The Guns of August

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  At sixty-five, he was suffering from the prostatitis of which, after two operations, he was to die within two years. Bereaved by the death of his wife within the last month, and having renounced the highest post in the French Army three years earlier, he was beyond personal ambition, a man with little time left, as irritably impatient with the politics of the army as with the rivalries of politicians. In the last months before the war when, prior to his retirement in April, the intrigues of the cliques swirled around him, some to have him named Minister of War or Commander in Chief designate in place of Joffre, others to reduce his pension or remove his friends, his diary was filled with disgust for life, for “that miserable thing, politics,” for the “clan of arrivistes,” for unreadiness and inefficiency in the army and with no great admiration for Joffre. “When I was riding I passed him in the Bois today—on foot as usual .… How fat and heavy he is; he will hardly last out his three years.” Now in France’s gravest moment since 1870 he was being asked to take over a botched job, called to defend Paris without an army. He believed it was essential to hold the capital for moral effect as well as for its railroads, supplies, and industrial capacity. He knew well enough that Paris could not be defended from the inside like a fortress, but only by an army giving battle beyond the perimeter, an army that would have to come from Joffre—who had other plans.

  “They do not want to defend Paris,” he said to Messimy that night when he was formally requested to become Military Governor. “In the eyes of our strategists Paris is a geographical expression—a town like any other. What do you give me to defend this immense place enclosing the heart and brain of France? A few Territorial divisions and one fine division from Africa. That is nothing but a drop in the ocean. If Paris is not to suffer the fate of Liège and Namur it must be covered for 100 kilometers around and to cover it requires an army. Give me an army of three active corps and I will agree to become Governor of Paris; on this condition, formal and explicit, you can count on me for its defense.”

  Messimy thanked him so effusively, “shaking my hands several times and even kissing me,” that Gallieni felt assured “from the warmth of these demonstrations that the place I was succeeding to was not an enviable one.”

  How he was to extract one active corps, much less three, from Joffre, Messimy did not know. The only active unit he could lay his hands on was the African division mentioned by Gallieni, the 45th Infantry from Algiers, which had been formed, apart from the regular mobilization orders, at the direct instance of the Ministry of War and was just disembarking in the south. Despite repeated telephonic demands for it from GQG, Messimy determined to hang on to this “fresh and splendid” division at all costs. He still needed five more. To force Joffre to supply them in order to satisfy Gallieni’s condition meant a direct clash of authority between the government and the Commander in Chief. Messimy trembled. On the solemn and unforgettable Mobilization Day he had sworn to himself “never to fall into the error committed by the War Ministry of 1870” whose interference, at the command of the Empress Eugénie, sent General MacMahon on the march to Sedan. He had carefully examined in company with Poincaré the Decrees of 1913 delimiting authority in wartime, and in all the ardor of the first day had voluntarily assured Joffre that he interpreted them as assigning the political conduct of war to the government and the military conduct to the Commander in Chief as his “absolute and exclusive domain.” Further, the decrees, as he read them, gave the Commander in Chief “extended powers” in the country as a whole and “absolute” power, civil as well as military, in the Zone of the Armies. “You are the master, we are your purveyors,” he had finished. Not surprisingly Joffre “without discussion” had agreed with him. Poincaré and Viviani’s neophyte Cabinet had obediently concurred.

  Where was he now to find the authority he had forsworn? Searching almost until midnight back through the Decrees for a legal basis, Messimy grasped at a phrase charging the civil government “with the vital interests of the country.” To prevent the capital from falling to the enemy was surely a vital interest of the country, but what form should an order to Joffre take? Through the remainder of an agonized and sleepless night the Minister of War tried to nerve himself to compose an order to the Commander in Chief. After four hours of painful labor in the lonely stretch between 2:00 and 6:00 A.M., he achieved two sentences headed “Order” which instructed Joffre that if “victory does not crown our armies and they are forced to retreat, a minimum of three active corps in good condition must be sent to the entrenched camp of Paris. The receipt of this order is to be acknowledged.” Sent by telegram, it was also delivered by hand at eleven next morning, August 25, accompanied by a “personal and friendly” letter in which Messimy added, “the importance of this order will not escape you.”

  By this time word of the defeat at the frontiers and the extent of the retreat was spreading through Paris. Ministers and deputies were clamoring for someone to blame as “responsible”; public opinion, they said, would demand it. In the antechambers of the Elysée mutterings against Joffre were heard: “… an idiot … incapable … fire him on the spot.” Messimy as War Minister was equally favored; “the lobbies are out for your skin,” his adjutant whispered. To affirm the “sacred union” of all parties and strengthen Viviani’s new and feeble ministry was a necessity in the crisis. Approaches were being made to France’s leading political figures to join the government. The oldest, most feared and respected, Clemenceau, the Tiger of France, although a bitter opponent of Poincaré, was the obvious first choice. Viviani found him in a “violent temper” and without desire to join a government he expected to be out of office in two weeks.

  “No, no, don’t count on me,” he said. “In a fortnight you will be torn to ribbons, I am not going to have anything to do with it.” After this “paroxysm of passion” he burst into tears, embraced Viviani, but continued to decline to join him in office. A triumvirate made up of Briand, a former premier; Delcassé, the most distinguished and experienced Foreign Minister of the prewar period; and Millerand, a former Minister of War, was willing to join as a group but only on condition that Delcassé and Millerand be given their old portfolios at the expense of the present holders, Doumergue at the Foreign Office and Messimy at the War Office. With this uncomfortable bargain, known so far only to Poincaré, hanging in the air, the Cabinet met at ten o’clock that morning. In their minds ministers heard the sound of guns and saw broken, fleeing armies and spike-helmeted hordes marching south, but attempting to preserve dignity and calm, they followed the routine procedure of speaking in turn on departmental matters. As they reported on bank moratoriums, on disturbance to the judicial process by the call-up of magistrates, on Russian aims in Constantinople, Messimy’s agitation mounted. From an early pitch of enthusiasm he was nearing despair. After Hirschauer’s disclosures and with Gallieni’s twelve days ringing in his ears, he felt that “hours were worth centuries and minutes counted as years.” When discussion turned upon diplomacy in the Balkans and Poincaré brought up the subject of Albania, he exploded.

  “To hell with Albania!” he shouted, striking the table a terrible blow. He denounced the pretense of calm as an “undignified farce,” and when begged by Poincaré to control himself, refused, saying, “I don’t know about your time but mine is too precious to waste.” He flung in the face of his colleagues Gallieni’s prediction that the Germans would be outside Paris by September 5. Everyone began talking at once, demands were made for Joffre’s removal, and Messimy was reproached for passing from “systematic optimism to dangerous pessimism.” One positive result gained was agreement to the appointment of Gallieni in place of Michel.

  While Messimy returned to the Rue St. Dominique to remove Michel a second time from office, his own removal was being exacted by Millerand, Delcassé, and Briand. They claimed he was responsible for the false optimism of the communiqués; he was “overwrought and nervy,” and besides, his office was wanted for Millerand. A thick-set, taciturn man with an ironic manner, Mille
rand was a one-time socialist of undoubted ability and courage whose “untiring energy and sangfroid,” Poincaré felt, were badly needed. He saw Messimy becoming “gloomier and gloomier,” and since a War Minister who “foresees a great defeat” was not the most desirable colleague, the President agreed to sacrifice him. The ministerial rites would be performed gracefully: Messimy and Doumergue would be asked to resign and become Ministers without Portfolio; General Michel would be offered a mission to the Czar. These soothing arrangements were not accepted by their intended victims.

  Michel stormed when asked by Messimy to resign, protested loudly and angrily and obstinately refused to go. Becoming equally excited, Messimy shouted at Michel that if he persisted in his refusal he would leave the room, not for his own office at the Invalides, but for the military prison of Cherche-Midi under guard. As their cries resounded from the room Viviani fortuitously arrived, calmed the disputants, and eventually persuaded Michel to give way.

  Hardly was the official decree appointing Gallieni “Military Governor and Commandant of the Armies of Paris” signed next day when it became Messimy’s turn to storm when asked for his resignation by Poincaré and Viviani. “I refuse to yield my post to Millerand, I refuse to do you the pleasure of resigning, I refuse to become a Minister without Portfolio.” If they wanted to get rid of him after the “crushing labor” he had sustained in the last month, then the whole government would have to resign, and in that case, he said, “I have an officer’s rank in the Army and a Mobilization order in my pocket. I shall go to the front.” No persuasion availed. The government was forced to resign and was reconstituted next day. Millerand, Delcassé, Briand, Alexander Ribot, and two new socialist ministers replaced five former members, including Messimy. He departed as a major to join Dubail’s army and to serve at the front until 1918, rising to general of division.

  His legacy to France, Gallieni, was left “Commander of the Armies of Paris” without an army. The three active corps which were to run like a red thread through the dark and tangled confusion of the next twelve days were not forthcoming from Joffre. The Generalissimo instantly detected in Messimy’s telegram “the menace of government interference in the conduct of operations.” When he was busy laying hold of every brigade he could find to resume battle on the Somme, the idea of sparing three active corps “in good condition” for the capital appealed to him as little as the idea of submitting to ministerial dictation. Having no intention of doing either, he ignored the War Minister’s order.

  “Yes, I have the order here,” admitted his deputy, General Belin, rapping his safe, when visited next day by General Hirschauer who had been sent by Gallieni to demand an answer. “The government is taking a terrible responsibility to ask for three corps to defend Paris. It might be the origin of a disaster. What does Paris matter!” Millerand, too, arrived to be told by Joffre that there could be no useful defense of Paris except by the mobile army in the field which was now needed to the last man for the maneuver and the battle that would decide the fate of the country. The distress of the government, the threat to Paris, moved him not at all. The loss of the capital, he said, would not mean the end of the struggle.

  In order to dam the open space in front of the German right wing, his immediate aim was to bring the new Sixth Army into position. Its nucleus was the Army of Lorraine, hastily scraped together only a few days before and thrown into the Battle of the Frontiers under General Maunoury, called out of retirement to command it. A svelte, delicate, small-boned veteran of sixty-seven, wounded as a lieutenant in 1870, Maunoury was a former Military Governor of Paris and member of the Supreme War Council of whom Joffre had said, “This is the complete soldier.” The Army of Lorraine consisted of the VIIth Corps, the same that had made the first dash into Alsace under the unfortunate General Bonneau, and the 55th and 56th reserve divisions taken from Ruffey’s Army, which were displaying, as the reserves did again and again, a dependable valor that was one of the elements to sustain France. On the day they received Joffre’s orders for transfer to the west, the 55th and 56th were engaged in a spirited battle to prevent passage of the Crown Prince’s Army between Verdun and Toul which proved one of the great feats of the retreat. Just when their firm stand was supporting the flank of a counteroffensive by Ruffey’s Army in the vital Briey basin, they were snatched from the field to shore up the failing front on the left.

  They were railed to Amiens through Paris, where they were switched to the northern railways, already congested by the demands of the BEF. Although French railroad movements had not been polished by the best brains of the General Staff to the fanatic perfection of the German, the transfer was managed quickly, if not smoothly, by means of a French equivalent for German thoroughness called le système D, in which the “D” stands for se débrouiller, meaning “to muddle through” or “work it out somehow.” Maunoury’s troops were already detraining at Amiens on August 26, but it was not soon enough. The front was falling back faster than the new army could be got into position, and on the far end of the line von Kluck’s pursuit had already caught up with the British.

  If there could have been an observer in a balloon high enough to have a view of the whole French frontier from the Vosges to Lille, he would have seen a rim of red, the pantalons rouges of 70 French divisions and near the left end, a tiny wedge of khaki, the four British divisions. On August 24 these were joined by the newly arrived 4th Division and 19th Brigade from England, making a total of five and a half British divisions. Now that the enveloping maneuver of the German right wing was at last clear, the British found themselves holding a place in the line more important than had been intended for them in Plan 17. They were not, however, holding the end of the line unsupported. Joffre had hurriedly sent Sordet’s tired Cavalry Corps to add to a group of three French Territorial divisions under General d’Amade in the space between the British and the sea. These were reinforced by the garrison division of Lille which on August 24 was declared an open city, and evacuated. (“If they get as far as Lille,” General de Castelnau had said not so long ago, “so much the better for us.”) If Joffre’s plan were to work, it was essential that the BEF hold the space between Lanrezac and the newly forming Sixth Army. Under General Order No. 2 Joffre intended the BEF to conform to the general pace of the retreat and, once they reached the Somme at St. Quentin, hold firm.

  But that was not now the British intention. Sir John French, Murray, and even Wilson, the once enthusiastic progenitor of the plan, were horrified at the unexpected peril of their position. Not one or two but four German corps were advancing against them; Lanrezac’s Army was in full retreat, uncovering their right; the whole French offensive had collapsed. Under these shocks, following immediately upon first contact with the enemy, Sir John French gave way at once to the conviction that the campaign was lost. His one idea was to save the BEF in which were nearly all Britain’s trained soldiers and staff. He feared it was about to be enveloped either on his left or on his right, in the gap between him and Lanrezac. Taking justification in Kitchener’s order not to risk the army, he thought no further of the purpose that had brought him to France but only of extricating his forces from the danger zone. While his troops were retreating to Le Cateau, the Commander in Chief and Headquarters Staff, on August 25, moved twenty-six miles farther back to St. Quentin on the Somme.

  With bitterness the British soldiers who felt proud of their fighting at Mons found themselves caught up in continued retreat. Such was their Commander’s anxiety to remove them from the danger of von Kluck’s enveloping arm that he gave them no rest. Under a blazing sun the soldiers, without proper food or sleep, shuffled along, hardly awake, and when halted fell asleep instantly, standing up. Smith-Dorrien’s Corps fought constant rearguard actions as the retreat from Mons began, and although Kluck’s pursuit kept them under heavy artillery fire, the Germans were unable to hold the British to a standstill.

  Believing the British to be peculiarly battle-wise “from their experience of small wars,” Ger
man soldiers felt at a disadvantage, as if they had been Redcoats pitted against Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Men. They complained bitterly that the English “were up to all the tricks of the trade.” On the second day, as at Mons, they “again vanished without leaving a trace.”

  Under pressure some of the British were forced onto unplanned lines of retreat. In an effort to get food to them, General “Wully” Robertson, the Quartermaster General, an unorthodox individual who had risen from private, ordered supplies to be dumped at crossroads. Some failed to be picked up, and German reports of these food dumps confirmed OHL in the impression of a foe in disorganized retreat.

  When the British reached Le Cateau by the evening of August 25, the nearest corps of Lanrezac’s Army had fallen back to a position on a level with, but no further south than, the BEF. Sir John, however, regarding himself as betrayed by what he called Lanrezac’s “headlong” retreat, was in a mood to have nothing more to do with him. Lanrezac, rather than the enemy, seemed to him the cause of all that had gone wrong and, when reporting to Kitchener his troops’ unwillingness to retreat, he said, “I shall explain to them that the operations of our Allies are the cause of this.” He sent orders for the retreat to continue next day to St. Quentin and Noyon. At St. Quentin, seventy miles from the capital, the signposts begin giving the distance to Paris.

  On the afternoon of August 25 when Smith-Dorrien arrived in Le Cateau a few hours ahead of his troops and went to look for the Commander in Chief, Sir John had already left, and only Sir Archibald Murray, his hard-working Chief of Staff, could be found. Usually calm, balanced, and reflective, the opposite of his Chief, Murray would have been an excellent complement for Sir John in an aggressive mood, but as he was by nature cautious and pessimistic, he acted as a stimulus to Sir John’s gloom. Now worn, harassed, and overworked, he could give Smith-Dorrien no news of Haig’s Corps which was expected to billet that night at Landrecies, twelve miles east of Le Cateau.