The Guns of August

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  He wrote of a “retreating and a broken army” after the series of engagements “which may be called the action of Mons,” of the French retreat on the flank, of the “immediate, relentless, unresting” German pursuit and its “irresistible vehemence,” of British regiments “grievously injured” though with “no failure in discipline, no panic and no throwing up the sponge.” In spite of everything the men were still “steady and cheerful” but “forced backwards, ever backwards.” He told of “very great losses,” of “bits of broken regiments,” and of some divisions having “lost nearly all their officers.” Evidently infected with the mood of GHQ, he wrote rather wildly of the German right wing, “so great was their estimated superiority in numbers that they could no more be stopped than the waves of the sea.” Britain, he concluded, must face the fact that the “first great German effort has succeeded” and “the investment of Paris cannot be banished from the field of possibility.”

  When, in summarizing the need for reinforcements, he spoke of the BEF which “bore the weight of the blow,” he laid the foundations of a myth. It was as if the French Army had been an adjunct somewhere in the offing. In fact the BEF was never at any time in the first month in contact with more than three German corps out of a total of over thirty, but the idea that it “bore the weight of the blow” was perpetuated in all subsequent British accounts of Mons and of the “Glorious Retreat.” It succeeded in planting in the British mind the conviction that the BEF in the gallant and terrible days of its first month of battle saved France, saved Europe, saved Western civilization or, as one British writer unbashfully put it, “Mons. In that single word will be summed up the Liberation of the World.”

  Alone among the belligerents Britain had gone to war with no prearranged framework of national effort, no mobilization orders in every pocket. Except for the regular army, all was improvisation and, during the first weeks, before the Amiens dispatch, almost a holiday mood. Up to then the truth of the German advance was concealed by—to use Mr. Asquith’s exquisite phrase—“patriotic reticence.” The fighting had been presented to the British public—as to the French—as a series of German defeats in which the enemy unaccountably moved from Belgium to France and appeared each day on the map at places farther forward. All over England on August 30 as The Times was read at Sunday breakfast tables, people were aghast. “It was as if,” thought Mr. Britling, “David had flung his pebble—and missed!”

  In the sudden and dreadful realization that the enemy was winning the war, people, searching for hope, seized upon a tale that had cropped up within the last few days and turned it into a national hallucination. On August 27 a seventeen-hour delay in the Liverpool-London railway service inspired the rumor that the trouble was due to the transport of Russian troops who were said to have landed in Scotland on their way to reinforce the Western Front. From Archangel they were supposed to have crossed the Arctic Sea to Norway, thence come by ordinary steamer to Aberdeen, and from there were being carried by special troop trains to Channel ports. Anyone whose train was held up thereafter knowingly attributed the delay to “the Russians.” In the gloom following the Amiens dispatch with its talk of German numbers like “the waves of the sea” and its cry for “men, men and more men,” thoughts turned unconsciously toward Russia’s limitless manpower, and the phantoms seen in Scotland took on body, gathering corroborative detail as the story spread.

  They stamped snow off their boots on station platforms—in August; a railway porter of Edinburgh was known who had swept up the snow. “Strange uniforms” were glimpsed in passing troop trains. They were reported variously to be going via Harwich to save Antwerp or via Dover to save Paris. Ten thousand were seen after midnight in London marching along the Embankment on their way to Victoria Station. The naval battle of Heligoland was explained by the wise as a diversion to cover the transport of the Russians to Belgium. The most reliable people had seen them—or knew friends who had. An Oxford professor knew a colleague who had been summoned to interpret for them. A Scottish army officer in Edinburgh saw them in “long gaily-colored coats and big fur caps,” carrying bows and arrows instead of rifles and with their own horses “just like Scottish ponies only bonier”—a description that exactly fitted the Cossacks of a hundred years ago as they appeared in early Victorian mezzotints. A resident of Aberdeen, Sir Stuart Coats, wrote to his brother-in-law in America that 125,000 Cossacks had marched across his estate in Perthshire. An English army officer assured friends that 70,000 Russians had passed through England to the Western Front in “utmost secrecy.” At first said to be 500,000, then 250,000, then 125,000, the figure gradually settled at between 70,000 and 80,000—the same number as made up the departed BEF. The story spread entirely by word of mouth; owing to the official censorship nothing appeared in the papers except in the United States. Here the reports of homecoming Americans, most of whom had embarked at Liverpool, which was in a furor of excitement over the Russians, preserved the phenomenon for posterity.

  Other neutrals picked up the news. Dispatches from Amsterdam reported a large force of Russians being rushed to Paris to aid in its defense. In Paris people hung about the railway stations hoping to see the arrival of the Cossacks. Passing to the Continent, the phantoms became a military factor; for the Germans, too, heard the rumors. Worry about a possible 70,000 Russians at their backs was to be as real a factor at the Marne as the absence of the 70,000 men they had transferred to the Eastern Front. It was only after the Marne, on September 15, that an official denial of the rumor appeared in the English press.

  On the same Sunday as the Amiens dispatch appalled the public, Sir John French composed a report that was an even greater shock to Lord Kitchener. GHQ was then at Compiègne, forty miles north of Paris, and the British troops, relieved of pursuit the previous day, had rested while the enemy was engaged by the French. The Operation Order to the BEF that day, bearing Sir John French’s signature, stated that enemy pressure “was relieved by a French advance in force on our right which met with great success in the neighborhood of Guise where the German Guard and Xth Corps were driven back into the Oise.” This ready acknowledgment of the facts being totally irreconcilable with what Sir John then wrote to Kitchener, it can only be supposed that he signed it without reading it.

  He informed Kitchener of Joffre’s request to him to hold fast north of Compiègne, keeping in contact with the enemy, but claimed he was “absolutely unable to remain in the front line” and intended to retire “behind the Seine,” keeping “at a considerable distance from the enemy.” His retirement would involve an eight-day march “without fatiguing the troops” and passing west of Paris so as to be near to his base. “I do not like General Joffre’s plan,” Sir John continued, “and would have preferred a vigorous offensive”—a preference he had just refused to exercise at St. Quentin when he forbade Haig to cooperate with Lanrezac in the battle.

  Quickly reversing himself in the next sentence, Sir John made it clear that, after ten days of campaign, he was ready to give the French up as beaten and come home. His confidence in the ability of the French “to carry the campaign to a successful conclusion is fast waning,” he wrote, and “this is my real reason for moving the British forces so far back.” Although “pressed very hard to remain in the front line, even in my shattered condition,” he had “absolutely refused to do so” in accordance with “the letter and spirit” of Kitchener’s instructions and insisted upon retaining independence of action “to retire on my base” if necessary.

  Kitchener read the report, received on August 31, with astonishment mounting to consternation. Sir John French’s intention to withdraw from the Allied line and separate the British from the French, with its appearance of deserting them in their most desperate hour, he regarded as “calamitous,” from the political as well as the military point of view. As a violation of the spirit, of the Entente, it became a question of policy, and Kitchener asked the Prime Minister to summon the Cabinet at once. Before it met he sent off a restrained telegr
am to Sir John expressing his “surprise” at the decision to retire behind the Seine and delicately phrasing his dismay in the form of a question: “What will be the effect of this course upon your relations with the French Army and on the general military situation? Will your retirement leave a gap in the French line or cause them discouragement of which the Germans could take advantage?” He closed with a reminder that the thirty-two troop trains moving through Berlin showed that the Germans were withdrawing forces from the Western Front.

  When Kitchener, after reading Sir John’s letter to the Cabinet, explained that retirement behind the Seine might mean loss of the war, the Cabinet was, as Mr. Asquith put it in his muffled way, “perturbed.” Kitchener was authorized to inform Sir John of the government’s anxiety at his proposed retirement and its expectation that “you will as far as possible conform with the plans of General Joffre for the conduct of the campaign.” The government, he added, with care for French’s amour propre, “have all possible confidence in your troops and yourself.”

  When OHL had learned of General von Prittwitz’s intention to retire behind the Vistula, he was instantly dismissed; but when Sir John French proposed to give up not a province but an ally, the same solution was not applied. The reason may have been that, owing to the ravages left by the Ulster quarrel, there was no replacement upon whom government and army could agree. The government may have regarded dismissal of the Commander in Chief at such a moment as too great a shock for the public. In any event, inspired by Sir John’s aura of irritability, everyone—French as well as British—continued to treat him with the utmost tact while in fact retaining very little confidence in him. “Joffre and he have never yet been within a mile of the heart of each other,” wrote Sir William Robertson, the British Quartermaster General, to the King’s secretary a year later. “He has never really, sincerely and honestly concerted with the French and they consider him as by no means a man of ability or a faithful friend and therefore do not confide in him.” This was not a situation propitious for the Allied war effort. Kitchener, whose relations with Sir John had not been cordial since the Boer War, never regained confidence in him after August 31, but it was not until December 1915 that Sir John’s own machinations against Kitchener, conducted in a manner, as Lord Birkenhead was to say, “neither decorous, fastidious nor loyal,” finally nerved the British government to remove him.

  While in London, Kitchener was waiting impatiently for Sir John’s reply, Joffre in Paris was mobilizing the aid of the French government to try to keep the British in the front line. Joffre had by now discovered that at least half of Lanrezac’s battle—the half at Guise—had been a success. Reports showing that the German Guard and Xth Corps had been “severely handled” and that Bülow’s Army was not pursuing, combined with the news of the withdrawal of German troops to the East, encouraged him. He told Poincaré the government might not have to leave after all; he now felt hopeful of checking the German advance in renewed action by the Fifth and Sixth Armies. He sent a letter to the British Commander telling him the Fifth and Sixth now had orders not to yield ground except under pressure. As they could not be expected to stand if there was a gap between them, he “earnestly” requested Field Marshal French not to withdraw and “at least to leave rearguards so as not to give the enemy the clear impression of a retreat and of a gap between the Fifth and Sixth Armies.”

  Asked by Joffre to exert his influence as President of France to obtain a favorable reply, Poincaré called the British ambassador, who called GHQ, but all the calls and visits of liaison officers were of no avail. “I refused,” as Sir John later succinctly summarized his reply, and thereby punctured Joffre’s momentary, if illusory, hope.

  Sir John’s reply to his own government was awaited so anxiously by Kitchener that he had the decoders read it to him word by word as it came through late that night. “Of course,” it said, there would be a gap in the French line caused by his retirement, but “if the French go on with their present tactics which are practically to fall back right and left of me, usually without notice, and to abandon all idea of offensive operations … the consequences will be borne by them .… I do not see why I should be called upon to run the risk of absolute disaster in order a second time to save them.” This militant misstatement of the truth, after Joffre had just finished telling him the opposite, was the kind of thing that when his book 1914 was published caused his countrymen to search helplessly for a polite equivalent of “lie” and moved even Mr. Asquith to use the phrase, “a travesty of the facts.” Even given Sir John’s limitations of character, the mystery remains how, with Henry Wilson on the Staff with his thorough knowledge of the French language and his acquaintance with senior French officers including Joffre himself, the British Commander in Chief could have arrived at the picture he did of French defeatism.

  When Kitchener finished reading the telegram at 1:00 A.M., he decided instantly there was only one thing to do and it could not wait for daybreak. He must go to France himself. As senior Field Marshal, he was head of the army and as such considered himself entitled to give orders to Sir John French on military matters as well as on matters of policy in his capacity as War Minister. Hastening to Downing Street he conferred with Asquith and a group of ministers, among them Churchill, who ordered a fast cruiser for his conveyance to be ready within two hours at Dover. He telegraphed Sir John to expect him and, lest his appearance at GHQ embarrass the sensibilities of the Commander in Chief, asked him to select a place of meeting. At 2:00 A.M. Sir Edward Grey was startled out of his sleep by the apparition of Kitchener walking into his bedroom to say he was going to France. At 2:30 he departed by special train from Charing Cross and by morning of September 1 was in Paris.

  Looking “irritated, violent, his face congested, sulky and angry,” Field Marshal French, accompanied by Sir Archibald Murray, arrived at the British Embassy, the meeting place he had selected. He intended it to emphasize the civilian nature of the conference for he insisted on regarding Kitchener as political head of the army only, with no status other than that of any civilian War Minister. His choler was hardly soothed to find Kitchener in uniform, which Sir John instantly took as an attempt to pull rank on him. In fact, after appearing in frock coat and silk hat on his first day at the war office, Kitchener had discarded civilian clothes for the blue undress uniform of a Field Marshal. Sir John took it as a personal affront. Clothes were a matter of the greatest importance to him and he had a tendency to use them to enhance his own dignity in ways his associates considered unorthodox. He offended King George by his habit of “wearing stars in khaki” and “covering himself with foreign baubles”; and Henry Wilson used to say of him, “He is a nice little man in his bath but when he puts his clothes on you can’t trust him; you never know what he will wear.”

  When the meeting at the British Embassy in the presence of Sir Francis Bertie, Viviani, Millerand, and several officers representing Joffre became increasingly acrimonious, Kitchener asked Sir John to retire with him to a private room. As Sir John’s version of what was said there, published after Kitchener was dead, is unreliable, only the results of their conversation are known for certain. They were expressed in a telegram from Kitchener to the government stating that “French’s troops are now engaged in the fighting line where they will remain conforming to the movements of the French Army,” which would mean retiring east, not west, of Paris. In a copy sent to Sir John, Kitchener said he felt sure this represented the agreement they had come to, but in any event “please consider it an instruction.” By “in the fighting line,” he said he meant disposing the British troops in contact with the French. In a fatal return to tact he added, “Of course you will judge as regards their position in this respect.” Unmollified, the Commander in Chief retired in a sulk now deeper and more paralyzing than before.

  During this and the previous day Kluck’s Army, advancing by forced marches in its haste to envelop the French before they could take a firm stand, had overtaken Compiègne, crossed the O
ise, pushing the Allied retreat before it, and on September 1 was in action against rearguards of the French Sixth Army and the BEF thirty miles from Paris.

  In preparation for the greatest moment in Teutonic history, the Germans with admirable efficiency had already struck off, and distributed to staff officers for ultimate presentation to the troops, a bronze medal confidently inscribed Einzug d. Deutschen Truppen in Paris (Entry of German Troops into Paris). Beneath appeared the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and, combining proud memory and anticipation, the dates 1871–1914.

  21

  Von Kluck’s Turn

  “AN AUTOMOBILE DROVE UP,” wrote M. Albert Fabre, whose villa at Lassigny, twelve miles north of Compiègne, was commandeered by the Germans on August 30. “From it descended an officer of arrogant and impressive bearing. He stalked forward alone while the officers standing in groups in front of the villa made way for him. He was tall and majestic with a scarred, clean-shaven face, hard features and a frightening glance. In his right hand he carried a soldier’s rifle and his left rested on the butt of a revolver. He turned around several times, striking the ground with the butt end of his rifle and then halted in a theatrical pose. No one seemed to dare to approach him and indeed he wore a terrible air.” Gazing awestruck at this be-weaponed apparition, M. Fabre thought of Attila and learned that his visitor was “the already too-famous von Kluck.”