Germany in defeat; a strategic history of the War

RMAMY
DEFEAT

By
nt Charles deSouza

and

Major Haldane Macfall

GERMANY IN DEFEAT

GERMANY IN
DEFEAT

A STRATEGIC HISTORY OF THE WAR

FIRST PHASE

BY

r COUNT) CHARLES DE SOUZA

nft'O
AND

MAJOR HALDANE MACFALL

FOURTH EDITION

l I '

LONDON

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.

NEW YORK : E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY

1916

THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH, ENGLAND

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Personal Note ix

CHAPTER

I. The position of the Germans at the opening of

the war 1

II. The position of the French at the opening of the

war 8

III. The strategic perplexity produced on the French

by the opening German moves in the war . 16

IV. The real and wholly unrealised significance of

Lie"ge . 24

V. The real German design in the siege of Liege and

their hesitations in Belgium ... 33

VI. The first French offensive in Alsace and its real

strategic significance 41

VII. The French evade the German trap in Belgium ;

lay a trap therein for the Germans instead ;
and, in their second advance into Alsace, win
their great tactical victory of Mulhausen, which
becomes strategically valueless ... 51

VIII. The Germans, perplexed by the French victories
in Alsace-Lorraine, swiftly seize an advantage
and win a great tactical victory over the
French, which, however, brings about strategic
disaster to their plans of campaign . . 66

IX. Joffre evades the German trap in Belgium ; the
German Generals, rushing to overwhelm the
French therein, strike their blow in the air,
at the same time baulking Joffre's counter-
stroke by their successful concentration of a
whole secret army 78

vi GERMANY IN DEFEAT

CHAPTER PAGE

X. The Germans walk into the trap laid by Joffre
for their annihilation, but one of Joffre's
generals leaves the trapdoor open ; and the
British are wasted 94

XI. The Germans, baulked of their scheme to trap the
French in Belgium, and eluding the French
trap, and compelled to a parallel fight, seek to
cut off and envelop the British wing of the line
— and fail ; the British getting touch with the
French line to right and left . . .109

XII. After their strategic check at Cambrai the German
staff resume, more to the west, their envelop-
ing movement . . . . . .124

XIII. The Great Retreat 138

XIV. The Battle of Nancy 152

XV. Battle of the Ourcq 169

XVI. The crowning achievement of the Great Retreat,
wherein Foch completely overthrows the whole
German armies and saves France at the battle
of Fere Champenoise 178

XVII. The overthrow of the largest German army by

the army of Sarrail before Verdun . . 194

LIST OF MAPS

MAP FACING PAGE

1 General positions of the German Western armies
at the outbreak of the War — First plan of con-
centration of the five first French armies . . 8

2. General positions of the German Western armies

on August 5, 1914 — Second plan of concentration

of the five first French armies .... 16

3. Position in Belgium on August 11-17 ... 24

4. " Grand Couronne* " of Nancy and the " Trouee "

or Gap of Mirecourt 41

5. The French advance in Alsace and Lorraine, and its

utmost limit on August 20 .... 66

6. The German effort against the " Trouee " or Gap of

Mirecourt, and its uttermost limit on August 24 . 70

7. Kluck's advance from Brussels on August 21-22 . 78

8. Battle of the Ardennes, August 21-22 ... 86

9. Battle of Mons-Charleroi. Position on August 22-23 94

10. Battle of Mons-Charleroi. Position on August 24

(morning) ....... 100

11. Battle of Cambrai, August 26 . . .109

12. General position of armies on August 26 . .124

13. General position of armies on August 30-31 . . 138

14. " Grand Couronnl " of Nancy . . . .162

15. Extreme limit of Great Retreat. General position

of Western armies in France . . . .169

vii

viii GERMANY IN DEFEAT

MAP FACING PAGE

16. Battle of the Ourcq, first day (September 6) . . 172

17. Battle of the Ourcq, third and fourth days (Sep-

>mber8-9) . .176

18. Battle of Fere Champenoise — Hausen's attacks,

September 7-8 — Battle of Fere Champenoise —
Foch's counter-attacks, September 9 . . . 184

19. Battle of Verdun. Position on September 8-9 —

Battle of Verdun. Position on September 10-11 194

20. End of German retreat from the Marne. Position of

Western armies in France on or about September
12-13> 1914 204

THE PERSONAL NOTE

Lady Day, 1915.

To add to the torrent of literature — or letterpress
—that is being poured out upon the Great War
demands a profound reason. Were the public —
our own public and the neutral public, above all
the American public — being fully enlightened as to
the significance of the strategy of this war, and as
to the prodigious results already achieved, these
pages would have no excuse. The public, strangely
enough, for all the vast journalistic effort to
enlighten it, has not yet fully grasped the strategic
significance of the war — yet it is of the most vital
consequence to the public that it should so grasp it,
and no time lost.

This is not to lay any blame upon journalism.
It is not the fault of the journalists. The service
rendered to the public by journalism in this
stupendous strife is astounding. Journalism is con-
cerned with the recording of events as they arise
from day to day ; and this service has been wonder-
fully performed. But strategy is outside the
training and ken of journalism — it requires close
study ; and, let us say, for an editor to think that

x GERMANY IN DEFEAT

by " reading up " a few text-books on war he can
grasp the strategy and intention of a campaign is
as though a journalist by reading up a few text-
books on medicine and surgery could perform an
exquisite surgical operation upon the brain.

Then the English-speaking public has never been
keenly interested in the reading of strategy — indeed,
the very word strategy at once conjures up in their
minds a boredom of technical details and of tedious
manipulation of numbers and armies and com-
manders and the like. Military and other expert
writers, writing for soldiers, have increased the
public distaste for any study of strategy. And by
consequence the public are content to read the mere
picturesque accounts of personal heroism or of
battle written by a good journalist, and to leave
the significance of the strategy to fighting men.
The Great War has broken this habit by bringing
forth two writers amongst us in particular who have
made strategy and tactics of human interest to the
public. Colonel Maude has brought his fine gifts
and deep knowledge of strategics within the view of
the man in the street, but unfortunately his essays
are scattered throughout the press. Mr. Belloc
has had the better fortune to secure a week to week
rostrum from whence, with consummate skill, he
has employed all his training in the French artillery
to popularise tactics — written in the most ilium in-

THE PERSONAL NOTE xi

ating fashion — so that the public has had the inestim-
able advantage of being able to follow every tactical
move of the armies in this great struggle from stage
to stage as each move developed. And it is in
the hope that the public, so educated, may follow
and pay serious consideration to the more profound
significances of the war as a whole, it is in the
hope that they may try to grasp its strategic aims
and acts and results, that these lines are being
written. For — and this is of first importance to the
public to-day — it is of vital importance to us all
that we shall try to look at the war in the large,
since our future and the destiny of our peoples
depend upon a thorough grasp of that strategic
significance.

It is most important for the public, as it is most
important for the proper and unswerving prosecu-
tion of the war to a complete finish, for us to
realise that Germany was defeated at the Marne —
that she has been a defeated people ever since — and
that at hand is, and must resolutely be carried outt
her complete crushing as a fighting force. It may
seem a startling statement to make on Lady Day
of this year of 1915, that the destinies of Europe
for generations to come have already been shaped.
Few at least seem to have realised the fact. It
may seem, if this be so, as if the journalists and
writers in general upon the war were strangely blind

xii GERMANY IN DEFEAT

and dense. But the point that the public ought to
grasp is that the destinies of Europe have already
been settled in France, and that the vast operations
now pending are but the perfecting of an achieve-
ment. Let there be no mistake. The crushing of
Germany may call for a blood- sacrifice far greater
than her defeat. She is in defeat — not vanquished.
Her peoples are being tricked and deceived. But
her guiding spirits know that she is defeated ; and
they are now striving to trick the world into blind-
ness to that defeat as they have so far tricked their
own peoples. To crush her will demand perhaps a
vast and hideous sacrifice. But if she be not
crushed, the sacrifice of the generations to come
will be so great and the threat and danger to
democracy and to the freedom of man and the
welfare of the world so constant, that civilisation
will be baulked and set back for ages and the
good of mankind thwarted and maimed.

Let us have no misunderstandings about it.
This is no appeal for vengeance. It is a simple
statement that if Prussianism, and all for which
Prussianism stands, whether in Potsdam or
Timbuctoo, be not smashed and broken here and
now, this war has been wholly in vain, and our
beloved dead lie slain in a frantic farce.

For the public to appreciate this is clearly a vital
act, To grasp it, the public must make an effort

THE PERSONAL NOTE xiii

to understand the significance of the strategy of
the war. There is no mystery, nothing really
difficult to understand in it all. To rid it of the
suspicion of dry-as-dust is the effort of these pages.
It is the effort of a couple of men who have been
life-students of strategics, and of Foreign Affairs
upon which strategics are founded. The heavy
duties of helping, in what small fashion may be
granted to me, in the training of men for the Great
War limits my day ; but in my friend Count Charles
de Souza we have a student of strategics of astound-
ingly wide knowledge and skill, and it will be my
chief part but to make the Englishing of his remark-
able work clear to the public, and to explain for the
man in the street what might otherwise be some-
what outside his ordinary ken. Count Charles de
Souza brings to his study of strategy that freedom
from bias which is essential to a judge. His
researches reveal some startling facts in the larger
aspects of the war. And if I can assist in making
his pages clear to the man in the street I shall be

well content.

HALDANE MACFALL.

MATTERS INTRODUCTORY

THE world will soon be full of books, indeed they
already begin to rain upon us, wherein a sort of
book-making from official pamphlets, and articles,
and the like matter, codifies for us in an intelligent
summary the chief events of the war. The work is,
and will be, largely done by skilful penmen without
any knowledge of strategy. It will fulfil useful
purposes. The following pages bear no relation
to any such intention. We have made strategic
notes for our own guidance during the course of the
campaign ; we have made the most elaborate
research for the position and acts of every unit
that has fought in the war ; we have tried to place
these corps in their positions on the morning and
the evening of each day — at reveille and in bivouac
and billet. Without the advantage of communion
with the leaders and commanders, we have, from
strategic training, sought out the motives for
strategic acts, and drawn deductions from the
attempts to execute those acts. This means a
laborious process which it would be impossible to
give to the public in detail without boredom. But

XV

xvi GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the picture of the war that we here give to the man
in the street is the result of this complex search
after facts and truth. The public does not see into
the workshop — it only sees the finished work. The
secrecy imposed by the commanders, especially the
French, has not made for ease ; but by dogged
watchfulness and by his quick grasp of strategy,
Count Charles de Souza has rarely been baffled for
long in regard to the position of any unit.

The strategics of the campaign I shall leave prac-
tically as de Souza has written them. All sorts of
theories of the fighting have been given to the public
as though final ; it will be seen that we have tested
and found these accounts lacking the support of
fact. The position of corps on the mornings and
evenings of certain dates prove few of these accounts
to be correct.

Histories of wars are prone to be one-sided, since
those who write them generally belong to one of the
warring powers and twist events with a national
bias. The result is that the strategy of a cam-
paign is confused, difficult to understand, and even
when not an affair of stupid ignorance, it is of no
mental profit to any man to read it. It is small
wonder, then, that being so close to the din, few of
even the best educated members of the community
have been able to grasp the strategy of this Great
War amidst the general upheaval and confused by

MATTERS INTRODUCTORY xvii

the wide assault of several nations, big and small,
who are in armed conflict to-day — even after eight
months of war.

One inevitably has a bias towards one's own people.
Impartiality, especially in a period of strife, when
the existence of one's own nation and of our allies
is at stake, is not easy to attain. But if one would
arrive at the strategic significance of war, it is
absolutely essential to try to attain it. It is possible,
with calm judgment and a sense of proportion, to
reach a lucid estimate of the more important
operations, and so to find the truth ; and, having
found it, to state it with the courage of conviction
once and for all.

We are not here concerned with the political
aspects of the situation, as they have no definite
laws underlying them, such as strategy has. Be-
sides, the history of the diplomatic negotiations
can easily be reconstructed in detail from a con-
siderable amount of official documents which have
been given a wide circulation. Indeed, it is in this
province, and with rare clarity, that the Press has
done so remarkable a public service. I will here but
give a simple review of the outstanding points which
directly affect the strategic intention guiding the
war, and so clear the ground for de Souza to confine
himself to a concise and lucid account of the actual
struggle, that is to say the armed conflict which is the

xviii GERMANY IN DEFEAT

result of strained political action and the inevitable
end of all national rivalry and ambition. This
description of the acts of the war will be rid of
all those details which only confuse the main issue ;
and thus the way will be simplified for the strict
impartial statement of the strategic acts of the war.

II

To journalism can be paid this great tribute, that
it has made clear certain basic truths to the wide
world. There is no delusion, except amongst the
hopelessly ignorant, that Germany made her war
for colonial expansion. Germany made her war
with one deliberate purpose, a purpose that she
has pursued with dogged resolution and unflinch-
ing courage and relentless intention for a generation
— World Domination. The chief end of all German
preparation for war was the destruction of the
mastery of the English-speaking peoples. All other
action was aimed at this supreme achievement.
It was impossible to arrive at this ambition without
first destroying France. Whether, having crushed
France, the Prussian intended to take territory from
her is merely academic discussion and useless guess-
work. Germany's design was to crush France
swiftly once and for ever, that she might thence-
forth proceed to her attack on the English-speaking
peoples — first the British and then the American,

MATTERS INTRODUCTORY xix

Whether Britain had stood aloof from her war
with France or not, Germany intended to strike
down British power. Had Britain stood aside
Germany's work had been the easier — that was all.
Germany's dogged scheme of befooling America is
the guide to what would have been her handling of
Britain.

It followed that France was bound to bear the
brunt of Germany's attack. Whatever else hap-
pened, this was sure. And so it has proved. Russia
was pledged to come to France's aid ; but Russian
help could not come soon enough to save France if
the German plan had succeeded. The entrance of
Britain did more to help France in these perilous
days, not only for the prodigious moral effect on
France, not only for the great service done to France
by Britain's small army, but by that sea-power
which has damaged Germany more and more every
day that the war was prolonged*

In challenging Britain at sea, Germany tried a
fall with nature. The Germans challenged Destiny
—or they rushed in where heroes fear to tread.
Napoleon wrecked his great dreams of conquest by
wasting his strength in challenging the sea-power
of a sea-folk, as the Spaniard wrecked his all before
him. The Prussian is to-day the victim of the like
conflict with world-forces. The challenge to Britain
at sea has been his ruin. The German is no more

xx GERMANY IN DEFEAT

capable of sea-power than an elephant. Sea-power
does not come from bookish theories and an elaborate
organisation ; sea-power is an instinct, arising out
of the seafaring habit, and is as much compelled
on a people as the necessity for that people to win
its bread upon the waters. All the professors, all
the encyclopaedias, all the admiralty offices, all the
gold lace, all the submarine murders in creation
cannot yield it. The master-key to admiralty is
the sea-genius of a whole people.

Germany's machine-made effort to master the
seas is of a part with her machine-made nightmare
of world-dominion. A people does not become a
world-empire by the book. World-dominion grows
out of the very marrow and instinct of a race, and
needs generations for its building. The German
genius, but lately freed from serfdom, thought, like
a parvenu, to become an imperial force by mechan-
ical organisation. The parvenu needs always to
be forgiven for his vulgarities ; they are part of his
energies. But being lately risen out of slavery, it
was inevitable that her valour should be the valour
of the slave-folk, not of the master breeds. It was
inevitable that chivalry should be denied to her,
and that her wars should be fought foully. It was
inevitable that she should think her navies to be
made of master-stuff by shirking battle with her
enemies' navies and accounting acts of piracy upon

MATTERS INTRODUCTORY xxi

unarmed merchant craft as being acts of valour and
of war. It was inevitable that she should employ
falsehood and treachery in her acts of war, since it
calls for a long tradition of mastery to rise above
the habits of the slave-folk.

Surely history can show no more tragically
pathetic sight than a people arming themselves to
go forth and conquer the world, who have not yet
arrived at self-government — a people so lacking in
master-valour that they have fallen behind the
leading democracies of the world, and have not
had the courage to acquire government over them-
selves ! The German peoples have been gulled into
political slavery ; but that such a subordinate
people should march forth to overwhelm the great
democracies is surely the maddest venture outside
Bedlam ! Nevertheless, so it has come about.

However, of prodigious value as the British
alliance, above all Britain's sea-power, has been to
France, we must not let our natural interest in the
British achievement give us a false proportion. The
fact remains that France had to bear the brunt of that
stupendous onrush of Germany's vast legions, which
the Prussians had prepared for a generation where-
with to overwhelm her, before she could gain help
on any large scale. So far the world at large has
probably realised the general state of affairs. But
we now arrive at a significant part of the crisis in

xxii GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the destiny of Western Europe which is not gener-
ally grasped. France not only bore the onrush of
Germany's legions with consummate strategic ability,
but she came within an ace of crushing the German
armies very early in the campaign on Belgian
soil ; and within a few weeks had not only stalled off
the German attack, but had defeated the German arms
in a series of battles that decided the destinies of Euro-
pean civilisation. In bald terms, with only a small
contingent of British troops, and before Russia
could come to her assistance, France had defeated
and flung back the German armies, had taken the
initiative, and had brought Germany to a state of
siege. Further, France, had she cared to make the
stupendous sacrifice, could have smashed the Ger-
man armies to pieces. In other words, Germany is
a defeated country, and at any moment she can be
crushed.

It will be said that Germany is not yet crushed,
and that her crushing may cost more loss of life
than her defeat. That is perfectly true, just as it
was true that the crushing of France after Sedan
required as many months as the disaster of Sedan
took weeks. It is equally true that Germany's
defeat is not complete until she is crushed. The real
danger lies not in the losses that may have to go
towards her crushing, but in the patching up of a
peace that will leave her the power to strike again.

MATTERS INTRODUCTORY xxiii

III

There is yet another political factor that stands
forth in this war, not wholly grasped even to-day,
but necessary to a full appreciation of the war.

There is a muddle-headed idea abroad that Ger-
many has, so far, held her own and is in a dominant
position because she has not suffered any large
dramatic loss — has known no Sedan — that not being
invaded she holds the key to mastery. And, to do
them justice, the General Staff has boasted this
splendour to the German people with no uncertain
breath. But when the General Staff take off their
coats and put their heads together in secret con-
clave, they talk no such balderdash. Yet the boast
has its value, and for a quaint reason.

The inability of journalists to understand the full
significance of the strategy of the war was rendered
still more obtuse by the cunning and unscrupulous
skill of the German Staff in the manipulation of the
foreign — especially of the neutral — Press. But there
was a more intense blindness and deafness inherent
in journalism due to the wide Moltke-olatry of the
military world since 1870.

Now, of all the delusions of man, perhaps the most
difficult to cast forth is an " olatry." Whether a
man love his idols or fear his idols, for some mad
reason he is as unwilling to test them as he is un-
reasoning in his worship. And it is significant that,

xxiv GERMANY IN DEFEAT

hating Prussia as most of the writers on the war
hate her, there is scarce one of them that discusses
or approaches the war except with Moltke-olatry
upon the altars of his faith. There is scarce one
who does not write as if Prussia were the Lord of
War and the greatest of the warrior breeds ; there
is scarce one who does not reason upon the war
without looking at it in the terms of Germany.
There is scarce one who does not reason as if
Germany held the initiative and controlled the
movements of the campaign !

Indeed, we find even military writers urging
conscription and the imitation of the German methods
and system upon us, at the very moment when we
are giving our life's blood to destroy for ever those
methods and that system !

The fact is that the sudden triumph of Prussia in
1870 tricked and dazzled Europe. That the Prus-
sians blundered and botched their way to victory,
that victory came often against the plan laid by
Moltke, that Prussian strategy was successful because
the French strategy was even more blundering and
botchy, was wholly unrealised. Prussia succeeded ;
and the world set up Moltke as the supreme
genius in war, and the Prussian as the supreme
warrior. So we get all this bombastic drivel in the
Press about the War Lord and the like, which reads
pretty childish to-day. Yet the creed has been

MATTERS INTRODUCTORY

XXV

gabbled for so long that it seems impossible for the
writers to shake themselves free of the banality.
We, and Europe with us, are as responsible for the
mad conceit of Prussia — if so blatant and tragic an
egoism can be called by so trivial and light a word
as conceit — as is Prussia herself. She came to look
upon herself as invincible, and, to do her justice, she
did all that lay in her power to make herself invin-
cible. But she knew that the vast machine of war
into which she had converted her people and her
wealth and industries had this limitation — she must
overwhelm her enemies with a rush, or fall. Time
would always be against her wherever she struck.
It was vital to Germany to win great victories and
crush her enemies at the very outset of the war.
To see what Europe, under Moltke-olatry, took to
be the significance of the strategy of the opening of
the war, there is no need to quote the fatuous
editors who, last September, made the land ridi-
culous, but let us take the words of one of our most
brilliant military writers in this week that I pen
these lines : " The first of these expectations was
amply realised " (i.e., great victories at the outset
of the war). " The strong fortress of Liege was
completely in German hands within ten days of the
first shots. The full mobilisation of the German
forces had not been completed a fortnight when the
greater part of Belgium was securely held. The

xxvi GERMANY IN DEFEAT

capital, Brussels, was entered and occupied immedi-
ately afterwards. The first French armies gathered
to meet the shock were borne down in an avalanche
of invasion. All the six weeks succeeding the forcing
of the war were an uninterrupted triumph, even ex-
ceeding what had been expected by the general public
in the German Empire : the whole garrison of
Maubeuge, the crashing blow of the battle of Metz,
the uninterrupted and enormous charge through
Northern France, to the very gates of Paris, prisoners
by the hundred thousand, and guns in interminable
numbers. To crown all, just as the decisive stroke
against the beaten French army made possible the
immediate occupation of Paris, with the approach
of Sedan day, the German population received the
astounding news of Tannenberg."

Now it is certain that the German General Staff
thus desired the German public to read the opening
chapter of their war. It is certain that the Moltke-
olatry of the German people so led them readily to
read it. It is only too well known that the mass
of our Moltke-olatrous Press so read it. It is the
object of these pages to show that, on the contrary,
the Germans went to their doom ; that they lost
their war ; that the retreat of the French was one
of the most masterly acts of war in the history of
man ; that the Germans came near to complete
and appallingly disastrous defeat at the very early

MATTERS INTRODUCTORY xxvii

stages of their " victory " ; and that the invincibility
of the German arms lay shattered and broken at
the end of this " victory." What is more, it is
incredible that the German Staff were ignorant of
the disaster that had befallen the German arms,
however much they might strive to deceive Germany
or Europe. It may be that in the first days
of their astounding and overwhelming rush into
France they looked to victory ; but the dream
could not have lasted a week. Hours before they
arrived within sight of Paris, the General Staff must
have sat uneasy in their saddles — for these men are
soldiers, and they are bound to have realised that
the master-mind and master-will of the whirlwind
was no German, but lay in one called Joffre, and
that Prussia had brought forth no man of genius
to compare with him. They must have realised
that, except by some stroke of wild fortune, they
were a defeated people — and it is to their credit
that they so realised their defeat, and with con-
summate skill prepared a series of positions for
their retirement so that that defeat should at least
not become a mad rout.

I say these men were soldiers. As they rode back
towards the Rhine from the Great Defeat, they at
least knew full well that the dream of Prussian
World-Dominion had nickered out, and that the
star of Prussia had sunk in the waters of the Maine.

H. M.

CHAPTER I

THE POSITION OF THE GERMANS AT THE
OPENING OF THE WAR

A HISTORY of the War of 1914-15, written in
English or French, must necessarily begin with the
campaign waged in France and Belgium during the
first phase of the war, because although it is true
that the first flames of the conflagration lit up the
banks of the Danube and that developments in the
Eastern theatre quickly assumed a decisive char-
acter, the fact remains that the first and principal
effort of the aggressor nation was made in France
and Belgium, and that the destinies of Europe were
there fought out.

This campaign, to be clearly understood, must be
divided into three distinct periods : First, from the
opening of hostilities to the end of the so-called
" Battles of the Marne " ; second, the battles of
the Aisnes and of St. Mihiel and those of Flanders ;
and third, the war of the trenches, commonly
called the " siege- war."

2 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

The first period, naturally, should start further
back than the actual outbreak of hostilities, as it
should include such important matters as the
organisation, mobilisation and concentration of the
armies.

The military problem should be looked at, from
the start, as more directly affecting the two prin-
cipal and more military opponents in the struggle ;
that is to say France and Germany. In the long
run it is true that the scope of operations became
considerably wider, extending as it did as far as
the Caucasus, the Dardanelles, and the Egyptian
plains, not to mention Tsing-tao in distant China ;
but during the first and most decisive period of
the war the main factors in the conflict were the
French and German armies. England, at the outset,
could not put more than a couple of small army
corps in the field — the Indian contingent, a couple
of divisions, not landing in France until after the
end of the first period of warfare. Belgium had also
but very few soldiers to put in the field, and had
no time for effective concentration. And finally,
Russia was not able to make her weight felt on
Germany until her mobilisation was complete and
she had properly settled with Austria.

The German scheme of operations, as is well
known, was based on the rapid and overwhelming
defeat of the French. Reading Bernhardi, one

POSITION OF THE GERMANS 3

sees that the Germans, or rather that their military
leaders, did not despise the French army as much
as might be thought, and that France was clearly
realised to be their most powerful and resourceful
foe upon the Continent.

The German solution of the problem therefore
lay in the direction of the most effective use of all
the means at their disposal for the crushing of France
in the shortest possible time.

The means at the service of Germany if employed
with full force were of the most decisive nature —
rapidity of mobilisation and of concentration, and
vast superiority of numbers. The first — rapidity
of mobilisation and of concentration — was bestowed
partly by the German Constitution, which allowed
the head of the army to issue mobilisation orders
without sanction of parliament ; and partly by a
railway system built entirely for strategic pur-
poses. The second — vast superiority of numbers —
was provided by a larger population and a greater
centralisation of forces. In this matter Germany
enjoyed a special advantage, for she had no troops
to bring out from across the sea from distant
shores ; whilst France had part of her best fighting
material away in Africa and in her Asiatic colonies.

No German, even of the less sanguine tempera-
ment, could entertain any doubt as to the result
of the struggle ; and in those busy days of active

4 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

preparation and hasty diplomatic dealings Germany
stood triumphant, intoxicated with the conscious-
ness of her might and the absolute certainty of
victory — of swift and crushing victory. Her people
had lived on the memories of 1870 ; and since then
Germany had become even more united, strong
and defiant. The respect and awe in which she was
held bespoke to the German recognised weakness
on the part of her neighbours. Pacifism, to the
German mind, the desire for universal peace, was
but a euphemism for cowardice. The hour had
come. Germany, with a light heart and the ' ' silvery
laugh of Siegfried," would step over her boundaries
and overwhelm " effete," " decadent " nations
with her war-trained millions. Of a certainty,
amongst the vast and glittering armies which,
towards the end of July, 1914, poured across the
Rhine in a westerly flood, there was not a single
man who doubted for one instant that the end of
France was at hand. Even the date chosen for
opening the campaign was of good omen and must
bring luck to the Kaiser's arms, for was it not on
the first of August, forty-four years ago, that the
victors of Sedan and Metz had crossed the frontier !
This time, however, in variance with 1870, and
as the higher command clearly foresaw, the problem
of crushing France in the shortest possible time
would only be half solved by the secret mobilisation

POSITION OF THE GERMANS 5

and rapid concentration of the German armies.
The mobilisation and concentration, for instance,
would not be sufficient to place all the first-line troops
and an equal number of first-rate reserve formations
in the west, as at least half the units thus mustered
through lack of space or of ground on which to deploy
would have to remain inactive in the rear for many
weeks, and could only advance to fill up gaps in
the more forward army corps — a congestion due to
the nature of the difficulty presented by the short-
ness of the French frontier. From Thionville in
the north to Mulhausen in the south, no more than
three armies, each of four or five army corps, could
be concentrated ; and there were four more armies
of equal strength that would consequently be held
back. Furthermore, the French eastern line of
defences was very strong ; and French concentra-
tion could be safely effected behind this unassail-
able line, thus robbing Germany of the benefit of
her greatest advantage — superiority of numbers.
She would win, of course — she had no doubts on
the subject ; but it might be months before she
achieved a decisive and complete success ; and
Russia by that time would have become a dangerous
foe at her back.

Such were the views of the German General Staff,
who, contrary to popular belief, considered their
war-plan entirely from its technical aspect, and

6 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

were never influenced by sentimental reasons nor
restrained by any moral or political considerations.
Full of their books and the teachings of Frederick
the Great and of Moltke, they subordinated every-
thing else to strategic necessity.

This is so true that the problem we have just
surveyed had been thought out and solved by the
Germans long before the war ; and the German
Staff had made no secret of it. A scheme of strategic
railways had been elaborated and laid down along
the Belgian frontier ; and the military writers of
Germany — some of whom were officers of distinc-
tion— had given the widest publicity to the fact,
and to the aims of Germany in this direction. Fin-
ally, the points chosen north of Treves for the
concentration of several German armies conclusively
proves that the German General Staff had irre-
vocably made up their minds to violate Belgian
neutrality ; for the concentration of an army is
an intricate, lengthy business, and cannot be altered
without cross-orders, counter-marches, and the
confusion which results.

In fact, the German Staff, adhering always strictly
to strategic principles, omitted nothing from their
calculations — not even the possibility of Great
Britain participating in the struggle, nor of Belgium
resisting. The German people and the rest of the
army, of course, knew nothing of that, as it is not

POSITION OF THE GERMANS 1

customary for the heads of the army to discuss
their plans in public. Nor is the public, untrained
to reason in strategy, able to draw conclusions from
even obvious preparations.

But the weighing of alternatives, which is the
basis of all strategic counsels, can leave no doubt
that when the gauntlet was thrown down and the
Teutonic hosts were sent swarming along the fron-
tiers of Luxembourg and Belgium, the German
General Staff were quite ready to face all eventu-
alities and to modify their plans, if necessary, as
they went along. Nothing could stop them. They
accounted themselves geniuses in war, every one
of them. They accounted their troops invincible,
and themselves the directors of invincibility. They
confidently believed that no troops in the wide
world could stand against the German arms. Even
at the worst, with Belgium and England fighting on
the side of France, they entertained no doubt as to
the result. They had enough resources to crush
any foes, and alternatives galore to fit any political
modification that might present itself. Of course
they preferred to fight France by herself until they
could, in all ease, transfer their victorious and in,
vincible troops to some other corner of the earth.

CHAPTER II

THE POSITION OF THE FRENCH AT THE OPENING OF
THE WAR

AT the outbreak of war the situation for France,
although terrible and most threatening, looked
simple enough ; and it was, after all, the one that
had been anticipated for years, and for which the
military authorities had made ready.

War with Germany implied an attack from the foe
on the frontier which mattered most, the frontier
which, for that reason, had been most elaborately
fortified. From Verdun in the north to Belfort in
the east, close to the Swiss frontier, stood the vast
rampart against German assault — a bastion of
strength against all surprise. There also lay the
covering troops — " troupes de couvertures " — the
" iron divisions " of the 20th and 7th corps, the
" Ironsides " of France, fully trained and equipped,
ever ready for war at an hour's call, not to mention
other troops trained almost to as high a pitch for
battle. Whilst these superb armies fought and kept
the Germans at bay, the other forces of France
would be mobilised, concentrated, and brought for-

HOLLAND

1-Generetl pojtttjons ofthf German Western armies

at the outbreak of Mir.
2. - first plan of concentration of the/Lvc/irst/rench armies

i I French army

SWITZERLAND

MAP 1.

To face page 8

POSITION OF THE FRENCH 9

ward to the field of battle. The shortness of the
front to be defended, as well as its strength, would
make all this possible ; and, as matters stood on
the day that the Germans set foot on French terri-
tory, the immediate prospect was not unfavourable
to France.

Even the inclusion by the enemy of the Grand
Duchy of Luxembourg in the scope of operations
could not make much difference, as the frontier
portion of this tiny State where it touches France
was infinitesimal. It only enabled the invaders to
attack the insignificant fortress of Longwy, which
was garrisoned but by a battalion of infantry.

The Germans derived some advantages by the
orders given to the French covering troops to leave
a space of ten kilometres (six miles) between them-
selves and the frontier. This measure, which was
taken by the French Government in order to
show its pacific intention and its strong desire for
compromise and a peaceful solution, enabled the
aggressors to seize some important positions along
the frontier, particularly over the Vosges mountains ;
also to extend their entrenched lines in Lorraine,
south of Saarburg and Savern, right into French
territory. But all this mattered little, and German
incursions and depredations on the frontier villages
could not affect the strength and value of such
strongholds as Verdun, Toul, Epinal or Belfort,

10 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

— or decrease the moral of the finest troops in France.
The concentration of the French armies, therefore,
was undertaken on the basis that France alone
would oppose Germany in Western Europe ; and
the whole of the French forces, consisting of five
armies of four to five army corps each, were gathered
up gradually, to be stretched on a line extending,
roughly, from Mezieres to Belfort. They were to
face eastwards. One of these armies, however — the
4th — was slightly in the rear, in reserve, west of
Commercy ; and this was the only indication that a
strategist would get, by a glance at the map, that
the French General Staff felt, or knew, that the
dreaded violation of Belgian neutrality by the
Germans was imminent ; because, from its position,
the 4th French army could, without a pronounced
change of front, proceed to the north as well as to
the eastward. This it did when the violation of
Belgium by Germany was an accomplished fact
and Belgium asked France for her support. Then,
and not until then, the action of the three first
armies was extended northwards ; the 5th army
slipped along the Meuse, from Mezieres to a point
opposite Fourmies on the Belgian frontier ; and the
4th army, wheeling slightly northwards, stepped in
between the 5th and 3rd army on the Meuse.

But it should be here borne in mind that this
change of position was not entirely accomplished by

POSITION OF THE FRENCH 11

the troops themselves, as, when the plan of concen-
tration had to be changed, mobilisation was still
going on. The French Staff merely issued new
orders, altering the destination of certain units.
Some of these units had to change trains or return
to their base in order to pick up a new line. The
alteration applied to all the branches — artillery,
cavalry, as well as commissariat ; hence the delays
and confusion often attending the adoption of a new
plan of concentration under pressure of events.
That the French authorities were able to accomplish
the mobilisation and concentration of the troops
in the scheduled minimum of time was in itself a
remarkable achievement. It certainly was not anti-
cipated by the Germans, who had hoped, by their
hurried attack on Longwy and their swift incur-
sions into French territory, to confuse the French
Staff. A more immediate surprise (for they could
not guess until some time afterwards the thorough-
ness of the French military arrangements) was the
unity and coolness of a nation which they had
thought to be divided amongst themselves, and
above all other peoples volatile and superficial.
The Germans, themselves trained most superficially
in knowledge of foreign affairs, fully expected a
revolution to break out in Paris. They even ex-
pected a gigantic mutiny through which Royalist,
Socialist, Democrat and Republican, by fighting

12 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

amongst themselves, would create confusion, chaos,
a regular panic, and thus greatly facilitate the
already quite easy work of the German armies.

No nation made sadder mistakes than Germany
in 1914, nor blundered more fatuously in its cal-
culations. The beliefs she entertained about France
in particular were extraordinary — they were colos-
sal in their ignorance and naivete ; and certainly,
if real Culture implies a total neglect of the history
of other peoples, then the Germans had Culture to
the pin of their collar. Setting aside their mis-
apprehension as to the English psychology and
character, and their fantastic interpretation of the
Irish question and of the Suffragist movement, the
tales seriously spread throughout Germany about
a nation with which they had been in immediate
contact for centuries were ludicrous to the point of
fatuity. In spite of the way in which France had
recuperated from her defeat and losses in 1870-71,
in spite of the great and evident progress France
was making in almost every field of human activity
and enterprise, she was, according to the German
view, even to the most learned amongst the
Germans, decadent and, therefore, ripe for conquest.
How could such a country — a Republic, a demo-
cracy— have an army and bring forth a great cap-
tain to lead that army ! Was not French admin-
istration, military and civil, steeped in corruption ?

POSITION OP THE FRENCH 13

Were there not scandals enough to prove it ! Even
on the eve of war had not one been breaking forth ?
Had not a deputy in the Chamber declared that
the army had no ammunition !

It must be confessed that Germany was not
entirely to blame for such beliefs, since, apart from
the public washing of dirty linen so frequent in
France, apart from the partisan spirit of politicians,
there were enough French people, of the kind gener-
ally opposed to Republican ideals and institutions,
to spread abroad the legend of French corruption
and degeneracy. But, for all that, the German, with
his much-vaunted knowledge of history, should
have realised that a nation that had so often re-
covered from past defeats and so often astonished
Europe and the world by its sudden bursts of energy,
would become, when its back was to the wall, a
most bitter and dangerous foe. There were the
instances of the Hundred Years War and of Joan of
Arc to ponder upon, and the more recent example
of Rossbach, followed by Valmy and Jena. In the
Seven Years War France had only mediocrities to
lead her troops. It had been the same in 1870. But
in the intervening period, not to mention anterior
phases, her military genius had shone forth in all
its lustre. Her whole past had been remarkable
for her recuperative power above all other qualities.
And here we come to the greatest surprise in reserve

14 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

for Germany in this war — France has revealed many
men of genius to lead her troops. They were un-
known because unadvertised. None of them had
written sensational books concerning the subjuga-
tion of Europe and the re-establishment of the
Frankish Empire ! None of them taught their
troops the goose-step or the like parade eccentrici-
ties. None of them advised the Sultan or contri-
buted loud ringing essays to a subsidised press.
They worked quietly and conscientiously at the
mastering of their profession and in the training of
their troops towards mastery. And on the critical
day they fell without a flourish of trumpets into
their allotted places of command. The Commander-
in-Chief alone was given some recognition from the
start, but the names of those under him who directed
the operations of huge bodies of men have only
become known to the public in order of merit of
achievement. Some of the greatest feats in arms
of the war have been performed anonymously ; and
it is not even certain that the operations of war that
really saved France and Europe have as yet been
noticed or will be remembered by future generations.
Naturally we do not mean to say that all the
French generals were men of genius. Some were
to turn out but indifferent leaders in the field. The
Commander-in-Chief whom the Republic placed
at the head of her armies, being a strong man, had

POSITION OF THE FRENCH 15

begun, before the war, to weed out, regardless of
politics or creed, all commanding or staff officers
whom he did not think fully fitted for their work.
Thus he cashiered five popular commanders who
were nearly all amongst his personal friends. He
did so in the teeth of considerable opposition,
political and social. But General Joffre would
rather have relinquished his command than have
kept men in the army on the principle of favouritism
that had cost France the loss of Alsace and Lorraine.
However, partly through caution and partly through
the difficulty of judging the true work of a military
man in time of peace, General Joffre was not
altogether fortunate in the choice of some of his
subordinates, three of whom were given high com-
mands but proved themselves unworthy of the
selection — not in the quality of honour, as some evil
rumours would have it, nor even of brains, for they
were brilliant theorists, but in their leadership in
action in the presence of the enemy. To put it in
the people's phrase, they lost their heads at critical
moments amidst the confusion of battle, and com-
mitted mistakes the import of which cannot be
exaggerated — blunders and errors of judgment which
it required all the ability of the really able men to
redress.

CHAPTER III

THE STRATEGIC PERPLEXITY PRODUCED ON THE
FRENCH BY THE OPENING GERMAN MOVES IN
THE WAR

THE strategic situation created by the German
incursion into Belgium was rather dark and com-
plicated ; and for some time the French Staff
knew not what to make of it nor what to expect
from an enemy so unscrupulous — an enemy, more-
over, who possessed the initiative.

As it was, rumours came of a German occupation
of Basle in Switzerland. Strong bodies were
stationed in the neighbourhood along the right
bank of the Rhine. They might cross Upper
Alsace and make a dash for Belfort, the nearest
French stronghold to the German frontier. There
was no denying, however, that the threat in the
north was more serious, and would increase in
danger if the Germans succeeded in overawing
Belgium and sweeping unopposed through that
country. Yet, their movements there taking place
so far north might have a different significance
— the Germans might simply wish to distract the

Oste.

/ _ General positions of the German Western armies

on the 5 ^ of August /*?/•?
2. - /Second plctn of concentration off fit /tuejirst

French, ct.rmi.es

MAP 2.

To /ace page 16.

STRATEGIC PERPLEXITY 17

attention of the French from their eastern line of
defence, which, when all was said, was the real
key of the position. This explanation seemed the
most likely, and later it turned out to be the correct
one.

A German attack was impending on Nancy.
Considerable bodies of troops were massed south,
west, and east of Metz, biding their time. The
attack was only to be made when the French, by
pressure of events, had diverted some of their
troops elsewhere and had thus weakened their
line. But the French Staff were not bound to know
this ; and at such an early stage of developments
they could not guess the real intentions of the Ger-
man Staff. They took the safest course by acting
on the assumption — one might say the belief — that
the Germans were going to attack Nancy at once.

For those who do not realise the importance of
the capital of Lorraine, or rather of the positions
surrounding it, it is as well to explain that these
positions, called " Grand Couronne," command
the approaches to the fortress of . Toul. This
fortress lies at the northern extremity of the " trouee
de Mirecourt " which the fortress of Epinal shuts
off in the south — a gap of 50 miles in the high grounds
through which an enemy besieging either Toul or
Epinal could easily pour into France. That is
what the French Staff meant when they said that

B

18 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

a successful attack on the " Grand Couronne "
and the German occupation of Nancy would be
fatal to the concentration of the French armies.
The " camp de Chalons " — the Aldershot of France
— would be threatened, and most probably seized,
by the Germans ; and all the French armies of the
north would have their communications cut off.
It will thus be understood that the anxieties of the
French Staff in the early days of August were well
founded. Before any other consideration they wished
to consolidate the threatened position ; and, whilst
the work of mobilisation and concentration of the
main armies was still going on they decided to
attempt a diversion which, if it did nothing else,
would at least ward off the German attack, and
would have the valuable effect of causing confusion
and anxiety in the minds of the German Staff as
to the French intention. This diversion was
prepared and launched with some of the forces
already in hand ; but meanwhile the situation in
the north assumed a different and more definite
aspect.

The Germans had entered Belgium on August 3
— the same day of their attack on Longwy and three
full days after they had already violated the terri-
tory of another neutral State ; and the French
Staff, as has been shown, had proceeded to alter
their first plan of concentration accordingly ; but,

STRATEGIC PERPLEXITY 19

as yet, until August 5 and the attack on Liege,
nothing further had happened — except in the realm
of diplomacy, the overtures of Germany to the
Belgian Government at Brussels, and the appeals
of Belgium to England and France. This interval
of two days marks an epoch in the history of the
world.

In France, from the moment that war was under-
stood to be inevitable, all eyes were turned to the
mistress of the seas. Even when the strategic
situation in Western Europe concerned France alone,
the uppermost desire of Frenchmen was that Eng-
land should intervene — partly because, not wishing
for war, they felt that the intervention of England
would mean peace ; partly for sentimental reasons
coupled with the almost superstitious belief that
if war really came, the side on which England stood
would win. This belief had little to do with the
actual resources that England could or would throw
into the balance, nor with the excellence of the British
army as a tactical unit, which was not yet proved.
The gist of the matter lay in the complex nature
of the French or Latin temperament, which is
rather prone to seek the approval and encourage-
ment of its friends, and lacking that, is apt to
become dangerously depressed. In this particular
case, no doubt, it would be unfair as well as strate-
gically inaccurate to assume that France, without

20 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the help of England, would have been definitely
conquered by the Germans. Such was the spirit and
soul of France and the genius of her commanders,
that means would have been found within the nation
itself to defeat and repel the invader. France had
deliberately and calmly decided from highest to
lowest that this should be so — or obliteration. But
— and this is the main point — it would have been
terribly costly for France ; it would have drained
the nation's resources, principally in men ; and
there would have been a lasting grudge against
England if she had failed her friend in the hour of
need. The support of England at first seemed doubt-
ful. The violation of the neutrality of Luxem-
bourg took place on August 1. It was a casus
belli, which, indirectly at least, affected England.
France was attacked all along the frontier on
August 2 — the declaration of war being formu-
lated on the next day ; on this day, August 3, the
violation of Belgian neutrality took place. Here
the casus belli affected England directly ; but her
attitude remained unknown until the 5th ; and yet
the French people, who could now, on technical
grounds, as the French Staff did, take it for granted
that England would remain neutral, did not flinch.
There can be no better proof of their confidence in
themselves ; but it would have been with a heavy
heart that they would have faced the foe ; whereas,

STRATEGIC PERPLEXITY 21

when the English declaration of war to Germany
at last came, a great wave of enthusiasm swept
over the country. With their characteristic quick-
ness of mind, the French understood the reasons
which had made England hesitate — the internal
political crisis caused by the Irish question ; the
Labour unrest ; the spirit of pacifism which per-
meated even the British Cabinet, of which more
than one member was suspected of German sym-
pathies, were all at their height when the trumpet
of war rang through Europe. Thus it was that
when, a few days later, whilst events were quickly
developing in the theatre of hostilities, the first
British contingent landed in northern France, it
was given a reception such as few troops have ever
known in a foreign land ; and, let us here add, such
as only a truly great people is capable of offering.
The smart and trim " Tommies " of England,
worthy descendants of the archers of Crecy and
Agincourt, were frankly admired and enthusiastically
taken to the heart of France.

Once the co-operation of the British army was
assured, the main matter for the French Staff was
to co-ordinate, in the best way possible, all strategic
efforts. The problem, again, had somewhat altered,
and some modifications had to be made in the
concentration of the left wing — the 5th army, and
the formations that were later to become the 6th

22 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

army. But even with these modifications, which
did not extend beyond Arras and Lille, France found
herself now with a line of concentration far too
long for her resources compared with the German
line of concentration. The isolation of some of her
forces might spell disaster — as in 1870. Yet some-
thing had to be made not only of British but of
Belgian co-operation. At the same time, and above
all other considerations, the French Staff were
obliged not to lose sight for one instant of their
eastern fortresses — the main defensive line of France
and the true pivot of the whole scheme of operations.
Such was the exact condition of affairs on the
French side on, and after, August 5, 1914, when the
Germans attacked Liege in Belgium, and England
declared war on Germany. From a broader, or
political, standpoint there were now other and
vaster issues at stake than the mere existence, as
an independent State, of the French nation. The
struggle assumed a more general international aspect,
and the prestige and wealth of Britain, as well as
her mastery of the seas and her domination of the
trade routes of the world, were destined to loom
larger than the more substantial and costly efforts
of other nations ; but the strategic problem, viewed
intrinsically, was to remain in essentials (as far as
the military operations in France and Belgium were
concerned) the particular domain of a body of men

STRATEGIC PERPLEXITY 23

not much thought about until then — the French
General Staff — and especially of its head, the gener-
alissimo, Joffre, who had until the war lived in
comparative obscurity and was totally unknown
to the world at large.

CHAPTER IV

THE REAL AND WHOLLY UNREALISED SIGNIFICANCE
OF LIJ3GE

THE attack and investment of the Belgian fortress
of Liege had, from the German standpoint, a
strategic intention of the utmost importance.

This result had a world-wide importance from the
mere glamour that arose and surrounded the event,
owing to its historic defence by the Belgians under
General Leman ; but its strategic importance was
wholly and rashly misinterpreted, as is often the
case at the start of a campaign when the military
plans and motives of the belligerents are necessarily
kept in the dark and, indeed, remain shrouded in
mystery for a long time afterwards — sometimes for
ever.

It is well to note that all, or nearly all, contro-
versies about affairs of war dwell on the opening
moves or plans which are rarely, if ever, explained
in a satisfactory manner. One eagerly strives to
know what happened here and there, and what was
the reason, or the cause, of this or that action or
lack of action. Generally, of course, the mass of

24

Jrtftjharrnu eoneen
_ J tratinf

Jrrencn. army
German army

MAPS.

To face page 24.

SIGNIFICANCE OP LI^GE 25

people, who take no interest in the military aspect
of a struggle, are quite satisfied with a simple ex-
planation of events that seems to give an obvious
solution. This explanation may be utterly false,
and in the light of succeeding events may show
ridiculous. But it has been accepted, and becomes
one of those convenient and pat commonplaces
that assures ready acceptance, and helps unthinking
babblers out of dialectic difficulties. Ask one of
these autocrats of the armchair : " Why did the
Germans attack Liege on August 5, 1914 ? " and
he is sure to answer : " Why, to move through
Belgium, of course." ... It is the accepted
formula of the opening strategy of the war, the
doggedly held dogma of this campaign. Ninety-
nine people out of a hundred have a settled con-
viction that the German strategy was to pour
through Belgium and make for Paris thereby.
Indeed, to challenge this theory — a plan of campaign
astutely advertised by the German writers before
the war — is almost to risk the strait-waistcoat of
Bedlam, or to be taken for one of those consequen-
tial fellows who make a point of opposing all popular
beliefs. But should you happen to have made care-
ful notes of the position of army corps, and to have
gone a little deeper into the first strategic moves of
the German armies in Belgium, and watched their
relation to the armies deliberately kept elsewhere,

26 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

you will be tempted to follow your first question
by another : " Why did the Germans not attack
Namur at the same time as they attacked Liege ? "
And to follow it with yet another and more explicit
and clear query : " Why did the Germans wait
until the 20th — that is to say, two whole weeks —
to do so ? " The tea-table and the armchair are
at once upset ; the autocrat gapes at you and,
mentally reviewing the map that he has so often
glanced at since the war began, he answers falter-
ingly : "I don't know."

After all, dates and the exact position of army
corps on those dates are very stubborn facts to
juggle with.

The sudden bewilderment of the cocksure is the
beginning of wisdom. The " I don't know " of the
dogmatist is the proof positive that the popular
theory, and generally accepted solution, of the siege
of Liege were wrong. Obviously the Germans were
not hammering at Liege as one beats on a gate that
one would break down, in order to " sweep " through
Belgium ; and that this was the intention of the
main German strategy when the Belgians scorned
their ultimatum is a myth of the popular imagi-
nation.

Let us deal with the ungarnished facts.

On August 2, whilst four huge German armies
concentrated along the Belgian frontier, and one of

SIGNIFICANCE OF LIlSGE 27

these armies penetrated through the Grand Duchy
of Luxembourg as far as the French frontier, the
German proposals to Brussels for free passage were
categorically rejected. On August 3 a final ulti-
matum was presented and a German army — the
2nd army under General von Bulow — stepped into
Belgium, and the Belgian Government made its
appeal to England and to France, and at the same
time affirmed its determination of defending its
neutrality. Therefore when, as is usual in warfare,
the German commander on the next day, the 4th,
approaching Liege, sent a summons to surrender to
the Governor of that fortress, he knew that the
Belgian Governor, General Leman, had orders to
resist, and would do so. The same would apply to
the other Belgian stronghold on the Meuse, Namur.
In plain terms, the Germans knew that resistance
would be met with everywhere. It is not for us
here to consider the speculative value of such a
position as it appeared to the German Staff at the
time of the Belgian resistance ; but we are solely
concerned with the simple fact that this resistance
altered the original strategic problem as it was
viewed by the German Staff before the rejection by
Belgium of the German proposals for free movement
through the country. In short, the German Staff,
strategically, could not now simply make use of
Belgium as a convenient open door. The German

28 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

military operations could not begin, as had at first
been hoped, within the French frontier, but con-
siderably outside of that frontier, in Belgium itself.
The strategic problem had, therefore, to be tackled
accordingly.

This alternative, be it clearly understood, had
been well weighed by the German General Staff,
who did nothing except in a most thorough manner,
and were guided by military rule of thumb rather
than by moral or political considerations. But even
political considerations went to strengthen the
decision of the German Staff ; for, by this time,
the date of the first attack on Liege, England had
declared war, and this meant that the area of
strategic possibilities must be widened. It had not
been intended to make the stroke through Belgium
the chief, but the secondary act. But Belgium was
now suddenly decided upon to be made the decisive
battle-ground where the fate of France was to be
settled at once.

The factor of time, more than anything else,
dictated such a course, because the original " hack-
ing through " policy might be a slow process, and it
could, after all, be picked up again later, if the more
advantageous alternative failed.

Everything, however, pointed to the early success
of this alternative. The spirit of France, of her
armies, of her commanders, was judged according

SIGNIFICANCE OF LI^GE 29

to the standards of 1870. The French Staff would
submit to the pressure of events and of public
opinion, which would demand the instant relief of
the Belgians. With their usual impatience and
impetuosity the French would rush forces into
Belgium, and the fate of these armies would in-
stantly be sealed — the Germans were in waiting for
them.

This is the true explanation of the German delay
in the matter of Namur, and the comparative in-
activity of their centre armies until the 20th of
August — that is to say, several days after the fall
of Liege. They wanted to " trap " the French, and
maybe the English army also, in Belgium. And
they felt sure that the French could and would fall
into the trap, rush their troops to Belgium, weaken
their eastern forces, and be overwhelmed. The rest
would have been easy, and the conquest of France
would have been accomplished, as in 1870, before
even Paris was reached. It would be a colossal
victory, which, at the outset, would give Germany
the mastery in Western Europe and enable her, at
an early date, with huge forces, to face the Russian
hosts on her eastern border.

It must not be thought that German reliance on
French preparedness was at all imaginary, and that
France had not the means necessary for a quick
advance into Belgium. The early French offensive

30 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

in Alsace, which started from Belfort on the same day
that the Germans attacked Liege, is a proof in point.
Far from thinking that the French were not able to
enter Belgium at such an early date, the Germans
had done everything they could to entice them to
violate Belgian neutrality before they — the Ger-
mans— did so. The mobilisation and concentration
of the first five French armies, despite the change
of plan forced on the French Staff by the German
invasion of Belgium, were accomplished on or before
August 14. The German Staff felt sure that by
that date a French army of four or five army corps,
perhaps more, would be well on its way to Brussels
or Liege.

There were, as a matter of fact, very early reports
to that effect. " Six French soldiers had arrived in
Liege in a motor car." " Many French officers had
been seen in Brussels a few days after." " French
cavalry had joined Belgian cavalry south of Huy,
and also north of the Sambre." " Thirty-two
trains, full of French troops, had arrived at Tournay,
on their way to Brussels, through Hal ! " These
reports, and many others to the same purport, were
spread abroad between the 6th and 12th of August.
By whom ? Before answering this question with
any degree of assurance one would have to examine
the reports carefully in the light of subsequent
developments, and also go rather deeply into the

SIGNIFICANCE OF LIEGE 31

strategy of Joffre in Belgium in August, 1914,
which we shall do in due course. Sufficient to say
that whosoever had spread them had fairly gauged
the intentions of the German Staff, and was more
than solicitous for the welfare of Belgium and the
success of the French arms.

The Germans, there can be no doubt, believed
these reports. Their extensive reconnaissances
west of Liege, after they had mastered the crossings
of the Meuse, show it. Their expedition to Dinant
on August 14 shows it. Their carefully entrenched
positions in the Ardennes show it. Their bomb-
throwing on Namur on the 14th also shows it — they
thought that Namur was full of French troops.
Finally, the prolonged inactivity of the German
armies south of Liege from the 5th to the 20th of
August — that is, for over a fortnight — shows it
beyond question. These armies, under the command
of General von Hausen, the Grand Duke of Wurtem-
berg, and the Crown Prince, were of a strength be-
tween them of fifteen army corps, not counting the
Prussian Guards and several cavalry divisions, and
except for the siege of the small French fortress of
Longwy, begun on August 3, a reconnaissance in
force in the direction of Verdun on August 10, and
another at Dinant on the 14th, these huge bodies of
troops, totalling nearly a million of men, remained
inactive for a matter of two weeks, thus giving time

32 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

to the French to collect their forces and increase
their strength.

What could have kept them from advancing ?

Not the resistance of Liege surely, since the place
was only attacked by the 2nd army under Bulow
— the 1st army under Kluck also lying inactive
behind it. Not the first French offensive in Alsace,
which had been defeated ; nor the subsequent
advance of the French in Lorraine, which the
Germans had ample means of defeating.

No. It was not any of these things. The real
truth was that the Germans were in waiting for
the French in Belgium. Their plan was to involve
them there in a calamitous disaster ; and then to
proceed to the easier task of beating them, of
finishing them off in detail, in other places. Their
eastern line would be pierced ; and to the Crown
Prince's army would fall the honour of marching
on Paris through Reims. That was the original
plan of the German Staff ; and it was for this that
the Crown Prince was placed in the centre and not
at the extreme right wing. Unforeseen develop-
ments alone gradually brought the German Staff
to alter the plan — as well as the strategic objective
of their armies.

Let us now deal in chronological order with the
said developments.

CHAPTER V

THE REAL GERMAN DESIGN IN THE SIEGE OF LllSGE
AND THEIR HESITATIONS IN BELGIUM

IT was on the 4th of August that the German
columns advancing into northern Belgium by the
roads of Verviers, Herve, and Vize came into
contact with Belgian troops.

This advance had been slow on account of the
difficulties accumulated by the Belgians on the
route taken by the German march — barricades,
felled trees, destroyed railway lines, and the like.
Thus the invaders knew almost at once the
character of the opposition that would be offered
by the Belgians.

The first attack on Liege began on the evening of
the 5th, after General Leman had rejected the
summons of the German commander, von Emmich,
of the 10th corps of the 2nd German army, who
was given the direction of the movements for the
reduction of the fortress. Von Emmich, in his
attack, acted on the principle of concentration on
a single sector — which proves that he had no

certainty that the defenders would give way at
g 33

34 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

once ; since, had the presumption of the Germans
been such that they believed they could overawe
the Belgians and rush the place, they would have
made from the start a greater display of force.
The north-east sector — three forts — was attacked
first, the German infantry trying to get a foothold
on the intervals between the forts. This, had they
succeeded, would have enabled them to bring their
artillery to bear on all sides of the forts. The
Belgians, however, had thoroughly prepared the
ground in these intervals. They fought well ;
and their fire, as well as their counter-attacks, told.
The Germans suffered great losses ; and retired in
disorder to their original positions.

It was after the failure of this attack that the
Germans directed their attention to the south-
eastern sector of forts. This action took place in
the early hours of the morning. It was not so
advantageous to the Belgians as the first. The
Germans not only gained the desired footing round
the forts, but they even entered the town itself and
thus gained control of the crossings over the Meuse.

Lie"ge was virtually occupied by the Germans on
the 6th of August. On the next day they had
mastered the crossings at Vize and at Huy. From
Huy General Leman had brought back a brigade
for the defence of the south-eastern sector. Thus
the Germans were able to occupy Huy.

THE SIEGE OF LH5GE 35

The work for the regular siege of the forts of
Lie"ge began on August 7.

Most of the forts resisted well, considering the
weight of metal brought to bear upon them. But
in the meantime the Germans could pour their
troops across the Meuse at will, which was their first
consideration.

Now what we want to point out is that the German
advance on Brussels could have begun there and
then — at the latest on the 9th of August. There
were no Belgian troops east of the Meuse ; and the
Be^ian army, like the French, had scarcely begun
its concentration. In not more than three days,
taking account of all difficulties, a couple of German
corps could have reached the Belgian capital.
They did not do so. Why ? Because it did not
suit the German strategists to do so. Yet the
illusion was entertained amongst the allies that
the Germans were doing all they could to reach
Brussels, but that each t:me they attempted to
do so they were hurled back by an extraordinarily
inferior number of heroic Belgians. The actions
of Eghezee, Haelen, Diest, and Hasselt, on August
11 and 12, which were mere reconnaissances on the
part of the Germans, were magnified into regular
pitched battles. The fact is that a reconnaissance
under modern conditions of war is apt to foster
such an illusion. In the wars of the past an

36 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

operation of the kind was generally carried out by
a very small number of troops — a few companies
and squadrons, with perhaps some light guns.
Nowadays, in a war of millions, the operation is
not comparatively larger ; but battalions take the
place of companies, whole cavalry regiments that
of squadrons, and the force, which may number
from 5,000 to 6,000 men, is accompanied by a large
number of machine guns, armoured cars, cyclist
companies, aeroplanes, and so forth. Thus the
reconnoitring party is a small army in itself ; and
if the operation be carried out on a wide front —
which it is, on account of the mobility of its various
units — the impression is given of a numerous army
on the march.

Viewed in their true perspective and proportions,
the " battles " of the llth and 12th of August to
the west of the Meuse were skirmishes, or at most
but loose attacks delivered by the Germans with
the object of discovering the main point of concen-
tration of the Belgian army, for on the position
of this point depended the further course of German
strategy in northern Belgium.

There was another, and just as important end in
view — but first let us deal with the question of the
concentration of the Belgian field forces. This
concentration was carried out according to a pre-
conceived plan based on the situation and strength

THE SIEGE OF LI^GE 37

of the fortress of Antwerp. This the German Intelli-
gence knew full well. Belgium had only three
fortresses, and the strongest was Antwerp, where
was a huge arsenal, with immense supplies ; and
it could be further supplied by sea. In the Govern-
ment councils before the war it had always been
laid down as a principle, indeed as an axiom, that
whatever happened Belgium must not relinquish
Antwerp except at the last extremity. Thus the
more sound strategic principle of initial and com-
plete co-operation — in the military sense — with
the allied armies was laid aside. The point of con-
centration was selected for defensive purposes near
Antwerp instead of for offensive purposes near the
French frontier — which would have proved more
advantageous in the long run. The plan was
drawn up, apparently, with the approval of the
French Staff ; but, considering the tendency of
the modern French school of war to attach little
value to fortresses as such, one can feel certain that
Belgian strategy, at the opening stages of the war,
was little, if at all, influenced by the spirit of the
French Staff. Or Joffre, who might have ventured
into Belgium sooner, adopted an alternative which
suited the Belgian plan of defence. This alterna-
tive was risky ; but there could be no other as
long as it could not be proved that Antwerp was
of no value in the Belgian system of defence.

38 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Later on we shall see what this alternative
was.

Let us explain now what was the second objective
of the German reconnaissances to the northwards
of the Meuse on the llth and 12th of August. The
false reports already mentioned in regard to the
generally looked for, and much hoped for, advance
of the French into Belgium gave the Germans the
idea that, as early as the 9th or 10th of August,
French troops were on their way to Brussels. It
was known, as a matter of fact, that French cavalry
had crossed the Belgian frontier on the 6th, and a
skirmish had taken place somewhere at the opening
of the Ardennes forest. The Germans, therefore,
wanted to test the accuracy of these reports about
the French being in force in Belgium, for the severity
of the French military censorship was such that a
couple of French army corps or more might be
concentrated in Belgium alongside the Belgian
army without the Germans being the wiser. This
course of action on the part of the French, as has
been said before, would have suited the German
strategists, since they were looking and hoping for
it ; and they firmly believed that such a concentra-
tion was actually taking place, but they were bound
to make sure before venturing upon measures which
might prove abortive. It was mainly with this
intention of discovering whether the French were

THE SIEGE OF LlfiGE 39

in strength in Belgium that the German commanders
spread their reconnoitring forces over such an expanse
of ground. The result was disappointing, and rather
perplexing — no French troops were met with
north of the Sambre. Then, and not until then,
the German Staff began to doubt whether French
troops — in important numbers — were in Belgium
at all. This, to them, seemed incredible, precisely
on account of the point of concentration for the
Belgian army having been selected so far north.
The most efficient Belgian resistance came from the
direction of Aershot and Louvain. In the south
there were only a few troops. Surely the Belgians
would not be left isolated by their allies, the French !
Or did it mean that the English army was already
landing in Belgium, and would come and fill the
gap between Brussels and the French frontier ?
Reports to that effect were also in circulation.

It suddenly occurred to the German Staff that,
after all, French troops might have entered Belgium
in large numbers, but not necessarily that they
might have reached Brussels, nor even crossed the
Sambre as yet. So another reconnaissance in force
was undertaken, on August 13, 14, in the direction
of Dinant. This time French troops were met.
Three battalions of Jaegers carried the town in the
teeth of a strong opposition. On the next day a
large French force, with field artillery, delivered a

40 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

counter-attack and retook the town. From the
fierceness of this attack, and principally from the
number of field batteries employed by the French
— the Germans had only machine guns — the German
Staff deduced that a general French advance had
begun in Belgium — and they shaped their strategy
accordingly.

But before going further into the developments
on Belgian soil it is necessary, in order not to lose
the sequence of events on the whole front of opera-
tions, to give an account of one of the initial moves
of General Jonre, which will make clear to all the
true character of his strategy.

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To face page 41.

CHAPTER VI

THE FIRST FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN ALSACE, AND ITS
REAL STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE

THE first important move on the French side was
the offensive in Alsace.

At the beginning of this war the French suffered
from two grave dangers of sentiment — the passion-
ate desire for " the lost provinces " of Alsace and
Lorraine and the intense feeling for Belgium. To
wage France's war compelled supreme qualities of
will upon the director of her strategy to withstand
these two dangers. It must be remembered that
the heroism of Belgium and the passion for Alsace
tore at the heartstrings of the whole people, and
that any act of the higher command which seemed
to neglect the relief of either of these realms of
the people's imagination was bound to be severely
criticised by the nation as a whole. And the German
Staff understood this full well and calculated upon
it. The sacrifice of the strategic value to the senti-
mental value had wrecked France in 1870 ; and
that sentimental danger was tenfold more powerful
now.

41

42 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

The strategic reasons for this first French move
into Alsace, as well as its great moral significance,
have not been perfectly understood. It should be
remembered that this offensive was launched from
Belf ort on the day of the first attack on Liege. It had
been thought out and prepared before the German
incursion into Belgium, and, therefore, it was not
intended at first as a diversion to the German
" coup " at Liege. It had a far more vital intention.

The position of the French Staff on the opening
days of the war was precarious on account of the
German threat against Nancy at a moment when
French mobilisation had scarcely begun. The
French positions, called " Grand Couronne," were
no doubt very strong, as they had been carefully
prepared since the year before, when General Joffre,
being Chief of the Superior Council of War, had
determined, in spite of the experts, to base all future
plans of concentration on the assumption that the
positions about Nancy could be held against any
attack. Now, however, it seems that at the outset
of the campaign General Joffre did not feel so
confident; and subsequent events were to show
that his uneasiness, if he had any, was not without
cause.

In that light the first French offensive in Alsace
must be viewed. At the time that it was executed
Joffre had not yet made his mark ; and his capa-

FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN ALSACE 43

bilities could not be fully gauged. Many were those
who, knowing how to make war better than the
great and incomparable chief, criticised this move-
ment in the most slashing spirit. They declared
that Alsace would have been better left alone ; that
the French must subdue their feelings about the
" lost province," ; that the decisive quarter of the
war was in Belgium ; that only in Belgium could
Alsace-Lorraine be reconquered. The military side
of the problem was left severely alone. No one
seemed to realise the danger that threatened the
whole plan of French concentration, nor that the
ultimate fate of Belgium, of France herself, and the
whole course of the Allies depended on the absolute
security of the French eastern line of defence.

When a commander like Joffre undertakes some
move, he considers, he weighs everything, taking
into account even the possible failure of the move,
and makes provision for a possible disaster. In the
hands of such a leader of men a country is safe,
and, given proper support on the part of the nation
and of his subordinates, he must accomplish great
things.

It would be no exaggeration to say that General
Joffre started the campaign on the supposition that
all his initial moves might fail ; thus it was that he
always found himself with sufficient reserves to
redress the balance and to lead the invaders to their

44 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

doom at the Maine. In his own spirit everything
that he undertook should be viewed. Thus his first
offensive in Alsace, which, strategically, was a
wonderful stroke, practically settled the whole
course of the campaign, without anyone, and least
of all the Germans, being aware of it at the time — nor
probably since ! The moral impetus it gave to the
French troops, as well as the tactical redistribution
which it compelled upon the Germans, were the
main and all-important advantages gained through
it, not counting the postponing by the Germans of
their attack upon Nancy, an attack which, if it had
come sooner, would have been the end of everything
for France, and probably of her Allies as well. So
an operation which in itself had no importance,
and which failed materially (or tactically), had
nevertheless all the weight and consequence of a
decisive victory in the strategic balance.

It remains to be seen how it was done and why,
whilst triumphant in its strategic results, in its
tactical execution it miscarried. And it is interest-
ing to compare it with the French tactical success at
Mulhouse later on, which, strategically, was a failure,
as we shall see further on.

First of all it should be realised that, at the early
stage of developments when it was undertaken, in
order to stop the Germans from massing, there was
practically nothing else for General Joffre to do.

FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN ALSACE 46

The point from which the column started was nearest
the French centre of concentration to the German
frontier ; it was also more easily and more quickly
reached by its quota of mobilised men, as it is the
southernmost position, and it had not been affected
by the change o" the general plan of concentration
consequent upon the German invasion of Belgium.
So that even if General Joffre had been quite an
ordinary commander, it was the most natural and
obvious thing for him to do. The wonder is that
the Germans, so well informed as to the arrange-
ments and resources of their opponents, and with a
military map of France before them, did not expect
anything of the kind, and were consequently quite
taken unawares ! This in itself shows how confident
they felt that they had distracted the attention of
the French Staff northward, and how eagerly their
own attention was fixed upon the central portion
of the French fortress-barrier. The concentration
of their own troops in that quarter shows it also.
They had several army corps in the region of Metz ;
several more in or near Strasburg, but only a thin
screen of advanced troops in the Vosges and Upper
Alsace. A larger number, it is true, were gathering
along the right bank of the Rhine, near Basle, but
these were really mobilised elements from South
Germany on their way to Strasbourg or Metz, by
way of Neu Brisach and Schlegstadt. Here was

46 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

another opportunity for an ordinary commander to
strike a swift and effective blow. Since the opening
of hostilities the French flying men had been busy,
and they had noticed the relative weakness of the
Germans in Upper Alsace. Joffre resolved to cut
off these detachments and, if possible, to gain con-
trol of the bridges over the Rhine, and to pin down
in that region such German troops as were on their
way northwards to increase the German strength
about Nancy. The move, whether successful or
not, would have the further effect of weakening
the German centre, which was inordinately strong,
particularly in the region opposite Nancy.

What ensued is well known.

The French crossed the frontier on the 7th of
August, took the Germans by surprise at Altkirch,
routed them, and entered Mulhausen in triumph
on the heels of the fleeing Germans. France was
unduly elated by the event ; and as depressed after-
wards by the result of the German counterstroke.

Now this change of mood, which was reflected
amongst the Allies, and provoked a storm of hostile
criticism, was caused by the unmilitary habit of
judging a manoeuvre or a battle by its material and
local aspect. The French had advanced, and had
been immediately driven back again ; and it looked
as if they had uselessly squandered forces that they
might better have employed in Belgium. As the

FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN ALSACE 47

Germans had hoped and longed for, the attention
of the world was riveted on the hapless Belgians.
But the greatest injustice done by the critics to the
French was to forget that, at the moment of the
offensive in Alsace, France was still in the throes of
mobilisation ; she was not as yet halfway through
with her work of preparation ; her line of concen-
tration in the north stood off a long way from the
point where the Germans were in contact with the
Belgian forces. All this apart from the fact, not
realised at the time, that the Germans were
expecting, and hoping for, a hurried premature
French advance into Belgium, and making ready
for it with a smashing blow.

Materially, and locally, the French manoeuvre in
Alsace failed for two reasons.

First, the too great impetuosity of the French
troops, including the officers themselves, when,
elated by the fact that they had at last crossed the
frontier and set foot in their beloved province, they
attacked, or rather flung themselves, at random, on
the German entrenchments at Altkirch. Another
French column, going up by Thann, had been set
the task of cutting off the retreat of the Germans at
Altkirch. But the frontal attack, being delivered
too soon, the enemy was able to extricate himself
from his dangerous position. In this the Germans
were further helped by another detachment, which,

48 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

hurriedly issuing from the forest of Hard, attacked
the French in flank as they advanced on Mulhouse.
Some German troops, quartered in the town itself,
took part in the severe action which developed west
of Mulhouse ; and, thus supported, the main
German body was able to retreat in good order.
The German tactics were admirable ; had the French
been as good the Kaiser's arms would here have
suffered at the outset of the campaign a serious
disaster. Yet, once the French were in possession
of Mulhouse, there was still a chance for them of
winning a considerable victory, if the officer in
command — a general of high degree — had grasped
the situation better and thoroughly.

This brings us to the second reason for the French
failure (in the tactical sense) of the first offensive
in Alsace. The commander in question did not
gather up his forces immediately, as he should have
done, and thus made no provision against the Ger-
man counterstroke, which he should have foreseen.
Well served by their spies, the Germans did not wait.
They struck quickly. Troops came down in the
night from Neu Brisach, others crossed the Rhine,
and it was a miracle that the French division in
Mulhouse was not surrounded. Even then the
French commander had still time, whilst he resisted
with his main body on the heights to the south of
Mulhouse, to bring over the troops left at Altkirch

FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN ALSACE 49

and to execute a flank attack on the Germans at
Cernay. Seeing how well the French troops stood
their ground under the pressure of superior numbers,
and what were the German losses, particularly near
Cernay, the victory for the French would have been
certain had the reserves from Altkirch been brought
up in time. The opportunity was lost, and the
French retreated, the safest course to adopt under
the circumstances and in face of the accumulating
strength of the enemy.

Such was, in its broad tactical outline, the first
battle of Mulhausen — a most sanguinary action, or
set of actions, in which the Germans tasted for the
first time the bite of the French field guns and the
sting of their bayonet charges. The Germans could
certainly claim a victory and a few captures. But
their losses, for an engagement of this kind, were
severe. At or near the village of Cernay alone they
buried 800 of their slain.

From the strategic point of view the operation in
itself had the desired effect, and therefore it was a
success. The German Staff, startled and nonplussed,
thought that the French were far more ready for
offensive operations than they were, and they kept
pouring down German troops from the north, there-
by weakening their centre, and so delayed their
contemplated attack on Nancy. Their movements
were easily followed by the French air-craft, which

D

60 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

at the beginning of the war, were far more active
than the German. And General Joffre was enabled
to pursue and complete the concentration of his
armies without undue anxiety. For this reason
alone, if for no other, the first French offensive in
Alsace can well be considered as one of the decisive
strokes of the war.

The cautious retirement from Alsace shows
further the true character of the strategy of General
J off re, who was determined to resist all sentimental
compulsion in favour of sound strategic ends.

So far, then, the Germans had calculated on the
Belgian sentiment luring the French legions away
from the fortress frontier into their Belgian trap.
Knowing, however, the lure of Alsace, they were
now being tricked by calculating upon it.

CHAPTER VII

THE FRENCH EVADE THE GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM ;
LAY A TRAP THEREIN FOR THE GERMANS INSTEAD J
AND, IN THEIR SECOND ADVANCE INTO ALSACE,
WIN THEIR GREAT TACTICAL VICTORY OF MUL-
HAUSEN, WHICH BECOMES STRATEGICALLY
VALUELESS

THE full concentration of the five first French
armies was accomplished on August 14, and that
date marks the beginning of the operations on a
large scale.

There were, in the western theatre of war, two
main spheres of activity. First, that of Belgium
and Northern France ; second, that of Alsace-
Lorraine and the Woevre region. The operations
in each sphere were of such magnitude that, although
connected strategically, it is impossible to give a
clear account of the whole at the same time in a
single narrative. For the sake of clearness it is
therefore necessary to deal with each region in turn
separately, but they must not, naturally, be con-
sidered as different periods of time.

Now, to understand the strategic significance of

this war, it is essential to remember that the cam-
si

52 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

paign was one and whole. The enormous numbers
employed were just as much employed in what
one may call one great battle as in former days of
battle, but we get divisions taking the place of batta-
lions, and consequently we get their movements
taking weeks where aforetime they took days — or
even hours. To grasp this is vital to a true survey
of the campaign as a whole. And we shall see the
consequences of this as the campaign becomes more
intense along the Marne. For instance, where
a movement in a Napoleonic battle saw the troops
at the end of that stroke exhausted by twelve
hours' fighting, we to-day in these vaster actions
must remember a movement when completed as
having put as much as a week's continuous fighting
upon the troops as the new measure of fatigue.

It has been customary, up to now, in surveying this
Great War, in more or less loose and disconnected
narratives of the war, to commence with the great
acts that unfolded themselves after Liege, on the
Belgian plains and northern French frontier —
and this with utter disregard to dates and the
chronological sequence and true strategy of the
campaign. Herein lies the cause of so much con-
fusion in the public mind and even in the brains of
those who have quite sincerely endeavoured by
means of lectures and newspaper articles to enlighten
the world as to the real significance of the great

TACTICAL VICTORY OF MULHAUSEN 53

happenings that we are witnessing. Quite apart
from the dramatic appeal of the German rush into
France from Belgium, dominating the public mind ;
quite apart from the utter lack of training and
capacity for strategic vision of the journalists who
naturally see only very obvious things in war,
there were, as has already been shown, a complex
series of conditions which tended to confuse the
issue — the national sentiments about Belgium and
the "lost provinces," the arrogant publication by
high Prussian officers of scores of books in which
the strategy for the conquest of France was openly
laid bare in elaborate and confident plans (generally
through Belgium), plans which the energetic jour-
nalist could " read up," but as to which he had
not the strategic training and vision to warn him
might be deliberate blinds to turn the French com-
manders' minds from the real German strategic
intention ; and the like. Public opinion through-
out Europe as to how Germany would conquer
France had been created by Germany before a shot
was fired — and a man sees what he goes out to see.
In short, the public confusion was, and is, due
to the fact that the political and sentimental have
overshadowed the strategical in this campaign to an
uncommon degree in the public vision in face of,
and in spite of, the all-compelling fact that the
directors of the French strategics, like true pro-

54 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

fessional makers of war, have been astoundingly
uninfluenced by political or sentimental considera-
tions, and have by their dogged and loyal adherence
to strategic necessity achieved a constant tide of
victory over their enemies — a tide of defeat for
Germany that has never been turned from the
day that war was declared.

It is wholly in the public imagination that the
delusion exists that certain strategic moves have
been for a political or sentimental reason, whilst
the high command on either side, but more parti-
cularly on the side of the Allies, has been striving
with all its will to keep all sentimental or political
considerations out of its military calculations.
For France, without such adamant stoicism in its
great leader, the strategic problem could not have
been handled successfully ; and France, and Eng-
land perhaps, might by now have been under the
heels of the Prussian.

Yet, with that curious discounting of facts, which
is no great voucher for the mental balance of
mankind, the majority, including some brilliant
penmen, keep to the fallacy of a scientific war waged
on, and influenced by, political and sentimental
principles, thus diminishing the professional value
and strategic acumen of their own leaders !

We have shown in the previous chapter how
General Joffre doggedly fought shy of all sentimental

TACTICAL VICTORY OF MULHAUSEN 55

appeals — how he confined himself in the period of
preparation to a diversion in favour of completing
his scheme of concentration, and how he did not
hesitate to withdraw from Upper Alsace on to a
sound strategic line. In other words, whilst Joffre
is moved by intense and passionate love of France,
and is as fiercely intent on winning back the " lost
provinces " as any Frenchman living, whilst he is
as keenly sensitive to the sufferings and heroism
of Belgium as any Belgian, the moment he makes
war he becomes the absolute soldier, and to the
true soldier the strategic act is the sole act that will
win what he desires.

Having made his first advance into the " lost
provinces," and having withdrawn — acts of pure
strategy that were misunderstood for acts of senti-
ment by the Germans quite as much as by the rest
of the world, indeed it is likely enough that Joffre
wished that it should be so mistaken — suddenly,
as if to contradict his real self, as if, after all, he
put a moral and political premium on the speedy
reconquest and occupation of the " lost provinces,"
Joffre renewed the diversion on a still larger scale,
seemingly abandoning the hapless Belgians to
their fate !

Knowing the facts and realising the strategic
reasons of this move and grasping its decisive effect
on the whole campaign, one cannot read or listen

56 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

to the opinions widely entertained upon it without
a sense that a great wrong, a shocking injustice,
has been done to the great strategist who might
well be termed the saviour of Europe. He is said
to have gone to Alsace and to Lorraine in order to
provoke a rising of the people when, on the contrary,
for months his officers have had orders to discourage
any attempts at a civil outburst ! All sorts of causes
have been sought out in order to explain the early
advance of the French eastern armies into German
territory except the true one. And no effort has been
made, on the other hand, to explain with accuracy —
strategic accuracy — the delay in the matter of the
French advance in Belgium ! Even after the publica-
tion of the terse and clear official account issued by
the French Staff, entitled " Six Months of War," the
same erroneous opinions are persisted in as if they
were articles of faith high and above the supreme com-
mand of the field forces ! Yet apply to these futile,
if dogged, opinions the damning evidence of dates,
and of the positions of corps on those dates, and they
crumble to pieces. But perhaps they are an excuse
for the budding writer to leave out of account those
great operations, of such vital issue that they
mattered most of all, and to focus his pettifogging
interest and that of his readers upon the more
theatric and kaleidoscopic events of the war. He
knows nothing of, or cares little for, the eastern

TACTICAL VICTORY OF MULHAUSEN 57

pivot of the campaign, and willingly imagines that
it has been comparatively bare of incident ; he
prefers to think that the " German avalanche,"
the whole of the Kaiser's legions, burst through
Belgium, driving before them, like an irresistible
flow, their " defeated " opponents, until something
— he knows not what — stopped short this " astound-
ing " progress " at the very gates of Paris " !
Think of it ! Here we have a vast battle in which
the multitudinous number of the slain was larger
than that of any action of the campaign, with,
perhaps, the exception of Ypres in the second stage
of the war — a battle which was the most murderous
and the most sternly disputed in the whole course
of the campaign, yet a battle which will for ever
receive but the scantiest attention — if any attention
at all!

But we are not here concerned with the merits of
particular combatants . The strategic problem alone,
in its true aspect, is here under our consideration.
We want to show the real balance of events, east and
west, regardless of national preferences. We cannot
do so, as we have seen, in a continuous narrative
of the whole phase ; so that once the preliminary
operations have been reviewed, we are bound to
start with the first operations on a large scale
attempted by France.

But first we must show the true position of the

58 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

French Staff in relation to Belgium ; and state,
once for all, the reasons, strategic and otherwise,
which delayed the movements of the French left
wing and centre armies, and incidentally prevented
General Joffre from walking blindly into the trap
set for him by the Germans in Belgium.

The strategic principle to act upon in offensive
operations, meant to be decisive, is to obtain supe-
riority of numbers. This, General Joffre on the
14th of August, by which date his first five armies
had finished their concentration, could not do at
any point — least of all in Belgium. But acting on
a miscalculation of the enemy's forces — a miscalcula-
tion the cause of which we shall explain later on —
he hoped to be able to do so as soon as the redis-
tribution of his left wing, consequent upon the
co-operation of the British and Belgian forces, had
been accomplished.

Here we must glance at the alternative that Joffre
had adopted for the prosecution of military action
in Belgium. This alternative in its main outline
had been suggested to him by the position of
the point selected for the concentration of the
Belgian field forces, as well as the configuration
of the country on which his left wing was to
operate.

It consisted in waylaying the German right wing
west of the Meuse — in other words, in reversing

TACTICAL VICTORY OF MTJLHAUSEN 59

against the Germans the situation that they were
attempting to create for the French ! Good ad-
vanced work and a great display of the mobile
French field-guns would bring the Germans on to
the point ; they would be " trapped " instead of the
French, and smashed ; and the destinies of Europe
— or rather of the German Empire — would be settled
on the plains of Brabant, where many another war
had been decided before. But in order to succeed
in this ambitious, but not unreasonable, project
General Joffre must first of all obtain superiority
of numbers, so as to make the victory swift and sure.
This superiority he might obtain through the British
army and the Belgians ; but to make it more cer-
tain General Joffre, not being fully informed as to
the real and full strength of the Germans in all
quarters of the field, calculated upon two other
factors — or, rather, upon a double factor — and this
brings us to the keystone of the general offensive in
Alsace and Lorraine.

It was taken for granted by those who took some
interest in these operations that the French had
massed nearly all their strength at the opening
phase of the war in the region of Alsace and Lor-
raine ; that their armies there were huge in com-
parison with those on the Belgian frontier, when,
as a matter of fact, the number of army corps given
to Generals Pau, Dubail and Castelnau to execute

60 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the great move in Alsace-Lorraine was less than
half that of the northern and western armies.

By the 14th of August, when the second offensive
on the eastern frontier began, there were fifteen
French army corps ready along the Belgian frontier,
and before the 18th both Dubail and Castelnau's
commands were depleted of an army corps each to
reinforce the 5th army commanded by Larenzac in
the north, to which were further added the Algerian
division, the Morocco division and an extra cavalry
corps. General Joffre might even have had in the
north a new army, the 6th, if the nucleus forma-
tions of that army had not been collected as far
south as Compiegne, in order to leave the com-
munications of the British army entirely free, at
least during the period of concentration.

On the eastern frontier Generals Castelnau and
Dubail had the equivalent of six army corps be-
tween them, and General Pau not half that number.
This made nine army corps, including reserve
divisions ; whilst the total of army corps in the
north on August 20, excluding the British army,
was eighteen ! But this accumulation of forces was
not sufficient ; and since General Joffre could not
assume offensive operations in Belgium until the
arrival of the British troops, he thought he would
make the most of the intervening period by trying
to weaken as much as possible the German northern

TACTICAL VICTORY OF MULHAUSEN 61

armies. This was the main reason for the early
French advance in Lorraine and Alsace. It was
hoped by the French Staff that this move, coming
on the top of the first offensive in Upper Alsace,
would puzzle the Germans, delay their movements in
Belgium, and divert another considerable number
of them from north to south. That the French
Staff succeeded in their object leaves no doubt ;
for by August 20 the German 6th army at Metz,
under Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, which was
already very strong, was further reinforced to the
extent of three more army corps ; and the Germans
realised only too late that they had been befooled,
that the main strength of the French lay not in
Lorraine, but in Belgium ! It was too late because
troops in such vast numbers cannot be transferred
in the twinkling of an eye from one part of such a
long front to another ! And at the very moment that
the real significance of Joffre's move in the " Reich-
land " dawned upon the German Staff the French
strategist was leading the Germans to strike too soon
in Belgium, to deliver against him a blow in the air,
previous to smashing their dreams for ever on the
banks of the Sambre ! The dashing valour of the
French columns in Alsace and Lorraine had been
enough to deceive the German leaders. Joffre had
made use of the enthusiasm of his troops on an
" annexed " soil to blind their opponents as to

62 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

their true strength and numbers. All the while he
was laying his trap in the north and egging on the
Germans to a premature unfolding of their plans.
He would have got them eventually in a ring of
steel if some tactical mistakes, committed by one
of his generals, had not dashed his whole plan to
the ground, as we shall see.

But before going further, the importance of the
operations which thwarted the Germans so early
in the war must be realised. Without a true per-
spective of events on the eastern frontier of France
the strategic developments in the north and west
mean little or nothing. The pivot was there, be-
tween Luneville and Nancy, and the Germans were
brought on to make their mightiest effort upon it
after having been delayed in a contemplated
attempt, which, if it had been made at the right
moment, would have meant the end of France and
the triumph of Germany over Europe.

It would be difficult to assign an exact date to
the beginning of this general forward movement of
the French in Alsace and Lorraine. The French
eastern armies were more ready than the rest,,
partly because their nucleus formations were already
on the spot — the famous " Iron Divisions " are
always at war strength and battle-preparedness
along the fortified frontier of France— and partly
owing to the anxiety entertained by the French

TACTICAL VICTORY OF MULHAUSEN 63

Staff about the safety of their eastern line of de-
fence. There can be no doubt, however, that this
forward movement, being a corollary of the first
offensive in Alsace, began very early. Already,
ever since the declaration of war, the advanced
troops near the German frontier were in constant
contact everywhere ; and simultaneously with the
opening of hostilities at Altkirch, General Dubail,
of the 1st army, whose headquarters were at St.
Die, was setting himself the task of capturing the
passes of the Vosges, at first with small effectives,
which swelled gradually as the mobilisation pro-
gressed. These arduous operations were well ad-
vanced, the Vosges passes were nearly all in French
hands, when General Castelnau in the north and
General Pau in the south assumed a definite advance
— Castelnau starting from Nancy to drive back on the
one hand the Germans who had crossed the Moselle
and Seille and had brutally bombarded Port a
Mousson, an open town, and on the other hand to
reduce the strong entrenchments of the Germans
south of Saarburg ; General Pau to reoccupy Mul-
hausen and to gain control of the Rhine bridges
south of Strasburg.

General Pau, who had replaced the first blunder-
ing commander at Belfort, was a retired officer,
seventy years of age, and lacked one hand, which
he had lost in the war of 1870. An extremely able

64 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

and popular man, had he been on the active list
when the war broke out he might have found him-
self in the place of Joffre, or at least been given a
very large command. As it was, he came to replace
a blunderer and to direct the movements of the
right wing of General Dubail's army.

Pau at once revealed his great ability. The plan
for attacking the Germans in Upper Alsace was re-
drawn, and Pau launched his columns accordingly.
It was not a question of a mere reconnaisance, but
of a large operation, which, in its local results at
least, was meant to be decisive. Nor were the odds
in favour of General Pau. Since their first alarm,
the Germans had extended their left wing and
had massed a large number of troops at Mulhausen
and Altkirch. Three army corps, at least, were
spread in the triangle of Neu Brisach-Altkirch-
Basle. Therefore General Pau had a hard task
before him. Yet, such was his tactical skill and
the enthusiasm of the troops under him that the
victory was swift and complete.

Instead of striking east at Altkirch, he advanced
northwards from Belfort and struck from the region
of Thann. Taken by surprise, the Germans had no
time to re-form and change front. Their rear divi-
sions were crushed in detail at Gwebweiler and
Mulhausen, whilst their main body lay idle at Alt-
kirch. Then, when they attempted to move against

TACTICAL VICTORY OF MULHAUSEN 65

Pau's flank, this consummate tactician had already
effected a change of front, and, overwhelmed by
numbers, since their supports were destroyed, the
Germans gave way and retired in disorder in the
direction of Basle and across the Rhine. Their
losses in men could not have been less than 10,000 ;
and the French captured twenty-four field guns
and a large amount of war material and munitions.
It was altogether a brilliant victory. Pau had issued
from Belfort on August 14, and by the 19th he had
smashed three German corps, was master of all
Upper Alsace, and had gained control of the Rhine
bridges and of the approaches to Colmar and Neu
Brisach.

But this victory, glorious to the French arms and
complete as it was, was destined to remain, in the
larger strategic issues of the war, an indecisive or
negative success, for the simple reason that it had
been won outside the main line of German concen-
tration. No doubt, if events in other quarters had
been more favourable, Pau would have turned his
victory to great account. He could have crossed
the Rhine at once and invaded South Germany,
which he was probably preparing to do when events
in the north reversed the position against him and
rendered the conquered position untenable.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GERMANS, PERPLEXED BY THE FRENCH VICTORIES
IN ALSACE-LORRAINE, SWIFTLY SEIZE AN
ADVANTAGE AND WIN A GREAT TACTICAL
VICTORY OVER THE FRENCH, WHICH, HOWEVER,
BRINGS ABOUT STRATEGIC DISASTER TO THEIR
PLANS OF CAMPAIGN

GENERAL CASTELNATJ, like Pau a brilliant tactician
of great gifts, was at first completely successful.
In spite of the difficulties of the country in which
he had to operate, and of the strong defensive works
raised by the Germans along the whole frontier and
right into French territory, the commander of the
army of Lorraine so well co-ordinated his movements
that, within a week, after hard and incessant fighting,
he had driven back the Germans all along the line,
and had captured all their positions south and
south-east of Metz, right up to and including the
Donon, the highest peak in the Vosges. General
Dubail had also succeeded in wresting from the
Germans all the passes of the Vosges, which they
had elaborately fortified ; and these arduous and
complicated operations terminated triumphantly
at the pass of Saales, where a considerable success

66

Tout

to illustrate the French
at-ctvancf i n Alsace €lnd Lorraine
and dj utmost limit onJlug.20*.

(jerman counte

MAP 5.

To face page 66.

TACTICAL VICTORY OVER THE FRENCH 67

was won, no less than 1,500 prisoners, 20 pieces of
artillery, a standard, and an enormous amount of
war material falling into the hands of the French on
August 18 and 19.

Thus the results achieved by the French in the
opening stage of the war surpassed anything that
had been anticipated, and this led onlookers to
take a crooked view of Joffre's strategy, for it was
openly held that if the same effort had been made
in Belgium — that if General Joffre had kept strictly
to the defensive on the eastern frontier and had
assumed the offensive in the north, Belgium might
have been spared invasion and Lie"ge would have
been relieved. These well-meaning if futile critics
did not realise at the time — indeed they may not
realise it yet — that what they so naively advised
and violently declaimed was precisely what the
Germans expected and hoped that Joffre would do.
From the moment that the Belgians had decided
to resist, and had shown that they could and would
do so, the German Staff had felt confident that the
French would rush into Belgium and leave their
eastern line insufficiently guarded ; then, with a
comparatively small force, the Germans would have
pierced that line, and, almost simultaneously, with
an overwhelming superiority of numbers, they
would have crushed the French in Belgium. But
the Germans had not been prepared for an early,

68 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

sudden, and general advance in the " Reichland."
It puzzled them — it blinded them — for Joffre's
strategy was astoundingly supple ; indeed, the said
critics may be altogether absolved after all, since
even the mighty brains of the German Staff were —
for a time at least — completely taken in. Yet
they had indications, if they could have read the
book of Fate — of a kind not furnished to the ordinary
amateur strategist : the big reconnaissance by the
Germans at Dinant, and an earlier one at Maugienne,
north of Verdun, had convinced them that the
French were rapidly gathering great forces in the
north. Yet the violence of the blows dealt in Alsace
and Lorraine by the French made them ponder and
hesitate . They could not make out the real meaning
of it all, nor penetrate the intentions of their
opponents. The advance in Alsace, and in Lor-
raine principally, looked serious from the German
point of view. The German line of concentration
was menaced at a vital spot. But at the same time,
on account of the great strength of this spot, an
opportunity of striking a decisive blow in Lorraine
seemed suddenly to loom — a blow which would open
to them at once the contemplated entry into France
through her main line of defence.

The measures they took to effect this blow show
they believed that Joffre had adopted the risky
strategic principle of operating on parallel lines—

TACTICAL VICTORY OVER THE FRENCH 69

that he had equally divided his forces between hia
northern and eastern theatre of operations, when,
as a matter of fact, he was far stronger in the
north. There, in any case, the Germans thought
that they would always be stronger than he, a fact
that Joffre, even from his high position, could not
easily guess — the reason for which will be seen
later on — and if Joffre's right wing, strong as it
was supposed to be, could be crumpled up and
destroyed, then their task in the north would be
made still easier.

But, it may be argued, why should the Germans
expect to break through the French line of defence
when they thought the French right wing was so
strong ? Because, as they saw by reason of their
own punishment, this right wing was not all concen-
trated in Lorraine — it extended to the Vosges and
Upper Alsace ; and a swift and smashing victory
over the Lorraine army would place the others to
the south in jeopardy. Now the Germans calcu-
lated that the victorious French in the south would
hesitate to evacuate Alsace a second time ; and that,
before they did so, the German columns, coming
down from Saarburg, would have reached Chalons
—the French armies of Upper Alsace and the Vosges
would be isolated and cut off — and later on would
be surrounded in Epinal and Belfort. The efforts
made to achieve all this would not affect adversely,

70 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

from the German point of view, the situation in
the north — on the contrary, it would help matters
in Belgium greatly, for the French armies of the
south would be destroyed, and the fate of those
of the north would be thereby settled, if by that
time they had not also succumbed on the Belgian
plains in the grasp of Kluck, Bulow, Hausen and
Wurtemberg.

So it came about that the German Staff decided
to strike at the French in Lorraine with great
strength.

The 20th of August marks the end of the great
French advance in Lorraine and Alsace. It also
opens the period of decisive developments in
Belgium. But inasmuch as the strategy of Joffre in
Belgium was greatly dependent upon the course of
events on the eastern frontier, and that these events
reached the critical stage sooner than those in
Belgium, and that it is necessary to keep them well
in mind whilst judging the state of affairs in the
north of the same period, we had best realise the
events of the next four or five days upon the French
eastern frontier.

We have seen that, after considerable fighting,
Castelnau's army had captured one after another
most of the German positions south and south-
east of Metz. On the 20th of August the advanced
posts of this French army reached Fenestrange, to

Jffa.p te illustrate
effort againjt (Ae'Troiu-e' 'o

audits uttermost

oriJtugujt 24 Q
French counter dUenftCi marked.
tius •- -^ -------- ^

\ /"" SWITZERLAND

MAP 6.

70 faie page 70.

TACTICAL VICTORY OVER THE FRENCH 71

the north of Saarburg ; and the other troops getting
into line, Castelnau proceeded towards the carrying
of the last positions of the Germans between Metz
and Strasburg with the object of piercing their line
of concentration.

To understand what happened it is good to bear
in mind several things : First of all that Castelnau 's
army was not as strong as when it had left Luneville
and Nancy ; it had been depleted of a whole corps
— the 9th — which had been sent to reinforce Laren-
zac's army in the north, this being part of Joffre's
strategy of making the Lorraine army, as it pro-
gressed, to appear much stronger than it was.
Then the cost of capturing the first German entrench-
ments had been very heavy. Then, again, several
units, partly through exhaustion, partly for the
purpose of organising the conquered ground and
fulfilling other duties, lagged behind. Under these
circumstances, Castelnau would have been better
advised to wait a day or two before attacking
— in which case he would most probably not have
attacked ; he would have confined himself strictly
to the defensive, or even have retreated across the
frontier, his task being now fully accomplished.
But he saw, or fancied that he saw, a great oppor-
tunity before him : the Germans, he thought, were
demoralised — as indeed those of them were whom
he had defeated, but certainly not so the fresh army

72 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

corps that the German commanders were now
bringing down from the north to meet him. The
Germans also had seen an opportunity before them.
As the French advanced in Lorraine, the Germans
were making their last line of defence stronger and
stronger, indeed impregnable — there were inter-
minable lines of trenches, redoubts, barricades of
felled trees, wire entanglements galore, and, what
was to prove more formidable still, an immense
amount of heavy artillery drawn from the huge
arsenal of Metz.

It was to perfect and useless slaughter that the
French officers led their troops at Saarburg and
Morhange on the 20th of August. In vain Castel-
nau's wearied columns, with extraordinary pluck and
heroism dashed themselves against the formidable
obstacles erected by the foe. They were enveloped
in a tornado of steel, an inferno of shot and shell.
First the poor reservists gave way. Then the
Germans, perfectly fresh and with a superiority in
numbers of three to one, launched their counter-
attacks. Happily the 20th army corps — the "Iron-
sides " — were there, or the destruction of Castelnau's
army might have been accomplished. The 20th,
commanded by Foch, did not give way, and protected
the retreat. The Germans made vain efforts to
break that corps ; and in the attempt they sustained
greater losses than they had ever contemplated, at

TACTICAL VICTORY OVER THE FRENCH 73

the same time the losses of the heroic "Ironsides"
were terrible — they cannot have been less than
20,000 men, besides nearly all their artillery.

Thus it will be seen that Castelnau squandered
a good third of his troops, and came near to being
surrounded ; for, before he had recrossed the frontier,
the Germans on one side were ascending the Moselle
and the Seille, towards Nancy, whilst on the other
side strong German columns were advancing from
Strasbourg to the Vosges. This, perhaps, saved
him, for he hurried his retreat and did not attempt
to make a stand until he had reached the " Grand
Couronne " and the Meurthe. In one thing the
Germans were baffled, for they had counted, with
absolute certainty, on the annihilation of Castel-
nau's army at Saarburg ; but they were to suffer
more serious disappointments.

After all, the affair of Saarburg in itself, whatever
the losses, could not influence Joffre's strategy. It
was the counterpart of Mulhausen — a defeat sus-
tained outside the main line of concentration. Had
it led to the piercing of the gap of Mirecourt and the
isolation of Dubail and Pau, the one in the Vosges
and the other in Alsace, then it would have been
another matter. It would have been the decisive
battle of the war, and France would now be a
German province.

As it was, it did not lead to the piercing of the

74 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

famous gap, nor to the isolation of Pau and Dubail
in Alsace, and Joffre's end was attained. He weak-
ened the Germans in the north by drawing several
of their corps to the south ; and with his bait he
drew a huge army on to a point that he saw to it
they did not pierce. For, against the hopes of the
Germans, and to their profound astonishment, Pau
and Dubail instantly evacuated Alsace and the
Vosges, and came up just in time to reinforce the
sorely-pressed army of Lorraine, and thus to save
France and Europe from the direst calamity. The
efforts of the Germans, of the army of Prince Rup-
precht of Bavaria, to reach the banks of the Moselle,
west of Luneville, and to shut up Castelnau's army
in Toul, were tremendous — gigantic. The German
commanders were bent on reaping all the profit of
their victory at Saarburg, and of the redistribution
of forces they were compelled to make, a redistri-
bution that must be disadvantageous to them if it
did not at once yield decisive results. Against their
intention they had been forced to spread out their
strength — to open their fists apart and leave bare
their breast to a blow — when they would have pre-
ferred to have kept their strength together, to have
remained concentrated on a shorter front. They
somehow began to understand the game of Joffre
without as yet giving him credit for more strategic
acumen. According to them he was still bound to

TACTICAL VICTORY OVER THE FRENCH 75

be caught in Belgium, and to leave his army of
Alsace where it was ! If nothing of this kind hap-
pened (and the German leaders could not bring
themselves to speculate on such a probability), then
the war was just as good as lost to Germany. All
the period of preparation and waiting would have
been for nothing !

Now it was not likely that, having the initiative
from the start, the French would wilfully lose it.
This initiative had been obtained by the first stroke
in Alsace ; it had been obtained by the next ad-
vance in the annexed provinces ; they were keeping
it also in Belgium by drawing the Germans on to
their positions instead of walking up to the German
positions ; and, whether they succeeded or not,
whether they advanced or retreated, the result
would be the same — Germany was doomed. The
fact that the Germans, like the journalists the world
over, were deceived into thinking they held the
initiative simply because they attacked Joffire where
Joffre decided that they should attack him did not
give the Germans the initiative.

It was perhaps a sense of the coming calamity of
their strategic fiasco that brought the Germans to
squander their forces in the way they did — to strike
so desperately in so many quarters at the same time,
and to commit the most senseless barbarities. It
was not Liege that lost them the war ; it was Alsace —

76 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

it made them lose the initiative, and that was enough.
They followed the designs of Jofire, obeyed his
moves, lost their balance, and tumbled down after
him as a man might be pulled down a steep incline
at the foot of which his assailant destroys him.
The fact of his rushing down on top does not prove
that he commands the fall. The Germans might
have been cornered sooner and France spared the
invasion had Jofrre been better informed as to the
German strength, and had all his subordinate
commanders helped him equally well.

Nothing severe, of course, can be said against
Castelnau. He only erred in the psychological cal-
culations, and that is what the ablest of men can do
and have done. And there should be eternally put to
his credit the high praise he deserved for the way
in which, after such a reverse, he reorganised his
army whilst keeping the foe at bay, and for the skill
with which he co-ordinated his movements with
those of Dubail and Pau. He paid back the Germans
at Luneville for the losses sustained at Saarburg
— whole regiments were mown down ; brigades
entirely disappeared. The Germans were held up
for two whole days on the right bank of the Moselle,
which they just managed to reach ; then they were
finished by two great flank attacks by the French,
one from Nancy, and the other from the south
(August 25). They lost ground, and henceforward

TACTICAL VICTORY OVER THE FRENCH 77

stood on the defensive, until their second great
attempt further north and the gigantic battle of
Nancy.

Thus we see the Germans winning a tactical
action on a large scale, but, in the doing, losing
strategically, and thinning their strength at their
vital spot, in obedience to Joffre's design ! We shall
see this domination of the will of Joflre over the
German commanders again and again until it has
almost become a law of German subordination to
the will of the conqueror. And it is curious as
regards the German psychology, and amazing as to
the nerve of the great French commander, that
these German strategic defeats have always alarmed
Europe as though they were the onrush of victories.

CHAPTER IX

JOFFRE EVADES THE GERMAN TRAP IN

THE GERMAN GENERALS, RUSHING TO OVER-
WHELM THE FRENCH THEREIN, STRIKE THEIR
BLOW IN THE AIR, AT THE SAME TIME BAULKING
JOFFRE 'S COUNTER-STROKE BY THEIR SUCCESS-
FUL CONCENTRATION OF A WHOLE SECRET ARMY

THE position in Belgium on the 14th of August,
when the French advance in Lorraine began, was
as follows : — The German 2nd army was rapidly
and methodically reducing the forts of Liege, whilst
keeping in contact with the Belgian forces that were
concentrating at Louvain ; the 1st German army
was crossing the Meuse both at Liege and Vize, and
was slowly feeling its way in the direction of Ant-
werp ; the other German northern armies — the 3rd
under Hausen, the 4th under Wurtemberg, and the
5th under the Crown Prince — were busy in various
ways, but not in active operations, if we except the
investment of the small fortress of Longwy, near
the Luxembourg frontier. This fortress — a very
old one dating from the eighteenth century — had
been first attacked on the 3rd of August. By the

5th or 6th of August it was completely invested.

78

cLp Chawing JduckJ advan
ccfrvm Brussels on.dluj.27- 22

MAP 7.

To face page 78.

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 79

Its dogged resistance was surprising, but of no
great consequence to the Germans. Apart from the
moral value of the performance, its commandant,
d'Arche, might well have surrendered at once with-
out the least endangering the safety of France.

The work done by the German centre armies in
other ways was of greater import than the subduing
of this small stronghold. They were entrenching
carefully south of Liege, along the Ourthe and at the
opening of the Ardennes forest. Their strength in
number of units was no doubt diminishing on account
of the redistribution southwards compelled by the
French offensive in Alsace ; but, taking for granted
that their enemy was going to act in the way
the German commanders expected, their strength,
coupled with the elaborate preparations made to
receive the French, was quite sufficient to involve
the French in a crushing disaster if the French
blundered into the Belgian trap. And be it remem-
bered that the Germans had not, as yet, awakened
to the skilful habit of Joffre in using the Prussian
self-confidence and self-deception into employing
their violent onrushes to draw them into positions
where he desired to give them battle ! We must
remember that, at this time, the German com-
manders were still convinced that the French were
in strength in Belgium, lured thereto byf sentiment.
Their Belgian battles, so far, were German recon-

80 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

naissances in force to discover where the French
were. Let us try to grasp the German psychology
at this stage as revealed by their strategy and
tactics.

The result of the big reconnaissances at Dinant,
and even of the earlier one at Mangienne, north of
Verdun, must, at the time, have raised the hopes of
the German commanders to the highest pitch. In
the first (Mangienne, on August 11 and 12) the
counter-reconnaissance had been terrific, no less than
1000 prisoners and even some guns being captured
by the French. This must have given them en-
couragement. It pointed, at any rate, to a pro-
nounced effort northwards. At Dinant, on August
14 and 15, it was better still. There in Belgian ter-
ritory, and quite near Namur, the strong German
reconnoitring force — a small army of itself — had
been simply swept away by what seemed to be a
whole army corps, a great number of French field
batteries being in action whilst the Germans had
only machine guns.

Now an army corps does not generally advance
by itself so far from its own frontier. It is usually
accompanied, or followed, by several more. The
Germans deduced that a general advance of the
French in Belgium had begun. They were con-
vinced of it the next day, August 16, when another
German reconnoitring force, based on Huy, came

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 81

into collision with French troops at Gembloux !
These French troops had also with them a good
quota of field guns, and on the 17th, after a stiff
fight, the French recaptured Gembloux. The
reports about French troops being in great
numbers at Brussels, and even in contact with
the Belgian army near Louvain, were persistent.
The expected French attack in the Ardennes might
take place at any moment.

The German commanders, flushed with antici-
pation and excitement, decided that it was about
time to strike. And they struck — but in north
Belgium only, for it was held that the chance of a
counter-stroke delivered under the best conditions
against the French centre armies must not be
missed. These French armies were known to be
gathering at Montmedy and Sedan ; they must be
ready by now, thought the German Staff, but they
were uncommonly slow in reaching their positions !
Certainly, by that date, their advanced guards
should have reached the Ourthe, yet they had not
even crossed the frontier, whilst the left wing, on
the other hand, was distinctly going up to perdition !
Dinant and Gembloux were there to prove it.
There must be at least an army corps in and
around Namur, not to mention those that might
be taking up positions between the Sambre and
the Meuse.
F

82 'GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Kluck struck ; and Bulow and Hausen followed
suit a little afterwards.

The task of Kluck was to pin down and surround
the Belgian army. That of Bulow was to drive
a wedge between this Belgian army and a number
of imaginary French corps south of it. Bulow also
must help Hausen, who was acting from the east,
in a hurried assault on Namur. Thus the Belgian
army and the French left wing would be disposed
of at the same time. Whilst this was going on
the French centre armies would feel bound
to hurry on to the attack in order to relieve
the pressure in the north. They would at once
be assailed in front by Wurtemberg and the
Crown Prince, whilst their retreat was to be
cut off by way of the Meuse by Hausen and
Bulow.

At once a perplexing position is explained, and
we now see why the army of the Crown Prince was
placed in Luxembourg. For directly the German
right wing had achieved its main object of sur-
rounding and destroying the French left wing, the
Crown Prince was to push on to Verdun and E/heims
and establish connection with the army of Bavaria,
which, by that time, so it was hoped, would have
broken through the gap of Mirecourt and have
reached Chalons. From thence the two prospective
young monarchs would push on to Paris and leave

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 83

to the wing armies the task of finishing off the beaten
French armies.

Kluck, in the north, proceeded with his task very
well — only the Belgian army fought in the open
much better than he had expected. The strategy
of the Belgians may have been defective, and their
tactics not quite up to the mark, but nothing can
be said against their valour, endurance, and courage.
Kluck, although he struck heavily at Aershot, failed
to cut off their retreat on Antwerp. His frontal
attack succeeded ; but that was of no use — strate-
gically— to him, except that it enabled him to
advance on and to enter the Belgian capital. The
Belgian army retreated in good order on to Ant-
werp, where, as it was not defeated, the German
commander found it necessary to keep a sufficient
strength to contain it.

When Kluck entered Brussels in triumph he
found no French troops there ! But he may have
supposed that they had hurriedly evacuated the
town on his approach.

Bulow, by now, with the 2nd army, was busy ;
but to his astonishment he met no considerable
French forces north of the Sambre — but only detach-
ments, which, spreading over the wooded country,
constantly waylaid and ambushed his advancing
troops. But, what was worse, there were no indica-
tions as to the French having reached Namur as yet !

84 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

The French armies, or their main body, were
still on the frontier. On the day that the Germans
attacked Namur and entered Brussels these French
armies moved forward, together with the British
army, which, having finished its concentration
behind the fortress of Maubeuge, advanced swiftly
towards Mons.

The position of the German right wing was now
precarious, for it had reached its limit of expansion
without having achieved anything definite or
decisive. It had stumbled forward blindly ; it
had the Meuse behind it, and the forces of the
Allies were on both its flanks. Technically, in terms
of strategy, it was surrounded.

Happily for them the German commanders were
not slow to grasp the fact, nor did they fail to realise
that, in order to avert a disaster, they must quickly
modify their plan. The movement westward must
continue, and even be accelerated so as not to leave
time to the French and British forces to take and
prepare strong positions . The German commanders,
it must be noted, were up to this time wholly in
the dark as to the whereabouts of the English
army. They knew that it had been landed in
France, but what line of action it would follow
they could not guess. Up to the 22nd of August,
when some of Bulow's Uhlans met vedettes in khaki
at Soignies, the German generals were inclined to

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 85

think that the British would begin operations from
the line of the Scheldt. So well accepted was this
theory that, when other Uhlans belonging to Kluck
arrived at Tournai on the same day (August 22)
they enquired for the French, not for the British,
who were advancing not far, but westward, from that
place . The troops of Kluck , in issuing from Brussels ,
spread in the direction of Ghent and Ostend on the
one side, and at Ath and Tournai on the other.

This shows a double purpose — that of meeting
" something " along the Scheldt, and of driving
the usual wedge between that something and the
French forces west of the Scheldt.

The British were not where the Germans supposed
them to be ; and here is another instance of the
sentimental being wisely sacrificed to the soundly
strategical. The invasion of Belgium by the
Germans affected the English more than one can
say. The wish for the instant relief of this small
and heroic nation was foremost in all English
breasts, and it appeared to many that those respons-
ible for the prosecution of the campaign were bound
to, and would endeavour to, bring the British and
Belgian forces into touch as soon as possible, and
would, therefore choose the most likely line of action
to effect that purpose above all other tactical or
strategic considerations whatsoever. The base for
this line lay in Belgian territory, and was later on

86 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

chosen for the landing of the column which was sent
to relieve Antwerp. To this degree the Germans
did not err so greatly in their assumption ; only
once again they were tricked by their tendency to
undervalue the firmness and strategic ability of their
enemies, for there can be no doubt that if Kluck's
columns, instead of spreading westwards as they
did and losing time in the process, had hurried
immediately southwards towards Valenciennes and
Mons, the fate of the army under Sir John French
would have been at once settled.

In short, the Germans struck their blow in the air ;
neither the French nor the British were in the trap
— and the triumphant entry into Brussels, however
much it may have warmed the pride of the German
people, must have left the German commanders
anxious and disturbed at their strategic failure.
Fine tacticians, however, Kluck and the other
commanders made the best of a bad job and at once
moved to retrieve their blunder.

But, before coming to subsequent operations
on this side, it is necessary to see what was happen-
ing— or had already happened — east of the Meuse.
For it was there that the German plans for the
annihilation of the French left wing (a disaster in
which the English army would have been involved)
had been somewhat modified. It was in this way :
the advance of the French centre armies, like the

J&al&e efthejfaehn n ej

2) -22

GLctvance. on tke

^.

MAP 8.

To face page 86.

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 87

rest, had been expected by the Germans to take
place sooner ; but on the 20th of August, whilst
Bulow and a part of Hausen's forces were attacking
Namur, the French centre armies were still on the
frontier ; the German commanders still believing
— and the illusion did not vanish until two days
later — that the French left wing extended far to
the north of the Sambre, and was in occupation of
Namur, the German Staff could not account for this
delay in the centre. To them it looked as if the
French left wing stood in a dangerous position —
which, it is true, would have been the case if it
had been disposed as the Germans thought, whereas
it was only just about to leave the frontier !

The opportunity to the Germans seemed a great
one : they could cut off the French left wing in
Belgium, as they had hoped and designed to do
earlier ! Therefore it was not necessary to wait for
a French attack in the Ardennes — besides, that
attack, if it came, might come too late, and already
the line of the Ourthe had been abandoned by the
German forces advancing on Namur from the east.
These forces must be increased in the direction of
Givet and Dinant so as to outflank the French army
on the Sambre ; and, in the meantime, the German
centre armies would issue from their positions in
the forests, and deal with the forces opposed to
them.

88 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Thus the general advance of the contending
parties in this region took place simultaneously —
and the collision which ensued on the banks of the
Lesse and of the Semoy, tributaries of the Meuse,
was terrific — no less than 300,000 men being engaged
on each side. The 3rd and 4th French armies
under Generals Ruffey and de Langle were each of
a strength of five army corps l ; and they were
opposed, partly by Hausen's army, the whole of
Wurtemberg's five2 corps, and at least half of the
army of the Crown Prince acting from Luxembourg
and the Woevre. It is interesting to note here that
the Crown Prince of Germany expected a complete
smash of the French in the Ardennes, and was
holding himself in readiness to advance on Verdun
and Rheims, as originally planned. In order fully
to understand this, the reader should realise that
it was the date of the French defeat at Saarburg
(August 21), and that if the retransference north-
wards of the German corps sent to Lorraine was
impossible, all the German commanders were in
touch with each other and knew at once through
Von Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff, all that
was happening on any part of the front. The
Crown Prince knew that the army of Bavaria had

1 Two first line corps, three reserve corps.

2 A German Corps of the 1st line had three divisions ; a French
corps only two.

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 89

defeated Castelnan in Lorraine ; and that the
Bavarian army was advancing to pierce the French
line of concentration at the gap of Mirecourt, with
the ultimate object of reaching Chalons. There
the junction of the centre German armies would
take place and the advance on Paris begin.

The gap of Mirecourt, as we have seen, was not
pierced by the Germans ; and the defeat of the
French in the Ardennes, although serious, was not
decisive, nor even complete.

Taken aback by the numbers of the Germans
opposing them, and hampered by the difficulties
of the broken country, the French generals, it
must be said, rather lost their heads, principally
Ruffey, who, as he advanced towards Neufchateau,
found himself seriously outflanked in the direction
of Longwy and Virton. There were also other
causes of discomfiture which are explained in the
French official survey of the campaign : " There
were, in this affair, individual and collective failures,
imprudences committed under the fire of the
enemy, divisions ill engaged, rash deployments and
precipitate retreats, a premature waste of men,
and finally the inadequacy of certain of our troops
and their leaders, both as regards the use of infantry
and of artillery. In consequence of these lapses,
the enemy, turning to account this difficult terrain,
was able to secure the maximum of profit from

90 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the advantages which the superiority of his subaltern
cadres gave him."

Nothing could be more frank and impartial. But
the words " maximum of profit " must be taken
here in the tactical sense, for strategically the
Germans derived no benefit from their victory. The
Germans might have had the maximum of profit
if all the French subaltern commanders and the
troops under them had been equally inefficient.
But there was one amongst them, General Sarrail,
who had the soul and the capacities of a great
leader of men ; and the corps under him, the 6th,
was the one which he had specially trained at
Chalons. This 6th corps (whilst the other troops
were falling back across the frontier under pressure
from the enemy) retook the offensive and delivered
such a counter-stroke against the Crown Prince's
army at Virton that the Germans in that region were
brought to a standstill after suffering great losses.
General Sarrail, two days later, took the place of
General Ruffey at the head of the 3rd army, and,
during the Great Retreat that followed, he was
entrusted with the defence of the approaches to
Verdun, the great eastern " camp retranche " of
France. With what ability General Sarrail was to
perform his task we shall see later on. It now re-
mains to be explained how it was that General
Joffre, in spite of his efforts in Lorraine and Alsace,

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 91

did not quite succeed in obtaining the superiority of
numbers which he was striving to attain on Belgian
soil, and which, in spite of the tactical short-
comings of some of his subordinates, might have
ensured an early and decisive victory for the Allies.
General Joffre was misinformed from the start as
to the number of German armies operating against
him. A Russian report, from a reliable source,
placed the number of German armies in the western
theatre of war at six, thus implying that the strength
of the German eastern forces operating against
Russia was greater than it was. Other reports
seemed to corroborate this. For instance, it became
known that one of the German armies destined for
Poland was the army of Saxony. The Saxon
officers, however, gave vent to public complaints
and protests about it, saying that they had hoped
to be sent to the land of good food and good wine,
whereas they were now to be sent to die of hunger
and thirst on the dreary steppes of Russia ! In the
end they were made happy, and were led towards
the land of their predilection. But whether all this
was part of a deep-laid, well-calculated plot to
mislead the French Staff one cannot say definitely.
However that may be, the French Staff were misled,
and they were not to realise until the third or fourth
week of the war the true strength of the German
armies opposing them. What points to the likeli-

92 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

hood of the change of destination of the Saxon
army being part of a carefully conceived plan to
deceive the French Staff is the choice of the part
of the German front selected for the concentration
of that army — the Ardennes Forest, where the
Saxons took up positions alongside the army of
Wurtemberg ; also the fact that the Saxons were
placed under the command of General von Hausen,
former Chief of the Staff to the Grand Duke of
Wurtemberg, for when the name of General von
Hausen appeared in the list of German commanders
it was quite naturally supposed that he was acting
in his former capacity, whereas he did not command
the Grand Duke of Wurtemberg's army at all, but
one of his own — the Saxon army of five army corps,
and including the Prussian Guards, which brought
up to seven the number of German armies concen-
trated in the western theatre of war.

Thus Joffre was misled by the French Intelligence,
and was only to discover the true state of affairs —
the increase of the German strength by the addi-
tion of the Saxon corps — when the German centre
armies issued from the forest of the Ardennes in
their leap forward to cut off the French left wing
and their assault upon the French centre armies in
order to crush them. But it must not be supposed,
because of the success of this secret concentration,
that Joffre's manoeuvre in Lorraine had failed or been

GERMAN TRAP IN BELGIUM 93

futile, or had come to nothing . For, though Joffre had
not been able to obtain the superiority of numbers
at which he had aimed in Belgium, neither did the
Germans obtain that overwhelming superiority.
At least three of the German corps, some 150,000
men, had been diverted from north to south ; others
were " pinned down " in Lorraine and Alsace ;
and the Germans failed to achieve anything decisive
in Belgium ; indeed, they came instead within an
ace of being utterly smashed to pieces there them-
selves, as we shall soon see.

CHAPTER X

THE GERMANS WALK INTO THE TRAP LAID BY JOFFRE
FOR THEIR ANNIHILATION, BUT ONE OF JOFFRE'S
GENERALS LEAVES THE TRAP DOOR OPEN, AND
THE BRITISH ARE WASTED

THE battle of Charleroi — or Mons, as it is sometimes
called — began on the 22nd of August — that is to
say, at least a whole day after de Langle and Kuffey
had assumed the defensive in the Ardennes, and
Castelnau was in retreat in Lorraine. At Mons
itself, where the British army deployed on hastily
prepared positions between Conde on the French
frontier and Binche in Belgium, there was no
fighting on the 22nd itself. Kluck was looking for
the British army along the Scheldt ; and Bulow's
more western columns were still feeling their way,
wholly in the dark, south of Brussels. But at Char-
leroi, early in the morning, the fray began.

The French army (Larenzac's) occupied positions
stretching from Anderlues and Thuin on the Sambre
to Dinant on the Meuse. The front was, therefore,
diagonal, and not parallel to the Sambre. This was
on account of the situation of Namur at the junction
of the two rivers, and because the French high com-

94

i Ghent

3 French

German army corps
C~aua2.ru

MAP 9.

To face page 94

GERMANS WALK INTO JOFFRE'S TRAP 95

mand had not wished to occupy the fortress, which
was already sufficiently garrisoned by Belgian troops.
Namur had been under attack since the 20th of
August ; and on the 22nd, when the battle of
Charleroi began, a couple of forts had already been
reduced. So it is worthy of remark here that the
length of its resistance did not matter to the French
Staff, who meant to entrap the Germans there, and
also that the Germans only attacked it on the day
they did because they fully believed it to be held by
French troops.

The composition of the Larenzac army, like that
of the other French armies, was very heterogeneous ;
but it was still more so than any of the others, as it
contained a high percentage of African troops —
Arabs, Moors, and negroes. It was altogether the
strongest army on the whole line, as it contained four
infantry corps of the first line, besides the African
divisions and the magnificent cavalry corps (three
divisions) of General Sordet. It is true that this corps
had been on the move since the 6th of August, and was
considerably fatigued after its exertions at Dinant,
along the right bank of the Meuse, and on the north
bank of the Sambre at Gembloux, Luttre, and other
localities. Its toll of casualties was already heavy,
but as it fell back before the German columns
marching on Charleroi and Thuin it was still full
of fight, and was able to do splendid service on the

96 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

23rd and 24th, as we shall see. There were also
reservists (three divisions), less good, but full of
enthusiasm and anxious to meet the foe.

With such an army, and the support of the British
on his left, General Joffre felt that he ought to win
the victory.

This victory would have been his if the command
of the 5th French army had been placed in better
hands. General Larenzac, its commander, was a
brilliant theorist, but nothing more. No man ever
disappointed his chief more utterly than did Lar-
enzac. General Joffre was bound to leave some
initiative to his subordinate commanders ; other-
wise there would have been no such thing as " army
commanders."

General Joffre only stated, roughly, what his
general intentions were, and left their execution to
his army commanders. It would have been impos-
sible for him to control the army corps and divi-
sional handling of the immense array of troops
stretching from the Sambre to the Swiss frontier.

General Larenzac, commander of the 5th army,
committed mistakes which were not at first apparent,
and of which General Joffre only became aware
when it was too late.

First of all, he should have occupied with great
strength both banks of the Sambre, and not the
south bank only ; failing this — if he meant to

GERMANS WALK INTO JOFFRE'S TRAP 97

remain on the defensive — he should have destroyed
the bridges. He should have treated the line of the
Meuse in the same way. For, once these positions
were rendered secure against any attack, the fate of
the German right wing in Belgium was sealed. Namur
would have become a death-trap to the Germans,
and the British army, acting from Mons northwards,
would have placed in a very tight position those
German corps that had ventured too far to the west
on their blind quest after the said British army. On
the other hand, once the Germans were allowed to
cross both rivers the position would be practically
reversed against the Allies, who must then retire
to avoid an envelopment.

General Larenzac had had ample time to fortify
the lines of the Sambre and the Meuse with strong
entrenchments, and, above all, to occupy Charleroi
in strength. He did none of these things. All these
advanced positions were held loosely, Charleroi, for
instance, being only occupied by a detachment of
light troops and a few machine guns ! Only south of
Dinant, towards Givet, was the line of the Meuse
fairly strongly prepared ; but north of it, towards
Namur, nothing had been done, except that, seem-
ingly as an afterthought, General Larenzac sent on
the 22nd of August, to the fortress there, a regiment
of the line, for what definite purpose will probably
never be discovered.
Q

98 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

The battle of Charleroi, therefore, opened badly
for the French when, on the contrary, from the
strength of the 5th army, it should have begun
with a distinct advantage. The Germans were in
earnest, and bent on the annihilation of the French
eft wing. They were not slow to grasp the situa-
tion, the danger to their own position should the
French be allowed to recover and make good their
mistakes. And, fighting with desperate will knowing
what failure meant, they struck quickly and as
heavily as they could on both sides,

On the north of the Sambre there were two
German corps. A third was winding its way down,
west of Charleroi, towards Binche and Thuin.

Another corps, the 7th, was still far behind, on
the road from Brussels to Nivelles ; but it would be
in support or continue towards Mons. On the east
of the Meuse the whole army of Hausen (the 5th),
including the Prussian Guards, was coming up.

The town of Charleroi was smothered in shells.
The weak French detachments in the town made
what was described by imaginative correspondents
as "a medieval sortie " — but it was a useless
slaughter of men, a futile squandering of brave lives.
Once Charleroi was not properly occupied, it would
have been better to retire from it to the main
position, or even as far back as the frontier. Yet
Larenzac became aware, through the efforts of the

GERMANS WALK INTO JOFFRE'S TRAP 99

Germans, of its importance, for on the 23rd he made
four distinct attempts to retake it. But all in vain.
The only result achieved was the packing of the
streets of the town with dead. What casualties
the 3rd French corps who fought there suffered
will probably never be known.

But what troubled Larenzac more was the flank
attack of von Hausen. As a matter of fact he
should not have been so anxious about this flank
attack. The African troops were lining the Meuse,
and could have inflicted terrible losses on the
Germans, as they did later on the next day from
a far worse position.

All the French commander had to do was to gather
all his strength on the main lines south of the Sambre,
and to dispute the crossings of the Meuse with von
Hausen. The French would thus still have had a
chance of winning the victory and of crushing
Bulow's western corps between them and the
English. Larenzac, instead, withdrew his right
wing, and thus allowed the Germans to cross the
Meuse at Dinant and north of it. Once this was
done all possibility of a French victory on Belgian
soil vanished.

And the British troops were now going to be placed
in a tight corner.

The fighting at Mons — or rather at Binche — only
began on the 23rd of August at noon, that is to say,

100 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

a full day after Larenzac had lost, practically, the
crossings over the Sambre. The situation of the
5th French army, however, was not as yet hopeless,
as Larenzac had not yet begun his retirement from
the Meuse. The German corps which came into
collision with the British east of Mons was the
9th of Bulow's army, one division of which was
already engaged with the French at Anderlues.
This corps had as its objective the fortress of
Maubeuge, in the rear of the British army. Its
march was impeded by the French, who struck at
it heavily on its flank from Thuin ; and judging
from the reception it got from the British a little
afterwards, it would have been routed without a
doubt — annihilated or captured — if only Charleroi
could have been held by the French. When, how-
ever, its attack developed against the British,
Charleroi was securely held by Bulow. On the rest
of the British front, north and west of Mons, there
was also a certain amount of fighting from the early
morning, but it was only of a desultory nature, the
main bodies of the advanced troops which were
attacking there being still far in the rear at Nivelles
and at Ath, so that one can say that the brunt of
the fighting on that day on this part of the line
fell to the British 1st corps, under Sir Douglas Haig,
which occupied entrenched positions in front of
Binche and Peissant,

Jiattle ofJlons C"h.a,rle

Position on.

MAP 10.

To fafe page 100.

GERMANS WALK INTO JOFFRE'S TRAP 101

The battle opened very favourably for the British.
The troops, after their enthusiastic reception at
Boulogne and all along the marches thence were full
of fire and felt that they could beat any enemy.
The Germans, of course, animated now with a special
and peculiar hatred of England, felt just as anxious
to meet them. Thus the encounter was bound to
be a formidable one, with the advantage distinctly
on the side of the English, since they were care-
fully entrenched and not yet outnumbered. Besides,
their tactics and their high standard of musketry
must have been something of a surprise to the
Germans, who were easily mown down by the
hundred before they themselves could inflict serious
losses in return — indeed, when they did so, it was
mainly with shell, not with rifle fire. In fact, Sir
John French's infantry was doing such execution in
the serried ranks of their enemies that it was a
pleasure to go on, so that when Sir John French
suddenly received in the late afternoon the message
from General Joflre, advising him of the 5th French
army's retirement, and of the number of German
corps west of Charleroi, whose presence was now
becoming a danger, he felt aggrieved, and even
incredulous as to the second part of the message.
To see victory within your grasp and to have to
turn your back upon it through no fault of your
own is a most painful and dramatic situation,

102 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

savouring of the tragic. Sir John was loth to
break off an action that had started so well. He
must have felt like the Iron Duke at Waterloo —
" What will they think of us in England ! " if we
retire before the very first onslaught of the Prus-
sians ? And he probably hoped that something
would turn up — or at least that General Joffre was
misinformed as to the strength of the Germans in
the north.

Sir John French did not break off the action,
although he made ready to do so in his mind should
it become absolutely necessary. Instead he sent
up his flying men to reconnoitre.

But General Joffre was quite well informed ; in
fact the information he had as to the strength of the
Germans formed the base of his original plan of
enticing the German wing as far west as possible
in order to crush it. But now that, through the
fault of a blundering subordinate, he had lost his
pivot on the Meuse, his plan not only could not be
carried out, but the German strength west of the
Meuse became very disadvantageous to the Allies.
The Germans could not cut off the French left wing,
but they might now surround it, as well as the
British.

The delay in the retirement of the British forces
was almost fatal. The German commanders had,
since that morning of the 23rd of August, located

GERMANS WALK INTO JOFFRE'S TRAP 103

the exact positions of Sir John French's army —
and they were closing in on it from north, east, and
west. The 7th corps (Bulow) was hurrying forward
from Nivelles. The 4th corps (Kluck) was moving
down from Ath ; the 2nd corps (Kluck) was now
engaged at Tournai with a division of French
Territorials, and was further delayed there by the
news of a great cavalry fight north of Lille, near
Courtrai. This cavalry fight, in which the nephew of
the Kaiser, Count von Schwerin, was taken prisoner,
gave Kluck the idea that strong French forces were
stationed at Lille and even along the Scheldt —
and these forces might take him in flank and render
his advance southwards dangerous. Kluck only
found out his mistake on the next day, the 24th of
August ; a fight had indeed occurred between a
French cavalry detachment based on Lille and
squadrons of Uhlans who were scouring the banks
of the Lys, but the reconnoitring forces of Uhlans,
whose action extended as far as the neighbourhood
of Ostend, did not report having seen any consider-
able bodies of the enemy west of the Scheldt ; but
by this time Sir John French had begun his retro-
grade movement from Mons. The advanced guard
of the German 2nd corps only reached Conde that
day, the objective of this corps being Valenciennes.
So anxious was Kluck to forestall the English that
he gave his troops no rest, and pressed his cavalry

104 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

forward and ever forward in the direction of
Bouchain and Cambrai. He must have regretted
bitterly his delay at Tournai. Such an opportunity
might never come again. Yet, hoping against hope,
he still thought he held the English within his grasp,
for he received hourly messages from the other
German commanders that the English were " pinned* '
at Mons, that they could not retire, and that the
9th German corps, battered as it was, and probably
the 10th, also battered at Charleroi, would reach
Maubeuge before the British did !

This calculation was wholly founded on the
assumption that the French, being in a difficult
corner themselves between the Sambre and the
Meuse, would make an uninterrupted flight to their
own frontier, leaving their allies to their fate. This
withdrawal of the French would make room for
the German corps mentioned to deploy round the
British, and would have left the passage quite free
along both banks of the Sambre to the fortress of
Maubeuge.

But if the Germans thought the French were
really defeated in the full sense of the term, they
were sadly mistaken ; and if they further thought,
as they most likely did, that General Jonre would
be capable of such an infamy as to leave the British
in the lurch, they were still more mistaken.

During the night of the 23rd to the 24th the

GERMANS WALK INTO JOFFRE'S TRAP 105

French 5th army stopped in its retirement on the
line Beaumont-Givet and, partly to relieve the
enormous pressure brought to bear on the English
at Mons, partly to prevent the Germans from
reaching Maubeuge before the English had fallen
back on to it, they held on like grim death to that
line, and delivered furious counter-attacks. The
counter-attack delivered by the Algerian division
against the Prussian Guards, who had crossed the
Meuse at Dinant, will be remembered in all time,
for the German " corps d* elite " suffered tremendous
casualties thereat, and lost its commander, Baron
von Plattenberg. One German regiment alone had
1,800 men placed " hors de combat." But the
African troops lost heavily themselves. The other
counter-attack, perhaps more important from the
point of view of the English, was less noticed as it
was delivered by a corps of the line — the 1st French
corps — whose commander, Franchet d'Esperey, was
a leader of the stamp of Sarrail, who had saved the
situation in the Ardennes by his brilliant stroke at
Virton.

Franchet d'Esperey led his troops with con-
summate mastery, and nearly all the villages south
of Charleroi, almost right up to that place, were
recaptured. They could not be held for long ; but
the main end was attained — the British and the
Germans reached Maubeuge simultaneously.

106 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Franchet d'Esperey was immediately given the
command of the 5th army in place of the dismissed
Larenzac.

It is only fair to say here that even with the
strategic support of the French just described, not to
mention a good deal of tactical work along the banks
of the Sambre on the 23rd and 24th of August by
General Sordet and the 18th French corps, the
British army, outnumbered as it was and outflanked,
could never have extricated itself from its terrible
position if its commander and corps commanders
had not been such masters of tactics as they were.
In Sir John French, Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, and
Sir Douglas Haig, Britain had a trio of men to whom
the fate of an army could well be entrusted — and
it is also to be confessed that if France had had such
a trio at the head of the 5th army the battles of
Mons and Charleroi would have been great and
decisive victories.

But, and this is a point too often forgotten by
the critics — there were few generals in the French
army who had seen active service. What was true
of the generals was also true of the rank and file.
The British troops consisted mainly of long-service
men, and they were led by generals and officers
whose ability had been tested in the heat of battle,
in South Africa, in India and elsewhere. For that
reason there has probably never been a better tactical

GERMANS WALK INTO JOFFRE'S TRAP 107

unit in the field than the British army that stood
against the Germans at Mons.

The tactical methods of Sir John French in his
retirement from his advanced positions at Mons are
interesting. First of all, seeing the preponderance
of German cavalry in the west, Sir John quickly
transferred the main part of his mounted troops
from his right wing to his left, and the fine squadrons
of General Allenby, by their repeated charges
against the flank of the enemy, relieved much pres-
sure from Smith-Dorrien's corps as it fell back south
of Mons. Then, to prevent a " jamming " of this
corps with that of Douglas Haig's, which had evacu-
ated Binche, Sir John directed a couple, or " cross "
counter-attacks by Haig's two divisions, as if to
retake Binche from south and west. This not only
stayed the enemy's advance in that quarter, but left
enough space to the 1st corps to keep fully deployed
and thus to effect its retrograde movement without
confusion.

Thus Sir John French, ably seconded by his
corps and divisional commanders, was able to retire
on the evening of the 24th of August on the line
Jenlain-Maubeuge, with the very minimum of losses
for an operation of the kind.

The losses of the British in men during the four
days' fighting (August 23-26) was from 6,000 to 8,000.
Those of the 5th French army during the same

108 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

period were variously computed at 20,000 to 30,000,
whilst Kluck, Bulow and Hausen are said to have
lost as many as 80,000 men, the majority of casual-
ties being sustained in front of the British lines.

But the danger was not past, and whilst the French
kept at bay the Germans on their frontier line, the
British were to sustain further south another
onslaught more formidable than the first.

MAP 11.

to /ace ^>a^e 109.

CHAPTER XI

THE GERMANS, BAULKED OF THEIR SCHEME TO TRAP
THE FRENCH IN BELGIUM, AND ELUDING THE
FRENCH TRAP, AND COMPELLED TO A PARALLEL
FIGHT, SEEK TO CUT OFF AND ENVELOP THE
BRITISH WING OF THE LINE — AND FALL, THE
BRITISH GETTING TOUCH WITH THE FRENCH LINE
TO RIGHT AND LEFT

THE 25th of August marks the abortion of all the
initial plans of Germany.

On this date the first German attempt against the
French eastern line of defence failed definitely.
The Crown Prince of Germany was held up, and even
driven back, by General Sarrail in the Woevre and
in Belgian Luxembourg ; the Grand Duke of Wur-
temberg did not pin down and surround de Langle's
army in the Ardennes, as he had hoped; Hausen
and Bulow failed to cut off or crush the 5th French
army between the Sambre and the Meuse ; and,
finally, Kluck and Bulow were unable to pin the
British to their line of Mons and to cut off their
retreat on Maubeuge.

Thus, after high hopes of an early and decisive
victory, the Germans were on French soil without

110 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

having effected anything except the costly reduc-
tion of a couple of fortresses and the occupation of
ground which was now strewn with their slain and
littered with their wrecked war material. Towns
and villages were in flames behind them ; in the
more important localities the ruthless invader
could levy contributions of war and obtain supplies.
He was, in fact, enjoying the advantages of fighting
in the enemy's territory ; but there his strategic
gains ended, for the opposed armies which, with
unparalleled confidence, he had set out to destroy,
were intact, unbroken, and, moreover, had suffered
less.

In the north, round Antwerp, the Belgians were
stoutly holding their own and even assuming offen-
sive operations ; in the west, at Ostend, a British
auxiliary force was landing to give the Belgians
support, and thereby hampering the course of
German strategy ; in the south, all along the French
frontier, numerous, superb armies were keeping the
enemy at bay ; whilst at Luneville the grim struggle
along the banks of the Meurthe and the Moselle was
distinctly turning to the advantage of the French.

The German commanders must now have been
sitting uneasily in their saddles. They had cal-
culated upon a rapid and overwhelming success, a
success which would have solved their problem at
once and made the invasion of France rather a

GERMANS BAULKED 111

pleasure than a task. But somehow this success
had been denied them. Every one of their strokes
had, so far, miscarried, not through the mishandling
of affairs by subaltern leaders, since tactical profit
had been achieved in almost every quarter of the
field, but through the surprising, disconcerting,
uncanny strategy of the man called Joffre — Joffre,
a Frenchman, and a southern Frenchman at that !
therefore a man who, from the German point of
view, should have proved unbalanced of mind and
of excitable disposition, whereas the handling of his
armies showed coolness and determination.

Summing up events since that extraordinary
commander had struck so unexpectedly in Alsace,
the German Staff were bound to admit at their war
councils that they still found themselves, as far as
strategic results were concerned, at the starting-
point ; that the tables were slowly but perceptibly
being turned against them, and that the project of
conquering and subduing France was a far more
formidable affair than had at first been contem-
plated. The invaders could not, as they did in 1870,
now make use of the convenient French eastern
line of railways ; and, without these shorter lines
of communication Paris, the ultimate German goal
in this campaign, could not be directly approached,
except from the north, and it followed that, before
the investment of the French capital could take

112 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

place, the French forces in the field must be dis
posed of, captured or destroyed ; otherwise, an
attack on such a huge armed camp as the French
capital would undoubtedly prove a most dangerous
enterprise, and constitute a powerful moral factor
in favour of the undefeated French troops. The
German Staff still remembered how well the badly-
trained " mobiles " of France had fought in 1870
whilst Paris was being besieged.

Had the Crown Prince of Bavaria succeeded in
piercing the Mirecourt gap, and had the Crown
Prince of Germany, with his six army corps, not
been overthrown at the very gate of Verdun, it
would have been possible for the Germans to cut
off the communications of the French armies of
the north. As it was, on the 25th of August the
German Staff had lost all hope of achieving anything
of the kind, and they found themselves compelled
instead to adopt an entirely new alternative —
grandiose, colossal in its conception, but doomed to
failure because, like all the alternatives that had
gone before, it left out of account the strategic
power and possibilities of their opponents. If
Germany had had an enemy that simply did what
she wanted done, or had been fighting the newspaper
" experts," then all had gone well for Germany.

The new plan was really a variation of the first,
but it aimed, as far as the French northern armies

GERMANS BAULKED 113

were concerned, at a simple envelopment. When,
under the stress of events, it was elaborated, this
envelopment was meant to take place on the
Falaises and the plains of Champagne — that is to
say, a long way from Paris, which shows the
popular conception of the German " march to
Paris " to have been quite wrong, since the German
leaders had no intention whatsoever of attacking
the French capital in the teeth of huge, enterprising,
and unbeaten armies.

This " enveloping " alternative was compelled
upon the Germans, because the French and British
retirement, from the Sambre and Mons, had drawn
on the German armies, against the wish of their
leaders, to a strictly parallel line of attack. Al-
though they might still continue, as they were
doing, to try and make " incisions " at various
points — trying to pierce the French line on the
Meuse, in the Woevre, and in Lorraine — these
" gnawing tactics " had not the sufficiency and the
weight of great flank attacks like that of von
Hausen at Dinant on the 23rd, or the abortive
effort of the Crown Prince on the same day in the
Ardennes and the Woevre. Whereas such flank
attacks had almost constituted important ends in
themselves, the new and smaller efforts were only
part of a more ambitious plan. The French armies
of Joffre, being now well on a parallel with the
II

114 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Germans, had no flanks open to attack, except
at both extremities. But the French right flank
rested on strong obstacles ; the left flank only,
which rested on nothing, was somewhat exposed,
and, by consequence, it was on the French left that
the German alternative alone could be applied, for
the Germans had there a pronounced superiority in
numbers, a superiority which might still more have
been increased if Joffre's unexpected strategic
move of holding on to the line Beaumont-Givet
after the retirement from Dinant and the Sambre
had not considerably minimised this superiority.

The German corps, which had crossed both rivers
simultaneously, found themselves jammed and
mixed up in a somewhat restricted space. In the
parallelogram, Charleroi-Namur-Dinant-Beaumont,
there were, on the 24th and 25th of August,
at least five German corps vainly endeavouring to
deploy. A great deal of confusion ensued, princi-
pally amongst the Saxons, whole columns going
astray and intermixing with each other. At one
moment there were batteries being directed to the
Sambre from Dinant ! It was this confusion which
enabled part of the garrison of Namur to escape
and join the French lines near Mariembourg. At
night time they were probably mistaken for German
troops.

Thus, of all the German strength there gathered

GERMANS BAULKED 115

together, no more than about half could effectively
come into play, and that too in but a very hap-
hazard, unmethodical fashion. Their losses were,
in consequence, greater than before, and had not
General Jofire been so threatened further west, he
might have taken advantage of the enemy's plight
and won some considerable victory.

The Germans and the English, as we have seen,
reached the position of Maubeuge together on the
evening of the 24th of August. At that moment
Kluck's western corps (the 2nd), delayed at Tournai,
was only approaching Valenciennes ; but his cavalry
was much in advance and reached Bouchain on the
next day. So Kluck still had a chance of out-
flanking Sir John French and of justifying the rather
hasty reports which at that time dazzled the Ger-
man public. The German commander knew from
history that the British were firm on the defensive,
and that they lacked imagination and elasticity of
movement ; already at Mons they had stood their
ground longer than necessary, and had narrowly
escaped being surrounded in consequence. With
the fortress of Maubeuge on their right, and with
such tactical support as the French might feel
bound to give them,, the German commanders
calculated upon the English standing their ground
and holding on still longer at the new position, and
thus they would be surrounded, gathered into and

GERMANY IN DEFEAT

captured in Maubeuge itself, which in this case
would become another Metz. So sure were the
German commanders that this would happen that
they did not hesitate to announce in their glowing
reports the eventual and inevitable destruction of
the British army, which was to be the prelude, of
course, to the definite envelopment and destruc-
tion of the French armies themselves.

But Sir John French disappointed all these
dreams ; for, better acquainted now with the
situation than he had been, he refused to be nailed
down to his new positions or to wait to be enveloped
by the German corps acting from Valenciennes.
No doubt he would have preferred to stand ; and
on the 25th of August, whilst hard pressed near
Maubeuge, he made an appeal to General Sordet,
who commanded a cavalry corps on his right at
Avesnes, for support ; but General Sordet could
not or would not act, and thereby gave good
grounds for the British commander to continue
his retirement. The support of General Sordet,
it must be pointed out, if it had been given, would
not have been of much help to Sir John French.
Apart from the fact that his horses were practically
exhausted after their three weeks of hard and costly
work on the Sambre and the Meuse, General Sordet
was just going to be transferred from the 5th French
army to the 6th army on the l-eft of the English,

GERMANS BAULKED 117

where German mounted troops were in great
preponderance. From Avesnes General Sordet
had a long way to go in order to find suitable
ground for cavalry work. He had in his front the
broken country of the valley of the Sambre, and the
fortress of Maubeuge blazing away with all its
guns at the advancing Germans ; and on his left
the vast forest of Mormal, where even infantry, to
say nothing of cavalry or artillery, could not move
about freely.

In the way of support, General d'Amade, acting
from Arras, where he was forming one reserve corps
appertaining to the 6th army, was to do much better
and to prove a valuable ally. He did not leave
Arras too soon, seeing the comparative insignificance
of the detachment he had in hand ; but he did not
leave Arras so late as is generally thought. The
French columns left the town on the night of the
24th to the 25th of August — that is to say, when
the English were still on the line Jenlain-Maubeuge
— and one of his columns was able to meet on the
noon of the 25th the German cavalry division which
had reached Bouchain. This German cavalry
division was mown down by the French guns and
defeated — and Kluck, hearing of the disaster and
fearing a flank attack which might develop as he
advanced against the English, again altered the
objective of his 2nd corps, which, from Valenciennes,

118 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

marched south-westwards on Cambrai, and from
thence on the 26th divided itself into two portions,
two divisions advancing against D'Amade near
Bapaume, and the 3rd division moving against
the English at Le Gateau. Thus the strategic
support of D'Amade meant two German divisions
less against the British than would otherwise have
been the case. It remains to add that the English
army was now stronger than it had been at Mons,
having been joined by a detached brigade — the
19th — at Valenciennes on the 24th, and by a full
division — the 4th — at Solesmes on the day following.
Whereas, to counterbalance this increase and the
weight of metal from the guns of the fortress of
Maubeuge, the Germans, as we have seen, could only
bring on the single division of the 2nd corps — these
troops not getting into contact until the 26th of
August on the line Caudry-Solesmes.

The German assault on this line, however, was
particularly formidable. There were seven German
divisions there against three English divisions and
a brigade.

Here there was an interesting development — the
artillery of the German 9th corps, not being able
to negotiate the difficulties of the ground up the
valley of the Sambre and along the forest of Mormal,
was sent a roundabout way west of the forest, and
the German generals took the opportunity of " mass-

GERMANS BAULKED 119

ing " it with the artillery of the 4th and 7th corps
against Smith-Dorrien's corps. Thus it came
about that the English artillery at Le Cateau was
frightfully outnumbered ; and Sir John French
thought he was attacked all along the line by five
German corps, whereas there were exactly three
corps and a division.

With such a superiority, however — a superiority of
a little over two to one in men, and three to one in
artillery — the English army should have been
crushed, and must have been had their tactics not
been so fine and their musketry above all praise. The
men stood firm and continued to inflict terrible losses
on the massed Germans. In the end, however, they
must have succumbed if Sir John French had not
broken off the combat and decided to retire behind
the Somme in order to keep closer touch with the
French on both sides of him. This was not easily
done, the German game being to nail down the
English, and to sever their connection with the
French, in order to surround them with what reserves
they had still in hand after their enormous losses.
Both the English corps commanders, however, rose
to the occasion and, wisely abandoning all cumbrous
material, they successfully extricated their worn-
out troops from the grip of the German talons.

By this time the Germans themselves were thor-
oughly exhausted, not only here but all along the

120 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

line from Cambrai to the Woevre. To what extent
we shall see further on. For the moment it is only
necessary to make clear the relation of Sir John
French's army to the strategic action of the French
armies on both his wings.

It will be remembered that at the time of mobilisa-
tion General Joffre had provided for the formation
of a 6th army. Towards the 20th of August this
army was being collected partly at Compiegne in
order to leave free the communications of the
English in the north and partly at Lille and Arras.
General Joffre had intended to use it as an active
force in Belgium if he had won the victory there, or
as a powerful reserve if he found himself outnumbered
and forced to retreat. The northern divisions were
nothing to boast of, being, with the exception of
cavalry and artillery, entirely composed of Terri-
torials. But the two first line army corps — the 4th
and the 7th — of which the 7th, from Alsace, had
fought at Mulhausen — were fine troops. Another
reserve corps belonging to the same army was being
collected near Paris ; and the Tunis division, first-
rate troops, were on the way to join it. We thus
see that the effectives meant to reinforce the great
contingents operating in the north were, owing to
circumstances, a good deal scattered. The problem
for General Joffre was how to bring them together
in the best conditions possible and the most telling

GERMANS BAULKED 121

manner on the strategy of the invader. They were
destined, however, through rapidity of the develop-
ments in the north, to be brought into battle piece-
meal— until an opportunity presented itself for a
great collective effort.

When d'Amade, with two divisions, left Arras to
outflank Kluck at Cambrai, the first line corps of the
French 6th army were only just leaving their base
for the north. On the 26th of August it was found
that, if these corps continued on the way chosen,
hopeless confusion would ensue, the retreating armies
having need of all the roads and the railway lines
in their rear. These corps, therefore, had to return
and take a circuitous route by Creil and Beauvais
towards Amiens. Thus the Territorial divisions in
the north were left to deal with the situation by
themselves as best they could.

They did not do so badly after all. At Tournai,
on the 23rd of August, a few battalions only, with
no artillery, faced most steadily a full German army
corps ; and they retired on Lille in good order.
D'Amade's divisions, on the 26th, stood their
ground during a whole day a ainst an equal number
of German first-line troops ; and later, on the 27th,
with the help of the English 4th division, now
retreating from Solesmes, and General Sordet's
cavalry corps, now transferred from the 5th to the
6th, the French Territorials, who had lost heavily,

122 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

were able to drive back Kluck's right wing on
Cambrai. The connection between the English
army and the 6th French army on its left was
definitely established on this day (27th).

The English right wing, as is known, had been in
earlier touch with the 5th French army ; but in the
retirement from the Sambre this touch had been lost,
and the Germans were doing their utmost on the
25th to sever it altogether, as this breach would
have enabled them to envelop the English from the
east. But partly through the exhaustion of the
advancing Germans, and partly through the fine work
of the French reserve divisions on the right of the
British, this breach did not come about. These
French divisions on the English right, instead of
retreating in front of the German 10th corps straight
backwards on to Hirson, took an oblique line of
retreat through Avesnes towards Landrecies ; and in
spite of the efforts of the German commanders they
managed to re-establish their connection with
Douglas Haig's corps east and south of Maroilles
on the night of the 25-26th. It would be difficult
to say whether the French tactics near Avesnes
and Maroilles relieved much pressure from the
English 1st corps at Landrecies ; as Sir John French
put it in his despatch it was chiefly owing to Haig's
efforts that the 1st corps extricated itself from a
dangerous position ; but that the said French

GERMANS BAULKED 123

tactics prevented the Germans from effecting a
turning movement that might have been proved
fatal there can be no shadow of a doubt ; and
considering that it was the work of Territorials
tired out by heavy fighting on a considerable scale,
it was an achievement worthy of high praise.

CHAPTER XII

AFTER THEIR STRATEGIC CHECK AT CAMBRAI THE
GERMAN STAFF RESUME, MORE TO THE WEST,
THEIR ENVELOPING MOVEMENT

THE great wave of the German attacks west of the
Meuse had broken itself against an indomitable
rock ; the attempt at a wide turning movement
had failed ; whilst in the Ardennes, in the Woevre,
in Lorraine, events were distinctly turning in favour
of the French. Such in concise terms would give
a full view of the German disappointment on
August 26-27.

The disappointment cannot be exaggerated. We
are, of course, treating of the view of the German
General Staff, and not that of the common soldiers,
who thought they were winning as long as they were
advancing, nor of the people at home who were
ignorant of strategy or were kept in the dark as
to the true state of affairs — the views of the
German Staff, be it said, when in secret council
and treating of things as they really stood, and
weighing values, not writing advertisements for
Berlin.

124

MAP 12.

To face page 124.

CHECK AT CAMBRAI 125

The German Staff knew this — that in modern
warfare, with the huge numbers of men employed
and with a very complex system of tactics, it is
extremely difficult, if not actually impossible, after
the first shocks, to deliver decisive blows or to get a
hold on the enemy's lines of communications. The
Germans had had the chance of effecting this.
After Saarburg and the battles in the Ardennes
and on the Sambre they had strained every nerve
to do so and to reap the maximum of profit out of
those victories, but every time the strategy of
Joffre had thwarted them. The redistribution of
their forces, imposed on them from the very
beginning, had prevented them from obtaining a
crushing superiority of numbers at any vital point.
Joffre, indeed, had himself failed on the Sambre
to achieve his own immediate ends, but his failure
mattered far less to France and her Allies, who had
not set out to conquer the Germans in a minimum
of time, and were quite content to play a waiting
game, whilst the Germans, on the contrary, were
absolutely in earnest in their full expectation of
conclusive results after the first three weeks of the
campaign. The only conclusive results, so far,
were hecatombs of German dead, whilst for them
the strategic horizon was becoming daily darker
and darker. Everything had been tried, alternative
had succeeded alternative, and with the abortion

126 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

of every new plan compelled upon them by the
master-mind that controlled the allied forces, the
German Staff sank deeper and deeper into unfore-
seen difficulties. They had lost the initiative, and
they knew it ; they knew also that the initiative,
once lost, cannot be regained except through a
strategic mistake committed by the foe.

But Joffre was committing no mistakes. Backed
by a people to whom invasion was no new thing,
and who were bent on securing victory at any cost,
material or moral, the great leader was able to work
serenely in that full equanimity and placidity of
mind which is essential to the attainment of great
ends.

The German commanders were not yet aware of
this, as they still entertained the hope that the
French commander's will would be overruled by
the sentiment of the nation ; that he would feel
compelled to risk a general and decisive action on
doubtful lines in the hope of saving the country
from total invasion. It was one thing to evacuate
Alsace in order to prevent the Germans from
forcing the gap at Mirecourt ; it was another
thing to abandon all northern France to the in-
vader on the forlorn quest of new lines further
back where the issue might be, after all, just as
problematical as in the north. Had the German
leaders been better acquainted with the real char-

CHECK At CAMBRAI 127

acter of Joffre, and the extent and nature of the
preparations that he was making behind his front,
they would have come to a different conclusion,
and, after Cambrai, they would have sensibly
altered their own course of action.

The first attempt at an enveloping movement
on a large scale had failed, as we have seen, on
account of the French forces which the 2nd German
corps, in its march upon Valenciennes to Cambrai,
had suddenly found on its front. These forces — •
the reserve divisions under d'Amade — had hurried
from Arras eastwards, and had practically out-
flanked the Germans themselves. D'Amade's army
corps was not strong enough to turn the tide of
invasion, so that the battle itself was lost to the
Allies ; but Kluck's manoeuvre was thwarted, and
this was the main thing to be accomplished. Now
Kluck had the means of resuming the same man-
oeuvre further west, and here we come to the actual
parting of the ways as far as German strategy is
concerned. It can even be stated, without fear of
contradiction, that here the issue of the war was
definitely settled, although no one could possibly
have been aware of it at the time. At the very
moment when some of the allied newspapers were
full of the most calamitous details, the issue of the
campaign was already a foregone conclusion. The
fact was only going to be disclosed some days later,

128 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

and it would take ages even for the cleverest men to
realise it, but it is nevertheless a fact. The German
Staff, by sticking to a measure which was already
anticipated by Joffre, definitely lost all chances of
winning the war. Their only excuse in the light of
military criticism was that they were in desperate
strategic plight, for they had failed to break, sur-
round or disperse the armies of their enemies.
The parallel positions of the struggling forces on
such a wide front precluded other means of effective
forward action than the one the Germans employed,
but if their leaders had not been, or felt, so pressed
for time, if they had not wished to bring on at all
costs a rapid decision in France, they might have
seized a new and more advantageous alternative
which lay within their grasp : this was to make an
end, there and then, of the business at Antwerp
— to eliminate the Belgian army as a fighting
force, and thus to obtain not only a great moral
profit, but also, immediately afterwards, a crush-
ing superiority of numbers so much needed in
France.

In order to do this it would have been necessary
to withdraw northwards one of the German corps
which had been hurried south from Brussels to par-
ticipate in the aforesaid turning movement. This
corps was the 2nd reserve of Kluck, which ap-
proached Lille on the 24th, and entered that city

CHECK AT CAMBRAI 129

without opposition on the 25th, the French Terri-
torials of General Perrin, which had fought at
Tournai previously, having evacuated Lille after,
by decree of Government, it was declared an open
town. On the 26th of August this German corps
was marching on Arras ; the German Staff judged
then that it was too late to bring it back again.
Yet, on the 24th, when the corps in question was
still in Belgium, the Belgians at Antwerp, finding
that the Germans on their front were keeping on
the defensive, attacked them in a most energetic
manner, and drove them back as far as Louvain.
The German troops of occupation in Brussels were
brought back quickly northwards and they barely
saved the situation. Had the German 2nd reserve
corps been there too, the Belgians must have
suffered a serious disaster. As it was, the Germans
were content to sack Louvain on the flimsy pretext
of quelling a civilian rising, and they kept to their
resolve of staking everything on their enveloping
policy in France. This resolve was based on the
assumption that Joffre had no more reserves on his
left to bring into play, or else that, in bringing them
up, if he could do so in time, he would weaken some
other part of his line with disastrous results to him-
self. There were other grounds, such as the belief
that the French commander would risk a general
action where he stood. Developments all along the

130 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

line, from St. Quentin eastwards, helped to foster
this impression.

The French counter-offensive in the Ardennes
and the Woevre, begun on or about the 24th of
August, and continued up to the 2 6-2 7th, were
strong indications, to the German mind, that the
Allies would not retire further than the lines of the
Somme and the Oise, and would fight out the issue
there. This calculation was made by the German
Staff on the 27th, when the 2nd reserve corps had
reached Arras, and General d'Amade was falling
back on Amiens. The events of the following days
strengthened that impression, and Kluck's western
corps were kept on the move at a frightful speed.
So intent were the German leaders on the pursuit
of the course of action entered upon, and so certain
were they that victory lay at last within their
grasp in northern France, that it did not occur to
them to seize and occupy the French seaports of
Calais, Boulogne and Havre. They left these places
behind them as so much useless, cumbersome, im-
pedimenta. Beyond d'Amade 's columns in the
west they saw nothing, and to his rear they did not
suppose that there was much, being firmly con-
vinced that France had already done her utmost,
and that all her mobilised elements had already
been placed in the fighting line. Another motive
prompted the German leaders to this breakneck

CHECK AT CAMBRAI 131

race to disaster ; the anniversary of Sedan was at
hand. A great surrender of French or English
troops must take place on that day, when the
much-trumpeted invincibility of the German
legions would be once more blazoned across the
world.

The events which convinced the German Staff
that Joffre would accept a general action in the
north, and let himself be surrounded there, are
little known to the world. These were the great
counter-strokes which Joffre delivered with his centre
armies on the 28th, the 29th and the 30th of August.
At that time the German 2nd reserve corps was
approaching Amiens, and a set of disconnected
actions was being fought east of that city in the
bend of the Somme between Amiens and St. Quentin.
The pressure in that part was not so great as it
appeared, but the British army was thoroughly ex-
hausted, and d'Amade's divisions on the left of the
British were not in a fitter state for battle. The
German corps, which had found themselves jammed
between the Sambre and the Meuse on the 24th of
August, had been released as they were slipping
westwards and gradually getting into line, thus
increasing the preponderance of German numbers
in the western part of the field. The 6th French
army was coming up, but after its journeyings
backwards and forwards~as already shown, it could

132 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

not reach the line of the Somme before the Germans
did. And if the Germans entered Amiens, then the
retreat of the 6th French army would become im-
perative ; so Joffre, although he had already made
up his mind to retreat, and, in consequence, had
stopped the offensive in the Ardennes, accelerated
the action of the 4th army on the Meuse, and sharply
brought forward the 5th army against those Ger-
man corps that were slipping westward from the
north along the Oise. The battles of Mezieres and
Guise — more particularly Guise — can well be said
to have saved Joffre's left wing from a disaster
which at first appeared inevitable.

It would be tedious to go into the tactical details
of these battles. But it is as well to give a general
view of them which will show their importance.
The battle of Mezieres may be said to have begun
on August 28th, although it was the continuation
of incessant fighting which had been going on since
the first French forward movement in the Ardennes
had been checked, since when the Grand Duke of
Wurtemberg had been bent on the destruction of
de Langle's army. This army of de Langle's had
suffered less in the first shock than that of Ruffey
on its right. It had retreated, quickly reorganised,
and resumed the advance at the same moment that
Sarrail, with the 6th corps, was checking the Crown
Prince at Virton and in the Woevre0 Then de

CHECK AT CAMBRAI 133

Langle, having reached on the 26th the line Paliseul-
Neufchateau, received orders from Joffre to fall
back. He did so just in time ; for Hausen, on the
left bank of the Meuse, had crossed into France and
could cut off the 4th army. Thereupon Wurtemberg
advanced once more, and in the teeth of very strong
opposition forced the crossings of the Meuse at
Fumay and Charleville, and, later on, at Mezieres
and Sedan. It was in the region Launoy-Signy
1'Abbaye, south of those places, that a considerable
action developed on the 28th. De Langle was out-
numbered, having in his front the whole of the
German 4th army (at least five army corps), and
against his left three of von Hausen's corps (Saxons).
The success of the 5th army at Guise, however,
helped de Langle to hold back the Saxons with an
inconsiderable portion of his forces ; whilst, with
his right and centre, he struck heavily at Wurtem-
berg. The victory was complete. On the 29th
Wurtemberg's advance came to a standstill ; on
the 30th his columns were rolled up, and on the next
day his whole army was back again in great disorder
across the Meuse. (See the Official German Report
to date.)

About that date the Crown Prince of Germany
was also trying to cross the Meuse above Verdun.
The 3rd French army, now under General Sarrail,
had withdrawn by the orders of Joffre, in conjunc-

134 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

tion with the 4th army, to the left bank of the river.
Its task was to defend the approaches to Verdun,
the most important French frontier fortress. The
Crown Prince, after his early disappointments in
the Woevre and his severe defeat at Virton, had
become very wary. Besides, he had now to conform
to the new plan, which aimed at the envelopment of
the French armies from the west. So he made no
further effort to " rush " the fortress, as he had
tried to do when outflanking the 3rd French army
at Longuyon and at Spincourt on August 23. He
mainly endeavoured to cross the Meuse with the
object of surrounding Sarrail's army in Verdun
later on. His attempts, as long as the French
defended the river, were unsuccessful and costly.
A whole infantry regiment and a cavalry division
were almost annihilated at Dun, near Stenay, on
the 30th of August ; whilst big sorties from Verdun
kept harassing the Crown Prince on his flank. It
was only when Sarrail joined in the Great Retreat
and followed the retrograde movements of the
western armies that the 5th German army was able
to cross the Meuse.

We now come to the important battle of Guise.
It was less disputed than that of Mezieres, but was
of far greater consequence to the Allies . The French
5th army, which had resumed touch on the 26th
with the British, east of Landrecies, had fallen back

CHECK, AT CAMBRAI 135

behind the Oise on the 27th, closely pursued by
part of Hausen's forces. There was a comparative
lull on that day and the next along that portion of
the line, and it looked as if the Saxon army had not
yet recovered from its severe shaking at and near
Givet on the 24th. But what was happening was
this : the confusion resulting from the " jamming "
of the German corps between the Sambre and the
Meuse on the 24th had imposed upon Hausen a
change of front. The Guards corps (active and
reserve), which originally formed his left wing,
were now on his right, having crossed in their path
the German 19th and 12th corps which advanced
from Namur after the fall of that fortress (August
25). The llth German corps, which had been in
the centre and had fought at Dinant on the 23rd,
found itself now on the left, in touch with Wurtem-
berg's right wing above Rozoy. Thus, more by
accident than by design, the German Guards corps
came to increase the pressure that Kluck and
Bulow were exercising on Joffre's left wing in
the bend of the Somme between Amiens and St.
Quentin.

The Prussian Guards, however, did not reach as
far as that. They had to their right, east of St.
Quentin, Bulow's head corps, the 10th (Hanoverian).
They were advancing on the front Guise-Ribemont ;
and it was there, along the banks of the Oise, that

136 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the 1st French corps crashed into their flank on the
29th of August, while the 3rd French corps dealt
as severe a blow to the 10th German corps near St.
Quentin. On the next day the Prussian Guards
were back over the Oise in confusion after having
suffered considerable losses. This victory, as has
been said, stopped the progress of the Saxon corps
against de Langle's left wing and materially helped
him to overthrow Wurtemberg at Mezieres. But
it did more than that ; for Kluck and Bulow in
the west became cautious, and this afforded some
respite to the sorely tried English troops ; also it
enabled the 6th French army to form its junction
with the reserve divisions under d'Amade south
of Amiens.

Amiens, however, was reached on the 31st of
August by the German 2nd reserve corps ; for
although, in consequence of Guise, Kluck held back
his other corps between Moreuil and Ham, he was
more than ever determined on the completion of
his turning movement. This mattered more to
him than the immediate crushing of Joffre's left
wing, and for that reason he did not view Guise
and Mezieres in the light of disasters. On the con-
trary, it seemed to him and his colleagues of the
General Staff that Joffre would now be tempted to
accept a general action, and the issue of the war
would be decided there and then. September the

CHECK AT CAMBRAI 137

2nd, 3rd or 4th at the latest was to herald to the
world the definite victory of the German arms,
for by that time the German right wing would be
opposite Paris, and Joflre's left wing would be
surrounded in the north.

CHAPTER XIII

THE GREAT RETREAT

ON the matter of General Joffre's Great Retreat to
the Marne there are two well-defined and contrary
opinions, according to the bias of those who express
these opinions.

It is generally assumed by one group — those who
are in sympathy with the Allies — that the Great
Retreat was willingly started from the line of the
Sambre on August 23 ; that General Joffre had
planned it long beforehand, and that from his
advanced positions in Belgium he deliberately led
the invaders after him into the centre of France in
order to defeat them there. This view is not wholly
incorrect, but it leaves out of account the reasons
that took the Franco-British armies into Belgium,
and ignores the early plan of General Joffre for
crushing the German right wing there.

The opposite view is held by pro-Germans, who
declare that the allied armies were borne down
by superior German strategy and an irresistible
avalanche of men, and that the allied armies would
have finally succumbed on the Marne if the news of

MAP 13.

face page 138

THE GREAT RETREAT 139

the Russian victories in Galicia had not thwarted
German designs in France ! It is useless to point
out how absurd and false this opinion is, except by
reminding the reader that the Germans were in
superior numbers all along the line in France, that
they had all the means of winning the victory if
their strategy had been better than that of Joffre ;
and that the news from the eastern theatre of war
so far from having a deterrent effect on the Germans
would only urge them to further and more strenuous
efforts against the Allies in France and Belgium.

Controversy on the subject, as on the vital issues
of some of the campaigns in the past, is likely to
last a long time, true impartiality being an almost
unknown quality amongst the usual critics of war-
fare, whose opinion is more often than not the mere
assertion of half-baked knowledge. Besides, in this
case there is a particular difficulty which the ordinary
tyro in the study of strategics is not likely to over-
come : the fact that both theories, whilst wrong in
themselves, nevertheless contain some elements
of truth, which shows how futile it is to present
the strategic problem in a cut and dried sort of way,
everything in war, as regards the prosecution of
a plan of action, depending on a variety of circum-
stances and on the material resources as well as
the strategic ability of the belligerents, and being
modified and even wholly changed in intention by

140 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

such varying conditions as arise in the process of
execution.

It is quite true that General Joffre deliberately
planned in his mind the Great Retreat, but he did
so gradually, as events developed ; and he sought
to adjust his moves to those of the enemy in a
manner that would not entail the loss of the
initiative, which he had conquered and which he
strove hard to keep in order to compel his will upon
the German commanders and thereby to win the
campaign. For it did not matter to him nor to
France where he won the campaign provided he
won it. The loss of a battle, the giving up of a
portion of territory had little weight in his considera-
tions as long as he could keep his line of armies
intact for the resumption of the offensive under the
best conditions, at what time and where and when
he chose. Thus one is able to grasp in its fulness
the astounding achievement of the Great Retreat,
one of the most masterly acts of war in history,
and also to realise the important fact that the
"offensive" is not necessarily the "initiative."

Joffre entered the war in the full knowledge of
the perfection to which a whole generation of vast
and thorough preparation had brought the machinery
of the Germans for war ; and with a clear under-
standing that victory for that machinery depended
on the swiftness of its employment and the crushing-

THE GREAT RETREAT 141

ness of its application, he made use of the German
" rush and crush " to serve his own ends, doggedly
refusing to fight on the positions the Germans
desired, and separating all dangerous German
concentrations, so that the very violence and rush
of the German offensive must, in the long run, be
turned to their disadvantage.

When, through the tactical mistakes of one of
his generals, Jofire failed to obtain the results he
sought in Belgium, he wisely and coolly retired to
the French frontier ; there the conditions, for a
variety of reasons, not being good enough, he
continued the retrograde movement, although at
one moment, as we have seen, he had a chance of
turning to account the difficulties in which the
Germans found themselves between the Meuse
and the Sambre. But to counterbalance this his
left flank stood somewhat exposed ; the British
were exhausted ; d'Amade's divisions, more to
the west, were only just able to stand their ground ;
and the rest of the 6th army, as has been explained,
could not reach its positions in time. Finally, when
Joffre's left wing was resting on the line of the
Somme, and his centre armies were pushing back
the Germans at Mezieres and Guise, the Germans
resumed, more to the west, their turning movement
which had been checked at Cambrai. They entered
Amiens before the nucleus formations of the 6th

142 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

French army had quite accomplished their junction
south of that town with the reserves under d'Amade.
And it was not certain that the 6th army, strong
as it was and eager for battle, could have counter-
acted the German move in a decisive manner. If
it did not. the action, at best, would result in a
draw, which would give time to the Germans to
bring still more weight to bear at the western
extremity of the line. The fact that a new French
army, the 7th, under General Foch, the brilliant
commander of the famous 20th corps who had so
ably protected the retreat from Saarburg, was com-
ing up to reinforce the left wing could not induce
a strategist of the stamp of Joffre to accept a general
engagement with one wing in process of reconcen-
tration. Moreover, the 7th army, being principally
made up of units brought over from Lorraine and
Alsace, could not, for lack of time, forestall any
further movement of the Germans between Amiens
and the sea. It had perforce to deploy where it
did, along the Aisne and slip in as best it could
between the 4th and 5th armies. Finally, Joffre
aimed not at half measures, but at something big
and definite that would ensure him the possession
of the initiative until the end ; and he saw his way,
through a further sacrifice of the soil of his country
to the incursion of a ruthless foe, of turning to vast
account Kluck's stubborn desire to outflank him.

THE GREAT RETREAT 143

Joffre decided to abandon the lines of the Somme
and the Oise and to retreat on Paris and the
Marne.

From that time, at any rate, the armies of France
cannot be said to have been " borne down," since
they carried out their retirement deliberately and
with method, and from that moment also did
General Joffre really " plan " his retreat to the
Marne. Knowing the lure of Paris and acquainted
with the methods of the German commanders,
Joffre could calculate precisely upon what the
Germans would do as if they had done it. And
all the more so if they were under the delusion that
they held the initiative and were conquering. The
longer their delusion could be made to last the
more terrible must be their overthrow. We shall
see that it was the sudden awakening of Kluck at
the eleventh hour that saved the German western
armies from instant annihilation. The Great
Retreat in itself was a gigantic task to perform,
yet not so difficult to carry out in all its details as
has been imagined, modern facilities for transport
simplifying its execution. The moral of the troops,
besides, was unimpaired. They had perfect con-
fidence in their chiefs and in their own individual
superiority over the foe, and, consequently, unshak-
able faith in the final issue. The same might be
said, naturally, of the Germans themselves, whose

144 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

numbers, material equipment and unscrupulous
ways of waging war constituted so many weighty
points to their advantage, not to speak of a costly
but effective system of tactics which seemed destined
to carry everything before it. But this leads us
back to strategics ; for numerical superiority, mach-
inery, brute force, cunning devices in matters of
detail are not sufficient to give one the victory.
We will go further and say that even moral fortitude
added to all that is not sufficient either. It is
the high command, high strategy, in other words
trained brains that win wars.

Joffre made use of his armies as a skilled musician
employs a perfect instrument ; and every time
he struck he outwitted the enemy, who certainly
never dreamed that such a leader could be born
outside Germany. They were soon to get a startling
awakening.

In the meantime their illusions were fed by the
way in which Joffre carried out the retreat.

He refused a general engagement on the line of
the Somme, but as his armies fell back towards Paris
and the Marne he did his utmost to make the
Germans pay dearly for every bit of ground over
which they advanced, thus making it appear that
he was really pressed back against his will and
patriotic sentiments. His ulterior motive was to
draw the invader into a deadly trap and to involve

THE GREAT RETREAT 145

him there in a calamitous disaster, a disaster which,
if all went well, would be complete and would
considerably shorten the length of the war. For
no other reason would General Joffre have momen-
tarily relinquished such a portion of France to the
Germans ; the points chosen from which to resume
the offensive show the boldness of his plan : these
points formed a semi-circle round the advancing
foe, from Paris to Verdun.

But, it might be asked, how could General Joffre
know that the Germans would walk into his trap ?
Because there comes a time in strategic develop-
ments when the answering moves of the enemy
can easily be surmised, especially when that enemy
has been playing into one's hand all the time. In
their blind rush towards the attainment of a speedy
victory the Germans had exhausted almost every
alternative, and they were now too far forward to
resort to any other than the one to which they were
committed once they had launched such vast hosts
at such a pace — the one, at any rate, that Joffre
felt sure they were bound to take. For one thing
they could not guess the gathering strength of
France's western armies ; and so, even before General
Joffre declined a general engagement in northern
France the Germans began their assaults on the
positions of Nancy fully confident that by so doing
they would attract there and pin down a consider-
K

146 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

able portion of the French forces whilst they drove
the rest before them.

But General Joffre was a wily opponent. We
have seen how he took advantage of his early
advance in Lorraine to strengthen his northern
armies. He was now repeating the same manoeuvre
on a larger scale — and taking measures which
showed how well he understood the psychology of
the Germans. As early as the 26th of August, when
the danger of the Germans piercing the gap of
Mirecourt had passed, Joffre had restrained, if
not entirely stopped, Castelnau's counter-offensive
in Lorraine, at the same time ordering him to keep
strictly to the defensive as far as the positions
around Nancy were concerned, but to make these
positions as strong as possible and, if need be, to
defend them to the last man. Thus he was able
to draw upon the eastern contingents to reinforce
once more the western armies, those contingents
being weakened to their utmost limit, the limit
that would still enable them to hold on success-
fully to the positions they were entrusted to
defend.

The positions around Nancy were strengthened
so as to make up for the numerical deficiency of
the defenders, and the whole affair was so well
managed that when the Germans come to know of
the manoeuvre, and principally by what handfuls of

THE GREAT RETREAT 147

men their gigantic efforts were baulked at Nancy,
they will, in all probability, be thunderstruck.

That they misinterpreted Joflre's retirement from
north France is obvious — the way in which Kluck
exposed his flank at the Marne shows us this
very clearly, for he did not know of the strength of
the 6th army. Neither did the other German com-
manders know that a new army, the 7th, under
Foch, was added to the French western line ; this
army, at the beginning of the retreat, slipping
unobserved between the 5th and 4th above Chateau
Thierry.

Thus Joffre drew the Germans on. After some
desultory but quite severe fighting east and south
of Amiens, the 6th French army retreated on Paris ;
the British army, after several brilliant rearguard
actions, notably at Villers Cotterets and Compiegne
(September 1), retired across the Marne immediately
east of Paris ; the 5th army fought a big action
south of Chateau Thierry, and fell back, together
with the 7th army on its right, towards the Seine ;
the 4th and 3rd armies gave battle to the Germans
between Rheims and Verdun (September 2-3) ; and
whilst the 4th army, after this engagement, proceeded
southwards by way of the broken and wooded country
of the Argonne, the 3rd, under Sarrail, pivoting
slowly backwards on Verdun, had the difficult task
not only of protecting Verdun from attack, but of

148 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

keeping its connection with the 4th army in the
direction of Bar-le-Duc.

Thus the Germans, whose big guns in their rear
were shelling the fortress of Maubeuge, entered in
triumph Laon, Rheims, Le Fere, and other im-
portant places. To the onlookers it seemed as if
their onrush would never be stopped — as if they
must eventually occupy and conquer the whole of
France.

The eyes of the world were fixed on the French
capital, many and many people believing that the
Germans would soon enter it. Paris appeared to all
as the immediate objective of the Germans, and
the situation for France and the Allies looked black
indeed. The fate of the French armies was not
thought of — in the mind of the pessimistic it was
already settled, since few could have as yet an inkling
of General Joffre's designs. The removal of the
French Government to Bordeaux added the last
touch to the gloom of the picture. In vain it was
officially explained that Paris, in order to play its
part in the general scheme of operations, must
cease for a time to be the capital ; in vain the veteran
General Gallieni, of Madagascar fame, was appointed
governor and entrusted with its defence in case
it really came to be attacked ; the depression con-
tinued and the exodus from the seemingly threatened
capital for some days, at any rate, was a flood.
Not that the nation really quaked, its calm

THE GREAT RETREAT 149

astonished every one ; not that the people had lost
faith in the destiny of France and the cause of the
Allies — but the seemingly irresistible advance of
the Germans towards the goal that every one
assigned to them was too strong an argument, an
argument that the unstrategic mind of the masses
could not digest. It was hoped that " something
would turn up," that the addition of the British
army to the field forces of France not being sufficient
to " turn the tide," the Russians, who were winning
at Lemberg and East Prussia, would swoop down
in hundreds of thousands, from Archangel through
Britain, against the German rear, about Ostend !
It is a curious statement to make, but the Great
Retreat, which actually saved France and Europe,
lowered the prestige of the French army, although
this army had demonstrated its superiority over the
Germans in many an encounter.

The aim of the Germans, however, was misin-
terpreted. They were not marching on Paris. The
rank and file, the officers and even, probably, the
subaltern leaders, believed it, or were made to
believe it, as it helped them to keep up their enthu-
siasm and self-confidence ; but the General Staff
had other plans. Ever since the first efforts of the
Crown Princes of Germany and Bavaria had been
foiled in Lorraine and the Ardennes, the idea of a
direct march on the capital of France had been

150 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

abandoned by the German leaders, for it stood to
reason that the French armies in the field must
be dealt with first. To attack such a strong
entrenched camp as Paris before the French field
forces had been completely defeated would have
been sheer madness on the part of the Germans.
The investment of a single sector alone would have
weakened the German field strength by a couple
of army corps ; and, as it was, the German corps
in the field, after the enormous losses suffered in
Belgium and north France, did not feel too strong
for the task that lay before them. The German
commanders, also, were trained soldiers and good
strategists. They knew that an attack on Paris
would add moral impetus to the French armies, a
moral impetus which might be dangerous to the
Germans. The German generals certainly remem-
bered how in 1870, after Sedan, the ill-trained
reserves of France had fought for the defence of
their capital. Finally, the German estimate of the
French leaders was now considerably higher than
at the opening of hostilities. They at least had
come to learn and to feel that Joffre, since the
beginning, had been playing a very close game,
and that, if they made a slip, he would not fail to
turn it to account.

Nevertheless the illusion of victorious German
armies advancing on Paris remained, and was

THE GREAT RETREAT 151

fated to remain. The strategic chessboard was as
plain as could be, but the dramatic situation of
an anxious capital stoically awaiting the onrush of
the foe made too strong an appeal to the imagina-
tion. A single glance at the map would have
shown that only one extremity of the huge German
line could come in direct and immediate contact
with Paris ; it required but rudimentary knowledge
to understand the vast strength of the French
capital, a strength that lay not so much in the
forts and their stupendous armament, but in
the numerous masked batteries which surrounded
the line of forts from a great distance. A full
army and a formidable garrison were ready for any
emergency. The Germans refrained, and kept to
their main objective — that of annihilating the
French armies in the field. But to the masses and
the amateur strategist Paris was the military objective
of the Germans. The French armies, evidently, did
not count, and so it has come about that, after
long months of war, and of official accounts and
explanations, the strategy of the most decisive
operations of the campaign has not been properly
understood.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE OF NANCY

WE have already seen that it is not easy to under-
stand the early military moves in Belgium and
northern France without a full knowledge of pre-
ceding or contemporaneous events in Alsace and
Lorraine. In the same way further developments in
the western part of the field cannot be well grasped,
nor properly focussed in the mind, if one leaves
out of account those operations which truly formed
the base of General Joffre's strategy. In the neglect
or ignorance of this fact lies the cause of so much
confusion in the public mind as to the real position
of affairs and the importance of the results achieved.
It was natural, indeed, that it should be so, that
people should fail to realise the relative value of
certain incidents and the exact meaning of the
whole scheme, for the secrecy enforced by the mili-
tary authorities (especially the French, who carried
out the scheme) made it difficult, not to say im-
possible, to f o low the trend of events in their right
perspective. The eyes of the world, as we have said,

were fixed on Paris, and on the western extremity

in

_ 0 R R A 1 N I

MAP 14.

To /ace page 152.

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 153

of the battlefield in France, not only because the
British were there ; not only because the situa-
tion of the apparently threatened capital seemed
desperate ; but because representatives of the world-
wide Press — who were allowed to follow the operations
from a safe distance — found it easier, and no doubt
more interesting, to confine their attention to that
sector of the line. Mention must be made also of
the different methods of conveying news of an official
character adopted by the various belligerents, the
British Staff, for instance, having to be, for many
reasons, most prolific in its accounts, whilst the
French, for more vital reasons still, had to remain
most concise. This disparity of methods more than
anything else contributed to a general distortion of
view that has never been attained before during
the progress of a war, for it inevitably gave prom-
inence to actions and incidents of minor consequence,
whilst it left in the dark developments and achieve-
ments of the utmost import.

Thus it is that wrong theories of the strategy of
the campaign are still held ; that it is believed, for in-
stance, that in the first phase of the war the Germans
made their greatest effort in the vicinity of Paris,
an assertion which amounts to giving them more
strategic ability than they possessed and auto-
matically diminishing the merits of the French.

Another influence detrimental to the proper

154 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

study of this campaign is the utter disregard of
chronology displayed by most commentators, who
will follow the bend of the public towards the
kaleidoscopic, and present the strategic problem,
such as they understand it, in a topsy-turvy way.
They begin with Liege ; follow with Mons imme-
diately ; rush down to the Marne at a rate of speed
that takes one's breath away and that would have
certainly landed General Joffre at the foot of the
declivity, panting, breathless, and with a bad pain
in the side. Then Paris is " saved " — the Germans
are pursued to the Aisne . . . and, quite as an after-
thought, the other previous or contemporaneous
operations are thrown in, or rather are reviewed in
the most detached, desultory sort of fashion. Result
in the minds of readers or listeners : chaos, and a
strong impression that the Allies of Britain are
inefficient and weak.

This favourite way of talking or writing about the
war has almost condemned to oblivion what can well
be considered, without exaggeration, as the finest
achievement of the campaign.

This is the defence of Nancy, an action which if
the field of operations had been reversed, if it had
been fought out in Belgium or near Paris, would
have immediately received from the world the amount
of attention that it deserved. For, on the defence
of Nancy, or rather of the positions surrounding it

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 155

and the approaches to the fortress of Toul, depended
entirely the course of events in the west, and there-
fore the success of the retreat to, and of the battles
on, the Marne. Furthermore, it was the longest and
most bitterly contested action of the first phase of
the campaign ; and the material results achieved,
apart from the strategic, were of paramount im-
portance to the successful prosecution of the war
by the Allies ; for, at little cost to the French, it
swept off the surface of the earth a number of first-
rate German units. In other words, the Germans, at
Nancy more than anywhere else (until the battles of
Flanders in the second phase of the war) squandered
their strength in the most ineffective and useless
fashion, not to mention the moral effect of the
failure, which was immense, for it was the first
time that German soldiers were defeated in the
presence and under the very eyes of their Emperor.
Apart from all this the battle of Nancy would
still take precedence over those on the Marne if
for the only reason that it started a whole week
previously, and reached its climax before the other
efforts of the Germans elsewhere reached theirs.
To realise this one must keep in account that the
German attack on the " Grand Couronne " began
at the moment that Joffre abandoned the line of
the Somme in order to carry out the Great Retreat,
and that when he resumed the offensive east and

156 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

south of Paris, the German efforts at Nancy were
practically spent. The fact that the Germans per-
sisted until the end is no proof that they would have
carried the positions if Joffre had been compelled
to continue his retreat further south. It simply
demonstrates what we have pointed out before,
that, beyond the taking of Nancy and the invest-
ment of Toul, the Germans had what constituted a
more important object at this stage of develop-
ments : the weakening of Joffre's left and centre
armies, and the " pinning down " in Lorraine of a
considerable portion of the French forces ; this end
(the last strategic hope of the Germans during
their first offensive) was not attained. They must
have understood this directly their right wing had
to retreat and their centre armies were overthrown.
The game was up. Joffre had baulked the Germans.

Thus can the battle of Nancy alone be appraised
at its true worth, and its decisive character impressed
on the minds of men.

The German attack on the " Grand Couronne "
was a direct answer to Joffre's refusal to accept
battle on the line of the Somme.

Up to August 30 the Germans, having failed
to gain control of the gap of Mirecourt, meant to
attack or isolate Verdun and pierce the French line
north of Toul, at St. Mihiel. What shows it plainly
is that on that date (August 30), the 5th German

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 157

army corps, under General von Stranz,1 based on
Metz, was advancing in a straight line westwards to
St. Mihiel, and that suddenly, as it became known
that the Allies were falling back from the Somme,
this army corps wheeled sharply round to the south,
towards Pont a Mousson, and the position of St.
Genevieve, which is the northern extremity of the
" Grand Couronne." Concurrently the garrisons of
Metz and Strasburg were being drawn upon in
material and men to reinforce the army of Bavaria,
whose losses along the banks of the Moselle and the
Meurthe had been fearful. What happened further
south, from Gerberviller to St. Die, after Castelnau's
successful counter-attacks from the 26th to the 30th
of August, was only a parallel action along the line
of the Meurthe, in which the Germans, now on the
defensive in that region, endeavoured to protect their
flank and the communications of the Bavarian army,
whilst this army transferred its activities to the
north, aiming first at Verdun, then, in obedience to
the change of plan, at Nancy. The terrific artillery
actions that took place east of Nancy on the 27th
and 28th were the outcome of the German flank
march past positions, where they thought the French
might attack in great strength, as they had done
two days earlier to check the German effort against

1 This army corps belonged to the army of the Crown
Prince. See Appendix, p. 207.

158 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the gap of Mirecourt. This is rendered more illum-
inative by the fact that it was not there, but on the
northern sector of the " Grand Couronne " that the
Bavarians began their infantry assaults, when they
would have saved time and the fatigues of a march
by beginning with the southern sector.

Thus the importance of Joffre's retreat is more
and more emphasised, for by so doing he not only
saved his left wing, which was in jeopardy on the
Somme, but he also saved Verdun. Verdun had no
" Grand Couronne " to protect it, and even without
taking it the Germans could isolate the fortress and
surround from the south the army of Sarrail, which
at the time (August 30-31) was still disputing to
the Crown Prince the passage of the Meuse north of
Verdun.

Instead the Germans turned their attention to
Nancy and concentrated their efforts against the
" Grand Couronne," a course of action which allowed
Sarrail to keep a tight hold on Verdun and play his
part in the Great Retreat.

The attacks on the " Grand Couronne " were pre-
ceded by the most terrific bombardment, no less than
400 heavy guns, brought from the arsenal of Metz,
being massed against it. The French, who had
already had a taste of the German heavy gun fire at
Saarburg, were fully prepared for it, and not being
able to reply to this weight of metal, they had taken

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 159

all the precautions necessary to reduce to a minimum
the effects of the German siege ordnance. The
troops had dug themselves in and improvised all
sorts of ingenious shelters against shell fire, and the
field guns (Rimailho's and " 75's "), to be used only
at short range against infantry attacks (since these
weapons were outranged by the howitzers and siege
guns of the enemy), were cleverly concealed in the
folds of the ground. Thus the effective defence of
the positions was made possible by an extreme
minimum of men. The position of St. Genevieve,
for instance (which to many was the key of the
" Grand Couronne ") was only held by a regiment
of reserve (Territorials). But the ground in front
of it, especially in the valley of the Moselle, was
elaborately prepared ; it was covered with wire
entanglements and other obstacles of a more or less
deadly kind. To the west of the Moselle there was
a division based on Toul ; the plateau of Amance,
north-east of Nancy, was occupied by the 20th
army corps. Further south a thin line of troops —
perhaps two divisions — extended as far as the
Rhine-Marne Canal, where they were in connection
with Dubail's army based on Epinal, Dubail having
in front of him, from that point to the Vosges,
the main body of von Heeringen's army.

The positions around Nancy, from Pont a Mousson
to Dombasle, near Luneville, were attacked by no

160 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

less than eight army corps, or, their equivalent in
number of men (about 350,000).

The infantry assaults began, as we have said, in
the north, on August 31, and gradually extended
south, the Germans employing everywhere the same
tactics; issuing in dense masses from the thick
woods, they rushed on the positions with the greatest
bravery and determination. Invariably they were
shot down at short range by the thousand, and were
finished off with the bayonet. Thus they were able
to realise the small impression that their big guns
had made on the French. Again and again Bav-
arians, Prussians and Saxons returned to the attack.
The result was the same ; they never conquered an
inch of ground, and their slain kept accumulating in
heaps on the slopes and at the foot of the " Grand
Couronne." At one single spot near St. Genevieve,
in the valley, the French found 4,000 German dead.
The Germans christened the locality " The Hole of
Death." The only momentary progress was made
by von Stranz, who took Pont a Mousson, and carried
the tall hill of the same name, whence he raked with
artillery fire the flank of the St. Genevieve position.
But a counter-attack by the French division based
on Toul made the Germans lose these gun positions.

The resources of France being limited, or not yet
completely concentrated and brought together, the
French generalissimo apparently found himself in a

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 161

dilemma. Either he must relinquish Nancy and the
supporting line of eastern fortresses, or else he must
uncover Paris. The second alternative he thought
the safer, principally as the Germans might feel
inclined to attack Paris and thus expose themselves
to the full effect of a sudden resumption of the
offensive by the French. But, supposing the Ger-
mans did not take the bait offered ! If, instead of
making a rush on the capital they elected to pursue
relentlessly the course of their enveloping policy,
what then ? The result could not be in doubt for
one instant : the French, weak and demoralised as
they seemed to be, would be surrounded and crushed
behind those very strongholds to which, on one side,
they were clinging so desperately.

This conviction held by the Germans is the true,
and only, explanation of Kluck's sudden move on
the Marne, and the reckless way in which he exposed
his own flank to the attack of the French from
Paris.

Kluck was not aware of the formation of the
6th French army. The French forces he had met up
to then on the left of the British were not con-
siderable. They appeared to consist only of a couple
of weak Territorial divisions, with a cavalry corps
attached. These troops had been sorely tried
and were, no doubt, exhausted. They were re-
tiring, behind the retreating English, into Paris, in
L

162 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

order to recuperate there and also to increase the
strength of the garrison in view of an expected Ger-
man attack. Thus Kluck, as he left Paris on one
side, and made his swing in to the east of Paris,
did so without experiencing any anxiety for his
flank, nor for the safety of his line of communica-
tions. The precautions that he took had not the
French in view, but were to guarantee himself
against a possible attack of the English who, having
crossed the Marne at Lagny, were spread across
the wooded region to the south of the Grand Morin,
and, therefore, would constitute a danger to Kluck
as he made his flank march past them.

Kluck left two army corps on the banks of the
Ourcq ; this was to outflank the British when the
time came. He also threw his cavalry westward
beyond Crecy and Coulommiers, to keep the British
well under observation, whilst his forward corps and
those of Bulow on his left converged towards
Montmirail and La Ferte Gaucher against the left
of the French armies. The statement, therefore,
made in one of the communique's that Kluck
" ignored " the British is quite wrong. The British
had given very recently proofs of efficiency — at
Compiegne, and at Villers Cotterets ; they were first
line troops, all of them, and the German commanders
knew from history that the British are not de-
moralised by retreat ; whilst the French, on the

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 163

contrary, were generally supposed to lose all grit,
all courage, when placed on the defensive. Kluck
did nevertheless ignore something — but it was not
the British. It was the 6th French army under
General Maunoury.

So the main point to remember in order to have a
clear view of the operations on the Marne is that,
until the sudden appearance of the 6th French
army on Kluck's rear, and the failure of the Ger-
man efforts to break the French centre later on, the
German commanders were in the dark as to the real
number and strength of the French western armies ;
and that this ignorance was mainly based on the
turn of events in Lorraine, of the little headway
made there by the Germans, and — in spite of their
strenuous exertions and terrible losses — a state of
affairs which certainly made it appear as if Joffre
had massed his main strength around the French
eastern fortresses.

The Germans were soon to have their awakening.

On September 5, in the words of the French
official account, the conditions were attained that
the generalissimo had been seeking from the
moment he had declined a general engagement on
the line of the Somme.

On that day Jonre issued his now famous pro-
clamation, making an appeal to the courage and
patriotism of his troops. The time had arrived for

164 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

a resumption of the offensive. No man in France
must look backwards any further, but forward, and
in the words of the proclamation, " be killed on the
spot rather than give way."

The effect of the proclamation on men who had
seen their country's soil once more trampled upon
by the foe was electrifying ; but such an appeal
must not be taken as signifying that the French
armies were really standing with their backs to the
wall, nor that their leader thought that only their
heroism and combative powers could save the situa-
tion and the country. The Great Retreat, as we have
shown, was deliberate, and not the result of defeat
or weakness. Joffre was master of the situation,
and he knew it ; but he also knew that the Germans
were strong, that they were in earnest, and that
they would make desperate, supreme efforts to
achieve the decisive victory which they were so
impatient of winning since their attack on Liege.

Joffre felt confident that he could break those
efforts, but he wished to achieve something more —
to involve the German armies in a tremendous and
complete disaster, and, in order to do so, he aimed
at nothing less than the envelopment and destruc-
tion of Kluck's army, the army which since Cambrai
had vainly endeavoured to envelop him. It was not
a presumptuous design — on the contrary, Kluck was
walking serenely into the trap prepared for him,

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 165

and unless the French arrangements went wrong
again, as they had done on the Sambre, Kluck
must be caught, and Bulow also. The fate of
Germany would then be sealed, and the war be
ended there and then, leaving the Allies triumphant.
The forlorn attacks of the Germans on the " Grand
Couronne " culminated on September 6 in a grand
and general assault on the plateau of Amance.
This assault, or series of assaults, was delivered by
masses of 50,000 men at a time, under the eyes of
the German Emperor, who had hurried from his
headquarters at Metz with the intention, it is said,
of entering the capital of Lorraine on that day or the
next, at the head of his white cuirassiers who formed
his escort. From a hill in the rear of his troops he
anxiously watched the action. He knew from his
staff, as well as from the early developments of the
campaign, that things had not been going too well ;
that the enemy was wily, resourceful and intelli-
gent, and that up to now the German arms had
scored no decisive success. The attack on Nancy,
if it succeeded, would put everything right. It
would, at any rate, help the sweeping moves near
Paris. So the Kaiser hoped, and he came to put
some heart into his soldiery, to give more impetus
to their attacks. From afar his lonely figure could
be seen on the top of a sunny hill on that fatal
day, peering through his glasses. He was pointed

166 GERMANY EN DEFEAT

out as a great favour to some French soldiers who
had been captured near St. Gene vie ve. The French
soldiers were not in the least awed. One of them, a
reservist, having escaped, wrote home to say that he
had at last seen " the scoundrel who had plunged
Europe in this calamitous war ! "

At the sight of their Kaiser the German troops
were truly inspirited. They dashed from the woods
in serried ranks, with flags unfurled and bands
playing. Three times on that day they ascended
the deadly slopes of the " Grand Couronne," already
strewn with slain ; and three times, under the ter-
rific fire of the " 75's" and the bayonet charges of
the 20th French corps, they reeled back in confusion.
In the evening the Kaiser returned to Metz, where
he received ominous tidings of the developments of
affairs near Paris. He had lost all hope. Not so
his commanders, who, on the 7th and the 8th,
renewed their attacks in less theatrical fashion.
But the troops were exhausted, disheartened, and
terribly diminished in numbers. To have an idea
of their losses it is only necessary to know that in
front of the positions of the " Grand Couronne "
alone the French picked up afterwards more than
40,000 identification discs of German dead. The
other casualties have not been estimated, and
probably never will be. Whole brigades, entire
regiments had vanished ; divisions and army corps

THE BATTLE OF NANCY 167

were sorely depleted, whilst the losses of the
French in comparison were insignificant. On the
9th, when the battles of the Marne were nearing
their climax, the German efforts against the " Grand
Couronne " had already slackened. It was on the
evening of that day that, more out of spite than
any effective design, the Germans pushed up, under
cover of darkness, an advanced battery, which
dropped some seventy shells in the suburbs of
Nancy. On the next day the battery was destroyed
by the French guns. On the 1 1th a German division
issuing from Einville made a dash against Dombasle,
with the apparent design of cutting into the
French line there. But this division was trapped
by the French artillery in and around the woods of
Crevic and practically annihilated. The French
counted there more than 3,000 German bodies.

Einville marks the end of all German offensive
action in Lorraine. It was the last kick of a baffled
foe, of an army in distress. By this time the issue
on the Marne had been decided.

The Germans evacuated Luneville, which they
had held since August 23, and they retreated
sullenly back to their own frontier. Nancy was
impregnable. It had cost the Germans well over
200,000 men (the equivalent of five army corps) to
learn the fact. They had effected nothing. Joffie,
full of confidence in the valour of his troops and

168 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the strength of the " Grand Couronne," had not
worried unduly about the strenuous German efforts
in Lorraine, and thus had been able to leave the
French western armies strong enough to achieve
their purpose on the Marne, their ranks unthinned
by the need for reinforcements for the sparsely
occupied trenches of the heroic defenders of Nancy.

Jfxlreme lun&efGrtal Retreat
General position, of western asmieSisi France
/fiat

MAP 15.

To face page 169

CHAPTER XV

BATTLE OF THE OURCQ

WE have now reached those events which, although
they were not clearly understood at the time and
are still misinterpreted, showed to the world that
Germany was not winning the war ; indeed, that
she was actually losing it. Military minds alone
(and, at that, only a few) could have guessed pre-
viously from the meagre information to hand that
the German armies in France were rushing to dis-
aster. The vast majority of onlookers measured the
extent of the German victories, those past and those
to come, by the amount of Belgian and French terri-
tory occupied, the number of Belgian and French
cities and strongholds in the hands of the invader.
Had the Germans attacked Paris at once, as they
were expected to do, people would have thought
that it was the end ; and, indeed, it would have
been the end, because a German attack on Paris
would have meant that the armies of France were no
longer of any account, that they were beaten.

But something strange happened, or rather some-
thing that seemed strange to those who were too

169

170 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

much taking for granted that France was defeated
and helpless : the German columns that were
apparently marching on Paris suddenly altered
their course. From Compiegne, instead of advanc-
ing straight on Paris, they wheeled to their left,
south-eastwards, in the direction of the Marne,
which they crossed at Meaux. The Allies were
puzzled, but relieved to think that Paris was
safe, and yet seeing that the public was not better
acquainted with the true position of affairs and with
the intentions of General Joffre, it should have
been more alarmed still, for the objective of the
Germans was not changed. It was a deadly one,
and mattered far more than the mere capture and
occupation of the French capital by the Germans,
for that sinister objective was no less than the en-
velopment and total annihilation of the French field
forces, a hard task, but one that the German leaders
felt they could now accomplish, their confidence
being increased by the stout resistance of the French
in Lorraine, at Nancy especially, as this resistance
made it appear as if the French were in great strength
there and, consequently, much weaker elsewhere.
So, at least, and most naturally, the Germans in-
terpreted Joffre's retreat.

The end sought by Joffre would have been attained
if only the French troops, detailed for the turning
movement and the attack of Kluck's rear, could

BATTLE OF THE OURCQ 171

have momentarily restrained their ardour. These
troops, it must be said, were in a peculiar position.
Since the 26th of August, when they had first moved
forward from Compiegne, they had been eagerly
anxious to meet the enemy. They had been sent
back, in consequence of the retreat from Belgium,
and had been led by a circuitous route towards
Amiens. But there, again, they had been disap-
pointed, and had been made to retire still further
without having had a serious encounter with the
Germans. At last, on reaching Paris, they were
told the enemy was near, and was preparing to
attack. The stirring appeal of Joffre transported
to the wildest enthusiasm every man from the
generals downwards. Thus it came about that the
French 6th army acted prematurely.

When the reserve corps under General Lamaze,
which formed the right wing of Maunoury's 6th
army, came into collision with the Germans near
Meaux, Kluck's forward corps was still on the move
above Coulommiers, and could, therefore, be
quickly brought back and withdrawn across the
Marne before the forces opposed to it along the
Grand Morin had time to act.

That is precisely what Kluck did as soon as his
eyes were opened and he realised the danger of his
position. He lost no time, he waited not a moment
and determined to defeat this new force which had

172 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

so unexpectedly appeared behind him. Leaving
strong detachments and his cavalry to delay the
Allies south of the Marne, he wheeled round his
2nd corps, which recrossed the Marne at Meaux,
and in order to crush Maunoury swiftly, he pre-
vailed upon Bulow to send him one of his corps.
This was the 9th, which lay the nearest to Kluck's
forces. It was camped west of Montmirail ; and
was hurried north by way of Chateau Thierry — the
way it had come — to outflank the French in the
direction of Betz and Crepy-en-Valois ; whilst the
2nd corps, slipping behind the forces that were at
grips with the French west of Meaux, went to the
support of the 4th German corps south of Betz.
Besides acting too soon Maunoury's army went
into the fight piecemeal ; and so quick were Kluck's
moves that, on the evening of the 7th, the 6th
French army was cut off from Baron and Nanteuil.
The French troops, however, aware of what a defeat
at the very gates of Paris would mean, fought with
wonderful devotion and courage ; and their com-
mander, a hard hitter if a little quicksilvery in
temperament, did all he could to retrieve the day ;
otherwise the 6th army might have succumbed
before it had time to receive reinforcements or
establish contact with the British forces which were
advancing south of the Marne. The 7th French
corps especially distinguished itself, although at one

/Jenlzj

title gf the Ourco
f*yfr
T Tunis

MAP 16.

To /ace page 172.

BATTLE OF THE OURCQ 173

moment it was hard pressed and driven back from
Betz. But reinforced, together with the 4th corps,
by troops of the Paris garrison, it resumed the offen-
sive, kept at bay the Germans, and captured many
trophies. The 4th corps also stood its ground well
near Nanteuil. The reserves only, near Meaux,
being rather outnumbered, gave way, until the Tunis
division arrived from Paris, on the evening of the
8th, in a regular fleet of motor vehicles that had
been hastily requisitioned in the capital. The
Tunis division, under General Drude, consisted
entirely of first line troops. It was therefore worth
an army corps, as the troops were quite fresh and
rushed into the fight direct from the conveyances
that had brought them. Although unsupported by
artillery, the Tunisian troops drove back the Ger-
mans into Meaux, where the French came again
into touch with the British who were acting from
the Grand Morin.

General Joffre, in pursuance of his plan, had asked
Sir John French, on September 5, to effect a change
of front by pivoting on Lagny, where the British left
rested. This had been done, and directly the signal
for a general offensive had been given the British
army had sprung forward in the direction of
Meaux and La Tretoire. But before these points
were attained, on September 8, it had been necessary
to deal with the cavalry divisions and strong rear-

174 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

guards which Kluck had left behind him. Then,
south of Meaux, the British left found unexpected
resistance, and for some little time was held back,
until the arrival from Paris of the Tunis division.
The English and the Tunisian troops entered Meaux
together and, after stubborn fighting, wrested it
from the Germans. At La Tretoire, on the English
right, there was a severe action, in which the Ger-
mans, outnumbered, held their ground heroically,
and were finally all slain, or captured, together with
booty and guns.

On the 9th the British army was across the Marne,
east of Meaux. On the whole it had had compara-
tively little fighting, but this was the fault of the
6th French army, which by attacking prematurely
on the Ourcq had drawn against itself a great number
of the enemy who otherwise might have been en-
gaged with the English south of the Marne, and
been pinned down there, which would have assured
the complete success of General Joffre's plan. The
5th French army, on the right of the British,
had a more heavy task, as it had to contend with
three full army corps, which faced it from La
Fert6 Gaucher to Sezanne.1 It was necessary that
its action should be quick — quicker than the

xThe French official survey of the War says that there were
four, but this would include Bulow's 9th corps, which, as we
have seen, was withdrawn to help Kluck on the Ourcq.

BATTLE OF THE OURCQ 175

British, because the intention of Joffre was to cut
off the German right wing from the centre, roll it up
from north and south and encircle it between the
Ourcq and the Marne, an object which might have
been achieved if, as we have stated already, the 6th
French army had not too eagerly hurried its attack
on Kluck's rear on the Ourcq.

The action of the 5th French army under Franchet
d'Esperey was brilliant. On the night of the
5th to the 6th the Germans were surprised in their
bivouacs near Montmirail. Three villages were
carried with the bayonet. On the next day a
severe action developed in that region, between the
Petit Morin and the Marne. The dash of the French
troops was irresistible. Two corps of Bulow were
overthrown and pursued to the Marne in the direc-
tion of Chateau Thierry. The confusion amongst
the enemy was so great that there is no doubt
that the German commanders in that part of the
field lost their heads entirely. After their swift
and practically unchecked advance from the
frontier of Belgium they had felt convinced that
their opponents were demoralised, or, at any rate,
incapable of resuming the offensive in such an
energetic fashion. The troops of Franchet d'Esperey
did not give time to the enemy to recover. Fighting
day and night, and keeping well in contact on their
left with the British, who were progressing in the

176 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

same direction, they reached the line of the Maine
on the 9th and crossed the river on the following
day in the teeth of a desperate opposition. The
booty captured by the 5th French army was
immense. It included guns, howitzers, maxims
and 1,300,000 cartridges. The number of prisoners,
however, was comparatively small, which shows
that the German leaders, once they grasped the
situation and the design of their adversaries, deter-
mined to get as quickly as possible out of the trap
which was closing round them. In order to effect
this they wisely abandoned all cumbrous material,
and only opposed the resistance necessary to delay
the enemy and avoid an envelopment. Those
detachments which were meant to be sacrificed
were sacrificed. The rest of the troops were well
kept together and withdrawn, not without disorder
and great losses, but with a rapidity and a cohesion
of movements which, under the circumstances, were
nothing short of marvellous.

On the morning of the 10th of September the
British and French were astride the Marne, between
Meaux and Chateau Thierry ; and, on the same day,
Kluck, giving up all further attempts against
Maunoury on the Ourcq, retreated to the Aisne.
This retreat seemed the natural outcome of Bulow's
overthrow at Montmirail and of his rapid retire-
ment to the north bank of the Marne. The asser-

elun

J^a-ntt -4th days
sSe.j>tembcr 8 -

MAP 17.

To /ace />a#e 176.

BATTLE OF THE OURCQ 177

tion is made in nearly all accounts, including one of
French official surveys of the war, which makes it
appear that Maunoury's move on the Ourcq after
all attained its object in full. But another account,
published in the Bulletin des Armies on December 5,
makes it clear that the final retirement of the
Germans' right wing armies to the line of the Aisne
was due to another cause that we shall deal with
in a subsequent chapter. Let us add here that
strict chronology is not quite in accordance with the
accepted view, and that, considering the Germans
were able subsequently to maintain themselves
in France for such a long time, and even to resume
prolonged offensive operations on a large scale,
there can be no doubt that, strategically, the French
turning movement on the Ourcq miscarried, and
that the issue of the so-called battles of the Marne
was decided elsewhere.

M

CHAPTER XVI

THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT OF THE GREAT RE-
TREAT, WHEREIN FOCH COMPLETELY OVER-
THROWS THE WHOLE GERMAN ARMIES AND
SAVES FRANCE AT THE BATTLE OF FERE CHAM-
PENOISE.

IN the survey of a campaign the truly decisive
moves are often overlooked. This comes as much
from ignorance of strategy as from the inclination
of most people to dwell on those events or details
of the fighting which appeal to the imagination
and stir patriotic sentiment or stimulate pride.
The various accounts given of the battle of the
Marne furnish an instance in point, all the atten-
tion of this dramatic happening having been
centred on the incidents in which the safety of the
capital of France seemed directly concerned — the
creation of a picture of the famous city being
saved, as in the times of Attila, from the incursion
of barbarous hordes constituting the main attrac-
tion of the war. Other parts of France could be
ravaged, polluted by the foe ; but this, to the out-
side world, did not so much matter — whilst Paris,
the happy hunting ground of the cosmopolitan

178

BATTLE OF F^RE CHAMPENOISE 179

pleasure seeker, must not, of course, be touched
by the rude hands of the barbarian. And so all
eyes were fixed on the region where the western
extremity of the invaders' line came in contact
with the forces detailed for the protection and defence
of the capital. The 6th army, under Maunoury,
issued from the fortified camp in Kluck's rear ;
then the British and French 5th armies advanced
from the south, and the Germans retreated hurriedly
to the river Aisne, where, curiously enough, in
spite of their recent " rout " and " complete "
overthrow, they managed to put up a stout
resistance for a matter of seven or eight months !
Paris was indeed " saved," but by whom ? By
Maunoury ? By the English ? By the 5th French
army ? No one seems to be able to answer those
questions in a definite manner. Maunoury did
stop Kluck's advance against the French armies
south of the Marne, and forced him to withdraw to
the north bank, but then Maunoury was nearly
surrounded and overwhelmed by Kluck, and the
arrival of reinforcements and the progress of the
British and the 5th French army, south of the Marne,
barely redressed the balance. Finally, on the date
of their final retirement, on September 10, Kluck
and Bulow were still strong and quite able to resume
the offensive from advantageous positions. Maun-
oury was still dangerously outflanked by way of

180 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Baron and Nanteuil, which Kluck held on
September 9. On that night, September 9 to 10,
Maunoury prepared for the morrow an attack,
the issue of which, in his mind, was uncertain.
This attack, however, did not take place, because in
the early morning of September 10 Kluck abandoned
his positions. Bulow, at the same moment, did
likewise, and Joffre's left whig had then nothing
more to do but to start in pursuit and push on as
far as it could go. No serious resistance was met
by the Allies until they reached the line of the
Aisne.

The date on which this sudden flight of Kluck
and Bulow took place is important to remember ;
the time of the day at which it began still more so.
It was in the early morning of September 10, at
about 6 o'clock, that the German right wing aban-
doned its positions on the banks of the Ourcq and
on the north bank of the Marne — and yet, on the
previous evening, the English and French had forded
the Marne ; and Meaux had been in their hands
since the evening of the 8th ! The position being
such as it was, surely the Germans, if they had been
really hard pressed, could have carried out their
retirement sooner, during the night itself, and not
waited for broad daylight to do so ! That is the
usual course followed in war. In order to avoid
unnecessary losses and the dangerous confusion

BATTLE OF F^RE CHAMPENOISE 181

often attending a retirement carried out in front of
an active and enterprising enemy, commanders
who find themselves under the necessity of beating
a retreat avail themselves, whenever they can, of
the protecting veil of darkness to evacuate their
positions. This is what Kluck and Bulow, who were
good generals, should have done, and what, strangely
enough, they did not do ! On the evening of the
9th the front columns of Franchet d'Esperey were
across the Marne, at Chateau Thierry, and the
British forces were also on the north bank of the
river ; yet the Germans did not break off the combat
until the following morning, when, for safety, and
also to baffle their enemy, they could easily have done
so immediately with less disorder and fewer losses.
What then, at the eleventh hour, caused Kluck
and Bulow, who were holding their own fairly well,
to retire — to fly in point of fact — so precipitately ?
The answer to this question will be found, as we
have hinted before, in the French official survey
of the campaign, published in the Bulletin des
Armies, on December 5, 1914, and entitled " Four
Months of War." This survey, in reference to the
battle of the Marne, contained an illuminating
paragraph. The paragraph, which deals with the
action of the 7th French army under General
Foch at the battle of the Marne, concludes with
the following significant words : "... if they (the

182 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Germans) had pierced us (viz., our lines) between
Sezanne and Mailly (where the 7th army stood)
the situation (created by the action of the 6th army
on the Ourcq) would have been reversed to their (the
Germans') advantage" Nothing could be more
definite nor clearer. It amounts to saying that the
action of the 6th army on the Ourcq, against Kluck,
was not decisive ; and that, if the Germans had
succeeded in driving back or piercing through the
7th French army under General Foch in the centre,
the 6th army would eventually have been defeated,
and the British and the 5th French army would have
been involved in the disaster ; and then it would
have been, had this contingency resulted, that Paris
would have been attacked ; and Joffre's left wing,
cut off from the centre, would have been driven
back and invested in the capital. Germany would
thus have won the war.

This, as is proved by the statement in the Bulletin
des Armees, is no supposition, no theory. We have
shown that the action of the 6th army was somewhat
premature ; that Maunoury, by hurrying develop-
ments, instead of waiting until Kluck was thor-
oughly engaged in his front and pinned down south
of the Marne, did not succeed in outnumbering the
Germans on the Ourcq as would otherwise have been
the case ; Maunoury was outnumbered himself
and came near to being crushed. It was Foch's

BATTLE OF F^RE CHAMPENOISE 183

victory in the centre, at Fere Champenoise, which
saved the situation ; which saved Paris, and which,
also, saved Joffre's left wing from ultimate disaster.
Yet Foch's victory, like that of Castelnau at Nancy,
seems condemned, by the ignorance and indifference
of the crowd, to eventual oblivion. The indications
that this action was the most important and de-
cisive of all those fought in western France are not
lacking. The communiques and subsequent accounts
pointed out that it was at Fere Champenoise,
between Sezanne and Mailly, that the most violent
fighting had taken place ; that the Germans there
fought desperately and did their utmost to break
the French line ; that it was there that the Prussian
Guards, the elite of the German infantry, sustained
their second and almost final overthrow ; and that
the Kaiser, on hearing of the disaster and of the way
in which Hausen, who commanded the Germans
there, had been outwitted by his French opponent
exclaimed that, after such a defeat, General Hausen
should have blown his brains out ! (This report,
like others of the kind, may not be true ; it certainly
fitted the event.) But all this was in vain ; the
attention of the masses was centred elsewhere —
Paris being, after all, a more attractive spot then
Fere Champenoise.

Von Hausen's defeat at Fere Champenoise was
the outcome partly of the German ignorance as to

184 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the real strength of the French western armies, but
mainly the result of General Foch's strategic ability.
The date at which von Hausen began his frantic
attacks against Foch should be borne in mind.
These attacks began on the 7th, therefore Hausen
delivered them in the full knowledge of Maunoury's
turning movement against Kluck, which had taken
place on the Ourcq on the previous day. This shows
that Maunoury's move, although it certainly sur-
prised, did not disturb the German commanders
overmuch, once they knew that the answering
move of Kluck against Maunoury was being carried
out under favourable conditions. On the contrary,
the German commanders argued that, since the
French were stronger on their wings than had been
expected, they must be correspondingly weaker
at their centre. Hence von Hausen's attack on
Foch on the 7th, supported by the severe fighting
of those carried out simultaneously by Wurtemberg
on de Langle and the 4th French army further east.
The value set on these attacks, and upon those of
the day that followed, by the high German com-
mand was further enhanced by the proclamation
which was issued to the German troops at Vitry le
Frangois on September 7, at 10 p.m. This procla-
mation, which, like that of Jonre on the preceding
day, was calculated to stimulate the ardour of the
combatants, ended with the words : " Everything

J^attLeofftre
Jfausenj attaxKt/S*fl J

MAP 18.

To face page 184.

BATTLE OF FERE CHAMPENOISE 185

depends on the result of to-morrow." Those words
clearly applied to the efforts of the German armies
of the centre, regardless of what the issue might be
elsewhere. This proclamation, however, is always
quoted in current accounts of the war at the opening
of the narratives dealing with the battle on the Ourcq,
which makes it appear that everything depended
on the issue of that battle, whereas the locality from
which the German proclamation was issued and the
date of the document prove the contrary, and that
the decisive action was fought, not near Paris, but
in the centre, between Sezanne and Vitry le Fran£ois.

We are here chiefly concerned, however, with the
action of Foch's army.

This army was the smallest French army on the
long line of battle, as it only consisted of two army
corps, a detached division, and the Morocco division
which had formerly belonged to the 5th army under
Franchet d'Esperey.

Retreating from the Aisne across the Marne, these
troops had reached a line stretching, roughly, from
Champaubert, through Fere Champenoise to Mailly,
when, on September 6, Joffre's famous proclama-
tion that the retreat was at an end and France about
to strike was issued. The armies of de Langle and
Foch halted, but instead of assuming the offensive,
they remained where they were, and entrenched,
severe fighting going on all the time with the ad-

186 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

vanced parties of the enemy. This momentary in-
action at a time when all Joffre's line, from Paris to
Verdun, was supposed to spring forward in order to
drive the invader back is easily explained, and shows
out in all its grand simplicity the plan conceived by
the French generalissimo for trapping and surround-
ing the Germans between Paris and Verdun. Foch
and de Langle, as they suddenly arrested their
retreating columns and wheeled them sharply round
from the high ground above Sezanne to the banks
of the Saulx, decided to wait and give time to the
turning movement of Maunoury to develop before
they began their advance, so that the trap should
close securely round the Germans. These hopes
were disappointed by the quickness with which
Maunoury struck, for Kluck, on the alert, walked
swiftly out of the trap, and Bulow likewise, although
with less mastery. It was left now to Foch to
retrieve the day, and, in order to appreciate the
importance of his victory, it is as well to remember
that the Germans had the means of entrenching on
the Marne as they did later on on the Aisne. The
issue of the war would have been uncertain, Paris
would have been bombarded, like Rheims, and the
French northern ports occupied by the Germans.
Foch's achievement is, therefore, worthy of wide
recognition.

The advance of von Hausen against Foch re-

BATTLE OF F^KE CHAMPENOISE 187

sembled that of Kluck on September 5 south of the
Marne, in this particular : that he (Hausen) also
bore to his left, eastward, but to this direction he
was chiefly committed by the character of the coun-
try. To his right, he had in front of him the swampy
grounds of St. Gond, near Champaubert, and the
heights which rose south of it towards Sezanne;
whilst to his left, east of Fere Champenoise and
towards Chalons and Mailly, the country was per-
fectly flat, although rather broken and intersected
with woods. Hausen's plan was to " contain " the
French forces on his front between Champaubert
and Sezanne, whilst with his left he drove a powerful
wedge between Foch and de Langle's armies near
Sommesous and Mailly. The disposition of his
forces was curious, and shows that in their hurried
advance the German corps had again crossed each
other in their paths, the 19th (Saxon) corps, which
originally was on the right, being now on the left,
near Chalons, whilst the 12th was now on the right,
towards Champaubert, and the Guards were in the
centre. This new disposition was favourable to the
Germans, since the elite of their army would be
brought to bear on the point at which they intended
to pierce the French line ; but in one particular it
was vicious, as the hurry of the advance had left
no time nor sufficient space for the rear corps (the
llth Saxon) to deploy. This corps was, therefore,

188 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

destined to be brought into the fight piecemeal, and
to achieve little, although it suffered terribly from
the French artillery fire, a single regiment sustain-
ing over 2,000 casualties. Furthermore, during the
confusion produced in the German ranks, on the
evening of the 9th, by Foch's sudden and unexpected
masterstroke, the 1 1th German corps lost its bearings,
and ran hither and thither, north, south and west,
until it found itself, on the morning of the 10th,
near Chalons, on the path of the retreating 19th
corps, not knowing, evidently, until then, that it
was turning its back on the enemy ! The action on
September 7 developed all along the line from the
north of Sezanne to Mailly, Vitry le Francois, and
the banks of the Saulx. On the 8th tremendous
pressure was brought to bear on Foch's right, which
stood its ground well against heavy odds, but which,
for ulterior motives, was drawn back a few miles as
far as Courgancon. Here the French had the ad-
vantage of the position, for this special reason, that
the locality was proximate to the " camp de Mailly,"
the famous rifle range and exercising grounds which,
in the words of a Saxon officer, the French knew
" like the backs of their hands." The French artil-
lery and rifle fire obtained there their maximum of
effect, the shells of the " 75's " in particular sweeping
the plain, and searching the woods and the folds of
the ground in a mathematical fashion that stag-

BATTLE OF FERE CHAMPENOISE 189

gered the Germans. The progress of the German
columns was arrested. It was also in the vicinity
of Mailly that the llth German corps, which fought
but little, nevertheless sustained most heavy casu-
alties. The Prussian Guards and the 19th corps
dashed forward repeatedly, but in vain, against the
French entrenchments. Their night attacks also
failed, and both sides in this region fought them-
selves to a standstill, until the final deb dele of
Hausen's army, brought about by Foch's masterly
flanking movement. Foch, during the same night
of September 8, also withdrew towards Sezanne
the division which was opposed to the German 12th
corps, and which, it must be said, was giving way
under the pressure of superior numbers. The
Morocco division, which linked Foch's left to Fran-
chet d'Esperey, was battling, in the neighbourhood
of Champaubert and St. Gond, with Bulow's 10th
corps, which had not yet been withdrawn across the
Marne. The Morocco division, now under Foch,
thus helped to the west Franchet d'Esperey's action
against Bulow and, in the words of the official
accounts, its " behaviour was heroic."

On September 9, at 6 o'clock in the morning, the
retirement of Foch's right wing and centre army
corps, a movement which was carried out during
the night, had attained its limit, and thus the 7th
French army, although vastly outnumbered by

190 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

von Hausen's hosts, formed a semicircle round the
Germans, the French line running from a point north
of Sezanne, through Allemant, Connantre and Cour-
gan$on, to Mailly.

Directly Foch had achieved the disposition of
forces necessary for the success of the bold plan he
had conceived, he launched his counter-attacks on
Hausen's flank. The effect of this was sudden,
terrific. Hausen, in his vain endeavour to pierce
the French line at Mailly, had gradually massed the
greater part of his forces there, to the east and south
of Fere Champenoise. And he, no doubt, thought
that his opponent had likewise reinforced his right
by drawing on his left, whereas the contrary was
the case, Foch having drawn in his right to reinforce
his left, in order to turn to profit the high ground
north of Sezanne, on which his left rested, and in
front of which the Germans were not in such great
strength as elsewhere. But, to make von Hausen's
discomfiture more complete, Foch was not content
to push his left front columns against his opponent's
flank, but he ordered a general offensive all along
the line, so as to protect his own flank from any
counter-attack. Thus he executed what might be
described, in terms of strategy, a forward contraction
of his right wing, whilst his left, coming down from
the above-mentioned heights, pivoted forward, round
the moving " point d'appui " thus created.

BATTLE OF Fl^RE CHAMPENOISE 191

This manoeuvre of Foch was the crowning strat-
egic achievement of the war. His left columns went
into Hausen's flank, near Fere Champenoise, like a
knife, or a set of knives, into butter. Taken un-
awares, Prussian and Saxon divisions gave way in
confusion. At and about Champenoise, Hausen's
left wing, driven back by Foch's right, rallied some-
what, and offered desperate resistance, some of the
localities, hamlets, chateaux, villas and farms,
changing hands many times. In this way a French
regiment of the line and one of the Territorials, in
terrific combat, finally wrested from the Prussian
Guards the Castle of Mondement. To the north of
Fere Champenoise Foch's triumphant columns pro-
gressed rapidly, pushing pell-mell before them the
disconnected units of the llth and 12th German
corps, who fled in all directions, some to Epernay,
others to Tours-sur-Marne, others to Chalons ; and
Hausen, in despair, hastily collecting those remains
of his battered army that still preserved some co-
hesion, retreated across the Marne, thus uncovering
Wurtemberg's right, which Foch forthwith attacked.
All this was effected on September 9, before Kluck
or Bulow had fallen back from the Ourcq and the
Marne. Foch, it is true, only entered Chalons in
person on the morning of the 1 1th, as, until then, he
had to direct the operations against Wurtemberg's
flank, but most of his troops by then were already

192 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

in pursuit of the routed Saxon army on the north
bank of the river, and it is at this precise moment
(September 10) that Kluck and Bulow, receiving
news of Hausen's disaster, definitely broke off the
action near Paris and fell back northwards to the
Aisne.

One may add here that the Saxon army's losses
were enormous. This army was the only one on the
German line which was subsequently reorganised
and placed under a new command (von Einem).
One may also add that had not the troops under
Foch been so exhausted as they were after all their
exertions, or had they been equal in numbers to
their opponents, nothing could have saved the Saxon
army from complete annihilation.

The losses of the Saxon army and of the Prussian
Guard corps at the battle of Fere Champenoise cannot
be computed with anything approaching accuracy. It
is said, however, that when their battered remnants
reached the line of the Aisne they were minus 300
guns, captured or destroyed by the French, or left
behind in the marshes of St. Gond. The number of
prisoners must have been large, despite the rapidity
of the German flight and the exhaustion of the
victors ; but the exact number of German pris-
oners made by Foch will not be known , until the
French military authorities make a public detailed
account of captures and losses, a thing which, for

BATTLE OF FERE CHAMPENOISE 193

various reasons, cannot be done during the prose-
cution of war under modern or conscript conditions.
The next action was that of Vitry le Fra^ois, the
result of which was caused by that of the battle of
Fere Champenoise. The Grand Duke of Wurtem-
berg was outflanked south of Chalons, on the line
Sommesous-Mailly, where Foch's right and de
Langle's left met. Enthused by the great victory
won by the 7th army, the soldiers of de Langle,
who had been resisting heroically to the frantic
attacks of Wurtemberg, resumed the offensive, and
carried all before them. Vitry le Fra^ois, which the
Germans had quickly, but strongly fortified, was
stormed and captured, and the rest of the 4th
German army was overthrown on the banks of the
Saulx, and driven back northwards, in disorder, in
the direction of Chalons, Suippes and Rheims.

CHAPTER XVII

THE OVERTHROW OF THE LARGEST GERMAN ARMY
BY THE ARMY OF SARRAIL BEFORE VERDUN

ALTHOUGH it may be said in all fairness that what-
ever took place along the fighting line in France
after September 9 was the result, direct or indirect,
of Foch's stupendous victory in the centre, yet there
was another action on the issue of which a good
deal depended, and which for that reason is worthy
of record.

This action was fought by General Sarrail with
the 3rd army, and had for its main object the defence
of Verdun, or rather of the approaches to it, for, in
the words of a French general, a "place assiegee" is a
"place prise" (a besieged stronghold is a town taken).

Verdun, as we have seen, was the eastern pivot
of the western armies of France, the eastern armies,
between Toul and Belfort, acting independently
(in the tactical sense). The Germans had contem-
plated, at a very early date, the taking of Verdun,
where the most important railway lines of north-
eastern France converge, and where the Germans
would have found a great arsenal and a huge amount
of supplies. What the possession of the fortress

194

nattU of Verdun

Position onSeplcm 8--Q

MAP 19.

To face page 194.

OVERTHROW OF THE GERMAN ARMY 195

would have meant to them it is difficult to estimate,
but it would have meant a good deal ; its capture,
at any rate, would have counteracted any success
of the French elsewhere, and appreciably altered the
course of the war.

Here we must point out the curious attitude of
mind of most people — the public and the military
" experts " alike — in reference to the apparently
passive role played by the great French eastern
fortress. It is readily assumed by these learned
critics that because the Germans did not invest
or take Verdun that they had no intention of doing
so. This is a grotesque idea, considering that the
centre German army, whose task it was from the very
beginning to approach Verdun in order to besiege
it, or to isolate it — which in modern war comes to
the same thing — was the largest army on the German
line and was placed under the Crown Prince of
Germany, whose chief of the staff, von Eichhorn, was
one of the best generals in Germany. This army con-
sisted of the 3rd, 1st Bavarian and 16th army corps,
and six divisions of reserves, not counting, of course,
the cavalry and the help that the Crown Prince
of Germany was to receive in the course of events
from his colleague the Grand Duke of Wurtemberg,1
whose army was almost as large as his own. The

1 This does not include the 5th army corps, which was
detached to attack the "Grand Couronne" of Nancy, as
shown at p. 156-7.

196 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

army of Sarrail (formerly under Ruffey) was smaller
than the army of the Crown Prince by no less than
five infantry divisions — the Crown Prince having
fifteen, and Sarrail only ten. Yet we are asked
by these " experts " to believe that such a force was
meant to remain inactive and wait, with arms
folded, for developments to take place elsewhere.
The terrific battle in the Ardennes ; SarraiTs tre-
mendous counter-stroke at Virton ; the hotly-
contested actions of Arrancy, of Spincourt, of
Longuyon ; and the energetic and effective manner
in which the 3rd French army disputed the crossings
of the Meuse to the enemy till the beginning of the
Great Retreat — all this is ignored or forgotten.
So are the great sorties made by the garrison
of Verdun against the flank of the Germans during
the Crown Prince's advance. Thousands of French
soldiers have fallen for the protection of their
fortress, but their prowess will probably remain
unrecognised and unsung by the indifference and
the lazy-mindedness of the multitude.

The Germans meant to take Verdun — they did
all they could to approach it and besiege it. The
change of plan imposed on them by Joffre's retreat
did not alter the strategic objective of the Crown
Prince. We have seen how General von Stranz, who
was marching on Verdun from the west, changed
the direction of his columns in order to attack the

OVERTHROW OP THE GERMAN ARMY 197

" Grand Couronne " of Nancy. It was a mistake,
for General Sarrail with this additional German
corps against him, being in the position he stood
in at the time, would have been surrounded and
overwhelmed, but the mistake was of the Germans'
making ; they were again playing into Jofire's
hand ; and this does not alter the fact that the
biggest German army, under the Crown Prince,
fought incessantly with the main object of isolating,
of investing, and of taking Verdun, and that to
attain this object the Crown Prince of Germany and
his counsellor, von Eichhorn, did all in their power
to overwhelm and destroy the 3rd French army
under General Sarrail.

Sarrail during the retreat had a difficult and thank-
less task to perform. As he fell back through the
broken and wooded country of the Argonne so as
not to lose his connection with the other French
armies on his left, he had to protect Verdun from
north, east and west. The Crown Prince had suffi-
cient forces to deploy round his opponent, to cut
through his lines from east to west and west to east,
and surround and drive in into Verdun at least a
portion of Sarrail's army. The German 3rd army
corps advanced through the forest, making straight
for Bar le Due, whilst the 1st Bavarian and the 16th
army corps pressed on in the direction of Troyon
and St. Mihiel. To the east of Verdun German

198 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

reserve divisions made their way, on the right bank
of the Meuse, with the object of crossing the river
near St. Mihiel and linking their efforts to those
of the German forces which were operating on the
left bank. Had the Crown Prince's plan succeeded
Sarrail's right army corps, which rested on Verdun,
would have been cut off from the rest and driven
into the fortress ; whilst to the south, Sarrail would
have lost his connection with the 4th army on his
left and been driven into Toul. What the moral
effect of such a development would have been on
the defenders of Nancy, who were fighting back to
to back with Sarrail at the time, it is difficult to
say ; but the German success would have heavily
counterbalanced the successes already achieved by
the Allies on the Marne. That these successes of
the Allies weighed heavily on the minds of the
Crown Prince and his generals there is no doubt,
but their army was powerful and practically intact,
and, therefore, they had the means of gaining a
complete victory before the Allies had time to make
further progress elsewhere.

On the 8th of September the army under Sarrail
reached the limit of its retirement. The Germans,
continuing to press on, were attacking in strength,
all along the line and on all sides. On the next
day (the same day as the battle of Fere Cham-
penoise) Sarrail counter-attacked in his front, whilst

OVERTHROW OF THE GERMAN ARMY 199

he diverted from left to right his two cavalry corps
to check the progress of the Germans who had
succeeded in crossing the Meuse in his rear, near
St. Mihiel. Both operations succeeded beyond the
expectations of the French general. At St. Mihiel
the Germans were driven back with heavy losses
across the Meuse ; on Sarrail's left, near Revigny,
the 3rd German corps, which was endeavouring to
reach Bar le Due, was thrown back after a murderous
struggle ; whilst in the centre the 16th German
corps lost eleven batteries, destroyed by the French
artillery. It was on the next day (September 10)
that the Crown Prince, completely baffled, and now
distracted by the news of Hausen's and Wurtemberg's
overthrow at Fere Champenoise and Vitry le Franyois
and the sudden retreat of Bulow and Kluck to the
Aisne, made his desperate attempt against the fort
of Troyon. His army corps lay then on a straight
line running from Triaucourt, south of the Argonne,
through Beauzee to Troyon. They all faced east,
thus offering their flank to Sarrail's advancing
columns. The disposition of the German corps,
then, show that the Crown Prince, or rather von
Eichhorn, his counsellor, felt sure they could batter
their way through the Meuse to Metz. They no
doubt could have done so, for the Troyon fort, which
barred the way, in spite of the wonderful and heroic
resistance it offered, must have been speedily

200 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

reduced ; but Sarrail gave no respite to his war-
worn battalions ; and overcoming the difficulties
of the ground and the obstacles and defences hastily
put up by the enemy to delay his advance, the French
general carried all before him. The Crown Prince
gave up the forlorn attempt, and withdrew his
battered forces through the immense forest across
which his opponent himself had retreated a few days
previously, but in a totally different manner ; for
the Crown Prince's retreat resembled a rout. He left
behind him prisoners, wounded and baggage, and at
last got into line, to the north of Verdun, with the
other discomfited and terribly depleted German
armies, which now spread along the Aisne, as far
as Soissons, behind a strong line of defensive works,
a line which they were enabled to make stronger
by the temporary exhaustion of their adversaries,
who besides, it must be owned, were not prepared
for the course of action the Germans, after their
huge defeat, were about to take. The Allies, elated
by success, had lost, in their swift advance and
relentless pursuit of the enemy, some of their own
cohesion. Otherwise they might have quickly
carried the first line of defences hastily thrown up
by the Germans along the river Aisne, and they might
thus have kept the enemy on the run, if not as far as
the Rhine, at least as far as the Belgian frontier.
The victory of the Marne, however, in a general

OVERTHROW OF THE GERMAN ARMY 201

sense, was complete. The Germans had not been
annihilated, nor definitely overthrown as Joffre had
meant that they should be. But the shadow of
defeat and of permanent invasion that had hung
over France until then was dispelled, and dispelled
for ever. The theory of German invincibility
which had been flouted across the world for half a
century was shattered. It was proved in this titanic
action, which settled the future destinies of Europe,
that the Germans, with the superiority of numbers
(which they enjoyed all along the line), and a most
perfect military organisation, were unable to crush
their adversaries, as they were expected to do by the
vast majority of onlookers. On the contrary, they
were thrown back and pursued for a distance of
forty miles by opponents who were much weaker in
numbers and who further lacked the military organ-
isation and thorough preparation of the Germans.

To what was this surprising result due ? To
bravery, courage, fighting power ? To a certain
extent, perhaps, but not altogether, for the Germans
also are brave and courageous and know how to
fight. Their tactics were fine, and although these
tactics were of a murderously costly kind to the
people employing them, they reached a completeness
and standard higher than that of the French.

The victory of the Allies was due to superior
strategy, for everything else being equal, or even

202 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

somewhat unequal, as was the case in this campaign,
strategy must and will always prevail. Good lead-
ing, sound principles of war will give a weaker army
the advantage over a stronger one in the long run.
The behaviour of the Allies, of the English, of the
Belgians, of the French was fine. The despised
Belgian army fought well at Lou vain. The English
musketry fire staggered the Germans at Mons, at
Cambrai. The " 75 " French guns were a revela-
tion, as was the wonderful suppleness and elasticity
of the French infantry fighting all the time against
heavy odds ; but in spite of all that, the Germans
must have won the campaign, and the war, if they
had had a Joffre or a Foch at their head. For it
must never be forgotten that the greatest surprise
of this war was not the heroic conduct of the Bel-
gians, nor the tactical efficiency of the " contempt-
ible " little army of Britain, but the totally unknown
and unadvertised ability of the French Staff. It is to
the French Staff, to men like Joffre, Foch, Pau,
Castelnau and Sarrail that France owes her safety
and the Allies their success over the consummately
well-trained and highly-organised legions of the vast
Germanic hordes. For without the first French
offensive in Alsace, which gave the Allies the initia-
tive— the initiative which they have kept ever
since and are not likely to lose — without the
successful defence of Nancy and Verdun; without

OVERTHROW OF THE GERMAN ARMY 203

the great retreat and Foch's crowning manoeuvre
at Fere Champenoise, the campaign would not, and
could not, have been won. France would have been
speedily crushed and conquered ; Belgium would
have remained for ever in German hands, and
Russia, in her turn, would have succumbed under
the irresistible avalanche of the victorious German
armies. As for England . . . but it is enough !
We leave to the imagination of the reader the pic-
ture of what the eventuality of a struggle between
England and a totally Germanised Europe might
have been, and to realise what debt of gratitude
is due to the nation which has unflinchingly and
silently sustained the brunt of the overwhelming
attacks of Germany.

We have to add here, however, that the victory,
although it was won, was not of a definite character.
The so-called victory of the Marne (which, perhaps,
would be more aptly named if it were called the
battle of " Fere Champenoise ") was not definite.
It did not, and could not, end the war, nor even
shorten it, and that for many reasons, one of which
we have stated above — the premature action of the
French 6th army on the Ourcq. The other reasons
were obvious — the numerical preponderance of the
Germans, their almost inexhaustible resources, and
their vast and thorough preparations for war.
France, on the other hand, was handicapped from

204 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the start, and even after the defeat of the German
onrush and the terrible losses of the invaders ; even
with England to help her and the Belgian field
forces also on her side, France could hardly hope to
do much more than she had done, unless she wished
to bleed to death and to emerge out of the struggle
victorious, but terribly withered and maimed. The
main object had been achieved — the invaders
had been checked, driven back, and forced to
assume the defensive. This in itself was a wonder-
ful, marvellous result. It was victory ; but there
was a harder task to perform — that of battering the
foe, of reducing his strength, and of crushing him
in the end and for all time.

In order to effect this the forces of France alone
were not sufficient, and thus a sort of waiting game
was imposed on General Joffre, whose course of action
was now to gather all his forces whilst he kept the
enemy busy along the lines on which, through politi-
cal more than strategical reasons, the Germans had
elected to remain. How he effected this ; how the
Belgian army, which was isolated at Antwerp, was
enabled to add its strength to the allied line ; how
the Russian pressure in the east made itself felt in
the long run on the German front in France, and
how England gradually enlarged her share of the
military operations will be shown in the second
phase of the history of the war.

j£nd offferman retreat from thejffctrnc
Position. ofWejlcm armies in france
on. or a£out Jept /2.I3--/0/4

MAP 20.

To face page 204.

APPENDIX

THE disposition of the German field units (army
corps) as given in this narrative of the campaign is
not quite in keeping with the official accounts. It
is, nevertheless, correct, the official accounts contain-
ing many discrepancies and contradictory statements
on the subject. Thus — to quote a few instances
— in Sir John French's dispatch on the battle of
the Marne, the German army under Kluck is made
to contain the 3rd army corps, the 4th reserve and
the 7th corps, whereas this corps, the 7th, formed
part of the army under General Bulow, the 4th
reserve was near Antwerp, and the 3rd corps be-
longed to the Crown Prince's command near Verdun
and Metz ; in the French official survey of the war
the 8th corps is given to the Crown Prince, whereas
it really belonged to the Duke of Wurtemberg's
command, and was fighting at the time mentioned
(September 8-10) not near Revigny, in the Argonne,
but at Vitry le Fra^ois, on the Marne. In various
accounts drawn from official sources other inaccur-
acies of the kind occur, some of them being appar-
ently due to careless figure writing. Thus we find

205

206 GERMANY IN DEFEAT

the 10th corps, which appertained to Bulow's com-
mand, made to belong also to the Crown Prince's
army at the other extremity of the western line in
France. The corps mentioned as being under the
Crown Prince was really the 1st Bavarian, written
down in abbreviated form thus : IB, the " B " of
Bavarian looking like an " 0." In the same way
the llth corps (Hausen) is often confused with the
17th, and placed under the command of Wurtem-
berg. Here the figure 7 looks like 1. The error made
in the French official survey in connection with the
8th corps is probably due to the same cause, the
figure 3 being often made to resemble an 8.

We have spared no pains to find out the exact
composition of the German armies in France in
August-September, 1914. It was not an easy task,
as the secrecy enforced by the German military
authorities as to the distribution of their forces was
almost as severe as the French, but in spite of all
difficulties we have succeeded in drawing up an
accurate memorandum of German army corps which
were operating in France in the early days of
September, and their groupings under different
commands '. —

1st army — General von Kluck : 2nd, 2nd
reserve, 4th army corps.

2nd army — General von Bulow : 7th, 9th, 10th,
10th reserve^

APPENDIX 207

3rd army — General von Hausen : Guard, llth,
12th, 19th army corps ; this command is generally
termed Saxon army.

4th army — Grand Duke of Wurtemberg : 8th,
13th, 17th, and reserve corps of one of these.

5th army — Crown Prince : 3rd, 5th, 16th, 1st
Bavarian, three reserve corps.

6th army — Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria : 21st,
2nd and 3rd Bavarian, two reserve corps.

7th army — General von Heeringen : 14th, 15th,
18th, one reserve corps.

This does not include cavalry, of which there
were ten divisions variously distributed amongst
the different commands, nor the 4th reserve and
6th army corps of Kluck, which were operating
against the Belgians near Antwerp.

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED

1. The French " communiques."

2. The dispatches of Sir John French.

3. French official survey of the war, Bulletin des
Armies, December 5, 1914.

4. French official account, entitled " Six Months
of War."

5. Accounts given by officers of the French Staff
to various members of the Press on the operations
around Luneville, Nancy, Verdun, and on the banks
of the Ourcq.

6. Official reports on atrocities for ascertaining
the exact position of certain German units at certain
dates.

7. French advertisements for men lost on the
various battlefields, for ascertaining the position of
certain French units.

8. Diaries of officers and men, especially German,
for ascertaining the position of German and French
units.

9. German casualty lists, for ascertaining the
position of certain units ; and a mass of other
reliable material.

THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH, ENGLAND

D Souza, Charles de, count

521 Germany in defeat

S68 4th ed.

1916

phi

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