The Guns of August

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Brussels on August 6 went mad with excitement at news of the repulse administered to the Germans the day before. “Grande Victoire Belge!” proclaimed newspaper extras. Happy, ardent people crowded the cafés, congratulated one another, boasted of vengeance, stayed up all night to celebrate, and next morning delightedly read to each other a Belgian communiqué which said that 125,000 Germans had “completely failed to make any impression and three army corps engaged in the attack were cut up and useless.” Echoing the optimism, the Allied press reported the “German rout complete,” with several regiments having surrendered, many prisoners taken, 20,000 German casualties, the defenders everywhere successful, the “invaders decisively checked,” and their advance brought to a “standstill.” How the withdrawal of the Belgian 3rd Division, briefly mentioned, fitted into this picture was somehow left unexplained.

  At Belgian Headquarters in the old Town Hall at Louvain confidence was as high as if the Belgian Army numbered thirty-four divisions and the German six instead of the other way around. The forward group within the General Staff “hummed with wild plans for an immediate offensive.”

  The King vetoed it at once. He recognized in the size of the force attacking Liège, and in new reports of five German corps now identified, the outlines of the envelopment strategy of Schlieffen. There was still a chance, if he were reinforced by French and English forces in time, of halting the Germans at the river Gette midway between Antwerp and Namur. Already he had sent two urgent appeals to President Poincaré. At this stage he still expected, as did everyone in Belgium, to be joined on Belgian territory by his Allies. “Where are the French? Where are the English?” people everywhere asked one another. In one village a Belgian woman offered a bunch of flowers tied with the English colors to a soldier in a strange uniform which she thought was khaki. In some embarrassment he identified himself as German.

  In France, Poincaré and Messimy who in his exuberance had instantly proposed to send five corps to help the Belgians were helpless against Joffre’s silent and stubborn refusal to change his plan of deployment by so much as a brigade. Three French cavalry divisions under General Sordet would enter Belgium on August 6 to reconnoiter German strength east of the Meuse, but only the nonappearance of the English, Joffre said, would induce him to extend his left wing. Late on the night of August 5 word came from London that the War Council, after an all-day meeting, had made up its mind to send an expeditionary force, but of only four divisions, plus cavalry, instead of six. Although this was disappointing, it did not induce Joffre to shift any divisions to his left to make up the British deficiency. He was keeping everything for the French offensive through the center. All he sent to Belgium, apart from the cavalry, was a single Staff officer, Colonel Brécard, with a letter to King Albert. It suggested that the Belgian Army should postpone decisive action and retreat upon Namur where it would make contact with the French and, when the French concentration was completed, join in a common offensive. Four French divisions, Joffre said, would be sent to Namur but would not reach there until August 15.

  As Joffre saw it, the Belgian Army, ignoring purely Belgian interests for the sake of a common front, should act as a wing of the French Army in conformity with French strategy. As King Albert saw it, with his clearer sense of the danger of the German right wing, if he allowed the Belgian Army to make a stand at Namur it could be cut off from its base at Antwerp by the advancing Germans and pushed out of Belgium over the French border. More intent on holding the Belgian Army on Belgian soil than upon a common strategy, King Albert was determined to keep open his line of retreat to Antwerp. Purely military considerations pointed to Namur; historical and national reasons pointed to Antwerp even at the risk of the army being bottled up there where it could exercise no direct influence upon the war as a whole.

  If compelled, the Belgian Army would retreat upon Antwerp, not Namur, the King told Colonel Brécard. Bitterly disappointed Brécard informed Joffre that the Belgians could not be expected to join the French in a combined offensive.

  On August 7 the French Government, which had never been consulted about Plan 17 and was now prevented by its requirements from coming to the aid of Belgium, conferred the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor upon Liège and the Military Medal upon King Albert. The gesture, however inadequate in the circumstances, expressed something of the world’s startled admiration of Belgium’s fight. She is not only “defending the independence of Europe; she is the champion of honor,” declared the President of the French Chamber. She has won “immortal renown” by shattering the superstition that the German armies are invincible, declared The Times of London.

  While the tributes multiplied, the people of Liège spent the first of the countless nights that twentieth century Europeans were to spend in cellars. Following the day of terror under the Zeppelin raid, Liège was pounded all night by the exploding shells of Ludendorff’s field artillery in an attempt to cow the city into surrender. The method was as fruitless as the long-range bombardment of Paris by the Big Berthas in 1918 or the Luftwaffe and V-2 bombings of London one war later.

  After the preliminary softening up, Emmich and Ludendorff decided to enter the city without waiting for the other brigades to come up. Meeting no resistance, as the Belgian 3rd Division had by now been withdrawn, the 14th Brigade marched across two bridges which were still undestroyed. Ludendorff, thinking the Citadel had been taken by an advance guard sent ahead for that purpose, drove up the steep winding road in a Staff car with a single adjutant. Reaching the courtyard he found no German soldiers in possession, the advance guard having not yet arrived. He nevertheless unhesitatingly “banged on the gates” and on their being opened to him received the surrender of the Citadel from the remaining Belgian soldiers inside. He was forty-nine, twice the age of Bonaparte in 1793 and Liège was his Toulon.

  Down below in the city, General Emmich, not finding Leman, arrested the burgomaster, who was told that Liège would be shelled and burned unless the forts surrendered, and was offered a safe conduct to obtain the surrender from General Leman or the King. He refused, and remained a prisoner. By evening three more German brigades had broken through the ring of forts to join the 14th inside the city.

  At six that evening an officer of motor transport tore through the streets of Aachen bringing excited word to Second Army Headquarters that General Emmich was inside Liège and at that moment negotiating with the burgomaster. In the midst of shouts and “Hochs!” a telegram from Emmich to his wife was intercepted with the message, “Hurrah, in Liège!” At 8:00 P.M. a liaison officer brought word from Emmich that although General Leman had not been taken, the bishop and burgomaster were prisoners, the Citadel had surrendered, the city was evacuated by Belgian troops, but that he had no information about the forts.

  In Berlin, where Supreme Headquarters, or Oberste Heeresleitung (hereafter OHL), remained until the end of the concentration period, the Kaiser was ecstatic. At the beginning, when it had appeared that the Belgians were going to fight after all, he had bitterly reproached Moltke, “Now you see you have brought the English down on me without any reason!” but at news of the fall of Liège, he called him his “dearest Julius” and, as Moltke recorded it, “I was rapturously kissed.” Still the English continued to worry the Kaiser. On August 10 the American ambassador, Mr. Gerard, who came to present an offer by President Wilson to mediate, found him “despondent.” Seated in the garden of the Palace at a green iron table under a sun umbrella with papers and telegraph forms scattered before him and two dachshunds lying at his feet, the Kaiser lamented, “The English change the whole situation—an obstinate people—they will keep up the war. It cannot end soon.”

  The bitter truth that none of the forts had been taken was learned the day after the fall of the city when Ludendorff came out of Liège to report. He insisted that the siege cannon must be brought into action at once; the Belgians still showed no disposition to surrender. Already the advance of Kluck’s First Army, scheduled to be the first to start, had
to be put off from the 10th to the 13th.

  Meanwhile at Essen the hideous fat black siege mortars stood immobile while around them surged the frantic struggle to assemble the motor transport and trained gun crews. By August 9 the two road models were ready and that night were loaded onto freight cars to be transported as far as possible by railway to save their treads. The train left Essen on the 10th and reached Belgium by nightfall, but at Herbesthal, twenty miles east of Liège, at 11:00 P.M. came to a dead stop. The railroad tunnel, blown up by the Belgians, was blocked. Furious efforts failed to reopen it. The mammoth guns had to be unloaded and proceed by road. Though they had only eleven miles to cover to come within range of the forts, one breakdown after another thwarted their progress. Motors failed, harness broke, roads were blocked, passing troops had to be pressed into service to help haul them. All day the slow struggle with the two silent monsters went on.

  While they were on their way, the German government made a last effort to persuade Belgium to yield passageway through her territory. On August 9 Mr. Gerard was asked to forward a note to his colleague in Brussels for presentation to the Belgian government. “Now that the Belgian Army has upheld its honor by heroic resistance to a very superior force,” it said, the German government “beg” the King of the Belgians and his government to spare Belgium “further horrors of war.” Germany was ready to make any compact with Belgium consistent with allowing her armies free passageway and would give her “solemn assurances” that she had no intention of taking Belgian territory and would evacuate the country as soon as the progress of war permitted. Both the American ministers in Brussels and at The Hague declined to be the bearer of such a proposal, but through the offices of the Dutch government it eventually reached King Albert on August 12. He refused.

  His steadfastness, in view of the enormity of the threat to his country, did not seem entirely believable even to his Allies. No one had expected heroism from Belgium. “Yes,” said King Albert after the war, in reply to a French statesman’s praise of his conduct, “we were cornered into it.” In 1914 the French had their doubts, and on August 8 sent the Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, M. Berthelot, to see the King on the basis of a rumor that he was going to arrange a truce with Germany. Berthelot was charged with the unhappy duty of explaining to the King that France would do everything in her power to help Belgium except interfere with her own plan of operations. Albert tried again to convey to the French his apprehension of the huge right wing that would be coming through Flanders and repeated his warning that the Belgian Army might have to withdraw to Antwerp. It would resume the offensive when, he delicately added, “the approach of the Allied armies makes itself felt.”

  To the outside world it seemed, as, from his pinnacle of authority, the Military Correspondent of The Times announced, that the German force attacking Liège “has been very handsomely beaten.” For the moment this was approximately true. The vaunted German Army, which had expected to be so easily victorious over the “dreaming sheep,” had failed to take the forts by assault. It came to a pause after August 9 and waited for reinforcements—though not of the human kind. It waited for the siege guns.

  In France General Joffre and his staff still had their minds closed as resolutely as ever to Flanders, still focused their thoughts as ardently as ever on the Rhine. The five French armies, totaling approximately the same seventy divisions that the Germans had on the Western Front, were arranged in order from the First Army on the right to the Fifth on the left. Divided by the fortified area of Verdun-Toul, they were concentrated in two groups in much the same proportion as the German armies were grouped on either side of Metz-Thionville. The First and Second Armies, facing the German Seventh and Sixth, in Alsace and Lorraine, together formed the French right wing whose mission was by vigorous attack to throw the Germans opposite them back upon the Rhine while driving a solid wedge between the German left and center.

  Farthest to the right was stationed a special assault force like Emmich’s at Liège for the opening move into Alsace. Detached from the First Army and composed of the VIIth Corps and 8th Cavalry Division, it was to liberate Mulhouse and Colmar and anchor itself upon the Rhine in the corner where Germany, Alsace, and Switzerland meet.

  Next to it was the First Army commanded by handsome General Dubail. Dubail, it was said, did not recognize the impossible, combined indomitable will with unlimited energy, and for some cause hidden in the intricate defiles of French Army politics was not on the best of terms with General de Castelnau, his immediate neighbor on the left. Castelnau had left the General Staff to become commander of the Second Army which held the crucial front around Nancy.

  The Third, Fourth, and Fifth Armies were gathered on the other side of Verdun for the great offensive through the German center contemplated by Plan 17. Their deployment extended from Verdun to Hirson. The Fifth Army, which held the open end, faced northeast for offense through the Ardennes, rather than north to meet the descending forces of the German right wing. The position on the Fifth Army’s left, centering on the once strong but lately neglected fortress of Maubeuge, was expected to be held by the British, who, it was now learned, were not coming in the full strength originally planned. The deficiency, if it did not unduly worry Joffre and his Staff whose attention was centered elsewhere, hardly reassured the Fifth Army’s commander, General Lanrezac.

  As he would have to bear the impact of the German right wing, General Lanrezac was all too conscious of the danger of his position. His predecessor in command of the Fifth Army had been Gallieni who, after tours of the terrain and failure to persuade the General Staff to modernize the fortifications of Maubeuge, had not been happy with it. When Gallieni reached the age limit in February 1914, Joffre had appointed Lanrezac, a “veritable lion” whose intellectual gifts he much admired and who had been one of his three choices for Deputy Chief of Staff in 1911. Because of his “keen intelligence” Lanrezac was considered a star at the General Staff, which forgave him his caustic manner and his tendency to bad temper and impolite language for the sake of the clarity, brilliance, and logic of his lectures. At sixty-two he fitted, like Joffre, Castelnau, and Pau, the heavy-mustached, heavy-paunched pattern for French generals.

  In May 1914, when each of the generals of the five armies was given the pertinent section of Plan 17 that applied to him, Lanrezac immediately pointed out the dangers to his exposed flank if the Germans came down in strength west of the Meuse. His objections were ignored on the basic General Staff theory that the stronger the German right wing, “so much the better for us.” In the last days before mobilization, Lanrezac put his objections in a letter to Joffre which was to become a primary document in the mountain of criticism and controversy that after the war rose over the grave of Plan 17. Lanrezac’s tone in the letter, as a fellow officer said, was less a bold challenge of a dominant plan than a professor’s critique of a pupil’s thesis. It pointed out that the offensive planned for the Fifth Army was based on the assumption that the Germans would come through Sedan when in fact it was more likely that they would come around farther north through Namur, Dinant, and Givet. “Clearly,” expounded the professor, “once the Fifth Army is committed to an offensive in the direction of Neufchâteau [in the Ardennes] it will be unable to parry a German offensive further north.”

  That was in fact the crucial point, but as if to cover himself Lanrezac reduced the force of his argument by adding, “it is noted here merely as a suggestion.” Joffre who received the letter on mobilization day, August 1, decided it was “entirely inopportune” and “in the midst of the important events that filled my day,” did not answer it. At the same time he dismissed the fears of General Ruffey, commander of the Third Army, who came to express concern about a possible German “parade through Belgium.” With characteristic economy Joffre replied “You are wrong.” In his opinion it was not for a generalissimo to explain but to give orders. It was not for a general to think but to carry out orders. Once a general had received his orders he should car
ry them out with a mind at rest, knowing it to be his duty.

  On August 3, the day Germany declared war, the generals assembled in a meeting summoned by Joffre, hoping at last to hear him explain the totality of Plan 17 and of the strategy they were to carry out. The hope was vain; Joffre waited in benign silence for remarks. At last Dubail spoke up, saying that the offensive laid out for his army required reinforcements which were not allowed for. Joffre replied with one of his cryptic phrases, “That may be your plan; it is not mine.” As no one knew what this meant, Dubail, thinking he had been misunderstood, repeated his remark. Joffre, “with his customary beatific smile,” replied in the same words as before, “That may be your plan; it is not mine.” The truth was that to Joffre what counted in the immense chaos of war was not the plan but the energy and verve with which it was carried out. Victory he believed would come not out of the best plan but out of the strongest will and firmest confidence, and these, he had no doubt, were his.