrender.
There is a common assumption that the
German plan was designed to repeat the
manoeuvres w^hich in the preceding war led to
Sedan, and almost with the same detail. That
is rating the intelligence of the German General
Staff far too low. They could not but know that
the details of one campaign cannot be repeated
in another against an opponent, who, aware of
the repetition, would be ready in advance against
every move.
Naturally, they fostered the notion of an in-
tended repetition. That promoted their real
design. The design itself, however, was based
not merely on the war of 1 870-1, but on the in-
vasion of 18 14, which led to the abdication of
Napoleon, and the primary idea of it was to
have only one main line of advance.
The reason was that if an assailant takes
two main lines of advance simultaneously and
has to advance along the valleys of rivers
The German Plans 21
converging to a point, as the Oise, the Marne,
and the Seine converge towards Paris, his ad-
vance may be effectively disputed by a much
smaller defending force than if he adopts only
one line of advance, provided always, of course,
that he can safeguard his flanks and his com-
munications.
Bear in mind the calculation that the main
French army would never in any event be
strong enough successfully to resist an invasion
so planned. Bear in mind, too, that an echelon
formation is not only supple and difficult to
attack along its length on either side, but that
it can be stretched out or closed up like a con-
certina. To maintain a formation of that kind
with smaller bodies of troops is fairly easy. To
maintain it with the enormous masses forming
the German armies would be difficult. But the
Germans were so confident of being able to
compel the French to conform to all the German
movements, to stand, that is to say, as the weaker
side, always on the defensive, leaving the in-
vaders a practically unchallenged initiative, that
they believed they could co-ordinate all their
movements with exactitude. This was taking a
risk, but they took it.
It is a mistake to suppose that they entered
on the campaign with every movement mapped
out from start to finish. No plan of any cam-
paign was ever laid down on such lines, and
none ever will be. The plan of a campaign has
to be built on broad ideas. Those ideas, by
taking all the essentials into consideration, the
22 The Battle of the Rivers
strategist seeks to convert into realised events.
In this instance, there can be very little doubt
that certain assumptions were treated as so
probable as almost to be certainties. The first
was that such forces as France could mobilise
in the time would be mainly drafted to defend
the fortified frontier. The next was that such
forces as could be massed in time along the
boundary of Belgium would be too weak
seriously to impede the invasion. The third
was that in any subsequent attempt to transfer
forces from the fortified frontier to the Belgian
boundary the French would be met and defeated
by the advancing echelon of German masses.
The fourth was that such an attempted transfer,
followed b}^ its defeat, would leave the fortified
frontier so readily seizable, that German armies
advancing swiftly into the valley of the Marne
would fall upon these defeated French forces
on the flank and rear. Besides, that attempted
transfer would be the very thing that would
promote the German design of envelop-
ment.
If Paris could be reached by the strongest of
the chain of armies in eight days, then the
mobilisation of the French reserves would still
be incomplete. Under the most favourable con-
ditions, and even w'ithout the disturbance of
invasion, that mobilisation takes a fortnight.
Given a sudden and successful invasion with
the resultant upset of communications and the
mobilisation could never be completed. All,
therefore, that the 1,680,000 men forming the
The German Plans 2^
invading- hosts ^ would iiave to encounter would
be the effectives of the French regular forces, less
than half the number of the invaders.
When we speak of twenty-eight army corps
moving in echelon, approximately like so many
squares placed diagonally corner to corner, it is
as well not to forget that such a chain of masses
may assume quite sinuous and snake-like varia-
tions and yet remain perfectly intact and strong.
For example, the head of the chain might be
wound round and pivot upon Paris, and the rest
of the chain extended across France in curves.
This gigantic military boa-constrictor might
therefore crush the heart out of France, while
the defenders of the country remained helpless
in its toils.
Such in brief was the daring and ambitious
scheme conceived and worked out by the German
General Headquarters Staff, and worked out in
the most minute detail.
It will be seen from this summary that so far
as its broad military features are concerned, the
plan promised an almost certainly successful
enterprise. There were concealed in its calcu-
lations, nevertheless, fatal flaws. What they
were will appear in the course of the present
narrative. Meanwhile it is necessary to add that
possible opposition from Belgium had not been
overlooked ; nor the possibility, consequent upon
that opposition, of intervention by Great Britain.
1 A German army corps is made up, with first re-
serves, embodied on mobilisation, to 60,000 men.
Twenty-eiglit army corps, therefore, represent a total of
1,680,000 of all arms.
24 The Battle of the Rivers
From the military standpoint, however, it was
never calculated that any British military force
would be able to land either in France or in
Belgium promptly enough to save the French
army from disaster. In any event, such a force
would be, from its limited numbers, compara-
tively unimportant.
CHAPTER II
WHY THE PLANS WERE CHANGED
Let us now pass from designs to events, and,
reviewing in their military bearing the operations
between August 3, when the German troops
crossed the Belgian frontier, to the day, exactly
one month later, when the German plans were
apparently changed, deal with the question :
Why were the plans changed ?
The Germans entered Liege on August 10.
They had hoped by that time to be, if not at,
at any rate close to, Paris. In part they were
unable to begin their advance through Belgium
until August 17 or August 18, because they had
not, until that date, destroyed all the forts at
Liege, but in part, also, these delays had played
havoc with the details of their scheme.
Consider how the shock of such a delay would
make itself felt. The mighty movement by this
time going on throughout the length and
breadth of Germany found itself suddenly jerked
into stoppage. All its couplings clashed. Ex-
cellently designed as are the strategic railways
2 6 The Battle of the Rivers
of Germany they are no more than sufficient for
the transport of troops, guns, munitions, food-
stuffs, and other things necessary in such a
case. If, owing to delays, troop trains got into
the way of food trains, and vice versa, the
resultant difficulties are readily conceivable. All
this w^ar transport is run on a military time
table. The time table was there, and it was
complete in every particular. But it had be-
come unworkable. Gradually the tangle was
straightened out, but the muddle, while it lasted,
was gigantic, and we can well believe that masses
of men, arriving from all parts of Germany at
Aix-la-Chapelle, found no sufficient supplies
aw^aiting them, and that sheer desperation drove
the German Government to collect supplies by
plundering all the districts of Belgium within
reach. As the Belgians were held to be wilfully
responsible for the mess, the cruelty and ferocity
shown in these raids ceases to be in any sense
unbelievable.
Dislocation of the plan, however, was not all.
In the attempts to carry the fortress of Li^ge by
storm the Germans lost, out of the three corps
forming the army of General von Emmich, 48,700
men killed and wounded.^ These corps, troops
from Hanover, Pomerania, and Brandenburg,
formed the flower of the army. The work had
to be carried out of burying the dead and evacu-
1 These figures are given on the authority of M. de
Broqueville, Belgian Prime Minister and Minister of
War, who has stated that the total here quoted was
officially admitted by the German Government.
why the Plans were Changed 27
ating the wounded. The shattered corps had to
be reformed from reserves. All this of necessity-
meant aditional complications.
Then there was the further fighting with the
Belgians. What were the losses sustained by
the Germans between the assaults on Li^ge and
the occupation of Brussels is, outside of Ger-
many, not known, nor is it known in Germany
save to the Government. To put that loss as
at least equal to the losses at Liege is, however,
a very conservative estimate.
Meanwhile, the French had advanced into
Belgium along both banks of the Meuse and
that further contributed to upset the great
preparation.
We have, therefore, down to August 21,
losses, including those in the fighting on the
Meuse and in Belgian Luxemburg, probably
equal to the destruction of two reinforced army
corps.
Now we come to the Battle of Mons and
Charleroi, when to the surprise of all non-Ger-
man tacticians, the attacks in mass formation
witnessed at Liege were repeated.
To describe that battle is beyond the scope
of this narrative. But it is certain that the
estimates so far formed of German losses are
below, if not a long way below, the truth.
There is, however, a reliable comparative basis
on which to arrive at a computation, and this has
a most essential bearing on later events.
At Li(^ge there were three heavy mass attacks
against trenches defended by a total force of
2 8 The Battle of the Rivers
20,000 Belgian riflemen with machine guns.^
We have seen what the losses were. At Mons,
against the British forces, there were mass
attacks against lines held by five divisions of
British infantry, a total roughly of 65,000 rifle-
men, with machine guns, and backed by over
sixty batteries of artillery.
Now', taking them altogether, the British
infantry reach, as marksmen, a level quite un-
known in the armies of the Continent. Further,
these mass attacks were made by the Germans
with far greater numbers than at Li^ge, and
there were far more of them. Indeed, they were
pressed at frequent intervals during two days
and part of the intervening night. The evidence
as to the dense formations adopted in these
attacks is conclusive.
What, from facts such as these, is the inference
to be drawn as to losses incurred? The infer-
ence, and it is supported by the failure of any of
these attacks to get home, is, and can only be,
that the losses must have been proportionally
on the same scale as those at Li^ge, for the
attacks were, for the most part, as at Lieg'e,
launched frontally against entrenched positions.
Though at first sight such figures may appear
fantastic, to put the losses at three times the
total of the losses at Liege is probably but a very
slight exaggeration, even if it be any exaggera-
tion at all.
There is, however, still another ground for
1 There are usually two machine guns to each section
of infantry.
why the Plans were Changed 29
such a conclusion. While the British front from
Conde past and behind Mons to Binche allowed
of the full and effective employment of the whole
British force, even when holding in hand neces-
sary reserves, it was obviously not a front wide
enough to allow of the full and effective employ-
ment on the German side of a force four times
as numerous. It must not be forgotten that
troops cannot fight at their best without sufficient
space to fight in.
But to employ in the same space a force no
greater than the British, considering the advan-
tage of position given with modern arms to an
army acting on the defensive on well-chosen
ground, would have meant the annihilation of
the German army section by section.
That in effect, apart from the turning move-
ment undertaken through Tournai, and the
attempt at Binche to enfilade the British position
by an oblique line of attack, was the problem
which General von Kluck had to face. His
solution of it, in the belief that his artillery must
have completely shaken the British resistance,
was to follow up the bombardment by a suc-
cession of infantry attacks in close formation,
one following immediately the other, so that each
attack would, it was thought, start from a point
nearer to the British trenches than that preceding
it, until finally the rush could not possibly be
stopped. In that way the whole weight of the
German infantry might, despite the narrow front,
be thrown against the British positions, and
though the losses incurred must of necessity be
30 The Battle of the Rivers
severe, nevertheless, the British line would be
entirely swept away, and the losses more than
amply revenged in the rout that must ensue.
Not only so, but the outcome should be the
destruction of the British force
That this is as near the truth as any explana-
tion which can be offered is hardly doubtful.
The conclusion is consonant, besides, with what
have been considered the newest German views
on offensive tactics. To suppose that General
von Kluck, or any other commander, would
throw away the lives of his officers and men
without some seemingly sufficient object is not
reasonable.
Here we touch one of the hidden but fatal
flaws in the German plan — the assumption
that German troops, if not superior, must at any
rate be equal in skill to any others. The German
troops at Mons, admittedly, fought with great
daring, but that they fought or were led with
skill is disproved by all the testimony available.
It is as clear as anything can be that not merely
the coolness and the marksmanship of the British
force was a surprise to the enemy, but the uni-
formity of its quality. Of the elements that go to
make up military strength, uniformity of quality
is among the most important. The cohesion of
an army with no weak links is unbreakable. It
is not only more supple than an army made up
of troops of varying quality and skill, but it is
more tenacious. Like a well-tempered sword, it
is at once more flexible yet more unbreakable
than an inferior weapon.
why the Plans were Changed 31
Against an inferior army the tactics of General
von Kluck must infallibly have succeeded.
Against such a military weapon as the British
force at Mons they were foredoomed to failure.
Assuming the British army to be inferior,
General von Kluck threw the full weight of his
troops upon it before he had tried its temper.
Studying their bearing, the importance of tliese
considerations becomes plain. Powerful as it
was, the driving head of the great German chain
had yet not proved powerful enough inevitably
to sweep away resistance. That again disclosed
a miscalculation. It is true that the British
force had to retire, and it is equally true that
that retirement exposed them to great danger,
for the enemy, inflamed by his losses, was still
in numbers far superior, and what, for troops
obliged to adopt marching formations, was even
more serious, he was times over superior in guns.
Few armies in face of such superiority could have
escaped annihilation ; fewer still would not have
fallen into complete demoralisation.
The British force, however, not only escaped
annihilation, but came out both with losses
relatively light, and wholly undemoralised. This
was no mere accident. Why, can be briefly
told. Remember that quality of uniformity,
remember the value of it in giving cohesion to
the organic masses of the army. Remember
further the hitting power of an army in which
both gunners and riflemen are on the whole
first-rate shots, and with a cavalry which the
hostile horse had shown itself unable to contend
32 The Battle of the Rivers
against. On the other hand, bear in mind that
the greater masses of the enemy were of neces-
sity slower in movement, and that the larger an
army is, the slower it must move.
Naturally the enemy used every effort to
throw as large forces as he could upon the
flanks of the retiring British divisions. He
especially employed his weight of guns for that
purpose. On the other hand, the British
obviously and purposely occupied all the roads
over as broad an extent of country as was advis-
able. They did so in order to impose wide
detours on outflanking movements. While those
forces were going round, the British were moving
forward and so escaping them.
The difficulties the Germans had to contend
against were first the difficulty of getting close
in enough with bodies of troops large enough,
and secondly that, in flowing up, their mass,
while greater in depth from van to rear than
the British, could not be much, if anything,
greater in breadth. The numerical superiority,
therefore, could not be made fully available.
Broadly, those were the conditions of this
retirement ; and when we come to examine them,
comparing the effective force of the opponents,
the relatively light losses of the British cease to
be surprising. The retirement, of course, was
full of exciting episodes. Sir John French
began his movement with a vigorous counter-
attack.^ This wise tactic both misled the enemy
and taught him caution.
' "At daybreak on the 24th (Aug.) the Second Division
why the Plans were Changed 3 3
It was by such tactics that the British General
so far outpaced the enemy as to be able to form
front for battle at Cambrai. Here again some
brief notes are necessary in order to estimate
the effect on later events.
On the right of the British position from
Cambrai to Le Cateau, and somewhat in
advance of it, the village of Landrecies was
held by the 4th Brigade of Guards. Just to the
north of Landrecies is the forest of IMormal.
The forest is shaped like a triangle. Landrecies
stands at the apex pointing south. Round the
skirts of the forest both to the east and to the
west are roads meeting at Landrecies. Along
these roads the Germans were obliged to
advance, although to obtain cover from the
British guns enfilading these roads large bodies
of them came through the forest.
The British right, the corps of General Sir
Douglas Haig, held Marailles, and commanded
the road to the west of the forest.
Towards the British centre a second slightly
advanced position like that of Landrecies was
held to the south of Solesmes by the 4th Divi-
sion, commanded by General Snow.
The British left, formed of the corps of
General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, was "re-
from the neighbourhood of Harmignies made a powerful
demonstration as if to retake Binche. This was sup-
ported by the artillery of the first and second divisions,
while the First Division took up a supporting position
in the neighbourhood of Peissant. Under cover of this
demonstration the Second (Army) Corps retired on the
line Dour — Quarouble — Frameries." — Despatch of Sir
John French of September 7.
6
34 "The Battle of the Rivers
fused" or drawn back, because in this quarter
an attempted turning movement on the part of
the enemy was looked for. In the position
taken up, the front here was covered by a small
river continued by a canal.
On the British left also, to the south of Cam-
brai, were posted the cavalry under General
Allenby.
These dispositions commanded the roads and
approaches along which the enemy must advance
in order to obtain touch with the main body,
and they were calculated both to break up the
unity of his onset and to lay him open to effec-
tive attack while deploying for battle. They
were, in fact, the same tactics which, in resist-
ing the onset of a superior force, Wellington
employed at Waterloo by holding in advance
of his main line Hugomont and La Haye Sainte
for a like purpose.
Sir John French had foreseen that, taught at
Mons the cost of a frontal assault against British
troops, General von Kluck would now seek to
employ his greater numerical strength and
weight of guns by throwing that strength as
far as he could against the flanks of the British,
hoping to crush the British line together and so
destroy it.
That, in fact, was what General von Kluck
did try to do. In this attack five German army
corps were engaged. The German General con-
centrated the main weight of his artillery, com-
prising some 112 batteries of field guns and
howitzers, against the British left. The terrific
why the Plans were Changed 35
bombardment was followed up by infantry-
attacks, in which mass formations were once
more resorted to. Evidently it was thought that
against such a strength in guns the British could
not possibly hold their lines, and that the in-
fantry, completely demoralised, must be so
shaken as to fire wildly, rendering an onslaught
by superior forces of the German infantry an
assured and sweeping victory.
For a second time these calculations mis-
carried. As they rushed forward, expecting but
feeble opposition, the hostile infantry masses
were shot down by thousands. The spectacle of
such masses was certainly designed to terrify.
It failed to terrify. In this connection it is
apposite to recall that the destruction of Baker
Pasha's army at Suakim by a massed rush of
Arab spearmen long formed with the newer
school of German tacticians a classic example of
the effect of such charges on British troops. No
distinction seems to have been made between the
half-trained Egyptian levies led by Baker
Pasha and fully trained British infantry. The
two are, in a military sense, worlds apart. Yet
German theorists, their judgment influenced by
natural bias, ignored the difference.
Nor was the fortune of the attacks upon the
British right any better. The defence of
Landrecies by the Guards Brigade forms one
of the most heroic episodes of the war. Before
it was evacuated the village had become a
German charnel-house. Hard pressed as they
were at both extremities of their line, the British
B 2
36 The Battle of the Rivers
during these two days fought to a standstill
an army still nearly three times as large" as their
own.
That simply upset all accepted computations.
As Sir John French stated in his despatch of
September 7, the fighting from the beginning
of the action at Mons to the further British
retirement from Cambrai formed in effect one
continuous battle. The British withdrawal was
materially helped by a timely attack upon the
right flank of the German forces delivered by
two French divisions which had advanced from
Arras under the command of General d'Amade,
and by the French cavalry under General Sordet.
Now consider the effect upon the German
plans. There is, to begin with, the losses. That
those at Cambrai must have been extremely
heavy is certain. The failure of such an attack
pushed with such determination proves it.^ We
are fully justified in concluding that the attack
did not cease until the power to continue it had
come to an end. Losses on that scale
meant, first, the collection of the wounded and
the burial of the dead; and, secondly, the re-
forming of broken battalions from reserves. The
latter had to be brought from the rear, and that,
as well as their incorporation in the various
corps, involved delay. Again, the vast expendi-
ture of artillery munitions meant waiting for
1 The reported extraordinary Army Order issued by
the German Emperor commanding- "extermination" of
the British force has since been officially disavowed as a
fiction.
why the Plans were Changed 37
replenishment; and though we may assume
that arrangements for replenishment were as
complete as possible, yet it would take time.
For all these reasons the inability of General
von Kluck to follow up becomes readily explic-
able.
Bear in mind that the whole German scheme
of invasion hung for its success on his ability
to follow up and on the continued power and
solidity of his forces. It must not be supposed
that that had not been fully foreseen and, as far
as was thought necessary, provided for. There
is ample evidence that, in view alike of the
fighting in Belgium and of the landing of the
British Expeditionary Force on August 17,
this leading and largest formation of the Ger-
man chain of armies had been made still larger
than the original scheme had designed. Ap-
parently at Mons it comprised eight instead of
the originally proposed six army corps. After
Cambrai, as later events will show, the force of
General von Kluck included only five army
corps of first line troops.
To account for that decrease, the suggestion
has been made that at this time, consequent
upon the defeat met with by the Germans at
Gunbinnen in East Prussia and the advance of
the Russians towards Konigsberg, there was a
heavy transfer of troops from the west front to
the east. Not only would such a transfer have
been in the circumstances the most manifest of
military blunders, but no one acquainted with
the methods of the German Government and of
38 The Battle of the Rivers
the German General Staff can accept the ex-
planation. Whatever may be the shortcomings
of the German Government, vacillation is not one
of them. What evidently did take place was the
transfer of the debris of army corps preparatory
to their re-formation for service on the east
front and their replacement by fresh reserves.
But though the mass was thus made up again,
there is a wide difference between a great army
consisting wholly of first line troops and an
army, even of equal numbers, formed of troops
of varying values. The driving head was no
longer solid.
In the battle on the Somme when the British
occupied positions from Ham to Peronne, and
the French army delivered a flank attack on the
Germans along the line from St. Quentin to
Guise, the invaders were again checked.
From St. Quentin to Peronne the course of
the Somme, a deep and dangerous river, describes
an irregular half-circle, sweeping first to the
west, and then round to the north. General von
Kluck had here to face the far from easy tactical
problem of fighting on the inner line of that half-
circle. He addressed himself to it with vigour.
One part of his plan was a wide outflanking
movement through Amiens; another was to
throw a heavy force against St. Quentin ; a third
was to force the passage of the Somme both east
and west of Ham.
These operations were undertaken, of course,
in conjunction with the army of General von
Billow. Part of the troops of von Biilow, the
Why the Plans were Changed 39
loth, and the Reserve Corps of the Prussian
Guard were heavily defeated by the French at
, Guise. But while it was the object of the French
and British to make the German operations as
costly as possible, it formed, for reasons which
will presently appear, no part of their strategy
to follow up local advantages.
Why it formed no part of their strategy will
become evident if at this point a glance is cast
over the fortunes of the other German armies.
The army of General von Biilow had been
engaged against the French in the battle at
Charleroi and along the Sambre, and again in
the battle at St. Quentin and Guise, and ad-
mittedly had in both encounters lost heavily.
The army of General von Hausen had been
compelled to fight its way across the Meuse in
the face of fierce opposition. At Charleville, the
centre of this great combat, its losses, too, were
severe. Again, at Rethel, on the line of the
Aisne, there was a furious six days' battle.
The army of Duke Albert of Wurtemberg had
twice been driven back over the Meuse into
Belgian Luxemburg.
The army of the Crown Prince of Germany,
notwithstanding its initial success at Chateau
Malins, had been defeated at Spincourt.
The army of the Crown Prince of Bavaria had
been defeated with heavy loss at Luneville.
Divisions of the German army operating in
Alsace had been worsted, first at Altkirch, and
again at Mulhausen.
Taking these events together, the fact stands
40 The Battle of the Rivers
out that the first aim in the strategy of General
Jofifre was, as far as possible, to defeat the Ger-
man armies in detail, and thus to hinder and delay
their co-operation. He was enabled to carry out
that object because the French m-obihsation had
been completed without disturbance.
These two facts — completion of the French
mobilisation and the throwing back of the Ger-
man plan by the defeat of the several armies in
detail — are facts of the first importance.
The aggregate losses sustained by the Ger-
mans were already huge. If, up to September 3,
we put the total wastage of w^ar from the outset
at 500,000, remembering that the fatigues of a
campaign conducted in a hurry mean a wastage
from exhaustion equal at least to the losses in
action, we shall, great as such a total may appear,
still be within the truth.
But more serious even than the losses was the
dislocation of the plan. The army of the Crown
Prince of Germany, which was to have advanced
by rapid marches through the defiles of the
Argonne, to have invested Verdun, and to have
taken the fortified frontier in the rear, found itself
unable to effect that object. It was held up in
the hills. That meant that the armies of the
Crown Prince of Bavaria and the army of
General von Heeringen were kept out of the
main scherne of operations.
Consider what this meant. It meant that the
freedom of movement of the whole chain of
armies was for the time being gone. It meant
further that, so long as that state of things con-
Why the Plans were Changed 41
tinned, the primary condition on wliich the whole
German scheme depended — a superiority of mih-
tary strength — could not be realised. Not only
were the German armies no longer, in a military
sense, homogeneous, but a considerable part of
the force, being on the wrong side of the fortified
frontier, could not be brought to bear, and
another considerable part of the force, the army
of the Crown Prince of Germany, had fallen into
an entanglement. Were the armies of von
Kluck, von Biilow, von Hausen, and Duke
Albert, the latter already badly mauled, sufficient
to carry out the scheme laid down ? Quite
obviously not.
Obviously not, because on the one hand there
was the completion of the French mobilisation,
and the presence of a British army; and on the
other hand there were the losses met with, and
the reductions in the applicable force.
Sometliing must be done to pull affairs round.
The something was to begin with the extraction
of the Crow'n Prince of Germany from his pre-
dicament. If that could be effected and the
fortified frontier turned, then the armies of the
Crov,n Prince of Bavaria and of General von
Heeringen could make their entry into the main
arena ; and the primary condition of superiority
in strength restored.
Thus it is evident that the events preceding
September 3, dictated the movement which, on
September 3, changed for good the aspect of the
campaign.
CHAPTER III
GENERAL JOFFRE AS A STRATEGIST
From the strategy on the German side let us
now turn to that on the side of the French.
Between them a fundamental distinction at once
appears.
Of both the aim was similar — to compel the
other side to fight under a disadvantage. In
that way strategy helps to ensure victory, or to
lessen the consequences of defeat.
The strategy of the German General Staff,
however, was from the outset obvious. The
strategy of General Joffre was at the outset a
mystery. Only as the campaign went on did
the French scheme of operations become ap-
parent. Even then the part of the scheme still
to come remained unfathomable.
It has been assumed that with the employment
of armies formed of millions of men the element
of surprtse must be banished. That was a
German theory. The theory is unsound. Now,
as ever, intellect is the ultimate commanding
quality in war.
In truth, the factor of intellect was never more
4*
General Joffre as a Strategist 43
commanding than under conditions of war
carried on with mass armies.
Reflect upon the difference between an oppo-
nent who, under such conditions, is able to fathom
and to provide against hostile moves, and the
opponent who has to take his measures in the
dark as to hostile intentions.
The former can issue his orders with the
reasonable certainty that they are what the situa-
tion will calrfor. Never were orders and in-
structions more complex than with modern
armies numbering millions; never were there
more contingencies to provide against and to
foresee. To move and to manipulate these vast
masses with effect, accurate anticipation is essen-
tial. Such complicated machines cannot be
pushed about on the spur of the moment when a
general suddenly wakes up to a discovery.
It follows that to conduct a campaign with
mass armies there must either be a plan which
you judge yourself strong enough in any event
to realise or a plan which, because your opponent
cannot fathom it, must throw him into complete
confusion. The former was the German way ;
the latter the French.
That General Joffre would try in the first place
to defeat the German armies in detail was not,
of course, one of the surprises, because it is
elementary, but that he should have so largely
succeeded in defeating them was a surprise.
In these encounters, as during later battles of
the campaign, the French troops discovered a
cohesion and steadiness and a military habit of
B* 2
44 The Battle of the Rivers
discipline assumed to be foreign to their tem-
perament. But their units had been trained to
act together in masses on practical lines. Of the
value of that training General Joffre was well
aware.
He knew^ also that success in the earlier en-
counters, which that training would go far to
ensure, must give his troops an invaluable con-
fidence in their own quality.
There were, however, two surprises even more
marked. One of these was the quite unexpected
use made of the fortified frontier; the other,
associated with it, was that of allowing the Ger-
mans to advance upon Paris with an insufficient
force, in the belief that French movements were
being conformed to their own.
Undoubtedly as regards the fortified frontier
the belief prevailed that the chief difficulty would
be that of destroying its works with heavy guns.
It had never been anticipated that the Germans
might be prevented from getting near enough
for the purpose. But in the French strategy
Verdun, Toul, and Belfort w-ere not employed
as obstacles. They were employed as the
fortified bases of armies. Being fortified, these
bases were safe even if close to the scene of
operations. Consequently the lines of com-
munication could be correspondingly shortened,
and the power and activity of the armies de-
pendent on them correspondingly increased. So
long as these armies remained afoot, the for-
tresses were unattackable. Used in that way, a
fortress reaches its highest military value.
General Joffre as a Strategist 45
The strategy adopted by General Joffre in
association with the German advance upon
Paris is one of the most interesting phases of
the war. His tactics were to delay and weaken
the first and driving formation of the German
chain of armies ; his strategy was, while holding
the tail of that chain of armies fast upon the
fortified frontier, to attract the head of it south-
west. In that way he at once weakened the chain
and lengthened out the German communications.
Not merely was the position of the first German
army the worse, and its effective strength the less,
the further it advanced, thus ensuring its eventual
defeat, but in the event of defeat retirement
became proportionally more difficult. The means
employed were the illusion that this army was
driving before it, not a wing of the Allied forces
engaged merely in operations of delay, but forces
w-hich, through defeat, were unable to withstand
its march onward.
It cannot now be doubted that the Germans
had believed themselves strong enough to under-
take the investment of Paris concurrently with
successful hostilities against the French forces
in the field. But by the time General von
Kluck's army arrived at Creil, the fact had
become manifest that those two objectives could
not be attempted concurrently. The necessity
had therefore arisen of attempting them succes-
sively.
In face of that necessity the choice as to which
of the two should be attempted first was not a
choice which admitted of debate. Defeat of the
46 The Battle of the Rivers
French forces in the field must be first. Without
it, the investment of Paris had clearly become an
impossibility. How far it had become an impos-
sibility will be realised by looking at the position
of the German armies.
Five of them were echeloned across France
from Creil, north-east of Paris, to near the
southern point of the Argonne.
The army of von Kluck was between Creil
and Soissons, with advanced posts extended to
Meaux on the Marne.
The army of von Biilow was between Soissons
and Rheims, with advanced posts pushed to
Chateau-Thierry, also on the Marne.
The army of von Hansen held Rheims and
the countrv between Rheims and Chalons, with
advanced posts at Epernay.
The army of Duke Albert, with headquarters
at Chalons, occupied the valley of the Marne
as far as the Argonne.
The army of the Crown Prince of Prussia,
with headquarters at St. Menehould, held the
Argonne north of that place, with communica-
tions pyassing round Verdun to Metz.
If the line formed by these armies be traced
on the map, it will be found to present from
Creil to the southern part of the Argonne a
great but somewhat flattened arc, its curvature
northwards. Then from the southern part of
the Argonne the line will present a sharp bend
to the north-east.
Now these five armies, refortified by reserves,
comprised nineteen army corps, plus divisions
General Joffre as a Strategist 47
of cavalry — a vast force aggregating well over
one million men, with more than 3,000 guns.
Powerful as it appeared, however, this chain of
armies was hampered by that capital disadvan-
tage of being held fast by the tail. Held as it
was, the chain could not be stretched to attempt
an investment of Paris without peril of being
broken, and the great project of defeating and
enveloping the Allied forces was impossible.
No question was during the first weeks of the
war more repeatedly asked than why, instead
of drafting larger forces to the frontier of Bel-
gium, General Joffre should have made what
seemed to be a purposeless diversion into Upper
Alsace, the Vosges, and Lorraine.
The operations of the French in those parts of
the theatre of war were neither purposeless nor
a diversion.
On the contrary, those operations formed the
crux of the French General's counter-scheme.
Their object was, as shown, to prevent the
Germans from making an effective attack on the
fortified frontier. General Joffre well knew that
in the absence of that effective attack, and so
long as the German echelon of armies was pinned
upon the frontier, Paris could not be invested.
In short, the effect of General Joffre's strategy
whs to rob the Germans of the advantages aris-
ing from their main body having taken the
Belgian route.
On September 3, then, the scale of advantage
had begun to dip on the side of the defence. It
remained to make that advantage decisive. The
48 The Battle of the Rivers
opportunity speedily offered. Since the oppor-
tunity had been looked for, General Joffre had
made his dispositions accordingly, and was ready
to seize it.
Let it be recalled that the most vulnerable and
at the same time the most vital point of the
German echelon was the outside or right flank
of the leading formation, the force led by
General von Kluck. Obviously that was the
point against which the weight of the French
and British attack was primarily directed.
To grasp clearly the operations which fol-
lowed, it is necessary here to outline the natural
features of the terrain and its roads and rail-
ways. For that purpose it will probably be best
to start from the Vosges and take the country
westward as far as Paris.
On their western side the Vosges are but-
tressed by a succession of wooded spurs divided
by upland valleys, often narrowing into mere
clefts called "rupts." These valleys, as we
move away from the Vosges, widen out and fall
in level until they merge with the upper valley
of the Moselle. If we think of this part of the
valley of the Moselle as a main street, and these
side valleys and "rupts" as cuh-de-sac opening
off it, we form a fairly accurate notion of the
region.
From the valley of the upper Moselle the
valley of the upper Meuse, roughly parallel to
it farther west, is divided by a ridge of wooded
country. Though not high, this ridge is con-
tinuous.
General Joffre as a Strategist 49
On the points of greatest natural strength
commanding the roads and railways running
across the ridge, and mostly on the east side of
the valley of the Meuse, had been built the
defence works of the fortified frontier.
Crossing the valley of the Meuse we come into
a similar region of hills and woods, but this
region is, on the whole, much wilder, the hills
higher, and the forests more extensive and dense.
The hills here, too, form a nearly continuous
ridge, running north-north-west. The highlands
east of the ^Nleuse sink, as we go north, into the
undulating country of Lorraine, but the ridge on
the west side of the Meuse extends a good many
miles farther. This ridge, with the Meuse flow-
ing along the east side of it and the river Aire
flowing along its west side, is the Argonne. It
is divided by two main clefts. Through the
more northerly runs the main road from Verdun
to Chalons ; through the more southerly the main
road from St. Mihiel on the Meuse to Bar-le-
Duc, on the Marne.
Thus from the Vosges to the Aire we have
three nearly parallel rivers divided by two hilly
ridges.
North of Verdun the undulating Lorraine
country east of the Meuse again rises into a
stretch of upland forest. This is the Woevre.
Now, westward of the Argonne and across the
Aire there is a region in character very like the
South Downs in England. It extends all the
way from the upper reaches of the Marne
north-west beyond the Aisne and the Oise to
50 The Battle of the Rivers
St. Quentin. In this open country, where the
principal occupation is sheep grazing, the lonely-
main roads run across the downs for mile after
mile straight as an arrow. Villages are far
between. The few towns lie along the inter-
secting valleys.
But descending from the downs into the wide
valley of the Marne w^e come into the region
which has been not unaptly called the orchard
of France, the land of vineyards and plantations,
and flourishing, picturesque towns; in short, one
of the most beautiful spots in Europe. The
change from the wide horizons of the solitary
downs to the populous and highly-cultivated
lowlands is like coming into another world.
From the military point of view, however, the
important features of all this part of France are
its roads and rivers, and most of all its rivers.
The three main waterways, the Oise, the
Marne, and the Seine, converge as they approach
Paris. Between the Oise and the Marne flows
the main tributary of the Oise, the Aisne. Also
north of the Marne is its tributary, the Ourcq;
south of the Marne flows its tributaries, the Petit
Morin and the Grand Morin. All join the
Marne in the lower part of the valley not far
from Paris. Between the Marne and the Seine
flows the Aube, a tributary of the Seine. The
country between the Marne and the Seine forms
a wide swell of land. It was along the plateaux
forming the backbone of this broad ridge that
the Battle of the Marne was, for the most part,
fought.
General Jofire as a Strategist 5 1
That brings us to the question of the roads.
Eastward from Paris, along the valley of the
Marne, run three great highways. The most
northerly, passing through Meaux, La Ferte-
sous-Jouarre, Chateau Thierry, and Epernay to
Chalons, follows nearly the same course as the
river, crossing it at several points to avoid bends.
The next branches off at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre,
and also runs to Chalons by way of Montmirail.
The third, passing through La Ferte-Gaucher,
Sezanne, Fere Champenoise, and Sommesons to
Vitry-le-Frangois, follows the backbone of
country already alluded to. All these great
roads lead farther east into Germany, the north-
erly and the middle roads to Metz and the valley
of the Moselle, the third road to Nancy and
Strasburg.
Now, it must be manifest to anybody that
command of these routes, with command of the
railways corresponding with them, meant mastery
of the communications between Paris and the
French forces holding the fortified frontier all
the way from Toul to Verdun.
If, consequently, the invading forces could
seize and hold these routes and railways, and, as
a result, which would to all intents follow, could
seize and hold the great main routes and the
railways running eastward through the valley
of the Seine from Paris to Belfort, the fortified
frontier — the key to the whole situation — would
in military phrase, be completely "turned." Its
defence consequently would have to be aban-
doned.
52 The Battle of the Rivers
Not only must its defence have been aban-
doned, with the effect of giving freedom of
movement to the German echelon, but, that
barrier removed, the German armies would no
longer be dependent for munitions and supplies
on the route through Belgium. They could
receive them just as conveniently by the route
through ]\Ietz. Their facilities of supply would
be doubled.
It will be seen, therefore, to what an extent
the whole course of the war hung upon this
great clash of arms on the Marne. German
success must have affected the future of opera-
tions alike in the western theatre and in the
eastern.
But there is another feature of the roads in
the valley of the Marne which is of consequence.
Great roads converge into it from the north.
Sezanne has already been mentioned. It is
half-way along the broad backbone dividing the
valley of the Marne from the valley of the Seine.
Five great roads meet there from La Fert^-sous-
Jouarre, Soissons, Rheims, Chalons, Verdun, and
Nancy. Hence the facility for massing at that
place a huge body of troops.
It will be seen, therefore, that in making Sez-
anne the point at which they aimed their main
blow at the whole French scheme of defence, the
Germans had selected the spot where the blow
would, in all probability, be at once decisive and
possibly fatal. Clearly they had now grasped,
at all events in its main intention, the strategy
of the French general. They sazv that he was
General Joffre as a Strategist 53
using the fortified frontier to checkmate their
Belgian plan.
Summing up the consequences, had success
attended the stroke we find that it would have :
Opened to the invaders the valley of the Seine.
Turned the defence of the fortified frontier.
Released the whole of the German armies.
Given them additional, as well as safer, lines
of supply from Germany.
Enabled the German armies to sweep westward
along the valley of the Seine, enveloping or
threatening to envelop the greater part of the
French forces in the field.
CHAPTER IV
THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE
Why, then, if it was so necessary and the
object of it so important, was the move begun
by General von Kluck on September 3 a false
move?
It was a false move because he ought to have
stood against the forces opposed to him. The
defeat of those forces was necessary before the
attack against Sezanne could be successful.
Conversely, his own defeat involved failure of
the great enterprise.
Instead, however, of facing and continuing his
offensive against the forces opposed to him, he
turned towards Sezanne. By doing that he ex-
posed his flank to the Allied counter-stroke.
This blunder can only be attributed to the
combined influences of, firstly, hurry; secondly,
bad information as to the strength and positions
of the Allied forces; thirdly, the false impression
formed from reports of victories unaccompanied
by exact statements as to losses ; and fourthly,
and perhaps of most consequence, the failure of
the Crown Prince of Germany in the Argonne.
54
The Battle of the Marne 55
General von Kluck doubtless acted upon im-
perative orders. His incomplete information and
the false impression his advance had created
probably also led him to accept those orders
without protest. But it should not be forgotten
that the Commander primarily responsible for
the blunder, and for the disasters it involved,
was the Crown Prince of Germany.
Primarily the Crown Prince of Germany was
responsible, but not wholly. In the responsi-
bility General von Kluck had no small share.
He was misled. When the British force arrived
at Creil General Joflfre resolved upon and carried
out a masterly and remarkable piece of strategy.
The British army was withdrawn from the ex-
treme left of the Allied line on the north-east of
Paris, and transferred to the south-east, and its
former place taken by the 6th French army.
This move, carried out with both secrecy and
rapidity, was designed to give General von Kluck
the impression that the British troops had been
withdrawn from the front. That the ruse suc-
ceeded is now clear. So far from being with-
drawn, the British army was brought up by re-
inforcements to the strength of three army corps.
Leaving out of account a force of that strength,
the calculations of the German Commander were
fatally wrong.
Let us now see what generally were the move-
ments of the German and of the Allied forces
between September 3 and September 6 when the
Battle of the Marne began.
Leaving two army corps, the 2nd and the
56 The Battle of the Rivers
4th Reserve corps, on the Ourcq to cover his
flank and rear, General von Kluck struck south-
east across the ^larne with the 3rd, 4th, and 7th
corps. The main body crossed the river at La
Ferte-sous-Jouarre, and took the main route to
Sezanne. Others crossed higher up between La
Ferte-sous-Jouarre and Chateau-Thierry. For
this purpose they threw bridges across the river.
The Marne is deep and for 120 miles of its
course navigable.
These movements were covered and screened
by the 2nd division of cavalry, which advanced
towards Coulommiers, and the 9th division, which
pushed on to the west of Crecy. Both places
are south of the Marne and east of Paris.
Writing of these events at the time, Mr. AV. T.
Massey, special correspondent of the Daily
Telegraph, observed that : —
The beginning of the alteration of German
plans was noticeable at Creil. Hidden bv a thick
screen of troops from the army in the field, but
observed by aerial squadrons, the enemy were
seen to be on the move. Ground won at Senlis
was given up, and the German troops, w'hich at
that point were nearer Paris than any other men
of the Kaiser's army, were marched to the rear.
Only the commandants in the field can say
whether the movement was expected, but it is the
fact that immediately the enemy began their
strategic movement British and French disposi-
tions were changed.
The movement ivas expected. Indeed, as we
have seen, the whole strategy of the campaign
The Battle of the Marne 57
on the French side had been designed to bring
it about.
The Germans must have observed that their
new intentions had been noticed, but they
steadily pursued their policy. Their right
was withdrawn from before Beauvais, and that
pretty cathedral town has now been relieved of
the danger of Teuton invasion. The shuttered
houses are safe, temporarily at any rate.
The ponderous machine did not turn at right
angles with any rapidity. Its movements were
slow, but they were not uncertain, and the change
was made just where it was anticipated the
driving wedge would meet with least resistance.
In the main the German right is a tired army.
It is a great fighting force still. The advance
has been rapid, and some big tasks have been
accomplished. But the men have learnt many
things which have surprised them. They
thought they were invincible, that they could
sweejD away opposition like a tidal wave. Instead
of a progress as easy as modern warfare would
allow, their way has had to be fought step by step
at a staggering sacrifice, and in place of an army
which took the field full of confidence in the
speedy ending of the war and taught that nothing
could prevent a triumph for German arms, you
have an army thoroughly disillusioned.
In this connection the service of the British
Flying Corps proved invaluable. Covering
though they did a vast area, and carefully as
they were screened by ordinary military pre-
cautions, the movements of the Germans were
watched and notified in detail. Upon this, as
far as the dispositions of the Allied forces were
58 The Battle of the Rivers
concerned, everything depended, and no one
knew that better than General Joffre. On Sep-
tember 9 he acknowledged it in a message to the
British headquarters: —
Please express most particularly to Marshal
French my thanks for services rendered on every
day by the English Flying Corps. The preci-
sion, exactitude, and regularity of the news
brought in by its members are evidence of their
perfect organisation, and also of the perfect
training of pilots and observers.
Farther east the army of General von Biilow
(the 9th, loth, loth Reserve corps, and the Army
corps of the Prussian Guard), advancing from
Soissons through Chateau-Thierry, and crossing
the Marne at that place as well as at points
higher up towards Epernay, was following the
main road to Montmirail on the Petit Morin.
The army of General von Hausen (the nth,
1 2th, and 19th corps), advancing from Rheims,
had crossed the Marne at Epernay and at other
points towards Chalons, and was following the
road towards Sezanne by way of Champaubert,
The army of Duke Albert, having passed the
Marne above Chalons, was moving along the
roads to Sommesous.
The army of the Crown Prince of German}^
was endeavouring to move from St. Menehould
to Vitr^'-le-Fran^ois, also on the Marne.
On the side of the Allies,
General Maunoury, with the 6th French army,
advanced from Paris upon the Ourcq. The right
of this army rested on Meaux on the Marne.
The Battle of the Marne 59
General French with the British army, pivot-
ing on its left, formed a new front extending
south-east to north-west from Jouey, through Le
Chatel and Faremoutiers, to Villeneuve-le-
Comte.
General Conneau with the French cavalry was
on the British right, between Coulommiers and
La Ferte Gaucher.
General Desperey with the 5th French army
held the line from Courtagon to Esternay, bar-
ring the roads from La Ferte-sous-Jouarre and
Montmirail to Sezanne.
General Foch, with headquarters at La F^re
Champenoise, barred with his army the roads
from Epernay and Chalons.
General de Langle, holding Vitry-le-Francois,
barred the approaches to that place and to
Sommesous.
General Serrail, with the French army operat-
ing in the Argonne, held Revigny. His line
extended north-east across the Argonne to
Verdun, and was linked up with the positions
held by the French army base on that fortress.
General Pau held the line on the east of the
fortified frontier.
Some observations on these dispositions of
the Allies will elucidate their tactical in-
tention.
The position of the Allied armies formed a
great bow, with the western end of it bent sharply
inwards.
The weight of the Allied forces was massed
round that western bend against the now exposed
6o The Battle of the Rivers
flank of von Kluck's army. Here lay the most
vulnerable point of the German line.
The tactical scheme of the Allied Commander-
in-Chief was simple — a great military merit. He
aimed first at defeating the German right led
by Generals von Kluck and von Biilow. Having
by that uncovered the flank of General von
Hausen's army, his intention was to attack it also
in both front and flank and defeat it. The same
tactic was to be repeated with each of the other
German armies in succession.
For that purpose the allied armies were not
posted directly on the front of the German
armies, but between them. Consequently the
left of one German army and the right of
another was attacked by the same French army.
In that way two German Generals would have
to resist an attack directed by one French
General, and every German General would
have to resist two independent French attacks.
Hence, too, if a German army was forced back
the French could at once double round the flank
of the German army next in the line if that army
was still standing its ground.
Choice of the battle ground and command of
the roads leading to it ensured that this would
happen. As a fact, it did.
Finally, all the way behind the French line
ran the great road leading across the plateaux
from Paris to the fortified frontier. This, with
railway communication, gave the needed facili-
ties for the movement of reserves and the trans-
port of munitions and food supplies.
The Battle of the Marne 6i
Now let us glance at the tactical scheme on
the German side.
The fact that General von Kluck had left two
out of the five corps forming his army on the
Ourcq, and was covering his movement to the
south of the Marne with his cavalry, proves that
he did not, as was supposed, intend to lose con-
tact with Paris. His scheme was to establish
an echelon of troops from the Ourcq to La
Ferte Gaucher on the great eastern road,
believing that to be meanwhile a quite sufficient
defence.
With the rest of his force he was to join with
von Billow and von Hansen in smashing through
the French position at Sezanne. Against that
position there was to be the overwhelming con-
centration of ten army corps.
To assist the stroke against Sezanne there was
a concurrent intention to break the French line
at Vitry-le-Francois. The French line between
Sezanne and Vitry-le-Francois would then be
swept away.
Assuming the success of these operations, the
German forces would be echeloned south-east
from the Ourcq across the valley of the Marne
and the plateau south of it to Troyes on the
Aube. The Germans would then be in a posi-
tion to attack in flank the French retreating from
the frontier, and ready, when these French troops
fell back, pursued by the armies of the Crown
Princes of Germany and Bavaria and by von
Heeringen's army of the Vosges, to join in
the great sweep along the valley of the Seine
62 The Battle of the Rivers
and round to the south of Paris. By this time,
remember, the long lines of communication
through Belgium would have ceased to be vital.
It was a bold scheme.
There are, however, other factors to be taken
into account besides tactical plans.
Not less a surprise than the apparently sudden
change in the German movements had been,
during the preceding week or more, the seem-
ingly hardly less precipitate falling back of the
French upon the Marne. All the world believed
that the French were "on the run," and all the
world thought they would keep on running.
Day by day during that exciting time the inhabi-
tants of the valley of the Marne witnessed column
after column of their defenders apparently in full
retreat. The marching qualities of the French
are, as everybody knows, remarkable. They
showed the enemy a clean pair of heels. Few
could understand it.
Then came the Germans, hot on the scent,
confident that the French could never withstand
them. From over the highlands by every road
they poured into the peaceful Marne valley like
a destroying flood. In front of them swept a
multitude of fugitives.
"Champagne," wrote a special correspondent
of the Daily Telegraph, "is now overrun with
fugitive villagers from the neighbourhood of
Rethel, Laon, and Soissons. It is painful to see
these unfortunate people hurrying away with a
few household goods on carts, or with bundles,
and walking along the country roads in regular
The Battle of the Marne 63
ragged processions, not knowing whither they
are going. Chateau-Thierry and all the beauti-
ful country of the Marne is by this time in the
hands of the Germans. When I last drove
through the place a few weeks ago, and lunched
with a few amiable French officers at the best
hotel in the place, "L'El^phant," Chateau-
Thierry was teeming with cattle and army horses
requisitioned for the campaign. Four times I
passed through it, and each time the great assem-
blage of horses, trucks, and army material had
increased, although the horses and cattle were
driven away each day, and fresh ones were led
in from the great pastoral country round about.
Little did I think then that the Germans would
now be bivouacking on the great market place
and stacking their rifles on the banks of the
Marne."
It was by just this over-confidence in them-
selves that General Joffre had intended the enemy
should be misled. He had foreseen that the
Germans would come on in a hurry. On the
other hand, the French retreat had apparently
been precipitous because it was essential to make
ready for the rebound. The retreat had rendered
the French troops, still unbeaten, only the more
dangerous. Describing the effect from his own
observation, Mr. Massey wrote: —
The French eastern army has been on the move
for days, and if the Germans were not in such
strong force they would be in grave danger. The
French have made such a strenuous effort to cope
with the new condition of things that one of their
64 The Battle of the Rivers
infantry brigades marched continuously for three
days, the men never resting for more than an
hour at a time.
One who has seen only the AlHed armies may
be a bad judge, and less able to form an opinion
than an armchair critic, who sums up the possi-
bilities with the aid of maps and the knowledge
of past achievements of German forces. But
there is one guide which the stay-at-home
strategist cannot possibly have, and that is the
spirit of the Allied soldiery. I have seen far
more of the French than of the English troops
in this campaign, but anyone who has talked to
the soldier must be infected with his cheery
optimism.
His faith in his country and in the power of
the army is stupendous, his patriotism is unques-
tionable, his confidence grows as the enemy
approaches. With a smile he accepts the news
of the German march southwards, and tells you
nothing could be better; the further the line pene-
trates the more remote is the chance that it will
continue unbroken. He will not believe that the
German advance would have got so far if it had
not been the plan of General Joffre to lure the
enemy forwards, and so to weaken his line. The
French soldier to-day is more confident of victory
than ever.
These things, which a soldier can appreciate
at their proper value, explain why the dash of
the French troops has rivalled their attitude in
the previous part of the campaign. Reinforced
by great battalions, stiffened by reserves com-
posed mainly of men with a stake in the country,
and fighting for all they hold most dear — for
France, for hearth, and home — thev have offered
a magnificent, resolute front to the machine-like
advance.
The Battle of the Marne 65
General Joffre, therefore, had handled his
machine with skill. He had used it for his
design without impairing its spirit. On the
contrary, he had stiffened its "form." And on
the eve of the great encounter on which the
fortunes of the campaign, and the future of
France alike hung, he issued to the troops his
now famous Order : —
At the moment, when a battle on which the
welfare of the country depends is about to begin,
I feel it incumbent upon me to remind you all
that this is no longer the time to look behind.
All our efforts must be directed towards attacking
and driving back the enemy. An army which
can no longer advance must at all costs keep the
ground it has won and allow itself to be killed on
the spot rather than give way. In the present
circumstances no faltering can be tolerated.
That the Germans on theii; side equally
realised how momentous was the impending
battle is shown by their Army Order. A copy
of it was, after the battle, found in a house at
Vitry-le-Fran(;;ois, which for a time had been
used as a headquarters of the 8th German army
corps. In the haste of flight the document was
left behind. Signed by Lieut.-General Tulff
von Tscheppe und Wendenbach, commandant
of the 8th corps, and dated September 7, it
ran : —
The object of our long and arduous marches
has been achieved. The principal French troops
c
66 The Battle of the Rivers
have been forced to accept battle after having
been continually forced back. The great decision
is undoubtedly at hand.
To-morrow, therefore, the whole strength of
the German army, as well as of all that of our
army corps, is bound to be engaged all along the
line from Paris to Verdun.
To save the welfare and honour of Germany I
expect every officer and man, notwithstanding
the hard and heroic lights of the last few days,
to do his duty unswervingly, and to the last
breath.
Everything depends on the result of to-morrow.
This, then, was the spirit in which, on both
sides, the mightiest clash of arms until then
known to history w^as entered upon. Across
France the battle front stretched for 150 miles.
The fight raged, too, for another forty miles
along the frontier, for coincidently with the main
conflict from Paris to Verdun, the Germans made
yet another great effort to break upon the fron-
tier from the east. Fourteen great armies took
part in the battle. They numbered altogether
more than tw^o millions of men. Taking the two
great hosts each as a whole, the numbers were
not very unequal. True, the Germans had but
six armies as against the eight on the side of the
Allies. The German armies, however, were
larger. Their strength ranged from 160,000 to
180,000 men as against, on the side of the Allies,
an average strength of 120,000.^
^ The following may be taken as the approximate
strength of the armies engaged, allowing on the one
hand for war wastage, and on the other for a filling up
The Battle of the Marne 67
During nearly six days there was, along that
far extended battle line, the flash and thunder of
more than 7,000 guns. Shells rose and burst
like flights of warring meteorites. Masses of
from reserves, which on the part of the Allies had been
completed : —
Germans.
General von Kluck's Army (5 corps,
Prussians) 245,000
2nd and 9th Cavalry Divisions ... 23,000
General von Billow's Army (4 corps,
Prussians) ... ... ... ... 180,000
Cavalry of the Prussian Guard ... 6,000
General von Hausen's Army (3 corps,
Saxons) ... ... 165,000
Duke Albert's Army (3 corps,
Wurtembergers) ... 150,000
Crown Prince of Germany's Army (3
corps, Prussians) ... ... ... 175,000
Crown Prince of Bavaria's Army (3
corps, Bavarians) ... ... ... 160,000
Approximate total ... ... 1,104,000
Allies.
General Maunoury's Army (3 corps
and reserves) ... ... ... ... 140,000
General French's Army (3 corps) ... 110,000
British Cavalry Divisions 8,000
General Conneau's Cavalry ... ... 23,000
General Desperey's Army (3 corps
and reserves) 150,000
General Foch's Army (3 corps) ... 120,000
General de Langle's Army (3 corps
and reserves ... ... ... ... 150,000
General Serrail's Army (3 corps) ... 120,000
General Pau's Army (3 corps and
reserves) 140,000
Approximate total ... ... 961,000
Grand approximate total of com-
batants ... 2,065,000
C 2
68 The Battle of the Rivers
infantry moved to the attack. Incessant rifle
fire accompanied the bolder bass of the artillery.
In and through woods, across fields, in and round
blazing villages and burning farms and chateaux
they fought ; an incessant movement to and fro,
amid an unceasing roar — the rage of nations
locked in deadly embrace. There were bayonet
fights on a vast scale; there were charges by
clouds of horsemen ; there were furious and mur-
derous combats for points of vantage ; there was
the capture and recapture of towns ; the rush of
fire-spitting automobiles below, and the flight of
bomb-dropping aeroplanes above. There was
the hurried movement of troops and the wild
gallop of batteries of guns along the roads.
There was, too, the ever-changing kaleidoscope
of the masses of transport. Along the great road
from Paris to Germany a spectator might have
travelled from sunrise to sunset during the whole
week of battle, and yet still have found himself
in the midst of this seemingly unbounded fury
of a world at war.
Approximate guns and mortars,
Germans ... ... ... ... 3,610
Approximate guns and mortars,
Allies 3,680
Total ... ... ... ... 7,290
The Allies were superior in field-guns, but had fewer
howitzers, especially of the heavy type, and the aggre-
gate weight of the German artillery was on the whole
greater. The estimate given of the number of com-
batants is rather below than above the actual.
CHAPTER V
THE GERMAN OVERTHROW
Such were the spectacular aspects of the
battle. It remains to sketch its phases as, first
sullenly, then swiftly, the tide of conflict rolled
backward across the miles of country between
Sezanne and Rheims.
These developments can best be followed day
by day.
September 5. — General movement of the Ger-
man armies across the Marne. The troops of
von Kluck crossed at Trilport, Sommery, and
La Fert6-sous-Jouarre ; those of von Billow^ at
Chateau-Thierry; those of von Hausen at
Epernay, and Duke Albert's at Chalons. Simul-
taneously columns of von Kluck's 2n.d and 4th
Reserve corps began to cross the Ourcq.
From the Marne the Germans pushed on
without delay to the south. The 3rd, 4th, and
7th corps of von Kluck's army were on the
march diagonally across the British near
Coulommiers. They were making for La Fert6
Gaucher. In face of this advance the 5th French
army fell back on the latter place. This move
69
yo The Battle of the Rivers
lengthened the German flank and laid it more
completely open to a British attack.
September 6. — General Joffre gave orders for
a general advance. Before daybreak the 6th
French, British, and 5th French armies began a
combined offensive. While the 6th French army
advanced eastward towards the line of the Ourcq,
the British advanced north-east to the line of the
Grand Morin, and the 5th French army north
from east of La Ferte Gaucher upon Montmirail.
The 6th French army, driving in the German
advance posts, reached Nanteuil.
The British fell upon the flank of the divisions
of von Kluck's army still crossing the Grand
Morin, and drove them back upon the Petit
Morin.
By this unexpected and swiftly delivered blow
von Kluck's army, extending from the Marne
to La Fert6 Gaucher, was cut into two parts.
Coincidently with the British advance the
5th French army had, in a night attack and at
the point of the bayonet, driven the leading
German divisions out of three villages near La
Ferte Gaucher, where they had bivouacked.
In view of these attacks General von Kluck
had no alternative save to retreat. To escape the
British he fell back on the Petit Morin in the
direction of Montmirail.
His retreat was assisted by the right of von
Billow's army, and covered by his divisions of
cavalry, reinforced by von Billow's cavalry of the
Prussian Guard. The German cavalry, attacked
by the French and British, was cut up with
The German Overthrov/ 71
heavy loss. More than 60,000 horsemen were
engaged in this gigantic combat.
September 7. — To assist the retreat, the centre
divisions of von Kluck's army opposing the
British made a stand upon the Petit Morin, and
the army of von Biilow a stand from Montmirail
to Le Petit Sompius. Along that line the 5th
French army was all day heavily engaged against
the left wing of von Kluck's army and the right
of von Billow's.
On the Ourcq the Germans launched a general
assault against the 6th French army.
On the Petit Morin they occupied a strong
position on the high north bank. This river flows
during part of its course through marshes. A
frontal attack on the position was out of the
question, but the ist British army corps and
the British cavalry found "a way round " higher
up stream. Simultaneously the 3rd British
corps crossed lower down. Threatened on both
flanks, the Germans fled precipitately towards
the Marne. Though they covered their retreat
by a counter-attack, they lost many prisoners
and some guns.
The armies of von Hansen and Duke Albert
and the Crown Prince of Germany were now
engaged against the armies of General Foch,
General Langle, and General Serrail from the
north of Sezanne to Sermaise-Ies-Bains in the
south of the Argonne. The fighting north of
Sezanne was obstinate, but the Wurtembergers
at Vitry-le-Francois met with a repulse.
On this day the battle extended for more than
72 The Battle of the Rivers
120 miles, from the line of the Ourcq across the
country to Montmirail, from that place to
Sezanne, and then along the plateaux into the
Argonne. There was also a German attack
upon Luneville designed to aid their operations
west of the fortified frontier.
September 8. — Heavy fighting between the
6th French army and the Germans on the Ourcq.
The British attacked the passages of the
]\Iarne. At La Fert6 Gaucher, where the bridge
had been destroyed, the Germans, supported by
machine guns, obstinately disputed the passage
against the British 3rd corps. The ist and 2nd
corps, however, succeeded in bridging the river
higher up, and dislodged them. In their retreat
the Germans again met with heavy losses.
At Montmirail the battle was continued with
great severity. The French carried several of
the German positions at the point of the bayonet.
Von Biilow^'s troops began a general retirement,
and were driven over the river.
Taking the offensive, General Foch's army
attacked the troops of von Hausen in flank. The
left of von Hansen's army north of Sezanne was
forced back, but his right at Le F^re Champen-
oise made an obstinate stand.
To meet this. General Langle also began a
general advance, and drove the Germans from
Vitry-le-Francois.
A heavy German attack was directed against
Clermont-en-Argonne. Beyond the fortified
frontier there was a renewed effort to capture
Nancy said to have been watched by the Kaiser.
The German Overthrow 73
September g. — Reinforced, the Germans on
the Ourcq made a great effort to break through
the 6th French army.
The British, having crossed the Marne, fell
upon the Germans fighting on the Ourcq, and
drove them northwards. Many guns, caissons,
and large quantities of transport were cap-
tured.
The 5th French army pursued the defeated
troops of von Biilow from Montmirail to Chateau-
Thierry. At that place the Germans are thrown
across the Marne in disorder and with huge
losses.
The German line had now been completely
broken. Between the wreck of von Billow's
troops, north of the Marne, and von Hausen's
positions, north of Sezanne, there was a gap
of some fifteen miles.
From Sezanne eastward the battle from this
time continued with more marked advantage to
the Allies.
September lo. — The 6th French army and the
British continued the pursuit. On this day the
British captured, besides further quantities of
transport abandoned in the flight or surrounded,
13 guns, 19 machine guns, and 2,000 prisoners.
German infantry, left behind in the hurried
march of their army, were found hiding in the
woods. There were evidences of general looting
by the enemy and of his demoralisation.
In the pursuit of von Billow's troops by the
5th French army, the Prussian Guard were
driven into the marshes of St. Gond.
74 The Battle of the Rivers
Covered with tall reeds and rank grass, these
marshes, drained by the Petit Morin, are a stretch
of low-lying land lying between the Marne and
a range of hills. They are probably the bed of
an ancient lake. Safe in the dry season, they
become in wet weather a dangerous swamp.
They were at this time saturated with heavy
rains. The Prussian Guards, who had borne the
brunt of the recent fighting, had already suf-
fered heavily. They now lost the greater part
of their artillery, and a heavy proportion of the
surviving force either perished in the quagmires
or were killed by the French shells.
An effort nevertheless was made to retrieve
the general disaster by a violent German attack
from Sezanne to Vitry-le-Frangois, accompanied
by an energetic offensive in the Argonne, and
by a renewed attempt against Nancy.
In the Argonne the Germans captured
Revigny and Brabant-le-Roi, but west of Vitry
were forced into retreat. The attack on Nancy
was again unsuccessful.
September 1 1 . — The 5th and 6th French armies
and the British pursued the troops of von Kluck
and von Biilow to the Aisne.
The armies of von Hausen and Duke Albert
were now in full flight at Epernay and Chalons.
Both incurred very heavy losses. The French
captured 6,000 prisoners and 175 guns.
The Germans were driven by General Serrail's
troops out of Revigny and Brabant-le-Roi.
East of the frontier there was also a general
falling back, notably from St. Die and round
The German Overthrow 75
Luneville. The French seized Pont-a-Mousson,
commanding one of the main passes across the
Vosges.
Of the decisive character of the overthrow
there could now be no doubt. On September ii,
in an Order to the French armies, General Joffre,
summing up the situation with soldierly brevity,
said : —
The battle which has been taking place for
five days is finishing in an incontestable victory.
The retreat of the ist, 2nd, and 3rd German
armies is being accentuated before our left and
our centre.
The enemy's 4th army, in its turn, is beginning
to fall back to the north of Vitry and Sermaize.
Everywhere the enemy is leaving on the field
numbers of wounded and quantities of munitions.
On all hands prisoners are being taken.
Our troops, as they gain ground, are finding
proofs of the intensity of the struggle and of
the extent of the means employed by the Germans
in attempting to resist our elan.
The vigorous resumption of the offensive has
brought about success. Officers, non-commis-
sioned officers, and men ! you have all of you
responded to my appeal, and all of you have
deserved well of your country. — Joffre.
It had been no easy victory. The huge forces
of Generals von Kluck, von Biilow, and von
Hausen, comprising the flower of the German
first line army, fought with stubborn and even
reckless courage. During the opening days of
the battle they contested the ground foot by foot.
The character of the fighting in which the British
C* 2
76 The Battle of the Rivers
troops were engaged, gathered from men who
had taken part in it, was disclosed by the Paris
correspondent of the Daily Telegraph : —
"The more we killed the more they seemed to
become," said an officer who described to me
some of the earlier phases. "They swarmed like
ants, coming on in masses, though rarely seeking
close contact, for they have learned to respect
our rifles and our bayonets."
On this point there is unprejudiced testimony.
A non-commissioned officer of Hussars asked me
to translate a letter found on a German officer
killed while defending his battery. In the letter
are these sentences: —
"German infantry and cavalry will not attack
English infantry and cavalry at close quarters.
Their fire is murderous. The only way to attack
them is with artillery."
Upon this advice the enemy seem to act. They
make the best use of their guns, and keep up an
incessant fire, which is often well directed, though
the effect is not nearly so deadly as they imagine.
Their machine guns — of which they have great
numbers — are also handled with skill, and make
many gaps in our ranks. But the enemy rarely
charge with the bayonet. Under cover of artil-
lery they advance '<?;? masse, pour out volleys
without taking aim, and retire when threatened.
This is the general method of attack, and it is
one in which numbers undoubtedly count. But
numbers are not everything; spirit and dash
count for more in the end, and these qualities our
soldiers have beyond all others in this war.
Every officer with"^whom I have spoken says the
same thing. Nothing could be finer than the
steadiness and the enterprise of our troops.
They remember and obey the order given by
The German Overthrow 77
Wellington at Waterloo — they stand fast — to the
death. Before this insistent and vigorous offen-
sive the enemy have fallen back every day,
pressed hard on front and on flank.
Realising that the whole future of the cam-
paign, if not of the war, hung upon the issue;
the army of General von Hausen stood to the
last. There was a hope that the German right
might yet rally against the staggering attack
thrown upon it. Mr. Massey wrote : —
The fighting on the line of the French centre
has, from all accounts, been of a most terrific
description. Neither side would give ground
except under the heaviest pressure. Long-con-
tinued artillery duels paved the way for infantry
attacks, and positions had to be carried at the
point of the bayonet. Often when bayonet
charges had cleared trenches the men driven out
were rallied and reinforced, and retook the posi-
tions. Here was the most strenuous fighting of
the campaign, and as the enemy's casualties are
certain to have exceeded those of the French, the
total of German killed, wounded, and prisoners
must reach an enormous figure. The French
losses were very heavy.
An infantryman wounded within sight of Vitry-
le-Francois told me that the French bayonet
fighting was performed with an irresistible dash.
The men were always eager — sometimes too
eager — to get to close quarters. The weary wait-
ing in trenches too hastily dug to give more than
poor shelter from artillery fire caused many a
murmur, and there was no attempt to move for-
ward stealthily when the word to advance was
given. Often a rushing line was severely torn
by mitrailleuse fire, but the heart's desire to settle
78 The Battle of the Rivers
matters with cold steel could not be checked
merely because comrades to the right and left
were put out of action. The bayonet work of
French infantry gave the enemy a terrible tim.e.
Of the struggle on the left of von Hansen's
army against the troops of General Langle, a
graphic picture is given in the diary of a Saxon
officer of infantry found later among the German
dead. The army of von Hausen had arrived by
forced marches, the left from Rethel, the right
from Rheims : —
Sept. I. — We marched to Rethel. Our bat-
talion stayed there as escort to headquarters.
Sept. 2. — The French burnt half the town,
probably to cut our lines of communications. It
can't hurt us for long, of course, but it's a
nuisance, as our field artillery is short of ammuni-
tion.
However, our division advanced. The burn-
ing of Rethel was dreadful. All the little houses
with wooden beams in their roofs, and their
stacks of furniture, fed the fiames to the full.
The Aisne was only a feeble protection ; the
sparks were soon carried over to the other side.
Next day the town was nothing but a heap of
ashes.
Sept. 3. — Still at Rethel, on guard over pri-
soners. The houses are charming inside. The
middle-class in France has magnificent furniture.
We found stylish pieces everywhere, and beau-
tiful silk, but in what a state ! . . . Good God !
. . . Every bit of furniture broken, mirrors
smashed. The vandals themselves could not
have done more damage.
This place is a disgrace to our army. The
The German Overthrow 79
inhabitants who fled could not have expected, of
course, that all their goods would have been left
in full after so many troops had passed. But
the column commanders are responsible for the
greater part of the damage, as they could have
prevented the looting and destruction. The
damage amounts to millions of marks; even the
safes have been attacked.
In a solicitor's house, in which, as luck would
have it, everything was in excellent taste, includ-
ing a collection of old lace, and Eastern works of
art, everything was smashed to bits.
I couldn't resist taking a little memento myself
here and there. . . . One house was particularly
elegant, everything in the best taste. The hall
was of light oak; near the staircase I found a
splendid aquascutum and a camera by Felix.
The sappers have been ordered to march with
the divisional bridging train. We shall start
to-morrow. Yesterday at Chalons-sur-Marne a
French aviator (officer) was taken prisoner. He
imagined the village was held by French troops
and so landed there. He was awfully disgusted
at being taken prisoner.
Sept. 4. — To Tuniville, Pont-Fauerger, where
we billeted.
Sept. 5. — Les Petites Loges, Tours-sur-Marne.
I never want to make such marches again ; simply
tests of endurance. We crossed the Marne canal
on Sept. 6. On our left the 19th corps marched
straight on Chalons. On our right front the
Guard corps was hotly engaged. When we
reached Villeneuve we heard that the Guard corps
had thrown the enemy back and that our divi-
sion was to take up the pursuit. We were in a
wood, which the enemy searched with shell fire.
Left and right it simply rained bullets, but
the one Fm fated to stop was not amons: them.
8o The Battle of the Rivers
We could not advance any further, the enemy
was too strong for us. On our left the 19th
corps came up in time to give us a little breath-
ing space. An infernal shell fire. We had a
dreadful thirst, a glass of Pilsener would have
been a godsend. ... A shell suddenly fell in the
wood and killed six of my section ; a second fell
right in the middle of us; we couldn't hang on
any longer, so we retired.
We made several attempts to reach the village
of Lenharree, but the enemy's artillery swept the
whole wood, so that we could not make an}- head-
way. And we never got a sight of the enemy's
guns. We soon had the answer to the riddle as
to why the enemy's shooting was so wonderfully
accurate. We were actually on the enemy's
practice range. Lenharree was the chief point
d'appui on the right wing.
The situation was as follows : The Guard
corps was on a ground which the enemy knew
like the back of his hand, and so was in an ex-
tremely critical position. It was just like St.
Privat, except that we were all in woods under a
terrible shell fire. Our artillery could do
nothing, as there was nothing to be seen.
We found an order from General Joffre to the
commander of the 2nd French corps, telling him
to hold the position at all costs, and saying that
it was the last card. It was probably the best
one, too. As we knew later, the artillery opposed
to us had an immense reserve of ammunition.
. . . Absolutely exhausted, we waited for the
night. In front of us all was still.
Sept. 8. — We went forward again to the attack
against an enemy perfectly entrenched. In spite
of his artillery fire, which nothing could silence,
we passed through the wood again. As soon as
we reached the northern edge, a perfectly insane
The German Overthrow 8i
fire opened on us, infantry and shell fire with
redoubled intensity,
A magnificent spectacle lay before us; in the
far background Lenharree was in flames, and
we saw the enemy retreating, beaten at last. The
enemy withdrew from one wood to another, but
shelled us furiously and scattered us with his
machine guns. We got to the village at last,
but were driven out of it again with heavy loss.
Our losses were enormous. The 178th Regi-
ment alone had 1,700 men wounded, besides
those killed. It was hell itself. There were
practically no officers left.
One word more about this artillery range ;
there were telephone wires everywhere. It is
thought that French officers hidden in trees were
telephoning our exact situation in the woods.
Sept. 9. — We marched to Oeuvry. The enemy
was apparently two kilometres in front of us.
Where was our intelligence branch ? Our artil-
lery arrived half an hour too late, unfortunately.
The French are indefatigable in digging
trenches. We passed through a wood and lost
touch altogether. We saw companies retiring,
and we ourselves received the order to withdraw.
We passed through Lenharree once more,
where we found piles of bodies, and we billeted
at Germinon. There was a rumour that the ist
army had had some disastrous fighting. Our
sappers prepared the bridges for demolition.
We passed through Chalons-sur-Marne. I am
terribly depressed. Everybody thinks the situa-
tion is critical. The uncertainty is worst of all.
I think we advanced too quickly and were worn
out by marching too rapidly and fighting inces-
santly. So we must wait for the other armies.
We went on to Mourmelon-le-Petit, where we
dug ourselves in thoroughly. Four of our avia-
82 The Battle of the Rivers
tors are said to have been brought down by the
enemy.
Finally, when forced back to the Marne, after
three days of incessant fighting — pounded by
the French guns, broken by the fury of the
French infantry, ripped by slashing onslaughts
of the French horse — the Germans still made
effort after effort to recover and to re-form. Of
the struggle on the Marne, Mr. William Max-
well says : —
I was fortunate enough to meet a non-commis-
sioned officer who watched from an eminence
the critical phase of the battle w'hich routed the
German centre. This is the substance of his
story, which has since been corroborated by
officers of my acquaintance. The enemy had
been driven back fighting for three days, until
they came to the river. There they made a
desperate stand. Masses of them appeared on the
flat and in the undulations of the ground — they
seemed like the sands on the sea shore for num-
bers. They came on in masses and kept up a
terrible fire from rifle and machine-gun. But our
infantry were not to be denied; they advanced
in short rushes and in open order, while shells
rained down upon the enemy, and rifles opened
great gaps in their ranks.
"I began," said the sergeant, "to count the
dead, but I soon found that impossible. Sud-
denly I heard a great shout, and turning to my
left I saw a sight that made my heart stand still.
Our cavalry were charging down on the enemy's
cavalry."
In the bright sunshine their lances and sabres
looked like a shower of falling stars. There was
The German Overthrow 83
an avalanche of men and horses and cold steel.
Huge gaps were torn in the enemy's ranks — and
the whole thing was over in a few minutes. The
German horsemen seemed to vanish into the
earth.
Stubborn courage, however, was of no avail.
In a brief six days that mighty host had been
reduced to a military ruin. They had advanced
in the confidence that they w^ere irresistible.
Down the valley of the Oise, over the highlands
of Champagne they had streamed, in endless
columns of men and guns. The earth had
shaken beneath the rumble of their artillery and
trembled under the hoofs of their horsemen ;
every road had re-echoed the united tread of
their battalions ; every horizon had bristled with
the flash of their bayonets and sabres ; every
town and village had felt their arrogance as they
"requisitioned" its foodstuffs, consumed its
wines, slept in its beds, laid hands on whatever
they fancied, and summoned mayors and officials
before them to learn their will, and collect their
"fines." On the substance of this country of the
Marne they had revelled, imagining that the
world was theirs.
And now they were a battered mass of fugi-
tives, hiding in woods and orchards; littering the
roads with the wrecks of their equipment;
fagged and footsore; driven by hunger to tear
up the crops from the fields, and devour roots
and vegetables raw; their discipline replaced by
brutal savagery. Not even the liveliest imagina-
tion can adequately picture the state of an army
84 The Battle of the Rivers
in flight after a heavy defeat. The bigger the
army the worse that state becomes. The organ-
isation of food supply is thrown out of gear.
No man knows where the suppHes may be, or
whether they may not be lost. Guns become
separated from their ammunition columns.
.Wagons break down or are disabled and have
to be left behind. The horses drop from famine
and overwork. Men grow sullen and intract-
able. The boom of guns bespeaking the pursuit
alone gives the stimulus to cover the lengthening
miles of weary road.
Without time to bury their dead, yet anxious
to hide their losses from the enemy, the Ger-
mans, where they could, formed large pyres of
timber, which they soaked with oil. On to these
they threw the bodies of the slain. Across the
country the smoke from such pyramids by day
and the glare of flames by night added to the
strangeness and tragedy of a scene removed even
from what had been thought civilised war.
The sufi"erings of the beaten host were severe.
Starving and depressed, or at the last point of
exhaustion, men fell out or hid themselves in the
thick woods which clothe the long undulating
slopes on the northern side of the Marne valley .^
Here they were found by the pursuing French
^ From the Oise to the Seine the general aspect of
this part of Franco is a succession of broad ridges
separated by valleys, some of them narrow and deep.
One-fifth of the whole surface is covered by woods and
forests of oak, beech and chestnut. Many of the forests
are of great extent. The main ridge was the site of the
battle in its first phases.
The German Overthrow 85
and British. Most, when discovered, had been
without food for two days. Partly to satisfy
the pangs of hunger, partly out of mere senseless
revenge, general and indiscriminate pillage was
resorted to. Chateaux, country houses, and
villages w-ere ransacked, and pictures or pieces
of furniture which could not be carried off
destroyed. Though their military spirit had
been broken, the ruthlessness of the invaders
remained. They traversed the country like a
horde of bandits.
Loss of horses forced them to leave behind
whole batteries of heavy howitzers and trains of
ammunition wagons, for these days of the
retreat were days of heavy rain. To shorten the
length of their columns, as well as to gain time,
the hurrying troops plunged into by-roads.
These, cut up by the weight of the guns, speedily
became impassable. How hasty was the retreat
is proved by the headquarters staff of the 2nd
army leaving behind them at Montmirail maps,
documents, and personal papers, as well as letters
and parcels received by or waiting for the
military post.
Following the track of General von Kluck's
army, Mr. Gerald Morgan, another special corre-
spondent of the Daily Telegraph, wrote : —
At Vareddes horses and men littered the
ground. Semi-permanent entrenchments had
been suddenly abandoned. Alongside the Ger-
man artillery positions I saw piles of unexploded
shells which the Germans had abandoned in their
hurry. These shells were in wicker baskets,
86 The Battle of the Rivers
three to a basket. The Germans had had there
many batteries of field .^uns, both three-inch and
five-inch, and had meant evidently to make a
determined resistance. But their artillery posi-
tions were plainly so badly placed that the
French were able to blow them, literally to drench
them, out. An avenue of large trees along the
roadside, trees which the Germans hoped to use
as a shelter, had been torn to pieces and flung to
the ground by the French artillery as by strokes
of lightning. The German dead had almost all
been hit by shells or by shrapnel. A German
aeroplane, brought down during the engage-
ment, lay in the fields like a big dead bird.
I followed the line of the German retreat as
far as a village called May. From the number
of accoutrements thrown away along the road I
judged the retreat was in bad order and greatly
hurried.
The scene on the battlefield was rather terrible.
There was no one to bury the dead, for the
French army had gone on in pursuit, and the
villagers had almost all left the country some
days before.
The German infantry position was in a valley.
The entrenchments had undoubtedly been dug
with a view to maintaining them permanently,
hut the fault lay in the artillery position. The
German guns — evidently a large number — had
been placed on a ridge behind the infantry posi-
tion. This ridge was exposed to a fire from the
French artillery on a ridge opposite, a fire which
completely silenced the German guns, and left
the German infantry to its fate. Few of the
infantry escaped.
On the day after the Germans had been driven
across the Marne, Mr. Wm. Maxwell, driving
The German Overthrow 87
into the, at ordinary times, pleasant little town
of Meaux, found it deserted : —
Its houses are standing ; its churches and
public buildings are untouched, yet its streets
are silent, its windows shuttered, and its doors
closed. It might be a plague-stricken city, for-
saken by all except a few Red Cross nurses, who
wait for the ambulances bringing the wounded
from the battlefield.
Leaving the town with a feeling akin to awe, I
came upon a new surprise. Walking calmly
along the public road in broad day were men
in Prussian uniform, and — more amazing still —
w^omen in the dark gellab or cloak of the Moors.
This was certainly startling, but the explanation
was waiting on the road to the east, and it was
written in gruesome signs — dead men lying in
the ditches — Zouaves in their Oriental dress,
Moors in their cloaks, French soldiers in their
long blue coats, and Germans in their grey.
Every hundred yards or so lay a disembowelled
horse wath a bloody saddle. This was the ragged
edge of the battlefield of the Marne, and the men
and women in Prussian and Moorish dress were
harmless civilians who had gone to bury the dead
and to succour the wounded. It was raining
torrents ; the wind was bitterly cold, and they
had covered themselves with the garments of the
dead.
Passing along this road I came to a wood,
where one of these civilian burial parties had
dug a pit in which they laid the friend and foe
side by side. Fresh mounds of earth that told
their own story guided me to a path, where the
battle had blazed, a trail of splintered shells,
broken rifles, bullet-riddled helmets, blood-
stained rags, with which the dying had stopped
88 The Battle of the Rivers
their wounds, tiny bags in which the German*
soldier had hoarded his crumbs of biscuit, letters
with the crimson imprint of fingers, showing how
in the hour of agony and death men's thoughts
turn to the beloved ones they are leaving for ever.
Four miles east of Meaux the hills rise sharply
to the north, and are covered with trees. Beyond
this wood a broad undulating plain stretches
northward over cultivated fields dotted with
farmsteads. A hundred paces in front, on a
gentle slope, the earth has been levelled in several
places that are sown with brass cylinders, whose
charge sent the shells on their deadly flight.
In these emplacements lie some gunners; their
heads have been shattered by shells. Under an
apple-tree, laden with green fruit, two livid faces
turn to the pitiless sky; one man grasps a letter
in his hand — it is a woman's writing. Dark
huddled patches among the cabbages and the
trampled wheat, brown stains on the path, frag-
ments of blood-stained lint, broken rifles and
bayonets, bullet-pierced helmets and rent cloaks
■ — all the debris of battle show where the fight
was fiercest.
On the crest of the rise are the trenches ; they
extend for nearly a mile parallel with the edge
of the wood, and are thrown back on the west.
They are deep trenches, protected with mounds
of earth, and were not made hurriedlv. About
them lie the dead.
The position of the trenches and gun emplace-
ments shows that here the enemy met a flanking
attack from the west and north, and covered the
retreat of their centre. It is not difficult to picture
what happened.
Scenes like these, the aftermath of the storm
of war, were repeated up the valley of the Marne
The German Overthrow 89
from Meaux to beyond Chalons, Terrific in its
intensity the whirlwind had passed as swiftly as
it had come.
No estimate has been formed of the loss of
life in this vast encounter. It is certain, how-
ever, that all the suppositions hitherto advanced
have been far below reality. Equally is it certain
that this was one of the most destructive battles
even in a war of destructive battles. Since the
losses on the side of the victorious troops in
killed and wounded exceeded 80,000 men, the
losses on the side of the vanquished must have
been more than three times as great.
That at first sight may appear exaggerated.
There exist, nevertheless, good grounds for con-
cluding that such a figure is within the truth.
The Germans made a series of grave tactical
mistakes. When he discovered the error into
which he had fallen. General von Kluck properly
decided to withdraw. Had the rest of the Ger-
man line in conformity with his movement fallen
back upon the north bank of the Marne, their
repulse, though serious, w^ould not have been a
disaster. But it is now manifest that, from a
quarter in which the situation was not under-
stood, imperative orders were received to
press on.
These orders evidently led von Biilow to
attempt a stand upon the Petit Morin. General
von Kluck, in face of the attack by the British
and by the 6th French army on the Ourcq,
realised that retirement on his part could not be
delayed. But the retreat of his left from the
90 The Battle of the Rivers
Petit Morin exposed the army of von Biilow
to an attack in flank. By that attack in flank, as
well as in front, von Billow's troops were forced
at Chateau-Thierry to cross the Marne in full
flight. Passing a deep and navigable river in
such circumstances is, of all military operations,
perhaps, the most destructive and dangerous,
and this, from ihe German standpoint, formed
one of the worst episodes of the battle.
Again, probably in obedience to the same im-
perative orders, the army of von Hansen remained
before Sezanne until its decisive defeat was fore-
gone, and its escape to the last degree jeopardised.
In the retreat, consequently, the losses were
terribly heavy. But even these were less than
the losses which fell upon the army of Duke
Albert. With almost inconceivable obstinacy and
ill-judgment that army clung to its positions at
Vitry until pressed by the French forces on both
flanks. All the way across the valley of the
Marne and over the highlands it had conse-
quently to run a gauntlet of incessant attacks.
In the face of these facts, it is no exaggeration
to say that the German losses must have been
at least 250,000. To that has to be added nearly
70,000 prisoners. They lost also by capture or by
abandonment about a tenth part of their artillery,
besides masses of ammunition and transport.
CHAPTER VI
HOW GENERAL VON KLUCK AVERTED RUIN
The German defeat had indeed been decisive.
On the other hand, the defeat did not, in the
immediate sequel, yield for the Allies all the
results which might have been looked for.
There have been misimpressions on both
points.
Take the first misimpression. A victorious
general, it has been well said, rarely knows the
full damage he inflicts. Over the wide area
covered by the Battle of the Marne and by the
pursuit, it was not humanely possible to collect
and to collate precise information without some
delay. All the same, the French General Staff
and the French War Ministry had by Septem-
ber 12 gathered facts enough to form a fairly
accurate estimate of advantages won. Beyond
vague indications of their nature, however, these
facts were not made public. There was at the
time a good reason. Situated as the German
armies were, and with their intercommunication
disorganised, they would take two or three days
longer at least to discover on their part the full
92 The Battle of the Rivers
measure of their losses, and to judge of the
effect. To the AlHes, that difference in time was
of the utmost moment. Certainly it would have
been against their interest by publication of
details to tell the German General Staff in effect
what reinforcements they ought to send, and
where they ought to send them. Why the
difference in time was of moment will presently
appear.
Again it has been repeatedly stated that the
foremost effect of the Battle of the Marne was to
confirm to the Allies the initiative which the
strategy of General Joffre had so skilfully gained.
That was one effect assuredly, and a vitally im-
portant effect. Another effect, however, hardly
less important, was that, in point of military
value and for effective operations, the German
force in France was no longer the same. The
blow had been too severe. Never again could
that force be levelled up to those armies which
had crossed the Marne in the confidence of pro-
spective victory.
The effect was not moral merely, though
moral had not a little to do with it. The effect
was in the main material. War wastage arising
from fatigue and privation must have reduced
the effective strength of the German armies in
nearly as great a degree as losses in killed and
wounded. If on September 12 we put the armies
which turned to hold the new line from Com-
pi^gne to Verdun at 600,000 men still fit for
duty, we shall be adopting probably an outside
figure.
How von Kluck Averted Ruin 93
Had this force, so reduced, not been able to
make a stand along that new line, it must have
been destroyed largely through exhaustion and
famine. It was saved not, as imagined, chiefly
by the defence works thrown up north of the
Aisne and across the highlands to the Argonne.
It was saved mainly by the tactics and by the
energy of General von Kluck.
Rightly described by the British Official
Bureau, doubtless on the authority of Sir John
French himself, as "bold and skilful," those
tactics form one of the outstanding features of
the campaign, and they ought justly to be con-
sidered among the greatest feats in modern war.
They are on the same plane indeed as the strategy
and tactics of General Joffre, and these, beyond
doubt, rank in point of mastery with the cam-
paign of Napoleon in 1814. In this very area
of Champagne on the eve of his fall the military
genius of Napoleon was, like lightning in the
gloom of tempest, displayed in its greatest
splendour. For a thousand years this region
of plateaux and rivers has been the arena of
events which have shaped the history of
Europe.^ The features it offers for military
defence are remarkable. Versed in the cam-
paigns of Napoleon, aware of what have proved
to be his mistakes, knowing the country in its
every detail, knowing and judging rightly the
' The Italian historian, Signer Gugllelmo Ferrero,
has expressed the opinion that the Battle of the Marne
has altered the face of European history. There is little
doubt that time will prove this view to be fully justified.
94 The Battle of the Rivers
qualities and capabilities of his troops, General
Joffre drew the Germans on step by step to
overthrow. The great feature of his plans was
that this was meant to be an overthrow which
would govern the fortune of the war. In great
fact that aim was achieved, but in part also its
fulfilment was postponed.
On the retreat of the German armies from the
Marne there were, in order to bring about the
destruction of those armies as a fighting force,
three things which the Allies had to accomplish,
and accomplish, if possible, concurrently. The
first was to cut the German communications with
Luxemburg and Metz by barring the roads and
railways across the eastern frontier; the second
was to push forward and seize Rheims, and the
outlet through the hills north of the Aisne
at Berry-au-Bac ; the third was to force the
troops of von Kluck eastward off their lines
of communication along the valley of the Oise,
and to do that, if it could be done, south of the
Aisne.
All three objectives were of great consequence.
The third, however, w^as the most important of
the three.
Of the three, the first, the closing of the eastern
frontier, was accomplished in part ; the second
was so far successful that the French were able
to seize Rheims without opposition ; the third
was not accomplished. Had it been the armies
of von Kluck and von Biilow forming the
German right must both have been severed
from the German line to the east of Rheims,
How von Klack Averted Ruin 95
and, with their supplies of food and of
munitions cut off, must liave been compelled to
surrender.
Appreciating the peril, and fully aware that
the fate of the whole German force hung upon
averting it, General von Kluck acted with re-
source and energy. Probably no commander
ever extricated himself out of a more deadly pre-
dicament, and the achievement is all the more
notable since he was opposed to skilful generals
in command of skilful troops, directed by the
greatest strategist of the age. The predicament
in which General von Kluck found himself was
this. If he opposed a front to the army of
General Desperey, formed of the pick of the
French regulars, he had on his flank both the
British and the troops of General Maunoury. In
that case, overwhelming defeat was certain. If
on the other hand he formed a front against
the troops of General French and General
Maunoury, he presented a flank to the 5th French
army. Not only in such circumstances was a
bad defeat almost equally foregone, but, forming
front to a flank and fighting along the lines of
his communications, he must, in the event of
defeat, retire eastward, abandoning his lines of
communication and obstructing the retreat of von
Biilow.
As events prove, the measures he adopted were
these. He recalled from Amiens the army corps
sent to that place to undertake an outflanking
movement against the Allied left, and to cut off
communication between Paris and Boulogne and
g6 The Battle of the Rivers
Calais. With all haste these troops fell back
upon the Oise to secure the German right rear.
Coincidently, his two army corps on the Ourcq
were ordered to undertake against General
Maunoury a vigorous offensive to the west of that
river. With the remaining three army corps,
which had crossed the Marne, General von Kluck
fell back, presenting to the British and to the
5th French army a line protected first by the
Grand Morin, and then by the Petit Morin and
the Alarne. In order to carry out that movement
he did not hesitate to sacrifice a considerable
part of his cavalry.
The danger-point of this disposition was La
Ferte-sous-Jouarre. Into that place, conse-
quently, he threw a strong force with orders to
hold it to the last moment. With the rest of his
three corps he formed front partly against the
British, partly against the left of the army of
General Desperey. In these actions, as Mr.
Maxwell has pointed out, his troops were swept
by the flank attack of part of the 6th French
army. There is no doubt they fought, despite
cruel losses, with the most stubborn courage.
As the 6th French army, who displayed equally
unshakable resolution, strove, following the
course of the Ourcq, to work round against the
German line of retreat, and as their attacks had
to be met as well as the attacks of the British, the
expedient which the German general resorted to
was, as he retired, to hurry divisions of troops
successively from the south to the north of his
fiank defence, and, as the 6th French army
How von Kluck Averted Ruin 97
moved, to move his flank defence with it. Not
only was the object to do that, but there was, at
the same time, an effort to press the 6th French
army towards the north-west. This, in fact,
General von Kluck managed to do. He did it
by extending his flank beyond the left of the
French army, and making a feint of envelop-
ment. Imagine a row of coins, each coin a
division, and a movement of the row by con-
stantly shifting a coin from one end of the row-
to the other. That will give roughly an idea of
what, on the events, appears to have been the
expedient.
The success of such a series of movements de-
pended, of course, on their rapidity, and, con-
sidering the severe and insistent pressure from
the British on the rear of the line, forming an
angle with the flank, the movements were carried
out with surprising rapidity. The Ourcq, though
not a long river, is, like the Marne, deep, and
over more than half its length navigable. It
flows between plateaux through a narrow valley
with steep sides. The crossing of such a stream
is no easy feat.
But General von Kluck did not mind the losses
he incurred so long as he achieved his purpose.
This was clearly his best policy. In the intervals
of desperate fighting his men had to undertake
long marches at a breakneck pace. For several
days together they were without rest or sleep.
To some extent they were aided by the entrench-
ments already dug to guard against an attack
from the west. These positions, prepared to
D
98 The Battle of the Rivers
protect the head of the German chain of armies
remaining in contact with Paris, now proved
useful in covering the retirement. Nevertheless,
the efforts of the Germans must have been ex-
hausting to the last degree.^
Despite that, they were successful in reaching
the Aisne in advance of the 6th French army.
The latter, it ought, however, to be said, had to
operate through a diflficult area. From the Ourcq
to the Aisne there is a succession of forests. Of
these the great forest of Villers-Cotterets extends
northwards from the Ourcq to within six miles
of Soissons. East of the stretch of forests the
country is more open. Given these facts of topo-
graphy, it is evident that on following the line of
the Ourcq, with the object of barring its passage
to the enemy, the French had in the forest belt
a formidable obstacle. Perceiving that in this
lay his chance. General von Kluck hurried as
large a part of his force as possible across the
Ourcq in order to bar the advance of the French
by the forest roads through Villers, and by the
comparatively narrow break in the forest belt
between Crepy and Pierrefond. He was thus
able, notwithstanding that the British were hang-
ing on to and harrying his rear, to hold the
' An official British note on this retreat stated :
"Many isolated parties of Germans have been discovered
hiding in the numerous woods a long way behind our
line. As a rule they seem glad to surrender.
"An officer, who was proceeding along the road in
charge of a number of led horses, received information
that there were some of the enemy in the neighbourhood.
Upon seeing them he gave the order to charge, where-
upon three German officers and 106 men surrendered."
How von Kluck Averted Ruin 99
outlets against the troops of General Maunoury
until he slipped past them.^
And once on the Aisne and in touch with his
Amiens rearguard, now on the Oise above Com-
pi^gne, he was in a position to initiate a complete
change in tactics, and, his force being compara-
tively secure, the other German armies could
again fall into line.
Before dealing with those new German tactics,
it is advisable briefly to sketch the defence w-orks
thrown up by the Germans along their line, be-
' An interesting sidelight on the German movements
is afforded by these particulars given on official
authority : — ■
"At Villers-Cotterets, though supplies far in excess of
the capabilities of the place were demanded, the town
was not seriously damaged. The Germans evacuated the
place on September nth in such haste that they left
behind a large amount of the bread requisitioned. It
was stated by the inhabitants that the enemy destroyed
and abandoned fifteen motor-lorries, seven guns, and
ammunition wagons.
"At Crepy, on Sept. 3, various articles were requisi-
tioned under threat of a fine of loo.ooof. for every day's
delay in the delivery of the goods. The following list
shows the amounts and natures of the supplies demanded,
and also the actual quantities furnished :
Flour
Dried vegetables
Coffee
Salt
Oats
Red wine
Requisitioned.
20,000 kilos.
5,000 ,,
1 ,000 , ,
1,000 ,,
100,000 ,,
2,500 litres.
All smoked meats, ham, cloth,
new boots, tobacco, biscuits,
handkerchiefs, shirts, braces,
stockings, horse shoes, bicycles,
motor-cars, petrol.
61
6
Supplied.
20,000 kilos.
800 ,,
809 ,,
2,000 ,,
55.000 ,,
2,500 litres.
prs. of boots,
bicycles,
motor tyres.
inner tubes.
D 2
100 The Battle of the Rivers
cause both these defence works and the character
of the country are intimately related to the tactics.
As already stated, the highlands of Champagne
extend north-west nearly as far as Peronne.
They are chalk hills and uplands cut by deep
valleys. The most northerly of the valleys is
that out of which flows the Somme. Then comes
the much wider valley of the Oise. Still farther
south is the valley of the Aisne. Between the
Oise and the Aisne is a roughly triangular tract
of country, its apex at the point where the Oise
and the Aisne join. Across the broad end or base
of this triangle run the open downs. Towards
the narrower end of the area the country becomes
broken and hilly, and is covered with great
patches of wood and forest.
There is along the north of the Aisne a long
wooded ridge, which on its northern edge slopes
steeply. But the top of the ridge forms a gentle
undulating slope to the south. It is not unlike
the top of a rough, slightly tilted table. To a
bird's-eye view this top would appear shaped
rather like a very coarse-toothed comb, with the
teeth jagged and broken. The top, that is to say,
runs out on its south side into a succession of pro-
montories, each ending in a round-ended bluff
overlooking the Aisne valley. Some of these
bluffs jut out close above the river. Others are
much farther back. Between them are clefts and
side valleys, in which the land slopes up from the
bottom of the main valley to the top of the
plateau. In the longer clefts, of course, the
general gradient is much less stiff than in the
How von Kluck Averted Ruin loi
shorter ones. Both the tops of the bluffs and
most of the clefts are thickly wooded. The bluffs
are on an average above 400 feet in height, that
in fact being the general elevation of the plateau.
The aspect of the edge of the corresponding
plateau on the south side of the valley of the
Aisne is exactly similar. Since the bluffs on the
opposite sides approach each other in some places
and are farther apart in others, the valley varies
in breadth from half a mile to two miles. The
bottom of the valley is practically flat, and
through this flat tract of meadow land the river
winds, now near one side of the valley, now near
the other. The stream is between fifty and sixty
yards wide, but, like all the rivers in this part
of France, deep. Where the valley opens out
there are villages and small towns. The largest
place is the picturesque old city of Soissons.
Now the ridge north of the Aisne extends
west to east for some thirty-four miles. At
Craonne, its eastern end, it rises to a summit about
500 feet high, and then falls abruptly. There is
here, going from the Aisne northwards, a fairly
level open gap some three miles wide. South
of the Aisne, the same gap extends for about
ten miles to Rheims. On each side of the gap
rise hillsides clothed with woods. At the cross-
ing of the Aisne is situated the village of Berry-
au-Bac. This gap, it will be seen, forms nn
important feature in the Aisne battle.
Above and behind the hills to the east of the
gap, and across the downs, the German entrench-
ments extended eastward for mile after mile
I02 The Battle of the Rivers
right away to the Argonne. It is apposite here
to note that near Rheims the traverse gap widens
out and passes right and left round an isolated,
hilly mass, lying like an island in a stream. Up
the sides of this hilly mass climb the villages of
Berru and Nogent-l'Abbesse.
Undoubtedly, one of the surprises of the war
was the discovery that the Germans had prepared
the positions just described. The preparation
must have involved great labour. But it should
not be forgotten that from time out of mind one
of the chief industries in this part of France is
represented by the chalk quarries, out of which
is dug the material, known in its prepared state
as plaster of Paris. All through Champagne
there was, before the war, a considerable German
population. Not a few of the plaster quarries
had passed into the hands of Germans. The
principal quarries are on the steep north slope
of the ridge along the Aisne. Cut into the hill-
sides, these chalk pits present a labyrinth of
galleries and chambers, where the quarrymen
w^ere accustomed to take their meals and even to
sleep. These quarries, numbered by scores,
might well form the refuge and stronghold of
an army. The region is remarkable, also, for its
many natural caves.
Even more important, however, from a military
standpoint, is the southern side of this plateau.
The only means of approaching the plateau
from that side is either up the clefts or side
valleys, or from the western end where the level
gradually falls. But an attack made up one of
How von Kluck Averted Ruin 103
the side valleys could be assailed from both sides.
In possession of the plateau above, the defence,
while keeping its force undivided, could move
that force to any point where attack was
threatened, having itself no clefts or fissures to
deal with. It will be seen, therefore, that the
ridge formed a sort of vast ready-made castle,
big enough to stretch from London to beyond
Oxford, or from Liverpool to Manchester, and
that the quarries and galleries made it habitable,
at all events on the banditti level of existence.
As Sir John French has pointed out,^ owing
to the patches of wood on the upper slopes and
tops of the bluffs, only small areas of the plateau
were open to view from the tops of bluffs on the
south side of the river. Hence the movements
of the defenders were, looked at from across the
river, to no small extent concealed.
Two further military features of the ridge
should be noted. One is the fact that its steep
northern slope forms one side of the valley of the
Lette, and that, therefore, it is bounded by a river
on both sides ; the other is, that some eight miles
from its eastern end at Craonne the plateau
narrows to a mere neck less than a mile wide,
and that across this neck is carried the Oise and
Aisne canal.
Not relying, however, merely on the natural
features of the place, the Germans dug along the
plateau lines of entrenchments connected by
galleries with other trenches in the rear where
^ See Appendix, Despatch of Sir John French, Oct. 8,
1914.
I04 The Battle of the Rivers
reserves, not in the firing line, were held. These
back trenches formed living places. The mass
of men was too large, for any save the smaller
proportion, to find shelter in the quarries.
It will be seen, therefore, that the business of
turning the Germans out of such a fastness
could be no easy matter.
On the choice of this position two questions
suggest themselves. How was it that the Ger-
mans came to pitch upon this place — for there
can be no doubt the choice was deliberate ^ —
and what operations did they intend to undertake
on the strength of its possession ?
The answers to these questions are in no sense
speculations in the secrets of War Offices.
Those secrets it would be idle to profess to know.
Like the observations made in preceding pages,
the answers are deductions from admitted facts
and events, perfectly plain to anyone who has
knowledge enough of military operations to draw
them. Only ignorance can assume that no true
commentary can be written concerning a cam-
paign save upon official confidences.
As to the German choice of this position, it
' The opinion on this point of the officers who took
part in the Battle of the Aisne is embodied in the follow-
incT official note published by the British Press Bureau : —
"There is no doubt that the position on the Aisne was
not hastily selected by the German Staff after the retreat
had bcji^fun. From the choice of ground and the care
with which the fields of fire have been arranged to cover
all possible avenues of approach, and from the amount
of work already carried out, it is clear that the con-
tingency of having to act on the defensive was not over-
looked when the details of the strategically offensive
campaign were arranged."
How von Kluck Averted Ruin 105
should not be forgotten that the present war
represents the fourth campaign which the Prus-
sians have fouglit in this area of France. In
forming their plans they had, we ought to pre-
sume, considered — bearing in mind the difference
in military conditions — not only the war of
1 870-1, but the campaign of Frederick William
II., and the campaign of Blucher in 1814. A
little earlier it was said that this arena offers
great facilities for defence. The reason is that,
since there is here a system of rivers flowing to
a conjunction near Paris, it is always open to
the defence to attack in superior force between
any two of the rivers, while the assailant must,
in advancing from east to west, have his forces
divided by one or more of the streams. The
whole German plan was intended to obviate and
to overcome that difficulty, and yet the plan
came to grief because, at the moment when their
forces were divided by the Marne and by the
Grand Morin, the defence were able to attack
them in superior force on their extreme right —
the vital point — and when the crossing of the
rivers made it difficult to meet that attack.^
' The late General Hamley, describing what he con-
sidered the most effective lines for an invasion of France
from Germany in opposition to the defensive adopted by
Napoleon, points out that if the left of the defence
threatens the invaders' communications, the invaders,
leaving their right on the Ourcq and Marne, march
through Sezanne to fight on the right bank of the Seine.
Pushing the French right and centre to the Y^res with
their own centre and left, they fight then the decisive
battle. It should be decisive, for the [Germans] on the
two rivers, approaching each other in the narrowing
io6 The Battle of the Rivers
Foreseeing, however, the possibility, though
not accepting the probabiHty, of having to stand
for a time on the defensive, the German General
Staff, we cannot now doubt, had formed the sub-
sidiary and provisional plan of concentrating,
as far as possible and in case of necessity, be-
tAveen two of the rivers — the Oise and the Aisne
— in positions which could be held with a
minimum of numbers.
But this concentration was only preliminary.
It was intended to aid the massing on their own
right flank of an echelon of reserve formations
to be thrown against the left of the Allied forces.
Concentration between two of the rivers was,
as a defensive, beyond question the best measure
in the situation. A mere defensive, however,
would be tantamount to a confession that the
whole expedition against France had proved a
failure. Undoubtedly, therefore, as the later
events show, the design was, at the earliest
moment, to resume the offensive by means of
masses of reserves. These, pivoting upon
Noyon, at the western end of the fortified line,
might sweep round and, by threatening to
angle can combine in a movement on Paris, holding the
passages at Melun and Montereau on the one side, and
at Meaux on the other.
" In executing such a plan the weapons of the defender
would be in some measure turned against himself. . . .
But the assailants in taking these forward steps do so
at the disadvantage of attacking a strongly posted
enemy and under penalty of exposing a flank to him.
This course demands a superiorit}^ in numbers of not
less than 4 to 3, and probably greater than that."
The Germans had adopted this very plan, but they had
not the superiority they imagined.
How von Kluck Averted Ruin 107
envelop the Allied armies compel their retire-
ment.
Conversely, the Allied tactic was plainly to
envelop the Germans and to threaten their main
communications through Belgium. The ques-
tion now was : Which side could carry out its
manoeuvre first ?
CHAPTER VII
THE OPERATIONS ON THE AISNE
The battle of the Aisne, destined to develop
into the longest conflict on record — it extended
over two whole months — began on the afternoon
of Sunday, September 13. To follow its com-
plexities it is necessary clearly to grasp, not only
the military purposes or objectives the two sides
had immediately in view, but the respective situa-
tions of the opposing masses as regards fighting
efficiency. When operations are on this gigantic
scale a certain amount of imagination must be
exercised to realise even the barest facts.
From Compi^gne eastward to Rheims the
Allied line was formed by the 6th French, the
British, and the 5th French armies. To the first
for the moment was assigned the duty of forcing
the passages of the Aisne from below Soissons,
clearing the enemv off the western end of the
ridge, and pushing him up to Noyon on the
Oise.
The business which fell to the British army
was that of delivering a frontal attack on this
108
The Operations on the Aisne 109
natural hill fortress from Soissons as far as
Craonne.
The 6th French army, which by a vigorous
forward thrust had driven the enemy out of
Rheims, was to push up through the transverse
gap to Berry-au-Bac, and assault the hostile posi-
tions on the hillsides along the east side of the
gap. Along these hills the Germans had settled
themselves in force. Here, too, there were many
chalk quarries and caves, which the Germans
were using as shelters and stores.
At first sight it might well seem that the frontal
attack undertaken by the British was not strictly
a necessary operation. Clearly, the feasible way
of driving the Germans out of their fastness was
to turn the flanks of the position on the west
through Lassigny and Noyon, and on the east
through Berry-au-Bac. The main operation was,
of course, that of turning the position from the
west, for the right of the German position re-
mained its vulnerable point. It was essential,
however, to the success of that operation that
General von Kluck should not be able to meet
it in force until, at all events, the Allied troops
had taken a firm grip.
Now, if the British army had assumed a
merely watching attitude on the south side of
the Aisne, and had in consequence been able
to extend their line from the south of Craonne
down the river to, say, Attichy, some ten miles
below Soissons, that, while leaving nearly the
whole strength of the 6th French army free to
undertake the turning movement, would at the
no The Battle of the Rivers
same time have left General von Kluck also free
to throw his main strength against it.
A vigorous and pressing attack along his front
was consequently essential, in order to keep his
main force employed. Not only was the attack
essential, but it had to be launched against him
without delay, and before he could recover from
the effects of his retreat.
Including the troops recalled from Amiens,
Generals von Kluck and von Biilow had under
their command, nominally at any rate, ten army
corps. If, deducting losses and war wastages, we
put their strength in effectives at not more than
the equivalent of six corps — it could have been
very little more — yet six corps was, in the posi-
tions they held, a force fully able to cope with
the nine corps making up the three Allied armies
pitted then against them. Bearing in mind,
indeed, the natural defensive advantages of the
ridges on which the Germans had established
themselves, and their facility for moving troops
either for the purposes of defence or of counter-
attack, their strongholds could have been held
by three corps, leaving the remainder to be used
on the flank for active operations.
Intended to frustrate that manceuvre, the
British attack compelled the German com-
manders to aw-ait, before they could make any
such attempt, the arrival of reinforcements. On
both sides there was now a race against time.
French reinforcements and reserves had to be
brought up and massed against the flank of the
German position. Many of those troops had,
The Operations on the Aisne in
however, to cover long distances afoot. The
movements of mass armies are comparatively
slow. After ail, the roads and railways travers-
ing a country have a capacity which is limited.
Some idea of what such movement involves may
be formed from the traffic on a popular bank
holiday. In the case of armies there is, in
addition to human numbers, the artillery, the
munitions, the camp equipment, the foodstuffs,
and all the rest of the transport. No one, there-
fore, can be surprised that by the time these
masses could be concentrated on the German
flank, there were German masses who, under the
same conditions, had been hurried forward to
meet them. From the very necessities of time
and space the race resulted to a great extent in
a draw.
The Battle of the Aisne is in every respect
unique. A battle in the ordinary sense of field
operations it was not. It was a siege. Nothing
at all like it had ever occurred before in war.
There have been many sieges of banditti in
mountain retreats. There have been sieges in
old times of fortified camps. There had never
been the siege under such conditions of a great
army.
The operations in this amazing and gigantic
conflict, though inter-related, must for the pur-
poses of clear narration be dealt with in sections.
The story divides itself into : —
The attack upon the German positions north
of the Aisne.
The struggle for and around Rheims.
112 The Battle of the Rivers
The operations on and against the German
right flank.
In this chapter it is proposed to deal with the
attack upon the German positions north of the
Aisne. The manner in which the British troops
forced the passage of that river and secured a
footing on the ridge, and held on to it, forms
a particularly brilliant feat of arms.
As stated in the official account : —
The country across which the army has had to
force its way is undulating and covered with
patches of thick wood.
Within the area which faced the British before
the advance commenced, right up to Laon, the
chief feature of tactical importance is the fact
that there are six rivers running right across the
direction of advance, at all of which it was pos-
sible that the Germans might make a resistance.
These are, in order from the south, the Marne,
the Ourcq, the Vesle, the Aisne, the Lette, and
the Oise.
The Lette, it may here be stated, is a tributary
of the Oise. Rising just to the north of Craonne
and flowing westward through an upland valley,
it is used in the lower part of its course as a
section of the Oise and Aisne Canal.
On Friday, the nth, the official account goes
on to say, but little opposition was met with by
us along any part of our front, and the direction
of advance was, for the purpose of co-operating
with our Allies, turned slightly to the north-
east. The day was spent in pushing forward
and in gathering in various hostile detachments,
The Operations on the Aisne 113
and by nightfall our forces had reached a line
to the north of the Ourcq, extending from
Oulchy Le Chateau to Long Pont.
On this day there was also a general advance
on the part of the French along their whole line,
which ended in substantial success, in one por-
tion of the field Duke Albrecht of Wiirtemberg's
fourth army being driven back across the Saulx ;
and elsewhere the whole of the corps artillery of
a German corps being captured. Several Ger-
man colours also were taken.
It was only on this day that the full extent of
the victory gained by the Allies was appreciated
by them. The moral effect of this success has
been enormous.
When the British pushed forward on Septem-
ber 12 to the Aisne, they found that the Germans
still held the heights to the south of the river
above Soissons. German outposts also held the
strip of hilly country between the Aisne and its
tributary the Vesle.
The first step was to drive the Germans across
the Aisne at Soissons. This was undertaken by
the 3rd army corps. Pushing forward to
Buzancy, south-east of Soissons, the troops won
the heights overlooking the old city and the
Aisne valley, which here opens to its greatest
width. It was a stiff fight. Despite, however,
a heavy bombardment from across the valley,
the British, side by side with troops of General
Maunoury, swept the Germans down into and
through Soissons, and as the enemy crowded
over the two bridges the artillery of the 3rd corps
poured upon them a rain of shells. Immediately
114 The Battle of the Rivers
the Germans had crossed, the bridges, which
had been mined, went up in two terrific ex-
plosions.
While this action was in progress, Sir John
French had thrown the ist army corps across
the Vesle at Fismes. They advanced to Vaucere
with but little opposition.
At Braisne on the Vesle, however, the Germans
for a time made a resolute stand. They held the
town in force, and covered the bridge with
machine guns. They were strongly supported by
artillery. Notwithstanding this, they were ousted
out of the place by the ist British Cavalry
Division under General Allenby. While a
brigade of British infantry cleared the enemy out
of the town, w hich lies mainly on the south bank,
the cavalry rushed the passage of the river under
a galling fire and turned the hostile position. So
rapidly did the Germans take to flight that they
had to throw a large amount of their artillery
ammunition into the river. There was no time
to reload it into the caissons.^ This feat of the
British horse ranks among the finest bits of
"derring do" in the campaign. The Queen's
Bays have been mentioned in despatches as
rendering distinguished service. Conspicuous
gallantry w^as shown by the whole division. As
a result of these operations from Braisne and
* A buried store of the enemy's munitions of war was
also found not far from the Aisne, ten wag-on-loads of
live shell and two wafjons of cable being dug up ; and
traces were discovered of large quantities of stores having
been burnt, all tending to show that so far back as the
Aisne the German retirement was hurried.
The Operations on the Aisne 115
Fismes, the British secured tlie country up to the
Aisne.
Left and right, therefore, the advance had been
completely successful. In the centre, however,
the 2nd army corps had an exceptionally tough
piece to negotiate. They advanced up to the
Aisne between Soissons and Missy. The latter
place lies on the north bank, just below the junc-
tion of the Aisne and the Vesle. Here there is
a broad stretch of meadow flats, commanded
north, east, and south by bluffs. On the south
IS the Sermoise bluff or spur; across the flats,
directly opposite to the north, stands out the
Chivre spur. The summit of the latter is
crowned by an old defence work, the Fort de
Cond^. This the Germans held, and they made
use of the spur, like a miniature Gibraltar, to
sweep the flats of the valley with their guns.
On this 1 2th September the 5th division found
themselves unable to make headway. They
advanced to the Aisne, which just here sweeps
close under the Chivres spur, leaving between
the cliff and the bank a narrow strip, occupied
by the village of Cond^-sur-Aisne. Across the
river at Conde there was a road bridge, and the
enemy had left the bridge intact, both because
they held the houses of the village, which they
had loop-holed, and because their guns above
commanded the approach road. It may be stated
that they held on to the Chivre spur and on to
Cond6 all through the battle.
On the night of September 12 the British had
possession of all the south bank of the Aisne
ii6 The Battle of the Rivers
from Soissons up to Alaizy, immediately to the
south of Craonne.
At daybreak on Sunday, September 13, Sir
John French ordered a general advance across
the river. Opposite the places where the water-
way could most readily be crossed, the enemy
had posted strong bodies of infantry with
machine guns. Along the bluffs, and behind
the side valleys above, they had disposed their
artillery in a range of batteries upwards of fifteen
miles in length.
The battle began with one of the most tre-
mendous and concentrated artillery duels that
has ever taken place, for the line was prolonged
both east and west by the French artillery, until
it stretched out to more than twice the length
of the British front.
Of the nine bridges over this section of the
Aisne, all save that at Conde had been blown up.
Near a little place called Bourg on the north
bank, some three miles below Maizy, the valley
is crossed by an aqueduct carrying the Oise and
Aisne canal. This canal passes in a series of
locks over the ridge north-west. The canal is
much used in connection with the chalk quarries.
Troops of the ist British division, defying a
fierce bombardment, advanced in rushes along
the towing path, or crept along the parapets of
the aqueduct. Every man deliberately took his
life in his hands. Others crept breast high in
the water along the canal sides. The German
guns stormed at them, and many fell, but foot
by foot and yard by yard they crawled on, while
The Operations on the Aisne 117
supporting riflemen from the ridges behind
tliem picked off tiie Germans who strove to
oppose their passage. Tiie resistance was
furious. They won, however, a footing on the
north bank. Once there, no counter-assaults
could dislodge them.
This bridgehead formed at the opposite end
of the aqueduct, more troops rushed across,
covered by a concentration of the British artil-
lery. In this way, at length, the whole division
got over, including the cavalry. Forthwith they
advanced up the road leading across the ridge
from Bourg, along the side valley, towards
Chamouille.
While these events were taking place, troops
of the 2nd division were, five miles farther down
the river, near Vailly, carrying out a feat of equal
daring. Just about Vailly, the Aisne is crossed
obliquely by the railway line from Soissons.
The railway bridge, a structure of iron, now lay
in the stream. Most of the confusion of massive
ribs and girders was under water, and the deep
and smoothly sweeping current, swollen by
recent rains, foamed and chafed against the
obstacle. One of the long girders, however, still
showed an edge above the flood. It was possible
for men to cross upon this girder, but only in
single file. Not more than two feet in breadth at
the outside, not less than 250 feet in length, this
path of iron resembled, if anything could, that
bridge, narrow as the edge of a scimitar, over
which the faithful Mussulman is fabled to pass
into Paradise. It was swept by shot and shell.
1 1 8 The Battle of the Rivers
From the heights across the valley belched with-
out ceasing the hail of death. Wounded or un-
nerved a man saw his end as surely in the grey-
green swirl of waters. But the soldiers who
undertook this service did not hesitate. It may
be doubted if there has ever been anything in
ancient or in modern war more coolly heroic.
Here was the spirit which has made Britain the
mother of mighty nations. Not a few of these
heroes fell, inevitably, but the spirit was in all,
and if some fell, others won their way over, and
having won it kept their footing against heavy
odds.
In sight of this struggle, amid the unceasing
roar of the batteries on either side, the 4th
Guards Brigade were, a mile away at Chavonne,
ferrying themselves over in boats. Notwith-
standing the furious efforts to annihilate them,
both as they crossed and as they sprang ashore,
a whole battalion in this way got across and made
good their foothold.
Half-way between Cond6 and Soissons, at the
village of Venizel, at the same time, the 14th
brigade were rafting themselves over on tree-
trunks crossed with planks, derelict doors, and
stairways.
These footholds won, the troops, like the ist
division, lost no time in pushing forward to
seize points of vantage before the enemy could
rallv from his astonishment. The 2nd division
advanced along the road from Vailly towards
Courte9on ; the 12th brigade made an attack in
the direction of Chivres, situated in a small side
The Operations on the Aisne 119
valley to the west of the Chivres bluff. Slightly-
higher up this side valley, and on its opposite
slope, the Germans held the hillside village of
Vregny in force. The cleft at once became the
scene of a furious combat.
Coincidently the work went on of throwing
pontoon bridges across the river. Under per-
sistent bombardment the Royal Engineers stuck
to this business with grim resolve. The battle
had gone on without a pause from daybreak. At
half-past five in the evening, opposite Bucy-le-
Long, three miles above Soissons, the first pon-
toon bridge had been completed, and the loth
brigade crossing by it drove the enemy out of
Bucy. Working right through the night the
Engineers completed eight pontoon bridges and
one footbridge. On the following day they tem-
porarily repaired the road bridges at Venizel,
Missy, and Vailly, and the bridge at Villers.
The army had thus twelve bridges connecting
with the south bank, and was able to move
across in force with a large part of his artillery.
Crossing the Aisne at Soissons, the main road
running for about a mile and a half north-east
to the little village of Crouy, there divides. On
the right is a lower road eastward up the valley
of the Aisne, past and under the bluffs on the
north side to Berry-au-Bac. On the left is a
road which climbs up hill, carried in some places
through cuttings and tunnels, at others over short
viaducts, until it reaches the summit of the ridge.
There, parallel in direction with the lower road
three miles away, it continues for some twelve
I20 The Battle of the Rivers
miles to Craonne. From this summit road there
is, between the patches of woods, a wide view of
the country — to the north the valley of the Lette,
and beyond it the height round which lies the
town and fortress of Laon, to the south the rich
woodland glimpses of the Aisne valley. This
panoramic highway is the famous Chemins des
Dames.
It is evident that command of the higher and of
the lower roads meant command of all the part
of the ridge between Soissons and Berry, and
the operations w-ere an effort on the one side to
obtain, and on the other to retain, that command.
Already, with the exception of the break at
Conde, the lower road, and the villages and the
town of Vailly lying along its length, were, as
the result of the fighting on September 13, in the
hands of the British. The higher road remained
in the possession of the Germans. Up the clefts
and side valleys are a number of small villages
and hamlets, inhabited for the most part by
quarrymen and lime-burners, but with, here and
there, a small factory. A sprinkling of these
civilians were Germans. Most were known to
the enemy, and were active spies, and one of the
first measures taken by the Germans was to
establish at various points secret telephones,
forming an exchange of intercommunication with
and along their positions. Where telephones
could not be employed they arranged a system
of ruses and signals. Among these devices was
that of smoke from cottage chimneys.
On the morning of September 14, the 13th,
The Operations on the Aisne 121
14th, and 15th Brigades, defeating a heavy
counter-attack, seized the roads between Conde
and Soissons. The object was to cut into the
centre of the German defence.
During this day further bodies of British
troops crossed the river. The forces already on
the north side were heavily engaged. Towards
nightfall the Germans attempted a counter-
attack. It was beaten off after severe fighting.
Three hours later, about ten o'clock at night,
they again descended in force against the posi-
tions and villages held by the British troops.
While the clefts and side valleys blazed with
flashing fire of infantry, the valley of the Aisne
was lit up for miles with the fluctuating and lurid
flare from the heavy guns. Masses of German
infantry tried to drive the British troops out of
the villages they had seized. It was evidently
hoped to prevail by weight of numbers. The
onset fell back crippled by the losses sustained.
By this time the fact was becoming plain that
the battle was no mere rearguard action. The
enemy had manifestly resolved to make a stand.
To ascertain the character and strength of his
disposition, Sir John French ordered a general
advance. It was timed to begin at daybreak.
The dawn broke amid rain and heavy mists,
but this, if a disadvantage to the attack, was
equally a disadvantage to the defence. One of
the leading features of this offensive was what
Sir John French has justly called the bold and
decisive action of the ist army corps, commanded
by Sir Douglas Haig.
122 The Battle of the Rivers
From Bourg, the scene of the crossing on the
aqueduct, there runs northward climbing to the
summit of the ridge a road to the village of
Cerny, about half-way along the Chemin des
Dames. The distance from Bourg to Cerny is
rather more than three miles. It is, however, a
stiff climb. Two-thirds of the way up, where
the road bends sharply to the left round a spur,
is the village of Vendresse-et-Troyon . The cap-
ture of this place was one of the immediate objec-
tives, and the troops told off to accomplish it
were the ist infantry brigade and the 25th artil-
lery brigade, under General Bulfin.^ At Cerny
there is a slight dip on the level of the ridge.
Vendresse is on the west slope of this side
valley, and Troyon on the east slope just behind
the spur. The Germans held in strong force both
the spur and the houses on each slope. At
Troyon they had fortified themselves in a factory.
Few operations could be more ticklish than
the seizure of such a place. From the spur the
Germans came down in a counter-attack like a
human avalanche. After stemming this rush
by a withering fire the Northamptons were
ordered to carrv the spur at the point of the
bayonet. They did it. As they were chasing
the survivors of the counter-attack up the slope
there suddenly appeared on the skyline a second
mass of German infantry, the reserves supporting
the counter-attacking column. In a matter of
seconds, however, the fugitives and the North-
* This able and distinguished officer has since been
promoted for his services.
The Operations on the Aisne 123
amptons were on them. Their ranks broken, they
also turned and fled in rout across the plateau.
In the meantime the North Lancashires had
stormed the factory and cleared the enemy out of
Vendresse at the point of the bayonet. Other
troops of the ist army corps pushed on to
Meulins, a mile to the south-east, and seized
positions along the east end of the ridge. During
the fighting the Germans lost 12 field guns and
600 prisoners. Many of the latter were found to
belong to the Landwehr, proving that the enemy
had already been compelled to fill up his forma-
tions from second reserves.
The fury of this fighting was intense. There
could be no better evidence of its character than
an unposted letter found later on an officer of
the 7th German army reserve corps. The letter
runs : —
Cerny, S. of Laon, Sept. 17, 1914.
My dear Parents, — Our corps has the task
of holding the heights south of Cerny in all
circumstances till the 15th corps on our left flank
can grip the enemy's flank. On our right are
other corps. We are fighting with the English
Guards, Highlanders, and Zouaves.^ The losses
on both sides have been enormous. For the most
part this is due to the too brilliant French artil-
lery. The English are marvellously trained in
making use of the ground. One never sees
them, and one is constantly under fire.
Three days ago our division took possession
of these heights, dug itself in, &c. Two days
ago, early in the morning, w^e were attacked by
^ Part of the 5th French Army, which was operating
on the right of the British from Rheims and Berry-au-
Bac.
I 24 The Battle of the Rivers
immensely superior English forces (one brigade
and two battalions), and were turned out of our
positions ; the fellows took five guns from us. It
was a tremendous hand-to-hand fight. How I
escaped myself I am not clear. I then had to
bring up supports on foot (my horse was
wounded and the others were too far in rear).
Then came up the Guard Jager Battalion, 4th
Jager, 65th Regiment, Reserve Regiment 13,
Landwehr Regiments 13 and 16, and with the
help of the artillery drove back the fellows out
of the position again.
. . . During the first two days of the battle^ I
had only one piece of bread and no w^ater, spent
the night in the rain without my great coat.
The rest of my kit was on the horses which have
been left miles behind with the baggage, which
cannot come up into the battle because as soon as
you put your nose out from behind cover the
bullets whistle.
Yesterday evening about six p.m., in the
valley in which our reserves stood, there was
such a terrible cannonade that we saw nothing
of the sky but a cloud of smoke. We had few
casualties.
Just to the west of Vendresse the 5th infantrv
brigade advanced against the part of the ridge
where is situated the village of Courte9on.
Simultaneously the 4th Guards Brigade, with the
36th brigade of artillery, debouched from Bourg
along the Aisne and Oise canal, with the object
of seizing Ostel. They had to fight their way,
opposed foot by foot, through dense woods. The
6th brigade pressed up farther along the canal
' The reference is evidently to the fighting- on Sept. 13
and 14.
The Operations on the Aisne 125
to Braye-en-Laonnois. It is immediately to the
north of that place that the plateau is at the
narrowest. Evidently to obtain possession of
that neck would be a great advantage. The
enemy held on to Braye at all costs.
Further w-est, again, the British advanced from
Vailly to Aizy along another of the approaches
to the plateau. The object was to hem in the
Germans holding the Chivres bluff and Conde.
On the farther side of the bluff from Aizy the
division of Sir Charles Fergusson held on to
Chivres village in the face of a succession of
determined onslaughts.
As the outcome of this day's fighting, which
had been very severe, the ist army corps had
won close up to the ridge by Craonne, and held
positions extending along the plateau across the
canal to Soupir, a distance of nearly nine miles.
Concurrently the 2nd and 3rd corps had gained
the plateau from Chavonne westward to Croucy,
and with the exception of the Chivres bluff all
the outer or southern edge of the plateau, as well
as the intervening side valleys, were in the British
hands, from Soissons to Craonne.
As soon as they had gained these positions the
British troops set about digging themselves in,
and although the rain fell all night in torrents,
and the men had been through a long and fierce
struggle since daybreak, they worked magni-
ficently.
Next day (September 15) heavy rain blurred
the view. Neither force could see the move-
ments of the other, but when the mists lifted
126 The Battle of the Rivers
somewhat the Germans must have been surprised
to discover that the foe were already in their
stronghold.
On their side they had not been idle. They
had brought along from Maubeuge the batteries
of heavy howitzers used to destroy the forts at
that place, and were putting them into well-
concealed positions. Besides this they worked
with energy to strengthen their entrenchments.
These lines of trenches among and along the
edges of the woods crowning the slopes of the
ridge were elaborately made, and in general
cleverly hidden.
They were so placed as to sweep with rifle
and machine gun fire the approaches to the
plateau up the various clefts. Lengths of barbed-
wire entanglements and rabbit fencing further
defended the approaches, both in the woods and
across open ground. Where behind or between
the lines of trenches the land rose — the top of
the plateau had been worn by ages of weather
into sweeping undulations — there were batteries
of field guns, so arranged that they laid ap-
proaches under a cross fire. Round and in front
of these knobs of land the trenches swept like
ditches round bastions. Everything, in fact, that
resource could suggest had been done to make
the positions impregnable.^
^ The following descriptive notes on the German posi-
tions were made by the official " E3'e-witness " with the
British forces : — " Owing to the concealment afforded to
the Germans' fire trenches and gun emplacements by
the woods and to the fact that nearly all the bridges and
roads leading to them, as well as a great part of the
The Operations on the Aisne 127
In addition to trenches, hamlets and villages
were held by the two armies as advanced posts,
and had been turned roughly into groups of block
houses.
southern slopes, are open to their fire, the position held
by them is a very strong one. Except for these patches
of wood, the terrain generally is not enclosed. No
boundaries between the fields exist as in England.
There are ditches here and there, but no hedges, wire
fences, or walls, except round the enclosures in the
villages. A large proportion of the woods, however, are
enclosed by high rabbit netting, which is in some places
supported by iron stanchions. The top of the plateau
on the south of the river to some extent resembles Salis-
bury Plain, except that the latter is downland while the
former is cultivated, being sown with lucerne, wheat,
and beetroot.
"A feature of this part of the country, and one which
is not confined to the neighbourhood of the Aisne, is the
large number of caves, both natural and artificial, and
of quarries. These are of great service to the forces on
both sides, since they can often be used as sheltered
accommodation for the troops in the second line. Other
points worthy of note are the excellence of the metalled
roads, though the metalled portion is very narrow, and
the comparative ease with which one can find one's way
about, even without a map. This is due partly to the
prevailing straightness of the roads and partly to the
absence of hedges. There are signposts at all cross-
roads, whilst the name of each village is posted in a
conspicuous place at the entry and exit of the main high-
way passing through it.
"In addition to the absence of hedges, the tall, white
ferro-concrete telegraph posts lining many of the main
roads give a somewhat strange note to the landscape."
CHAPTER VIII
WARFARE BY DAY AND BY NIGHT
In three days the British had not only gained
the passages over the Aisne, but had won their
way to the plateau. Both sides had fought with
determination. The German commander knew
that if he could not hold this position the whole
contemplated strategy of throwing masses of re-
inforcements against the left flank of the Allied
forces must collapse. He was well aware that
if he failed, not only must his own force in all
probability be destroyed, but the whole German
line as far as Verdun must in all probability be
crumpled up.
Not less was Sir John French aware that the
future success of the Allied campaign hung upon
obtaining a purchase on the German position
which would force General von Kluck to employ
his whole strength in holding on. It is easy,
therefore, to infer how fierce had been this three
days' struggle.
The Germans had put forth the greatest effort
of which they were capable. But despite the
natural advantage given them, first by the river
Warfare by Day and by Night 129
front, and next by the rugged and broken ground
in the many side valleys, they had been beaten.
Henceforward the struggle was on less uneven
terms. The fact had become manifest that
without a strenuous counter-offensive the Ger-
mans could not hope to hold on.
This counter-offensive was attempted without
delay.
Since the top of the plateau sloped from north
to south, the positions held by the British were
in general on lower ground than the trenches cut
by the Germans, and it must have been some-
thing of a disagreeable surprise to the latter when
on the morning of September 15, the heavy mists
having lifted, they saw miles of earthworks,
which had literally sprung up in the night. The
rain and mist during the hours of darkness had
made a night attack impossible, even if, after
the eighteen hours' furious battle in the mists on
the preceding day, they had had the stomach
for it.
They had their surprise ready, however, as
well. From well-hidden positions behind the
woods on the top of the plateau they opened a
violent bombardment of the British lines with
their huge 8-inch and ii-inch howitzers, throwing
the enormous shells, which fell with such terrific
force as to bury themselves in the ground. Giving
off in exploding dense clouds of black smoke,
these shells blew away the earth on all sides of
them in a rain of fragments of rock, masses of
soil and stones, leaving the surface filled with
holes wide and deep enough to be the burial place
E
130 The Battle of the Rivers
of several horses. This heavy ordnance was kept
well beyond the range of the British guns, and
employed for high-angle fire. So far as life was
concerned, the shells caused relatively little loss.
Their flight being visible — they looked not unlike
tree-trunks hurled from across the hills — they
could be dodged. On realising how little they
were to be feared, the British troops nicknamed
them "Black Marias," "Coalboxes," and "Jack
Johnsons," and shouted jocular warnings. The
idea of using these shells was to knock the
British defence works to pieces. Some of these
works, hastily thrown up, proved to be too slight,
and had to be replaced by diggings, which
became regular underground barracks.
At this time the British lines were in general
more than a mile distant, on the average, from
those of the enemy. They followed no sym-
metrical plan, but, adapted to the (defensive
features of the ground, were cut where there were
at once the best shelters from attack and the best
jumping-off places for offence. Describing them,
the British military correspondent wrote : —
A striking feature of our line — to use the con-
ventional term which so seldom expresses accur-
ately the position taken up by an army — is that
it consists really of a series of trenches not all
placed alongside each other, but some more ad-
vanced than others, and many facing in different
directions. At one place they run east and west,
along one side of a valley; another, almost north
and south, up some subsidiary valley ; here they
line the edge of wood, and there they are on the
reverse slope of a hill, or possibly along a sunken
Warfare by Day and by Night 131
road. And at different points both the German
and British trenches jut out Hke promontories
into what might be regarded as the opponent's
territory.
While the British infantry had been entrench-
ing, the artillery, with an equal energy, had
hauled their guns up the steep roads, and in many
cases up still steeper hillsides, and by the morn-
ing of September 15 — another disagreeable sur-
prise for the enemy — nearly 500 field pieces
bristled from positions of vantage along the front.
The reply to the German bombardment w^as a
bombardment of the hostile trenches. The latter
were crowded with men. If the German shells
did a lot of injury to the landscape, the British
shrapnel inflicted far heavier injury on the
enemy's force. It swept the German trenches and
field batteries with a regular hail of lead. Well-
concealed though they to a great extent were,
the German positions were not so well-concealed
as the British positions. Both armies did their
best to make themselves appear scarce, and
beyond the deafening uproar of the guns belch-
ing from behind woods and undulations, there
seemed at a distance few signs of life on either
side. But, looked at from behind and within, the
lines were very anthills of activity.
The bombardment went on until midnight.
Then came a night battle of almost unexampled
fury.
From the outline already given of the fighting
on September 14 it will have been gathered that
one of the most substantial advantages won had
E 2
132 The Battle of the Rivers
been the position seized by the 4th Guards
Brigade along the Aisne and Oise Canal from
Astel to Braye-en-Laonnois. At Braye and east-
wards over the intervening spur of plateau to
Vendresse the British positions were dangerously
close to the narrow neck of the ridge. Across
that neck, too, following the canal to its juncture
with the Lette, and then up the short valley of
the Ardon, was the easiest route to Laon, the
main base of the ist German army. Obviously
the British must, if possible, be ousted out of
these villages.
Bombardment had failed to do it. Soon after
midnight, therefore, a huge mass of German in-
fantry moved down against the Guards' entrench-
ments by Braye. It was a murderous combat.
Six times in succession the Germans were beaten
off. But for every column of the enemy that went
back, broken, decimated, and exhausted, there
was another ready instantly to take its place.
Advancing over the dying and the dead, the
Germans faced the appalling and rapid volleys
of the Guards with unflinching courage. They
fell in hundreds, but still they rushed on.
Machine guns on both sides spat sheets of
bullets. At close grips, finally, men stabbed like
demons. In and round houses, many set on fire,
and throwing the scene of slaughter into lurid
and Dantesque relief, there were fights to the
death. No quarter was given or taken. The
canal became choked with corpses. On the roads
and hillsides dead and wounded lay in every
posture of pain. Beyond the outer ring of the
Warfare by Day and by Night 133
struggle, where shouts of fury mingled with cries
of agony, the roaring choruses of the guns bayed
across the valley with redoubled rage.
Great as it was, the effort proved vain. If the
attack was heroic, the defence was super-heroic.
When, for the last time, the lines of the Guards
swept forward, withering the retreating and now
disordered foe with their volleys, charging into
them in what seemed a lightning-like energy,
terrible alike in their forgetfulness of danger and
in the irresistible impetus of victory, the Germans
must have realised that their hopes of conquest
were shattered.
This was but one out of similar scenes in that
fierce night.^ After it the cold, grey morning
broke in strange silence. For a space the artillery
had ceased to speak. Many and many a hero,
unknown to fame, but faithful unto death, lay
with face upturned on those hillsides. Never had
duty been more valiantly done.
Sir John French realised the qualities of his
soldiers. He had been compelled to demand from
them a herculean energy. They had not failed
him in any place nor in any particular. They
had been in truth magnificent, and he could not
but embody his admiration in a Special Order of
the Day. That historic document ran : —
Once more I have to express my deep appre-
ciation of the splendid behaviour of officers, non-
^ The troops of the 5th Division under Sir Charles
Fergusson repulsed with equal gallantry a furious attack
against their position at Missy, on the west side of the
Chivres bluff.
134 The Battle of the Rivers
commissioned officers, and men of the army
under my command throughout the great battle
of the Aisne, which has been in progress since
the evening of the 12th inst. The battle of the
Marne, which lasted from the morning of the
6th to the evening of the loth, had hardly ended
in the precipitate flight of the enemy when we
were brought face to face with a position of
extraordinary strength, carefully entrenched and
prepared for defence by an army and a staff
which are thorough adepts in such work.
Throughout the 13th and 14th that position
was most gallantly attacked by the British forces,
and the passage of the Aisne effected. This is
the third day the troops have been gallantly
holding the position they have gained against
the most desperate counter-attacks and a hail of
heavy artillery.
I am unable to find adequate words in which to
express the admiration I feel for their magnificent
conduct.
The self-sacrificing devotion and splendid
spirit of the British Army in France will carry
all before it.
(Signed) J. D. P. French, Field Marshal,
Covimanding-in-Chief the British Army
in the Field.
The enemy had been shaken. Of that there
could be no doubt. Following his experiences
in the battle of the Marne this fighting was be-
ginning to prove too much for him.
A considerable amount of information about
the enemy has now been gleaned from prisoners
(says the official record). It has been gathered
that our bombardment on the 15th produced a
Warfare by Day and by Night 135
great impression. The opinion is also recorded
that our infantry make such good use of the
ground that the German companies are deci-
mated by our rifle fire before a British soldier
can be seen.
From an official diary captured by the First
Army Corps it appears that one of the German
corps contains an extraordinary mixture of units.
If the composition of the other corps is at all
similar, it may be assumed that the present
efficiency of the enemy's forces is in no way com-
parable with what it was when war commenced.
The losses in officers are noted as having been
especially severe. A brigade is stated to be
commanded by a major, and some companies of
the Foot Guards to be commanded by one-year
volunteers, while after the battle of Montmirail
one regiment lost fifty-five out of sixty officers.
The prisoners recently captured appreciate the
fact that the march on Paris has failed, and that
their forces are retreating, but state that the
object of this movement is explained by the
officers as being to withdraw into closer touch
with supports which have stayed too far in rear.
The officers are also endeavouring to encourage
the troops by telling them that they will be at
home by Christmas. A large number of the
men, however, believe that they are beaten. The
following is an extract from one document : —
With the English troops we have great
difficulties. They have a queer way of caus-
ing losses to the enemy. They make good
trenches, in which they wait patiently. They
carefully measure the ranges for their rifle fire,
and they then open a truly hellish fire. This
was the reason that we had such heavy
losses. . . .
136 The Battle of the Rivers
From another source: —
The EngUsh are very brave, and fight to the
last man. . . . One of our companies has lost
130 men out of 240.
From this time the battle took on more and
more the features of a regular siege. On the
side of the Germans the operations resolved
themselves into persistent bombardments by day
alternated with infantry attacks by night. In-
fantry attacks in daylight they now knew to be
foredoomed. It is questionable, indeed, if, with
the lowered moral of their troops, such attacks
were any longer possible. To assist their night
attacks they rigged up searchlights, and when
their infantry advanced played the beams upon
the British lines in the hope of dazzling the
defence and spoiling the rifle-fire they had
learned to dread. These lights, however, served
also as a warning. When that was found out
the enemy went back to attacks in the darkness,
but with no better results.
Sunday, September 20, was the date of another
general night onslaught. Just before the attack
developed military bands were heard playing in
the German lines. After the manner of the
natives of West Africa they were working them-
selves up to the fury pitch. It was to be a do-or-
die business evidently. The enterprise, however,
again failed to prosper. Against some of the
British positions the attack was pushed with
dogged bravery; and the scenes of five nights
before were enacted again and again with the
Warfare by Day and by Night 137
like results. Against one part of the line the
onset wound up with an extraordinary disaster.
Two German columns mistook each other in the
darkness for British troops. They had appar-
ently set out from different points to converge
upon the same British position. In front of that
position they fought a furious combat, and while
no bullets reached the British trenches the men
in them were afforded the unwonted spectacle of
the enemy w'iping themselves out.^
Between the two armies the country had now
become a "no-man's land," deserted by both
sides because, in the expressive phrase of the
British soldier, it had turned "unhealthy." Over
this tract the still unburied bodies of German
infantry lay where they had fallen. Outside the
village of Paissy, held by the British and near a
ridge where there had been some of the severest
fighting, the German dead lay in heaps. Lines
of German trenches held at the beginning of the
battle were by this time deserted.
Reconnoitring parties, says the authorised
story, sent out during the night of the 2ist-22nd,
^ In the official account this singular episode is thus
recorded: — "Since the last letter left General Head-
quarters evidence has been received which points to the
fact that during the counter-attacks on the night of
Sunday, the 20th, the German infantry fired into each
other — the result of an attempt to carry out the
dangerous expedient of a converging advance in the
dark. Opposite one portion of our position a consider-
able massing of the hostile forces was observed before
dark. Some hours later a furious fusillade was heard
in front of our line, though no bullets came over our
trenches."
138 The Battle of the Rivers
discovered some deserted trenches, and in them,
or near them in the woods, over a hundred dead
and wounded were picked up. A number of
rifles, ammunition, and equipment were also
found. There were various other signs that por-
tions of the enemy's forces had withdrawn for
some distance.
Unable to prevail in open fight, the Germans
resorted to almost every variety of ruse. In the
words of the official story : —
The Germans, well trained, long-prepared, and
brave, are carrying on the contest with skill and
valour. Nevertheless, they are fighting to win
anyhow, regardless of all the rules of fair play,
and there is evidence that they do not hesitate at
anything in order to gain victory.
During a counter-attack by the German 53rd
Regiment on portions of the Northampton and
Queen's Regiments on Thursday, the 17th, a
force of some 400 of the enemy were allowed to
approach right up to the trench occupied by a
platoon of the former regiment, owing to the fact
that they had held up their hands and made
gestures that were interpreted as signs that they
wished to surrender. When they were actually
on the parapet of the trench held by the North-
amptons they opened fire on our men at point-
blank range.
Unluckily for the enemy, however, flanking
them and only some 400 yards away, there hap-
pened to be a machine gun manned by a detach-
ment of the "Queen's." This at once opened
fire, cutting a lane through their mass, and they
fell back to their own trench with great loss.
Shortly afterwards they were driven further back
with additional loss by a battalion of the Guards,
which came up in support.
Warfare by Day and by Night 139
During the fighting, also, some German ambu-
lance wagons advanced in order to collect the
wounded. An order to cease fire was conse-
quently given to our guns, which were firing on
this particular section of ground. The German
battery commanders at once took advantage of
the lull in the action to climb up their observa-
tion ladders and on to haystacks to locate our
guns, which soon afterwards came under a far
more accurate fire than any to which they had
been subjected up to that time.
A British officer who was captured by the
Germans, and has since escaped, reports that
while a prisoner he saw men who had been fight-
ing subsequently put on Red Cross brassards.
That the irregular use of the protection afforded
by the Geneva Convention is not uncommon is
confirmed by the fact that on one occasion men
in the uniform of combatant units have been
captured wearing the Red Cross brassard hastily
slipped over the arm. The excuse given has
been that they had been detailed after a fight to
look after the wounded.
It is reported by a cavalry officer that the driver
of a motor-car with a machine gun mounted on
it, which he captured, was wearing the Red
Cross.
A curious feature of this strange siege-battle
was that villages and hamlets between the fight-
ing lines still continued, where not destroyed, to
be in part, at any rate, inhabited, and at intervals
peasants worked in the intervening fields. The
Germans took advantage of this to push their spy
system.
The suspicions of some French troops (of the
5th army) were aroused by coming across a farm
E* 2
140 The Battle of the Rivers
from which the horses had not been removed.
After some search they discovered a telephone
which was connected by an underground cable
with the German lines, and the owner of the farm
paid the penalty usual in war for his treachery.
Some of the methods being employed for the
collection or conveyance of intelligence were : —
Men in plain clothes who signalled to the
German lines from points in the hands of the
enemy by means of coloured lights at night
and puffs of smoke from chimneys by day.
Pseudo-labourers working in the fields be-
tween the armies who conveyed information,
and persons in plain clothes acting as advanced
scouts.
German officers and soldiers in plain clothes
or in French or British uniforms remained in
localities evacuated by the Germans in order
to furnish them with intelligence.
One spy of this kind was found by the British
troops hidden in a church tower. His presence
was only discovered through the erratic move-
ments of the hands of the church clock, which he
was using to signal to his friends by means of
an improvised semaphore code.
Women spies were also caught, and secret
agents found observing entrainments and de-
trainments.
Amongst the precautions taken by the British
to guard against spying was the publication of
the following notice : —
(i) Motor cars and bicycles other than those
carrying soldiers in uniform may not
circulate on the roads.
(2) Inhabitants may not leave the localities in
which they reside between six p.m. and
six a.m.
Warfare by Day and by Night 141
(3) Inhabitants may not quit their homes after
eight p.m.
(4) No person may on any pretext pass
through the British lines without an
authorisation countersigned by a British
officer.
On October 23rd six batteries of heavy
howitzers asked for by Sir John French reached
the front, and were at once put into action. No
effort was spared by the Germans to drive the
British army back across the Aisne. The quan-
tity of heavy shells they fired was enormous, and
they were probably under the impression that
the effect was devastating.
The object of the great proportion of artillery
the Germans employ (observes the official record
on this point) is to beat down the resistance of
their enemy by a concentrated and prolonged
fire, and to shatter their nerve with high explo-
sives before the infantry attack is launched.
They seem to have relied on doing this with us ;
but they have not done so, though it has taken
them several costly experiments to discover this
fact. From the statements of prisoners, indeed,
it appears that they have been greatly disap-
pointed by the moral effect produced by their
heavy guns, which, despite the actual losses
inflicted, has not been at all commensurate with
the colossal expenditure of ammunition, which
has really been wasted.
By this it is not implied that their artillery fire
is not good. It is more than good ; it is excel-
lent. But the British soldier is a difficult person
to impress or depress, even by immense shells
filled with high explosive which detonate with
142 The Battle of the Rivers
terrific violence and form craters large enough
to act as graves for five horses
How far the colossal expenditure of ammuni-
tion was thrown away is illustrated by this
description of the effect in a given instance : —
At a certain point in our front our advanced
trenches on the north of the Aisne are not far
from a village on the hillside, and also within a
short distance of the German works, being on
the slope of a spur formed by a subsidiary valley
running north and the main valley of the river.
It was a calm, sunny afternoon, but hazy ; and
from a point of vantage south of the river it was
difficult exactly to locate on the far bank the well-
concealed trenches of either side. From far and
near the sullen boom of guns echoed along the
valley and at intervals, in different directions, the
sky was flecked with the almost motionless smoke
of anti-aircraft shrapnel. Suddenly, without any
warning, for the reports of the distant howitzers
from which they were fired could not be distin-
guished from other distant reports, three or four
heavy shells fell into the village, sending up
huge clouds of smoke and dust, which slowly
ascended in a brownish-grey column. To this
no reply was made by our side.
Shortly afterwards there was a quick succes-
sion of reports from a point some distance up
the subsidiary valley on the side opposite our
trenches, and therefore rather on their flank. It
was not possible either by ear or by eye to locate
the guns from which these sounds proceeded.
Almost simultaneously, as it seemed, there was a
corres|X)nding succession of flashes and sharp
detonations in a line on the hill side, along what
appeared to be our trenches. There w^as then a
pause, and several clouds of smoke rose slowly
Warfare by Day and by Night 143
and remained stationary, spaced as regularly as
a line of poplars. Again there was a succession
of reports from the German quick-firers on the
far side of the misty valley and — like echoes —
the detonations of high explosive; and the row
of expanding smoke clouds was prolonged by
several new ones.
Another pause, and silence, except for the noise
in the distance. After a few minutes there was
a roar from our side of the main valley as our
field guns opened one after another in a more
deliberate fire upon the position of the German
guns. After six reports there was again silence,
save for the whirr of the shells as they sang up
the small valley, and then followed the flashes
and balls of smoke — one, two, three, four, five,
six, as the shrapnel burst nicely over what in the
haze looked like some ruined buildings at the
edge of a wood.
Again, after a short interval, the enemy's
gunners reopened with a burst, still further pro-
longing the smoke, which was by now merged
into one solid screen above a considerable length
of trench, and again did our guns reply. And
so the duel went on for some time. Ignoring our
guns, the German artillerymen, probably rely-
ing on concealment for immunity, were concen-
trating all their efforts in a particularly forceful
effort to enfilade our trenches. For them it
must have appeared to be the chance of a life-
time, and with their customary prodigality of
ammunition they continued to pour bouquet
after bouquet of high-explosive Einheitsgeschoss,
or combined shrapnel and common shell, on to
our works. Occasionally, with a roar, a high-
angle projectile would sail over the hill and blast
a gap in the village.
In the hazy valleys bathed in sunlight not a
144 The Battle of the Rivers
man, not a horse, not a gun, nor even a trench
was to be seen. There were only flashes, smoke,
and noise. Above, against the blue sky, were
several round white clouds hanging in the track
of the only two visible human souls — represented
by a glistening speck in the air. On high also
were to be heard the more or less gentle reports
of the bursts of the anti-aircraft projectiles.
Upon inquiry as to the losses sustained it
was found that our men had dug themselves well
in. In that collection of trenches were portions
of four battalions of British soldiers — the Dor-
sets, the West Kents, the King's Own Yorkshire
Light Infantry, and the King's Own Scottish
Borderers. Over 300 projectiles were fired
against them. The result was nine men
wounded.
On the following day 109 shells were fired at
the trenches occupied by the West Kent Regi-
ment alone. Four officers were buried, but dug
out unhurt. One man was scratched.
All through the second week of the battle, from
September 20 to September 28, there was a
succession of night attacks. Those delivered on
the nights of September 21 and September 23
were especially violent. In the fierce bayonet
fights — sometimes on the line of the trenches —
the British infantry never failed to prove their
superiority. The losses of the enemy were
punishingly heavy, not merely in the fire-fights,
but in the pursuit when the survivors turned to
fly. The object of these tactics of bombardment
throughout the day, and of infantry assaults at
night, kept up without intermission, was plainly
so to wear the British force down that in the
Warfare by Day and by Night 145
end it must give way and be swept back to the
Aisne in rout.
For such a victory the Germans were ready to
pay a very high price. They paid it — but for
defeat. What may be considered the culminat-
ing effort was launched against the trenches held
by the ist division on the extreme British right.
The division's advanced position close under the
ridge near Craonne had all through been a thorn.
On the night of September 27 an apparently
overwhelming force was flung upon it. Aided by
the play of searchlights the German masses
strove with might and main. The fight lasted
for hours. To say that it was repulsed is evi-
dence enough. The next night the attack was
repeated with, if anything, greater violence. It
was the fight of the Guards Brigade over again,
but on a greater scale. Imagine such a struggle
with 50,000 men involved ; a fighting mass nearly
three miles in extent ; the fire of rifles and
machine guns and artillery ; the gleam of clash-
ing bayonets ; the searchlights throwing momen-
tarily into view the fury of a melee and then
shutting it off to light up another scene of
struggle. Fortunately for the British, the
columns of attack were ripped up before the
trenches could be reached. Men fell in rows,
held up by the wire entanglements and shot
wholesale. This was the enemy's last great
stroke.
From that time the British won forward until
they gained the ridge, seized Craonne and all the
hostile positions along the Chemin des Dames.
CHAPTER IX
THE STRUGGLE ROUND RHEIMS
It will have been gathered from the preceding
pages that the tactics adopted by the Germans
north of the Aisne were tactics designed to wear
down the British force. No troops, it was sup-
posed, could, even if they survived, withstand
such an experience as that of the eight days from
September 20 to September 28. Their lines
pounded during all the hours of daylight by
heavy shells, and assaulted during the hours of
darkness by masses of infantry, the British force
ought, upon every German hypothesis of modern
warfare, to have been either driven back, or
broken to pieces. The theory had proved un-
sound. To say nothing of the enormous mone-
tary cost of the ammunition used, the attacks
had turned out appallingly wasteful of life. The
best troops of the Prussian army had been en-
gulfed. In this savage struggle, between 13,000
and 14,000 British soldiers had been killed or
wounded. What the losses were on the side of
the Germans we do not know, for their casualties
,46
The Struggle Round Rheims 147
in any particular operations have not been dis-
closed.
If, however, their losses were on anything like
the same scale as those at Mons and at Cambrai,
the casualties must have been severe in the
extreme. That they were severe is certain. The
tactics adopted on the Aisne were not yet sub-
stantially different from the tactics followed in
the earlier battles. At this stage of the cam-
paign, the Germans still held to the principle
that for victory hardly any price was too
high.
Remembering at the same time that neither
lives nor money are sacrificed by Germany
without what is considered good cause, it be-
comes necessary when there are heavy sacrifices
to search for the most adequate and assignable
reason. In this instance, the search need not go
far. After the first week of the battle, the enemy
were not merely defending their stronghold, they
were attempting to carry out an offensive, and
that offensive had two objects. One was the
scheme of operations against the left of the
Allied line. The other was the recapture of
Rheims.
Consider how a defeat of the British force
must have affected the situation. On the one
hand, it would have enabled the Germans to
push back the 6th French army upon Paris;
on the other, it would have compelled the
French to evacuate Rheims.
Now Rheims was clearly at this time the key
of the Allied position. The roads and railways
148 The Battle of the Rivers
converging upon the city made it an advanced
base of the first importance. Driven out of
Rheims, the AlHes would have found their com-
munications between Noyon and Verdun hope-
lessly confused. Neither reinforcements, nor
munitions, nor supplies could have been brought
up save by difficult and circuitous routes. A
general retreat must have become imperative,
and all the advantages arising from the recent
victory on the Marne have been lost.
Why, then, it may be asked, did the Germans
not keep Rheims when they had it? To that
question there is but one answer. The Germans
evacuated Rheims because they had no choice.
Possession of Rheims means command of all
the country between the Aisne and the Marne,
because that possession also means command of
the communications. From Roman times the
military importance of the city has been recog-
nised. Eight great roads converge into it from
as many points of the compass. These are
military roa3"s, made originally by the Romans,
and mostly straight as arrows. They are now
supplemented, but in time of war not super-
seded, by the railways.
The occupation of Rheims by the Germans,
and their forced evacuation of the place twelve
days later, are two of the most notable episodes
of the campaign. If there was one position
where it might have been expected the French
would make a stand between Belgium and Paris,
it was assuredly here. The Germans looked for
that opposition. The city was plainly too
The Struggle Round Rheims 149
valuable a prize, and too important a military
possession to be yielded without a struggle. Yet
when the invaders came within sight of it, there
were no signs of resistance. As they debouched
from the highlands the splendid picture which
spread before their eyes to the south-west was
touched with a strange peace. Framed in its
theatre of wooded hills, and dominated by the
twin towers of its peerless cathedral, the lordly
city, a seat of civilisation and the arts when
ancient Germany was still a wilderness, seemed
far removed from the scene of war. No cannon
boomed from any of its surrounding forts ; no
trenches were anywhere visible; no troops could
be seen along the distant roads. German officers
swept the landscape with their field glasses.
They found a military blank. Naturally, they
suspected a ruse. Volunteers were called for,
and a band of eighteen valiants enrolled them-
selves. The eighteen rode into the city. They
were not molested. At the same time, another
band crept cautiously up to the nearest of the
outlying forts. They entered it without chal-
lenge. It was empty. Both bands came back
to headquarters with the same surprising report.
The French troops had fled to the last man.
What better proof could there be of total de-
moralisation ?
Now, there was a ruse, and if anything could
illustrate the combined boldness and depth of
the French strategy it was this. Let us see
what the ruse was. To begin with, Rheims was
supposed to be a fortress, but the forts, situated
150 The Battle of the Rivers
on the surrounding hills, and constructed after
the war of 1870-71, were mere earthworks. They
were not adapted to withstand modern artillery.
It was part of the French plan that they should
not be adapted. On the contrary, just before
the German advance, the forts had been dis-
mantled and abandoned. That measure had
been postponed to the last moment, and though
the invaders had their spies at Rheims, as else-
where, they remained unaware of it.
Clearly the effect of the abandonment was a
belief that the French were already, to all in-
tents, beaten. In the Berlin papers there
appeared glowing accounts of the triumph.
Conversely, at all events in England among
those who did not know^, the French evacuation
came as a shock. This was all part of the fore-
seen result. It not only heightened the con-
fidence of the German armies, but it had no
small influence on that fatal change of plan on
their part which we may now sa}'- was decided
upon at this very time. General Joffre purposely
misled the enemy, both as to the power at his
command, and as to his disposition of that
power.
Thus it was that the Germans, unopposed,
made their triumphal entry. They swept
through the famous Gate of Mars, the
triumphal arch built by the then townsmen of
Rheims in honour of Julius Caesar and Augustus
and to mark the completion of the scheme of
military roads by Agrippa. They parked their
cannon along the noble Public Promenade which
The Struggle Round Rheims 151
stretches beyond this great monument. In the
square before the Cathedral, about which at that
time German war correspondents went into
ecstasies of admiration, the statue of Joan of
Arc was ringed by stacks of German lances.
Ranks of men in pickelhauben, headed by bands
playing " Deutschland iiber Alles," were in
movement along the great Boulevard Victor
Hugo. The very name now seemed a mockery.
Rheims appeared helpless. Taking possession
of the town hall, the invaders seized the Mayor,
Dr. Langlet, and compelled him to remain up
all through the succeeding night issuing the
orders which they dictated at the muzzle of a
revolver.^ Nearly one hundred of the leading
citizens found themselves placed under arrest
as hostages. This was alleged to be a guarantee
for the preservation of order. As a fact, it was
intended to assist collection, both of the heavy
"fine " imposed on the city, and of the extortion-
ate requisitions demanded in kind. With the
stocks of champagne contained in the labyrinth
of vast cellars hollowed out beneath Rheims in
the chalk rock, the German officers made them-
selves unrestrainedly free. The occupation de-
generated into an orgie. Much wine that could
not be consumed was, on the advance being
resumed, taken to the front, loaded on ambulance
wagons.^ It is alleged that nearly 2,000,000
* This incident was narrated by the special corre-
spondent of the Berliner Tageblatt.
^ Letters from the front published in the Berlin news-
papers leave no doubt on this point. One such
152 The Battle of the Rivers
bottles of wine were either consumed, plundered,
or wasted.
Every house, too, had its complement of
soldiers billeted on the occupants. When they
marched south to the Marne, the Germans had
been refreshed w-ith unwonted good cheer and
by rest in comfortable beds.
But three days later there began to come in,
both by road and by railway, convoys of
wounded, and these swelled in number day by
day, until every hotel and many houses had been
filled with human wrecks of battle. The Cathe-
dral, its floor strewn with straw, was turned into
a great hospital. All this, however, was but a
presage. Rarely has there been in so brief a
time a contrast more startling than that between
the outward march of the German troops and
their return.
Just ten days had gone by when Rheims
witnessed the influx of haggard, hungry, and
dog-tired men ; many bare-headed or bootless ;
not a few wearing uniforms which were in rags ;
numbers injured. The bands had ceased to
play. Instead of the steady march and the im-
perious word of command, there was the tramp
of a sullen, beaten, and battered army ; a tramp
mingled with shouts and curses of exasperation ;
account described how a French shell in the Battle of
the Marne wrecked an ambulance wag^on loaded with
bottles of wine — an instance of French contempt for
civilised warfare !
In 1870-71 the Germans impoverished Rheims by heavy
requisitions.
The Struggle Round Rheims 153
and the rumble of guns dragged by exhausted
horses, mercilessly lashed in order to get the
last ounce of pace out of them. All day, on
September 12, the tide of defeat rolled into
Rheims from the south, and surged out of it by
the north ; but above the clash and confusion
was borne the boom of cannon, growing steadily
louder and nearer.
Knowing that the population of Rheims had
been driven to exasperation, the Germans feared
they might be entrapped in the city by street
fighting. An evidence of their panic is found
in the proclamation which, on the morning of
September 12, they compelled the Mayor to
issue. The document speaks for itself. It
ran : —
In the event of an action being fought either
to-day or in the immediate future in the neigh-
bourhood of Rheims, or in the city itself, the
inhabitants are warned that they must remain
absolutely calm and must in no way try to take
part in tfie fighting. They must not attempt to
attack either isolated soldiers or detachments of
the German army. The erection of barricades,
the taking up of paving stones in the streets in
a w-ay to hinder the movements of troops, or, in
a word, any action that may embarrass the Ger-
man army, is formally forbidden.
With a view to securing adequately the safety
of the troops and to instil calm into the popula-
tion of Rheims, the persons named below have
been seized as hostages by the Commander-in-
Chief of the German Army. These hostages
will be hanged at the slightest attempt at dis-
order. Also, the city will be totally or partly
154 The Battle of the Rivers
burnt and the inhabitants will be hanged for any
infraction of the above.
By order of the German Authorities.
The Mayor (Dr. Langlet).
Rheims, Sept. 12, 1914.
Then followed the names of 81 of the principal
inhabitants, with their addresses, including four
priests, the list ending with the words, "and some
others."
There was good reason for this German panic.
These troops of the army of von Biilow had been
completely defeated. Of that no better evidence
can be offered than a letter found on a soldier of
the 74th German Regiment of infantry, part of
the loth army corps. The letter is of vivid
human interest.
My Dear Wife, — I have just been living
through days that defy imagination. I should
never have thought that men could stand it. Not
a second has passed but my life has been in
danger, and yet not a hair of my head has been
hurt. It was horrible, it was ghastly. But I
have been saved for you and for our happiness,
and I take heart again, although I am still
terribly unnerved. God grant that I may see
you again soon, and that this horror may soon
be over. None of us can do any more ; human
strength is at an end.
I will try to tell you about it.
On Sept. 5 the enemy were reported to be
taking up a position near St. Prix (north-east of
Paris). The loth corps, which had made an
astonishingly rapid advance, of course attacked
on the Sunday.
The Struggle Round Rheims 155
Steep slopes led up to heights which were held
in considerable force. With our weak detach-
ments of the 74th and 91st Regiments we reached
the crest and came under a terrible artillery fire
that mowed us down. However, we entered St.
Prix. Hardly had we done so than we were met
with shell fire and a violent fusillade from the
enemy's infantry. Our colonel was badly
wounded — he is the third we have had. Four-
teen men were killed round me. . . . We got away
in a lull without being hit.
The 7th, 8th, and gth of Sept. we were con-
stantly under shell and shrapnel fire, and suffered
terrible losses. I was in a house which was hit
several times. The fear of a death of agony
which is in every man's heart, and naturally so,
is a terrible feeling.
How often I thought of you, my darling, and
what I suffered in that terrifying battle, which
extended along a front of many miles near Mont-
mirail, you cannot possibly imagine. Our heavy
artillery was being used for the siege of Mau-
beuge; we wanted it badly, as the enemy had
theirs in force, and kept up a furious bombard-
ment. For four days I was under artillery fire;
it is like hell, but a thousand times worse.
On the night of the gth the order was given
to retreat, as it would have been madness to
attempt to hold our position with our few men,
and we should have risked a terrible defeat the
next day. The first and third armies had not
been able to attack with us, as we had advanced
too rapidly. Our moral was absolutely broken.
In spite of unheard-of sacrifices we had
achieved nothing. I cannot understand how our
army, after fighting three great battles and being
terribly weakened,' was sent against a position
which "the enemy had prepared for three weeks,
I S6 The Battle of the Rivers
but naturally I know nothing of the intentions
of our chiefs. . . . They say nothing has been
lost. In a word, we retired towards Cormontreuil
and Rheims by forced marches by day and
night.
We hear that three armies are going to get into
line, entrench, rest, and then start afresh our
victorious march on Paris. It was not a defeat,
but only a strategic retreat. I have confidence
in our chiefs that everything will be successful.
Our first battalion, which has fought with un-
paralleled bravery, is reduced from 1,200 to 194
men. These numbers speak for themselves. . . .
If the defeat had been complete, the pursuit
had been relentless. The 5th French army had
excelled itself. It comprised the Algerian army
corps, and had been reinforced by the Moroccan
and Senegalese regiments. Not only along the
main roads, but along all the by-roads, and in
and among the vineyards and woods, there had
been ceaseless fighting. If one side is reflected
by the letter of the dead German soldier, that
revelation is completed by the Order issued to
his troops by General Desperey when they had
broken the enemy at Montmirail on Septem-
ber 9.
Soldiers, — Upon the memorable fields of
Montmirail, of Vauchamps, and of Champaubert,
which a century ago witnessed the victories of
our ancestors over Bliicher's Prussians, your
vigorous offensive has triumphed over the resist-
ance of the Germ.ans.
Held on his flanks, his centre broken, the
enemy is now retreating towards east and north
The Struggle Round Rheims 157
by forced marches. The most renowned army-
corps of Old Prussia, the contingents of West-
phalia, of Hanover, of Brandenburg, have retired
in haste before you.
This first success is no more than a prelude.
The enemy is shaken, but not yet decisively
beaten.
You have still to undergo severe hardships, to
make long marches, to fight hard battles.
May the image of our country, soiled by bar-
barians, always remain before your eyes. Never
was it more necessary to sacrifice all for her.
Saluting the heroes who have fallen in the
fighting of the last few days, my thoughts turn
towards you — the victors in the next battle.
Forward, soldiers, for France !
Forward for France they had gone. Thus it
was that, shut in their houses throughout the
night of September 12, the people of Rheims
heard above the uproar of the German retreat the
always swelling th.under of the French guns.
When morning broke the only German military
still left in Rheims were the abandoned wounded,
and the main streets echoed to the welcome tread
of the war-worn but triumphant defenders of the
fatherland.
Through the transverse gap from Rheims to
Berry-au-Bac on the Aisne there is one of those
wonderful old Roman roads, now a great modern
highway. The road runs nearly straight as a
ruler north-west to Laon. The first step taken
by General Desperey was to secure this road, as
well as the railway which on the western side
of the gap winds curiously in and out along the
I 5 8 The Battle of the Rivers
foot of the hills. From Berry-au-Bac north of
the Aisne the French lent most material aid to
the British attack upon Craonne. South-east of
Rheims they were occupied in securing the rail-
way to Chalons, which for some twenty miles
runs through the valley of the Vesle. Above
Rheims this valley, in character not unlike the
valley of the Aisne, but wilder, may be com-
pared to a great crack in the plateau of the high-
lands. On each side are chalk cliffs, and side
valleys of gravel soil covered with woods. Be-
tween the cliffs the river winds through flat
meadows. Towards Rheims the valley opens out
into that theatre of wooded hills in the midst of
which the city is situated.
The operations of this part of the great battle
resolved themselves partly into a struggle for
the transverse gap ; next into a gigantic combat
waged from opposite sides of the theatre of hills ;
and lastlv, into a fight for command of the upper
valley of the Vesle.
■ Sheltered among the caves and quarries on
the north-east side of the gap and of the theatre
of hills, the Germans had contrived a scheme of
defence works not less elaborate than those along
the ridge north of the Aisne, and these defence
works extended round the theatre of hills to the
outlet from the narrow part of the Vesle valley,
blockading both the main military road from
Rheims to Chalons, and also the railway.
At the outset their reduced strength limited
them to merely defensive tactics, and, as on the
north of the Aisne, they steadily, and day by
The Struggle Round Rheims 159
day, lost ground. But they then began steadily
and day by day to receive reinforcements, both
of men and of heavy artillery. The reinforce-
ments of men included a reconstitution of the
Prussian Guard drawn from its reserves at
Berlin.
Before the end of September an immense body
of additional troops had arrived at this part of the
front. On the side of the French, also, strong
reserves were hurried forward.
It will assist to understand the description of
the operations to state first their plan and pur-
pose both on the one side and the other, since
this formed strategically the critical section of the
battle.
At Conde-sur-Aisne, it will be recalled, the
Germans held a position right on the river, and
that position formed a wedge or salient jutting
into the British lines east and west of it.
The fact is recalled here because it illustrates
what in this campaign has proved a well-marked
feature of German strategy. It has been proved,
that is to say, that whenever the Germans found
it necessary to resist very heavy pressure they
seized some point capable of obstinate defence,
and, even if pushed back to right and left, kept
their grip as long as possible, using the position
as a general hold-up along that section of the
front.
Thus their grip on Conde and the Chivres
bluff was essential to their retention of the Aisne
ridge.
They had a similar position at Prunay on the
i6o The Battle of the Rivers
railway between Rheims and Chalons. The
village of Prunay is at the point where the theatre
of hills narrow's into the upper valley of the
Vesle. The position jutted out like an angle
from the German line, and it commanded the
valley.
Figuratively taking these positions of Conde-
sur-Aisne on the one side and Prunay on the
other, we may imagine the German army like a
man clinging to a couple of posts or railings and
so defying the effort to move him.
That is the aspect of the matter so far as
defensive tactics go. For offensive tactics grip
on such positions is obviously a great aid to
pressure on a hostile line lying between them.
A military salient serves exactly the same pur-
pose as a wedge. It is a device for splitting the
opposition. Here, then, were two wedges in the
Allied front, and the object was manifestly to
break off the part of the front intervening. On
that part of the front with Rheims as its main
advanced base the Allied line, all the way round
from beyond Noyon to Verdun, structurally
depended.
Such was the German scheme. But the Allies
on their part had a wedge or salient driven into
the German front at Craonne, and as they were
there two-thirds of the way along the road from
Rheims to Laon, the main advanced base and
communication centre of the German line, that
salient w^as extremely awkward. They were
intent, on their part, in hammering in their
wedge, because it meant a collapse of the whole
The Struggle Round Rheims i6i
German right flank from the Aisne ridge to the
Belgian frontier.
It is not difficult, therefore, to understand the
fury of the resulting struggle. The best troops
on both sides were engaged. In point of magni-
tude the fighting round Rheims was hardly less
than the fighting which occurred later round
Ypres.
The struggle in its acute phase lasted for fifteen
days and nights without the slightest pause or
intermission. In the tracks of the German re-
treat from the Marne great gaps among the vine-
yards, where rose mounds of earth, marked the
common graves of the slain. Along the boun-
daries of woods appeared the blackened sites of
the hecatombs. Nevertheless, many of the fallen
still lay in the woods or among the vines, un-
buried and infecting the air. Through this
country and these scenes marched the reinforce-
ments of the 5th French army. In the opposite
direction flowed a ceaseless stream of civilian
fugitives — poor people carrying their few per-
sonal belongings strapped on their backs, or
pushing them along in wheelbarrows; women
carrying children in their arms, and with other
children trailing at their skirts ; a procession on
foot and in vehicles of every sort.
Against Rheims the Germans employed much
of the artillery and material and apparatus they
had intended for the siege of Paris. On the
eastern side of the theatre of hills behind the
advanced island mass where stand the villages of
Berru and Nogent I'Abbesse, they had mounted
F
1 62 The Battle of the Rivers
their huge mortars. From these positions and
from others to the north-east they threw into
Rheims an incessant crash of monster shells.
Viewed from any of the villages of its circumfer-
ence, this theatre of hills ten miles across pre-
sented during these days a spectacle at once
grandiose and awful. The battle spread out
round and below like a panorama of fire. Out
of advanced positions among the woods on the
south-west, across by Rheims, and to the north,
hundreds of the French field guns searched the
German positions with their terrible high ex-
plosive shells. At brief regular intervals amid the
angry roar arose a deep resounding boom — the
note of the enemy's great howitzers. The earth
shook beneath the salvoes, for the French had
also massed here their heaviest artillery. Amid
the flash of bursting shells appeared here a vil-
lage, there a mill a mass of flames, with the
smoke drifting above it in a dense cloud. The
roar was that of hurricane and earthquake rolled
into one. And the uproar went on without
ceasing through all the hours of daylight, and
far into the night.
Furious and destructive as it was, however,
the artillery duel was not the deadliest part. The
great slaughter occurred when the armies came
to grips. The Germans launched an attack upon
Rheims from the north and an attack at the same
time from the south-east. Of the first attack the
immediate objective was the suburb of La
Neuvillette. That place is on the great road from
Rheims to Berry-au-Bac, and if it could be
The Struggle Round Rheims 163
seized the French positions along the transverse
gap would be endangered, and their position at
Craonne made untenable. The immediate ob-
jective of the second attack was the fort of La
Pompelle, commanding the great road to
Chalons. To the French both communications
were vital.
In the attack upon La Neuvillette the troops
employed were the re-formed Prussian Guard.
Over 40,000 strong, men for the most part in the
prime of life, and men who, though reservists,
had received the highest military training, they
formed probably as formidable a body of troops
as any in Europe. Against them were pitted the
finest of French regular infantry, including a
division 20,000 strong of the Zouaves. Both
sides fought with the fury of mutual hate. It
was a contest in which race passion had been
stirred to its depths. The Guard advanced south
along the great road from Neuchatel ; descended
into the transverse gap ; and crossed the Aisne
and Marne canal at Loivre. They braved the
deadly hail of the French 75-millimetre guns,
than which there is nothing more deadly ; they
fought through the gap against charges of the
Zouaves in which there v/as no quarter; they
reached St. Thierry ; they reached, after fourteen
hours' continuous fighting, La Neuvillette itself
— that is to say, a remnant reached it. It was a
splendid feat of courage ; for more than half the
force had fallen. At Neuvillette, however, they
were overpowered. The French troops who held
that place could not be dislodged. The scenes
r 2
164 The Battle of the Rivers
in the streets were terrible. Meanwliile, the French
had shattered the succeeding and supporting
German columns, and had closed in on the
rear. The Guards, finding themselves entrapped,
had to cut their way out. How many again
reached the German lines we do not know. It
must have been very few.
At Fort La Pompelle the garrison heroically
held out against a vastly superior force. The
fort was stormed. Then it was retaken by the
French. The order to the ofHcer commanding
was, "Fight to the last man." He fought. When
the position became desperate he appealed for
reinforcements. As he was sending off the mes-
sage he was killed by a shell. The command
devolved upon a sergeant. Relief came while the
survivors of the garrison were still resisting.
To throw the relief into La Pompelle it was
necessary to attack the tiers of trenches cut by the
Germans along the hills as far as Prunay The
French had to cross the Aisne and Oise canal,
w^hich after passing through Rheims is joined up
with the Vesle. Tiiis, in face of the German
infantry fire and in face of well-concealed bat-
teries of guns, was a desperate business. It was
done not only through the dauntless courage of
the French foot, but by the terrible effect of their
artillery. The Germans, notwithstanding, ad-
vanced from their trenches to dispute the passage.
There was a hand-to-hand battle in the canal
itself — a battle to the death. The French won
over; they carried the first line of German
trenches ; supports, regiment after regiment, were
The Struggle Round Rheims 165
thrown across; they carried the second Hne; then
the third; at each it was bayonet work, thrust
and parry.
But the Germans still clung to Prunay. That
place was the real centre of this part of the
struggle. The village lies between the Rheims-
Chalons railway line and the Vesle. Out of the
place the enemy had to be cleared, cost what it
might. It was one of those episodes in which
an army puts forth its whole strength of nerve.
From the wooded heights above the valley a
massing of German batteries sought to wither
the attack. A massing of French batteries on the
nearer side strove to put the German guns out of
action. The duel was gigantic. Reports of the
guns became no longer distinguishable. They
were merged into what seemed one continued
solid and unbroken explosion. The French
infantry advanced to the assault. Their losses
were heavy. Prunay was set alight by shells.
Still the attack was pressed. Then the ring of
fire round the distant woods which marked the
line of German batteries became ragged, and
died down. The French guns had proved their
superiority. At the point of the bayonet the Ger-
mans were driven out of Prunay and across the
railway. Here they made a last stand. It was
in vain. French gunners were now racing their
pieces forward and opening in new positions;
German batteries, on the other hand, were seen
limbering up and in flight. At last, as night fell,
the Germans broke in rout along the road to
Beine. Prunay they had lost for good.
1 66 The Battle of the Rivers
These were leading but only typical episodes
of those fifteen days. The fighting went on, too,
through the night. As daylight faded, masses of
Algerian and Moroccan troops, held in reserve,
crept forward, and gathered stealthily in chalk-
pits or among the woods. They moved with an
almost catlike tread. In these secret rendezvous
they waited until the dead of night. Then in file
after file, thousands of them, they stole up, in-
visible, to the German trenches; and in the first
faint shimmer of dawn launched themselves with
a savage yell upon the foe. There was terrible
work among those hills.
Do these episodes throw no light on the
damage done to Rheims Cathedral ? Here
round Rheims and north of the Aisne had been
the mightiest effort the German armies had yet
made. Here was concentrated the full force of
their most disciplined and most valiant troops.
Those troops had been sacrificed and with no re-
sult. Many storms of war had passed by the
cathedral at Rheims since it was completed in
123 1, and from the time when nearly a hundred
more years of patient labour had put the last
touches on its marvellous sculptures, and it had
stood forth a thing of wonder and of beauty, no
hand of violence had been laid on its consecrated
stones. At the news that Prussian cannon had
been turned upon it to destroy it, and had reduced
it to a burned-out skeleton, from which Prussian
wounded had to be carried out lest they should
be roasted alive, the whole civilised world gasped.
Mr. E. Ashmead-Bartlett, who visited the
The Struggle Round Rheims 167
cathedral while the bombardment was going on,
sent to the Daily Telegraph a remarkable account
of his experiences.
"Round the cathedral," he wrote, "hardly
a house had escaped damage, and even before
we reached the open square in which it
stands it became evident that the Germans
had concentrated their fire on the building.
The pavement of the square had been torn
up by the bursting of these 6-in. shells and
was covered with fragments of steel, cracked
masonry, glass, and loose stones. In front
of the fa9ade of the cathedral stands the well-
known statue of Jeanne d'Arc. Someone had
placed a Tricolour in her outstretched arm.
The great shells had burst all round her, leaving
the Maid of Orleans and her flag unscathed, but
her horse's belly and legs were chipped and
seared with fragments of flying steel.
" At the first view the exterior of the cathedral
did not appear to have suffered much damage,
although the masonry was chipped and scarred
white by countless shrapnel bullets or pieces of
steel, and many of the carved figures and gar-
goyles on the western facade were broken and
chipped.
"We found no one in the square; in fact, this
part of the town appeared to be deserted, but
as we approached the main entrance to try to
obtain admittance a curious sight met our eyes.
We saw the recumbent figure of a man lying
against the door. He had long since lost both
his legs, which had been replaced by wooden
1 68 The Battle of the Rivers
stumps. He lay covered with dust, small stones,
and broken glass, which had been thrown over
him by bursting shells, but by some chance his
remaining limbs had escaped all injury. This
old veteran of the war of 1870, as he described
himself, has accosted all and sundry at the gate
of the cathedral for generations past, and even
in the midst of the bombardment he had crawled
once more to his accustomed post. As we
knocked on the great w'ooden door, from this
shapeless and filthy wreck of what had once been
a man there came the feeble cry : ' Monsieur, un
petit sou. Monsieur, un petit sou.'
"Our knock was answered by a priest, who, on
seeing that we were English, at once allowed us
to enter. The father then told us, in language
that was not altogether priestly, when speaking
of the vandals whose guns w^ere still thundering
outside, of how the Germans had bombarded the
cathedral for two hours that morning, landing
over fifty shells in its immediate neighbourhood,
but, luckily, the range being very great, over
eight kilometres, the solid stonework of the
building had resisted the successive shocks of
these six-inch howitzers, and how it was that
ancient and priceless glass which had suffered the
most.^
"' Monsieur, they respect nothing. We placed
125 of them inside and hoisted the red cross on
the spire in order to protect the cathedral, and
* The windows of Rheims Cathedral were filled with
stained Venetian g^lass dating from the 12th century and
impossible to replace.
The Struggle Round Rheims 169
yet they fire at it all the same, and have killed
their own soldiers. Pray, monsieur, make these
facts known all over Europe and America.'
"With these words he unlocked a wicket and
conducted us toward the altar, close to which
stands a small painted statue of Jeanne d'Arc.
The east end of Notre Dame had up to this period
suffered but little, and although some of the win-
dows were damaged they were not lost beyond
repair. The light still shone through in rays of
dark blue and red, broken here and there by
streaks of pure light.
"Then our guide conducted us to the great cold
stone body of the cathedral, where the Gothic
pillars rise in sombre majesty, relieved by no
ornamentation 1 until they hold aloft the blue
masterpieces of the unknowm artist. Here one
of the strangest of spectacles met the eye. The
whole of this vast vault w-as covered with dust
half an inch thick, with chipped-off masonry,
pieces of lead piping from the shattered windows,
and with countless fragments of varied coloured
glass. In the centre lay an ancient candelabrum
which had hung for centuries from the roof
suspended by a steel chain. That morning a
fragment of shell had cut the chain in half and
dropped its ancient burden to the hard stone floor
beneath, where it lay bent and crumpled.
1 The interior of Rheims Cathedral was furnished with
sixty-six large pieces of priceless old tapestry, represent-
ing scenes in the life of Christ, the story of the Virgin,
and scenes from the life of St. Paul, the latter after
designs by Raphael. These tapestries had been removed
to a place of safety.
170 The Battle of the Rivers
"A great wave of sunshine lit up a sombre
picture of carnage and suffering at the western
end near the main entrance. Here on piles of
straw lay the wounded Germans in all stages of
suffering — their round shaven heads, thin
cheeks, and bluish-grey uniforms contrasting
strangely with the sombre black of the silent
priests attending them, while in the background
the red trousers of the French soldiers were just
visible on the steps outside. Most of the
wounded had dragged their straw behind the
great Gothic pillars as if seeking shelter from
their own shells. The priest conducted us to
one of the aisles beneath the window where the
shell had entered that morning. A great pool of
blood lay there, staining the column just as the
blood of Thomas a Becket must have stained the
altar of Canterbury seven centuries before.
" ' That, Monsieur, is the blood of the French
gendarme who was killed at eleven this morning,
but he did not go alone.' The priest pointed to
two more recumbent figures clad in the bluish-
grey of the Kaiser's legions. There they lay
stiff and cold as the effigies around them. All
three had perished by the same shell. Civilian
doctors of Rheims moved amongst the wounded,
who for the most part maintained an attitude
of stoical indifference to everything around them.
We moved around collecting fragments of the
precious glass which the Kaiser had so unex-
pectedly thrown within our reach. We were
brought back to realities by hearing the unmis-
takable whistle of an approaching shell, followed
The Struggle Round Rheims 171
by a deafening explosion, and more fragments
of glass came tumbling from aloft. The weary
war-worn Teutons instinctively huddled closer
to the Gothic arches. A dying officer, his eyes
already fixed in a glassy stare on the sunlight
above, gave an involuntary groan. We heard
outside the crash of falling masonry. The shell
was followed by another, and more breaking
glass. Our chauffeur came hastening in with
the Virgin's broken arm in his hands. A frag-
ment of shell had broken it off outside. We
lingered long gazing at this strange scene.
"Outside the guns were thundering all round
Rheims."
It was after this that the cathedral was set on
fire by the shells.
CHAPTER X
REVIEW OF RESULTS
Had the fighting round Rheims and the
fighting north of the Aisne no result? Were
these combats, vast as they were, merely drawn
combats? By no means. North of the Aisne
the British gained the eastern end of the ridge ;
round Rheims the French won all the eastern
side of the theatre of hills, with the exception
of Nogent TAbbesse, and also the eastern side
of the transverse gap. Those results were both
decisive and important.
They were decisive and important because
they achieved strategical purposes vital to the
Allied campaign. Let us try to make that
clear.
When after the defeat on the Marne the Ger-
mans took up their new line from the north of
the Aisne to the Argonne, their utmost energy
and resource were put forth to send into the
fighting line from Germany fresh reserve forma-
tions which would give their forces not only a
numerical but a military superiority.
Review of Results 173
But the effect and value of those fresh masses
clearly depended on their being employed at the
decisive points. Where were those decisive
points ?
The decisive points were first the extreme left
of the Allied line, where it turned round from the
north of the Aisne to the Oise, and secondly
Verdun and along- the eastern frontier.
Consider the effect had the Germans been able
promptly to throw decisively superior forces
against the Allies at those points. They would
have turned both flanks of the Allied line, they
would have forced a general retreat, and they
would have been able once more to resume the
offensive, but this time probably with the forti-
fied frontier in their hands.
There can be no doubt that, broadly, that was
their intention ; and it was plainly seen by
General Joffre to be their intention, because east-
ward from Rheims to the Argonne in their forti-
fied line across the highlands the Germans re-
mained from first to last upon the defensive.
This, however, was the situation the Germans
had to meet : between the Aisne and the Oise a
new and powerful French army under the com-
mand of General de Castlenau ; on the Aisne
and round Rheims, a tremendous and sustained
onset by the 6th French, the British, and the 5th
French army; between Rheims and the Argonne,
an offensive which pushed them successively out
of Suippes, and Souain, and therefore off the
great cross-roads ; in the Argonne, an offensive
which forced them back from St. Menehould and
174 The Battle of the Rivers
beyond Varennes, and closed the defiles; round
Verdun, and in the Woeuvre, an onset which
threatened to cut communications with Metz.
Now the effect of these operations was, among
other things, to restrict the German means of
movement and supply ; and it was a consequence
of that restriction that even though there might
be two or more millions of men then ready in
Germany to be sent forward, there were neither
roads nor railways enough to send them forward
save after delay, nor roads or railways enough to
keep them supplied when they had been sent.
With the means at their disposal — those means
were still great, though not great enough — the
German Government had to choose between vari-
ous alternatives. As to the choice they made,
later events leave no doubt. They sent forward
troops enough to defend their flank between the
Aisne and the Oise — it was all at the moment
they could do ; and they employed the best and
heaviest of their masses of reserves partly to
resist the British attack, but mainly to resist the
5th French army. At this time they had to let
the position in the Argonne, round Verdun, and
on the eastern frontier go ; that is to say, they
had there to remain for the time being on the
defensive.
The fighting north of the Aisne and round
Rheims therefore crippled their operations at
what were, in truth, the decisive points — the
Allied flanks ; and that was unavoidable, because
unless the centre of their line remained secure,
operations on the flanks would be impracticable.
Review of Results 175
But these operations in the centre used up
their best troops.
Conversely, of course, the same operations left
General Joffre the more free both to pursue his
envelopment of the Germans on their flank
northwards from the Aisne towards the Belgian
frontier, and to go on with his seizures of posi-
tions round Verdun and on the eastern frontier,
seizures which pressed upon and embarrassed
the German communications, and consequently
limited the total strength they could put into the
field.
It will be seen, therefore, that the fighting
north of the Aisne and round Rheims was im-
portant and was decisive.
The fact must not be lost sight of that the
aim of the Germans was at this time, if they
could, to re-seize the initiative. Again the fact
ought to be kept in mind that the aim of the
Allied strategy was not to drive the German
armies from France, but both to prevent them
from getting out of France and to destroy them
as a military force. If we know the governing
motive on each side, we hold the key to the
strategy adopted. Here the governing motive
of neither was a "secret.
To show the effect of governing motive, let
us in the first instance follow the course of
German strategy. We shall find that from the
middle of September, during the succeeding
nine weeks — that is, until about November 20 —
they made six great efforts, any one of which,
had it succeeded, would once more have given
176 The Battle of the Rivers
them the initiative in this western campaign.
The first was the effort to break the AlHed line
at Rheims.
Foiled in their outflanking scheme by the
inherent difficulties of the situation, but not less
by the powerful Allied attack north of the Aisne
and round Rheims, there can be no question that
the German Headquarters Staff decided that
their best, most direct, and most decisive stroke
would be a counter-offensive made against
Rheims with their utmost force, and as the
situation stood at the end of September, there
can be no question that they were right.
Had the effort succeeded both parts of the
Allies' line must have been forced into retreat
and their communications severed. This success
must have changed the entire aspect of the
western operations. For the Allies it would have
been a disaster of the first magnitude. If in this
effort the Germans sacrificed their best troops, it
affords only another illustration of the statement
that they do not make such sacrifices without what
they consider good cause.
But the effort failed, and the German Head-
quarters Staff, at any rate, must have realised that
the failure and the cost of it had imperilled the
whole position of their armies in France. Matters
of this kind have not to be judged only by ground
lost or won. The success or failure to achieve
objectives is the true test.
Meanwhile heavy forces of the Allies had been
massed against the German right flank. The
next effort of the Germans consequently was to
Review of Results 177
push back those forces. They met the out-
flanking movement in the way such movements
can best be met — by trying to outflank the out-
flankers.
At this time the AlUed forces on the flank
extended from near Noyon on the Oise north-
ward to the Somme. The Germans promptly
pushed westward in force north of the Somme
and across the outside edge of the AlHed line
to the town of Albert and the heights command-
ing it.
With notable promptitude, however, the Allied
line was extended across the Somme to the north,
and by the west of Arras, and the German move-
ment was held. Gradually, after days of ob-
stinate fighting, the enemy were battled out of
Albert and then out of Arras; and the Allied
outflanking line was stretched up to Bethune
and La Bass^e.
Night and day, day and night, by railway, by
motor-omnibus, on motor-cars,^ French troops
during three whole weeks were rushed up from
the south and west of France. This movement
towards the fighting line had begun with the
pursuit after the Battle of the Marne. It never
ceased. First the army of General de Castlenau
appeared on the front. Next came the army of
General de Maudhuy. Territorials and marines
from the fleet were hurried into the service;
(divisions of cavalry spaced out the line, and
defended communications. In Germany as in
* Some 70,000 motor-cars and motor-omnibuses are
said to have been employed.
178 The Battle of the Rivers
France no effort was spared. The issue was
momentous. During these first weeks of October
the German Government put forth its supreme
effort to stem and to turn the adverse tide of
war. Hitherto they had found their measures
baffled. Two new and powerful French armies
had fastened on to the flank of their position.
Their own forces had come up just too late.
The peril was menacing and it was growing.
They redoubled their energies.
Their decision was another supreme effort to
outflank the outflankers. With fresh masses of
Reservists, sent westward at all possible speed,
they pushed behind a heavy screen of cavalry
across the Aa and across the Lys at Estaires and
threatened the rear of the French troops holding
Bethune.
It is probably not realised that this was strate-
gically the most important offensive movement
the Germans had made in the western theatre of
war since their advance upon Paris.
Yet that undoubtedly was the fact. Had the
movement succeeded it must not only have given
them control of the north-east coast of France as
far probably as Havre, but it must have rolled
up the Allied line as far as Noyon. The whole
original scheme of turning the Allies' left flank
would have been within realisation.
The movement did not succeed. It was met by
a counter-move probably as unexpected by the
Germans as it was bold. The counter-move was
the transfer of the British army from the Aisne.
Recognising the decisive character of these
Review of Results 179
operations, General Joffre had entrusted the con-
trol of affairs on this part of the front to General
Foch, not only one of the ablest among the able
soldiers whom this war has shown the French
Army to possess, but one of the most brilliant
authorities on the science of modern military
tactics. As he had met the situation magnifi-
cently at Sezanne, so now he met it with equal
resource under circumstances hardly less critical.
There were now three French armies on the
German flank, and they fought as they were led
with a skill equal to their valour. Yet the neces-
sity remained for a great counter-stroke. In
view of that necessity the idea occurred to Sir
John French to transfer the British army, a
proposal to which General Joffre at once agreed.
It is beyond the scope of this volume to enter
into details of the new great battle which, begin-
ning with the arrival of the British troops, cul-
minated in the heroic defence of Ypres. Justice
could not be done to that great and memorable
feat of arms in a brief summary.
Suffice it to say that here, on the great coal-
field of northern France, in a labyrinth of railway
sidings and canals, villages and lanes, pit heaps,
and factories, the British troops, helped by the
French cavalry, after furious fighting, drove back
the Germans from the Aa and the Lys and took
up a line continuing the outflanking positions
from La Bassee to Ypres in Belgium.
A third effort of the Germans to outflank the
outflanking line was directed across the Yser.
This was the last attempt of the kind that could
i8o The Battle of the Rivers
be made. Its success was consequently vital^
and its failure equally disastrous. Again it
illustrates the fact that the Germans sacrifice
neither money nor lives without good cause.
The fighting on the Yser was as deadly for the
enemy as the fighting round Rheims.
Coincidently, however, with these move-
ments were others of a different kind. The
official communiques, covering the two kinds of
movements as the evidences of them appeared
day by day, have naturally led to a certain
amount of mystification — not intentional, but in-
evitable from the brevity and caution of these
statements and the fact that they cover separately
only the operations of a few hours.
The movements of a different kind were those
designed at one point or another to drive a wedge
or salient into the Allied front.
In the operations on the German flank between
the Aisne and the Belgian coast there have been
two main efforts of that character. The first
was the attempt to split the Allied front at
Roye and at Arras, and to break up the line
between those places ; the second was the effort
on an even larger scale, and pursued with still
greater determination, to split the front at La
Bass^e and at Ypres, and to break up the line
intervening.
It is no mere accident that this latter attempt
followed immediately on the failure to cross the
Yser. The attempt arose out of ike necessity of
the situation.
On the Upper Meuse, by another great effort,
Review of Results 1 8 1
the Germans had driven a wedge into the French
fortified frontier at St. Mihiel, and that wedge
appeared to some the prelude of a mysterious
scheme. In fact, the intention and the effect of
it was to hold off the French advance along the
frontier of Lorraine and across the Vosges.
Again it is the case of a desperate man clinging
to a railing.
We have, therefore, three great efforts to break
the Allied front by their wedge tactics, and
three to outflank the Allied outflanking develop-
ment. None of these efforts succeeded.
What was the consequence ? The consequence
was that the German armies in France and Bel-
gium could neither advance nor retreat. They
could not advance because they are not strong
enough. They could not retreat, because retreat
would mean their destruction.
The retreat of any army — and most of all the
retreat of a huge mass army — is not a simple
matter. On the contrary, it is a most difficult
and complex operation in the most favourable
circumstances. Here, however, was not one mass
army, but a line of mass armies, occupying a
front forming a right angle, and opposed on
each arm of that right angle by forces which
had proved stronger than they. So situated,
they could only retreat with any chance of safety
by falling directly back ; but either arm of the
angle if it fell directly back must obstruct the
retreat of the other ; and if they fell directly
back each at the same time, their movements
must become exactly like those of the blades
1 82 The Battle of the Rivers
of a pair of scissors as they are being closed.
A retreat under such conditions is a military
impossibility.
Not a few fantastic motives have been attri-
buted to the Germans, more particularly as
regards the terrible struggle in West Flanders,
but the plain truth of the matter is that here
stated.
Now if we turn to the strategy of the Allies,
bearing their governing motive in mind, we
shall find that it rested primarily on the attack
launched against the German positions north of
the Aisne and round Rheims.
That attack wrecked the German scheme for
resuming the offensive, and was the most effec-
tive means of assuring that end. It is im-
possible indeed not to recognise that the feat
which reduced a force like the German armies to
immobility is a masterpiece of strategy wholly
without parallel in the annals of war. Whether
we look at the breadth and boldness of its con-
ception, at the patience and command of
organisation with which it was carried out, at
the grasp it displayed of the real conditions
governing the operations of modern mass armies,
or at the clear purpose and unswerving resolution
with which it was followed, the plan equally calls
forth surprise and admiration.
From the military standpoint, victory or de-
feat is the answer to the question : Which side
has accomplished the purpose it had in view?
The German purpose of re-seizing the initia-
tive was not accomplished. The German scheme
Review of Results 183
of turning either one or both flanks of the Allied
line was not accomplished. That is military
failure.
From the beginning of October, when the
struggle round Rheims was at its height, the
feature of the campaign broadly was that the
weight of the fighting passed progressively from
the centre of the fighting front to the wings — to
West Flanders on the one side, and to the
Argonne and the Upper Meuse on the other.
Progressively the Allied forces were placed where
it was intended they should be placed. They
accomplished the purpose which it was intended
they should accomplish — that of keeping the
main military strength of Germany helpless
while they wasted that strength. That is mili-
tary success.
To sum up. The Germans entered France
with a force of more than a million and a half
of men. The like of such a military expedition
the world till then had never seen. The plan of
it had been studied and worked out in detail for
years. On the preparations for it had been
bestowed a colossal labour. It appeared certain
of success. It was defeated by an exercise of
military skill and resource which, however re-
garded, must stand as one of the greatest records
of mastery in the art of war.
APPENDIX
Despatches of Field-Marshal Sir John French on the
Battles of the Marne and the Aisne, addressed to Lord
Kitchener, Secretary of State for War.
I.
Sept. 17, 1914.
My Lord —
In continuation of my despatch of Sept. 7, I have
the honour to report the further progress of the opera-
tions of the forces under my command from Aug. 28.
On that evening the retirement of the force was
followed closely by two of the enemy's cavalry columns,
moving south-east from St. Quentin.
The retreat in this part of the field was being covered
by the 3rd and 5th Cavalry Brigades. South of the
Somme General Gough, with the 3rd Cavalry Brigade,
threw back the Uhlans of the Guard with considerable
loss.
General Chetwode, with the 5th Cavalry Brigade,
encountered the eastern column near C^rizy, moving
south. The Brigade attacked and routed the column,
the leading German regiment suffering very severe
casualties and being almost broken up.
The 7th French Army Corps was now in course of
being railed up from the south to the east of Amiens.
On the 29th it nearly completed its detrainment, and the
French 6th Army got into position on my left, its right
resting on Roye.
The 5th French Army was behind the line of the Oise
between La F^re and Guise.
184
Appendix 185
The pursuit of the enemy was very vigorous ; some
five or six German corps were on the Somme, facing the
5th Army on the Oise. At least two corps were
advancing towards my front, and were crossing the
Somme east and west of Ham. Three or four more
German corps were opposing the 6th French Army on
my left.
This was the situation at one o'clock on the 29th,
when I received a visit from General Joffre at my head-
quarters.
I strongly represented my position to the French
Commander-in-Chief, who was most kind, cordial, and
sympathetic, as he has always been. He told me that
he had directed the 5th French Army on the Oise to
move forward and attack the Germans on the Somme,
with a view to checking pursuit. He also told me of
the formation of the 6th French Army on my left flank,
composed of the 7th Army Corps, four reserve divisions,
and Sordet's corps of cavalry.
I finally arranged with General Joffre to effect a
further short retirement towards the line Compi^gne-
Soissons, promising him, however, to do my utmost to
keep always within a day's march of him.
In pursuance of this arrangement the British forces
retired to a position a few miles north of the line
Compi^gne-Soissons on the 29th.
The right flank of the German army was now reach-
ing a point which appeared seriously to endanger my
line of communications with Havre. I had already
evacuated Amiens, into which place a German reserve
division was reported to have moved.
Orders were given to change the base to St. Nazaire,
and establish an advance base at Le Mans. This opera-
tion was well carried out by the Inspector-General of
Communications.
In spite of a severe defeat inflicted upon the Guard
loth and Guard Reserve Corps of the German army by
the ist and 3rd French Corps on the right of the 5th
Army, it was not part of General Joffre's plan to pursue
this advantage, and a general retirement on to the line
1 86 The Battle of the Rivers
of the Marne was ordered, to which the French forces
in the more eastern theatre were directed to conform.
A new army (the 9th) has been formed from three
corps in the south by General Joffre, and moved into the
space between the right of the 5th and left of the 4th
Armies.
Whilst closely adhering- to his strategic conception to
draw the enemy on at all points until a favourable
situation was created from which to assume the offensive,
General Joffre found it necessary to modify from day to
day the methods by which he sought to attain this
object, owing to the development of the enemy's plans
and changes in the general situation.
In conformity with the movements of the French
forces, my retirement continued practically from day to
day. Although we were not severely pressed by the
enemy, rearguard actions took place continually.
On Sept. I, when retiring from the thickly- wooded
country to the south of Compiegne, the ist Cavalry
Brigade was overtaken by some German cavalry. They
momentarily lost a horse artillery battery, and several
officers and men were killed and wounded. With the
help, however, of some detachments from the 3rd Corps
operating on their left, they not only recovered their
own guns, but succeeded in capturing twelve of the
enemy's.
Similarly, to the eastward, the ist Corps, retiring
south, also got into some very difficult forest country,
and a somewhat severe rearguard action ensued at
Villers-Cotterets, in which the 4th Guards Brigade
suffered considerably.
On Sept. 3 the British forces were in position south
of the Marne between Lagny and Signy-Signets. Up to
this time I had been requested by General Joffre to
defend the passages of the river as long as possible, and
to blow up the bridges in my front. After I had made
the necessary dispositions, and the destruction of the
bridges had been effected, I was asked by the French
Commander-in-Chief to continue my retirement to a
point some twelve miles in rear of the position I then
I
Appendix 187
occupied, with a view to taking up a second position
behind the Seine. This retirement was duly carried out.
In the meantime the enemy had thrown bridges and
crossed the Marne in considerable force, and was
threatening the Allies all along- the line of the British
forces and the 5th and 9th French armies. Consequently
several small outpost actions took place.
On Saturday, Sept. 5, I met the French Commander-
in-Chief at his request, and he informed me of his
intention to take the offensive forthwith, as he con-
sidered conditions were very favourable to success.
General Joffre announced to me his intention of wheel-
ing up the left f^ank of the 6th Army, pivoting on the
Marne, and directing it to move on the Ourcq ; cross
and attack the flank of the ist German Army, which
was then moving in a south-easterly direction east of
that river.
He requested me to effect a change of front to my
right — my left resting on the Marne and my right on
the 5th Army — to fill the gap between that army and the
6th. I was then to advance against the enemy in my
front and join in the general offensive movement.
These combined movements practically commenced on
Sunday, Sept. 6, at sunrise; and on that day it may
be said that a great battle opened on a front extending
from Ermenonville, which was just in front of the left
flank of the 6th French Army, through Lizy on the
Marne, Mauperthuis, which was about the British centre,
Courtecon, which was the left of the 5th French Army,
to Esternay and Charleville, the left of the 9th Army
under General Foch, and so along the front of the 9th,
4th, and 3rd French Armies to a point north of the
fortress of Verdun.
This battle, in so far as the 6th French Army, the
British Army, the 5th French Army, and the 9th French
Army were concerned, may be said to have concluded on
the evening of Sept. 10, by which time the Germans
had been driven back to the line Soissons-Rheirns, with
a loss of thousands of prisoners, many guns, and enor-
mous masses of transport.
1 88 The Battle of the Rivers
About Sept. 3 the enemy appears to have changed his
plans and to have determined to stop his advance south
direct upon Paris, for on Sept. 4 air reconnaissances
showed that his main columns were moving in a south-
easterly direction generally east of a line drawn through
Nanteuil and Lizy on the Ourcq.
On Sept. 5 several of these columns were observed to
have crossed the Marne ; whilst German troops, which
were observed moving south-east up the left bank of the
Ourcq on the 4th, were now reported to be halted and
facing that river. Heads of the enemy's columns were
seen crossing at Changis, La Fert6, Nogent, Chateau-
Thierry, and Mezy.
Considerable German columns of all arms were seen
to be converging on Montmirail, whilst before sunset
large bivouacs of the enemy were located in the neigh-
bourhood of Coulommiers, south of Rebais, La Fertd-
Gaucher and Dagny.
I should conceive it to have been about noon on Sept.
6, after the British forces had changed their front to the
right and occupied the line Jouy-Le Chatel-Faremoutiers-
Villeneuve Le Comte, and the advance of the 6th French
Army north of the Marne towards the Ourcq became
apparent, 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 above referred to.
On the evening of Sept. 6, therefore, the fronts and
positions of the opposing armies were, roughly, as
follows :
Allies.
6th French Army. — Right on the Marne at Meux, left
towards Betz.
British Forces. — On the line Dagny-Coulommiers-
Maison.
5th French Army. — At Courtagon, right on Esternay.
Conneau's Cavalry Corps. — Between the right of the
British and the left of the French 5th Army.
Appendix 189
Germans.
4th Reserve and 2nd Corps.— East of the Ourcq and
facing that river.
9th Cavalry Division. — West of Crecy.
2nd Cavalry Division. North of Coulommiers.
4th Corps. — Rebais.
3rd and 7th Corps. — South-west of Montmirail.
All these troops constituted the ist German Army,
which was directed against the French 6th Army on the
Ourcq, and the British forces, and the left of the 5th
French Army south of the Marne.
The 2nd German Army (IX., X., X.R. and Guard) was
moving against the centre and right of the 5th French
Army and the 9th French Army.
On Sept. 7 both the 5th and 6th French Armies were
heavily engaged on our flank. The 2nd and 4th Reserve
German Corps on the Ourcq vigorously opposed the
advance of the French towards that river, but did not
prevent the 6th Army from gaining some headway, the
Germans themselves suffering serious losses. The
French 5th Army threw the enemy back to the line of
the Petit Morin River, after inflicting severe losses upon
them, especially about Montceaux, which was carried at
the point of the bayonet.
The enemy retreated before our advance, covered by
his 2nd and 9th and Guard Cavalry Divisions, which
suffered severely.
Our cavalry acted with great vigour, especially
General De Lisle 's Brigade, with the 9th Lancers and
18th Hussars.
On Sept. 8 the enemy continued his retreat northward,
and our army was successfully engaged during the day
with strong rearguards of all arms on the Petit Morin
River, thereby materially assisting the progress of the
French armies on our right and left, against whom the
enemy was making his greatest efforts. On both sides
the enemy was thrown back with very heavy loss. The
First Army Corps encountered stubborn resistance at La
IQO The Battle of the Rivers
Tr^toire (north of Rebais). The enemy occupied a strong
position with infantry and guns on the northern bank of
the Petit Morin River ; they were dislodged with con-
siderable loss. Several machine guns and many prisoners
were captured, and upwards of 200 German dead were
left on the ground.
The forcing of the Petit Morin at this point was much
assisted by the cavalry and the ist Division, which
crossed higher up the stream.
Later in the day a counter attack by the enemj' was
well repulsed by the First Army Corps, a great many
prisoners and some guns again falling into our hands.
On this day (Sept. 8) the Second Army Corps en-
countered considerable opposition, but drove back the
enemy at all points with great loss, making consider-
able captures.
The Third Army Corps also drove back considerable
bodies of the enemy's infantry and made some captures.
On Sept. 9 the First and Second Army Corps forced
the passage of the Marne and advanced some miles to
the north of it. The Third Corps encountered consider-
able opposition, as the bridge at La Fert6 was destroyed
and the enemy held the town on the opposite bank in
some strength, and thence persistently obstructed the
construction of a bridge ; so the passage was not effected
until after nightfall.
During the day's pursuit the enemy suffered heavy loss
in killed and wounded, some hundreds of prisoners fell
into our hands, and a battery of eight machine guns
was captured by the 2nd Division.
On this day the 6th French Army was heavily engaged
west of the River Ourcq. The enemy had largely in-
creased his force opposing them, and very heavy fighting
ensued, in which the French were successful throughout.
The left of the 5th French Army reached the neigh-
bourhood of Chateau-Thierry after the most severe
fighting, having driven the enemy completely north of
the river with great loss.
The fighting of this army in the neighbourhood of
Montmirail was very severe.
Appendix 191
The advance was resumed at daybreak on the loth up
to the line of the Ourcq, opposed by strong rearguards
of all arms. The ist and 2nd Corps, assisted by the
Cavalry Division on the right, the 3rd and 5th Cavalry
Brigades on the left, drove the enemy northwards.
Thirteen guns, seven machine guns, about 2,000
prisoners, and quantities of transport fell into our hands.
The enemy left many dead on the field. On this day
the French 5th and 6th Armies had little opposition.
As the ist and 2nd German Armies were now in full
retreat, this evening marks the end of the battle which
practically commenced on the morning of the 6th instant,
and it is at this point in the operations that I am con-
cluding the present despatch.
Although I deeply regret to have had to report heavy
losses in killed and wounded throughout these opera-
tions, I do not think they have been excessive in view
of the magnitude of the great fight, the outlines of which
I have only been able very briefly to describe, and the
demoralisation and loss in killed and wounded which
are known to have been caused to the enemy by the
vigour and severity of the pursuit.
In concluding this despatch I must call your lordship's
special attention to the fact that from Sunday, Aug.
23, up to the present date (Sept. 17), from Mons back
almost to the Seine, and from the Seine to the Aisne,
the Army under my command has been ceaselessly
engaged without one single day's halt or rest of any
kind.
Since the date to which in this dispatch I have limited
my report of the operations, a great battle on the Aisne
has been proceeding. A full report of this battle will be
made in an early further despatch.
It will, however, be of interest to say here that, in
spite of a very determined resistance on the part of the
enemy, who is holding in strength and great tenacity a
position peculiarly favourable to defence, the battle which
commenced on the evening of the 12th inst. has, so far,
forced the enemy back from his first position, secured the
passage of the river, and inflicted great loss upon him,
192 The Battle of the Rivers
including the capture of over 2,000 prisoners and several
guns. — I have the honour to be, your lordship's most
obedient servant,
(Signed) J. D. P. FRENCH, Field-
Marshal, Commanding-in-Chief, the
British Forces in the Field.
II.
Oct. 8, 1914.
My Lord —
I have the honour to report the operations in which
the British forces in France have been engaged since the
evening of Sept. 10.
I. In the early morning of the nth the further pur-
suit of the enemy was commenced, and the three corps
crossed the Ourcq practically unopposed, the cavalry
reaching the line of the Aisne River ; the 3rd and 5th
Brigades south of Soissons, the ist, 2nd, and 4th on the
high ground at Couvrelles and Cerseull.
On the afternoon of the 12th from the opposition
encountered by the 6th French Army to the west of
Soissons, by the 3rd Corps south-east of that place, by
the 2nd Corps south of Missy and Vailly, and certain
indications all along the line, I formed the opinion that
the enemy had, for the moment at any rate, arrested his
retreat, and was preparing to dispute the passage of the
Aisne with some vigour.
South of Soissons the Germans were holding Mont de
Paris against the attack of the right of the French 6th
Army when the 3rd Corps reached the neighbourhood of
Buzancy, south-east of that place. With the assistance
of the artillery of the 3rd Corps the French drove them
back across the river at Soissons, where they destroyed
the bridges.
The heavy artillery fire which was visible for several
miles in a westerly direction in the valley of the Aisne
showed that the 6th French Army was meeting with
strong opposition all along the line.
On this day the cavalry under General Allcnby reached
Appendix 193
the neighbourhood of Braine, and did good work in
clearing the town and the high ground beyond it of
strong hostile detachments. The Queen's Bays are par-
ticularly mentioned by the General as having assisted
greatly in the success of this operation. They were well
supported by the 3rd Division, which on this night
bivouacked at Brenelle, south of the river.
The 5th Division approached Missy, but were unable
to make headway.
The I St Army Corps reached the neighbourhood of
Vauxc^r^ without much opposition.
In this manner the Battle of the Aisne commenced.
2. The Aisne Valley runs generally east and west, and
consists of a flat-bottomed depression of width varying
from half a mile to two miles, down which the river
follows a winding course to the west at some points near
the southern slopes of the valley and at others near the
northern. The high ground both on the north and south
of the river is approximately 400 ft. above the bottom of
the valley, and is very similar in character, as are both
slopes of the valley itself, which are broken into
numerous rounded spurs and re-entrants. The most
prominent of the former are the Chivre spur on the right
bank and Sermoise spur on the left. Near the latter
place the general plateau on the south is divided by a
subsidiary valley of much the same character, down
which the small River Vesle flows to the main stream
near Sermoise. The slopes of the plateau overlooking
the Aisne on the north and south are of varying steep-
ness, and are covered with numerous patches of wood,
which also stretch upwards and backwards over the edge
on to the top of the high ground. There are several
villages and small towns dotted about in the valley itself
and along its sides, the chief of which is the town of
Soissons.
The Aisne is a sluggish stream of some 170 ft. in
breadth, but, being 15 ft. deep in the centre, it is un-
fordable. Between Soissons on the west and Villers on
the east (the part of the river attacked and secured by
the British forces) there are eleven road bridges across
G
194 The Battle of the Rivers
it. On the north bank a narrow-gauge railway runs
from Soissons to Vailly, where it crosses the river and
continues eastward along the south bank. From
Soissons to Sermoise a double line of railway runs along
the south bank, turning at the latter place up the Vesle
Valley towards Bazoches.
The position held by the enemy is a very strong one,
either for a delaying action or for a defensive battle.
One of its chief military characteristics is that from the
high ground on neither side can the top of the plateau
on the other side be seen except for small stretches.
This is chiefly due to the woods on the edges of the
slopes. Another important point is that all the bridges
are under either direct or high-angle artillery fire.
The tract of country above described, which lies north
of the Aisne, is well adapted to concealment, and was so
skilfully turned to account by the enemy as to render it
impossible to judge the real nature of his opposition to
our passage of the river, or to accurately gauge his
strength ; but I have every reason to conclude that strong
rearguards of at least three army corps were holding the
passages on the early morning of the 13th.
3. On that morning I ordered the British Forces to
advance and make good the Aisne.
The ist Corps and the cavalry advanced on the river.
The First Division was directed on Chanouille, vi& the
canal bridge at Bourg, and the Second Division on
Courtegon and Presles, vid Pont-Arcy and on the canal
to the north of Braye, vid Chavonne. On the right the
cavalry and First Division met with slight opposition,
and found a passage by means of the canal which crosses
the river by an aqueduct. The Division was, therefore,
able to press on, supported by the Cavalry Division on
its outer flank, driving back the enemy in front of it.
On the left the leading troops of the Second Division
reached the river by nine o'clock. The Fifth Infantry
Brigade were only enabled to cross, in single file and
under considerable shell fire, by means of the broken
girder of the bridge which was not entirely submerged
in the river. The construction of a pontoon bridge was
Appendix 195
at once undertaken, and was completed by five o'clock in
the afternoon.
On the extreme left the 4th Guards Brigade met
with severe opposition at Chavonne, and it was only late
in the afternoon that it was able to establish a foothold
on the northern bank of the river by ferrying one
battalion across in boats.
By nightfall the First Division occupied the area
Moulins-Paissy-Geny, with posts in the village of
Vendresse.
The Second Division bivouacked as a whole on the
southern bank of the river, leaving only the Fifth
Brigade on the north bank to establish a bridge head.
The Second Corps found all the bridges in front of
them destroyed, except that of Conde, which was in
possession of the enemy, and remained so until the end
of the battle.
In the approach to Missy, where the 5th Division
eventually crossed, there is some open ground which was
swept by heavy fire from the opposite bank. The 13th
Brigade was, therefore, unable to advance ; but the 14th,
which was directed to the east of Venizel at a less ex-
posed point, was rafted across, and by night established
itself with its left at St. Marguerite. They were followed
by the 15th Brigade, and later on both the 14th and 15th
supported the 4th Division on their left in repelling a
heavy counter-attack on the Third Corps.
On the morning of the 13th the Third Corps found
the enemy had established himself in strength on the
Vregny Plateau. The road bridge at Venizel was
repaired during the morning, and a reconnaissance was
made with a view to throwing a pontoon bridge at
Soissons.
The 12th Infantry Brigade crossed at Venizel, and was
assembled at Bucy Le Long by one p.m., but the bridge
was so far damaged that artillery could only be man-
handled across it. Meanwhile the construction of a
bridge was commenced close to the road bridge at
Venizel.
At two p.m. the 12th Infantry Brigade attacked in the
G 2
196 The Battle of the Rivers
direction of Chivres and Vregny with the object of
securing the high ground east of Chivres, as a necessary
preHminary to a further advance northwards. This
attack made good progress, but at 5.30 p.m. the enemy's
artillery and machine-gun fire from the direction of
Vregny became so severe that no further advance could
be made. The positions reached were held till dark.
The pontoon bridge at Venizel was completed at
5.30 p.m., when the loth Infantry Brigade crossed the
river and moved to Bucy Le Long.
The 19th Infantry Brigade moved to Billy-sur-Aisne,
and before dark all the artillery of the division had
crossed the river, with the exception of the heavy battery
and one brigade of field artillery.
During the night the positions gained by the 12th
Infantry Brigade to the east of the stream running
through Chivres were handed over to the 5th Division.
The section of the bridging train allotted to the Third
Corps began to arrive in the neighbourhood of Soissons
late in the afternoon, when an attempt to throw a heavy
pontoon bridge at Soissons had to be abandoned, owing
to the fire of the enemy's heavy howitzers.
In the evening the enemy retired at all points and
entrenched himself on the high ground about two miles
north of the river, along which runs the Chemin-des-
Dames. Detachments of infantry, however, strongly
entrenched in commanding points down slopes of the
various spurs, were left in front of all three corps, with
powerful artillery in support of them.
During the night of the 13th and on the 14th and
following days the field companies were incessantly at
work night and day. Eight pontoon bridges and one
foot bridge were thrown across the river under generally
very heavy artillery fire, which was incessantly kept up
on to most of the crossings after completion. Three of
the road bridges, i.e., Venizel, Missy, and Vailly, and
the railway bridge east of Vailly were temporarily re-
paired so as to take foot traffic, and the Villers Bridge
made fit to carry weights up to six tons.
Preparations were also made for the repair of the
Appendix 197
Missy, Vailly, and Bourg Bridges, so as to take
mechanical transport.
The weather was very wet and added to the difficulties
by cutting up the already indifferent approaches, entail-
ing a large amount of work to repair and improve.
The operations of the field companies during this most
trying time are worthy of the best traditions of the
Royal Engineers.
4. On the evening of the 14th it was still impossible
to decide whether the enemy was only making a tem-
porary halt, covered by rearguards, or whether he in-
tended to stand and defend the position.
With a view to clearing up the situation, I ordered a
general advance.
The action of the ist Corps on this day under the
direction and command of Sir Douglas Haig was of so
skilful, bold, and decisive a character that he gained
positions which alone have enabled me to maintain my
position for more than three weeks of very severe fight-
ing on the north bank of the river.
The corps was directed to cross the line Moulins-
Moussy by seven a.m.
On the right the General Officer Commanding the ist
Division directed the 2nd Infantry Brigade (which was
in billets and bivouacked about Moulins), and the 25th
Artillery Brigade (less one battery), under General
Bulfin, to move forward before daybreak, in order to
protect the advance of the division sent up the valley
to Vendresse. An officers' patrol sent out by this
brigade reported a considerable force of the enemy near
the factory north of Troyon, and the Brigadier accord-
ingly directed two regiments (the King's Royal Rifles
and the Royal Sussex Regiment) to move at three a.m.
The Northamptonshire Regiment was ordered to move
at four a.m. to occupy the spur east of Troyon. The
remaining regiment of the brigade (the Loyal North
Lancashire Regiment) moved at 5.30 a.m. to the village
of Vendresse. The factory was found to be held in con-
siderable strength by the enemy, and the brigadier
ordered the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment to sup-
198 The Battle of the Rivers
port the King's Roj-al Rifles and the Sussex Regiment.
Even with this support the force was unable to make
headway, and on the arrival of the ist Brigade the
Coldstream Guards were moved up to support the right
of the leading brigade (the 2nd), while the remainder of
the ist Brigade supported its left.
About noon the situation was, roughly, that the whole
of these two brigades were extended along a line running
east and west, north of the line Troyon and south of the
Chemin-des-Dames. A party of the Loyal North Lanca-
shire Regiment had seized and were holding the factory.
The enemy held a line of entrenchments north and east
of the factory in considerable strength, and every effort
to advance against this line was driven back by heavy
shell and machine-gun fire. The morning was wet, and
a heavy mist hung over the hills, so that the 25th
Artillery Brigade and the Divisional Artillery were un-
able to render effective support to the advanced troops
until about nine o'clock.
By ten o'clock the 3rd Infantry Brigade had reached
a point one mile south of Vendresse, and from there it
was ordered to continue the line of the ist Brigade and
to connect with and help the right of the 2nd Division.
A strong hostile column was found to be advancing, and
by a vigorous counter-stroke with two of his battalions
the Brigadier checked the advance of this column and
relieved the pressure on the 2nd Division. From this
period until late in the afternoon the fighting consisted
of a series of attacks and counter-attacks. The counter-
strokes by the enemy were delivered at first with great
vigour, but later on they decreased in strength, and all
were driven off with heavy loss.
On the left the 6th Infantry Brigade had been ordered
to cross the river and to pass through the line held during
the preceding night by the 5th Infantry Brigade and
occupy the Courtegon Ridge, whilst a detached force,
consisting of the 4th Guards Brigade and the 36th
Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, under Brigadier-General
Perceval, were ordered to proceed to a point east of the
village of Ostel.
Appendix 199
The 6th Infantry Brigade crossed the river at Pont-
Arcy, moved up the valley towards Braye, and at nine
a.m. had reached the line Tilleul — La Buvelle. On this
line they came under heavy artillery and rifle fire, and
were unable to advance until supported by the 34th
Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, and the 44th Howitzer
Brigade and the Heavy Artillery.
The 4th Guards Brigade crossed the river at ten a.m.,
and met with very heavy opposition. It had to pass
through dense woods ; field artillery support was difficult
to obtain ; but one section of the field battery pushed
up to and within the firing line. At one p.m. the left
of the brigade was south of the Ostel Ridge.
At this period of the action the enemy obtained a foot-
ing between the First and Second Corps, and threatened
to cut the communications of the latter.
Sir Douglas Haig was very hardly pressed, and had
no reserve in hand. I placed the cavalry division at his
disposal, part of which he skilfully used to prolong and
secure the left flank of the Guards Brigade. Some
heavy fighting ensued, which resulted in the enemy
being driven back with heavy loss.
About four o'clock the weakening of the counter-
attacks by the enemy and other indications tended to
show that his resistance was decreasing, and a general
advance was ordered by the Army Corps Commander.
Although meeting with considerable opposition, and
coming under very heavy artillery and rifle fire, the posi-
tion of the corps at the end of the day's operations ex-
tended from the Chemin-des-Dames on the right, through
Chivy, to Le Cour de Soupir, with the ist Cavalry
Brigade extending to the Chavonne — Soissons road.
On the right the corps was in close touch with the
French Moroccan troops of the 18th Corps, which were
entrenched in echelon to its right rear. During the night
they entrenched this position.
Throughout the battle of the Aisne this advanced and
commanding position was maintained, and I cannot
speak too highly of the valuable services rendered by
Sir Douglas Haig and the army corps under his com-
200 The Battle of the Rivers
mand. Day after day and night after night the enemy's
infantry has been hurled against him in violent counter-
attack, which has never on any one occasion succeeded,
whilst the trenches all over his position have been under
continuous heavy artillery fire.
The operations of the First Corps on this day resulted
in the capture of several hundred prisoners, some field
pieces, and machine guns.
The casualties were very severe, one brigade alone
losing three of its four colonels.
The 3rd Division commenced a further advance, and
had nearly reached the plateau of Aizy when they were
driven back by a powerful counter-attack supported by
heavy artillery. The division, however, fell back in the
best order, and finally entrenched itself about a mile
north of Vailly Bridge, effectively covering the passage.
The 4th and 5th Divisions were unable to do more
than maintain their ground.
5. On the morning of the 15th, after close examination
of the position, it became clear to me that the enemy
was making a determined stand, and this view was con-
firmed by reports which reached me from the French
armies fighting on my right and left, which clearly
showed that a strongly entrenched line of defence was
being taken up from the north of Compi^gne, eastward
and south-eastward, along the whole valley of the Aisne
up to and beyond Rheims.
A few days previously the fortress of Maubeuge fell,
and a considerable quantity of siege artillery was brought
down from that place to strengthen the enemy's position
in front of us.
During the 15th shells fell in our position which have
been judged by experts to be thrown by eight-inch siege
gxms with a range of 10,000 yards. Throughout the
whole course of the battle our troops have suffered very
heavily from this fire, although its effect latterly was
largely mitigated by more efficient and thorough en-
trenching, the necessity for which I impressed strongly
upon army corps commanders. In order to assist them
in this work all villages within the area of our occupa-
Appendix 201
tion were searched for heavy entrenching tools, a large
number of which were collected.
In view of the peculiar formation of the ground on
the north side of the river between Missy and Soissons,
and its extraordinary adaptability to a force on the
defensive, the 5th Division found it impossible to main-
tain its position on the southern edge of the Chivres
Plateau, as the enemy in possession of the village of
Vregny to the west was able to bring a flank lire to
bear upon it. The division had, therefore, to retire to
a line the left of which was at the village of Marguerite,
and thence ran by the north edge of Missy back to the
river to the east of that place.
With great skill and tenacity Sir Charles Fergusson
maintained this position throughout the whole battle,
although his trenches were necessarily on lower ground
than that occupied by the enemy on the southern edge
of the plateau, which was only 400 yards away.
General Hamilton with the 3rd Division vigorously
attacked to the north, and regained all the ground he
had lost on the 15th, which throughout the battle had
formed a most powerful and effective bridge head.
6. On the i6th the 6th Division came up into line.
It had been my intention to direct the First Corps to
attack and seize the enemy's position on the Chemin-
des-Dames, supporting it with this new reinforcement.
I hoped from the position thus gained to bring effective
fire to bear across the front of the 3rd Division which,
by securing the advance of the latter, would also take
the pressure off the 5th Division and the Third Corps.
But any further advance of the First Corps would have
dangerously exposed my right flank. And, further, I
learned from the French Commander-in-Chief that he
was strongly reinforcing the 6th French Army on my
left, with the intention of bringing up the Allied left to
attack the enemy's flank, and thus compel his retire-
ment. I therefore sent the 6th Division to join the Third
Corps, with orders to keep it on the south side of the
river, as it might be available in general reserve.
On the 17th, i8th, and 19th the whole of our line
202 The Battle of the Rivers
was heavily bombarded, and the First Corps was con-
stantly and heavily engaged. On the afternoon of the
17th the right flank of the ist Division was seriously
threatened. A counter-attack was made by the North-
amptonshire Regiment in combination with the Queen's,
and one battalion of the Divisional Reserve was moved
up in support. The Northamptonshire Regiment, under
cover of mist, crept up to within a hundred yards of the
enemy's trenches and charged with the bayonet, driving
them out of the trenches and up the hill. A very strong
force of hostile infantry was then disclosed on the crest
line. This new line was enfiladed by part of the
Queen's and the King's Royal Rifles, which wheeled to
their left on the extreme right of our infantry line, and
were supported by a squadron of cavalry on their outer
flank. The enemy's attack was ultimately driven back
with heavy loss.
On the i8th, during the night, the Gloucestershire
Regiment advanced from their position near Chivy, filled
in the enemy's trenches and captured two Maxim guns.
On the extreme right the Queen's were heavily
attacked, but the enemy was repulsed with great loss.
About midnight the attack was renewed on the ist
Division, supported by artillery fire, but was again
repulsed.
Shortly after midnight an attack was made on the
left of the 2nd Division with considerable force, which
was also thrown back.
At about one p.m. on the 19th the and Division drove
back a heavy infantry attack strongly supported by
artillery fire. At dusk the attack was renewed and again
repulsed.
On the i8th I discussed with the General Officer Com-
manding the 2nd Army Corps and his Divisional Com-
manders the possibility of driving the enemy out of
Cond^, which lay between his two divisions, and seizing
the bridge which has remained throughout in his
possession.
As, however, I found that the bridge was closely com-
manded from all points on the south side and that satis-
Appendix 203
factory arrangements were made to prevent any issue
from it by the enemy by day or night, I decided that it
was not necessary to incur the losses which an attack
would entail, as, in view of the position of the 2nd and
3rd Corps, the enemy could make no use of Cond6, and
would be automatically forced out of it by any advance
which might become possible for us.
7. On this day information reached me from General
Joffre that he had found it necessary to make a new
plan, and to attack and envelop the German right flank.
It was now evident to me that the battle in which we
had been engaged since the 12th instant must last some
days longer, until the effect of this new flank movement
could be felt, and a way opened to drive the enemy from
his positions.
It thus became essential to establish some system of
regular relief in the trenches, and I have used the
infantry -of the 6th Division for this purpose with good
results. The relieved brigades were brought back
alternately south of the river, and, with the artillery of
the 6th Division, formed a general reserve on which I
could rely in case of necessity.
The cavalry has rendered most efficient and ready help
in the trenches, and have done all they possibly could to
lighten the arduous and trying task which has of
necessity fallen to the lot of the infantry.
On the evening of the 19th, and throughout the 20th,
the enemy again commenced to show considerable
activity. On the former night a severe counter-attack
on the 3rd Division was repulsed with considerable loss,
and from early on Sunday morning various hostile
attempts were made on the trenches of the ist Division.
During the day the enemy suffered another severe repulse
in front of the 2nd Division, losing heavily in the
attempt. In the course of the afternoon the enemy made
desperate attempts against the trenches all along the
front of the First Corps, but with similar results.
After dark the enemy again attacked the 2nd Division,
only to be again driven back.
Our losses on these two days were considerable, but
204 The Battle of the Rivers
the number, as obtained, of the enemy's killed and
wounded vastly exceeded them.
As the troops of the First Army Corps were much
exhausted by this continual fighting, I reinforced Sir
Douglas Haig with a brigade from the reserve, and
called upon the ist Cavalry Division to assist them.
On the night of the 21st another violent counter-
attack was repulsed by the 3rd Division, the enemy
losing heavily.
On the 23rd the four six-inch howitzer batteries, which
I had asked to be sent from home, arrived. Two
batteries were handed over to the Second Corps and two
to the First Corps. They were brought into action on.
the 24th with very good results.
Our experiences in this campaign seem to point to the
employment of more heavy guns of a larger calibre in
great battles which last for several days, during which
time powerful entrenching work on both sides can be
carried out.
These batteries were used with considerable effect on
the 24th and the following days.
8. On the 23rd the action of General de Castelnau's
army on the Allied left developed considerably, and
apparently withdrew considerable forces of the enemy
away from the centre and east. I am not aware whether
it was due to this cause or not, but until the 26th it
appeared as though the enemy's opposition in our front
was weakening. On that day, however, a very marked
renewal of activity commenced. A constant and vigorous
artillery bombardment was maintained all day, and the
Germans in front of the ist Division were observed to
be " sapping " up to our lines and trying to establish
new trenches. Renewed counter-attacks were delivered
and beaten off during the course of the day, and In the
afternoon a well-timed attack by the ist Division stopped
the enemy's entrenching work.
During the night of 27th-28th the enemy again made
the most determined attempts to capture the trenches of
the 1st Division, but without the slightest success.
Similar attacks were reported during these three days
Appendix 205
all along the line of the Allied front, and it is certain
that the enemy then made one last great effort to
establish ascendancy. He was, however, unsuccessful
-everywhere, and is reported to have suffered heavy losses.
The same futile attempts were made all along our front
up to the evening of the 28th, when they died away,
and have not since been renewed.
On former occasions I have brought to your lordship's
notice the valuable services performed during this cam-
paign by the Royal Artillery.
Throughout the Battle of the Aisne they have dis-
played the same skill, endurance, and tenacity, and I
deeply appreciate the work they have done.
Sir David Henderson and the Royal Flying Corps
under his command have again proved their incalculable
value. Great strides have been made in the development
of the use of aircraft in the tactical sphere by establish-
ing effective communication between aircraft and units
in action.
It is difficult to describe adequately and accurately the
great strain to which officers and men were subjected
almost every hour of the day and night throughout this
battle.
I have described above the severe character of the
artillery fire which was directed from morning till night,
not only upon the trenches, but over the whole surface
of the ground occupied by our forces. It was not until
a few days before the position was evacuated that the
heavy guns were removed and the fire slackened.
Attack and counter-attack occurred at all hours of the
night and day throughout the whole position, demand-
ing extreme vigilance, and permitting only a minimum
of rest.
The fact that between Sept. 12 to the date of this
despatch the total numbers of killed, wounded, and
missing reached the figures amounting to 561 officers,
12,980 men, proves the severity of the struggle.
The tax on the endurance of tne troops was further
increased by the heavy rain and cold which prevailed
for some ten or twelve days of this trying time.
2o6 The Battle of the Rivers
The battle of the Aisne has once more demonstrated
the splendid spirit, gallantry, and devotion which
animates the officers and men of his Majesty's Forces.
With reference to the last paragraph of my despatch
of Sept. 7, I append the names of officers, non-com-
missioned officers, and men brought forward for special
mention by Army Corps commanders and heads of
departments for services rendered from the commence-
ment of the campaign up to the present date.
I entirely agree with these recommendations and beg
to submit them for your lordship's consideration.
I further wish to bring forward the names of the
following officers who have rendered valuable service :
General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and Lieutenant-
General Sir Douglas Haig (commanding First and
Second Corps respectively) I have already mentioned
in the present and former despatches for particularly
marked and distinguished service in critical situations.
Since the commencement of the campaign they have
carried out all my orders and instructions with the
utmost ability.
Lieutenant-General W. P. Pulteney took over the com-
mand of the Third Corps just before the commencement
of the battle of the Marne. Throughout the subsequent
operations he showed himself to be a most capable com-
mander in the field, and has rendered very valuable
services.
Major-General E. H. H. AUenby and Major-General
H. de la P. Gough have proved themselves to be cavalry
leaders of a high order, and I am deeply indebted to
them. The undoubted moral superiority which our
cavalry has obtained over that of the enemy has been
due to the skill with which they have turned to the best
account the qualities inherent in the splendid troops they
command.
In my despatch of Sept. 7 I mentioned the name of
Brigadier-General Sir David Henderson and his valu-
able work in command of the Royal Flying Corps, and
I have once more to express my deep appreciation of the
help he has since rendered me.
Appendix 207
Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Murray iias con-
tinued to render me invaluable help as Chief of the
Staff, and in his arduous and responsible duties he has
been ably assisted by Major-General Henry Wilson, Sub-
Chief.
Lieutenant-General Sir Nevil Macready and Lieu-
tenant-General Sir William Robertson have continued to
perform excellent service as Adjutant-General and
Quartermaster-General respectively.
The Director of Army Signals, Lieutenant-Colonel
J. S. Fowler, has materially assisted the operations by
the skill and energy which he has displayed in the work-
ing of the important department over which he presides.
My Military Secretary, Brigadier-General the Hon.
W. Lambton, has performed his arduous and difficult
duties with much zeal and great efficiency.
I am anxious also to bring to your lordship's notice
the following names of officers of my Personal Staff,
who throughout these arduous operations have shown
untiring zeal and energy in the performance of their
duties : —
Aides-de-Camp.
Lieut. -Colonel Stanley Barry.
Lieut. -Colonel Lord Brooke.
Major Fitzgerald Watt.
Extra Aide-de-Camp.
Captain the Hon. F. E. Guest.
Private Secretary.
Lieut. -Colonel Brindsley Fitzgerald.
Major his Royal Highness Prince Arthur of Con-
naught, K.G., joined my staff as Aide-de-Camp on
Sept. 14.
His Royal Highness 's intimate knowledge of
languages enabled me to employ him with great
advantage on confidential missions of some importance,
and his services have proved of considerable value.
I cannot close this despatch without informing your
2o8 The Battle of the Rivers
lordship of the valuable services rendered by the chief
of the Frerxch Military Mission at my headquarters,
Colonel Victor Huguet, of the French Artillery. He has
displayed tact and judgment of a high order in many
difficult situations, and has rendered conspicuous service
to the Allied cause.— I have the honour to be, your lord-
ship's most obedient servant,
(Signed) J. D. P. FRENCH, Field-Marshal,
Commanding-in-Chief, the British
Army in the Field.
PRINTED IN GEF.AT BRITAIN BT B. CLAT AND SONS, LTD.,
BHCNSWICK STRKET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BrNGAT. SUFFOLK.
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