JOFFRE’S REACTION TO THE GERMAN ADVANCE
Mercifully for Lanrezac, at 5 PM on 21 August, Joffre, appreciating his commander’s “impatience,” sent out his third order (Instruction particulière No. 15).12 It canceled the first option previously laid out for Fifth Army. The time had come to mount the offensive that Joffre had planned for years: Ruffey’s Third Army, now divided in two (Third Army and a new Army of Lorraine under Michel-Joseph Maunoury), was to charge toward Arlon in Belgium; Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army was to cross the Semois River and drive on Neufchâteau. From Verdun to Charleroi, the decisive moment for the great French offensive by nine corps of 361,000 men was at hand. At the same time, Special Order No. 15 gave Lanrezac the green light to attack “the northern enemy group,” specifically, Bülow’s Second Army, in concert with whatever British and Belgian forces were on his left. The precise “line of demarcation” between British and French units was left for Field Marshal French and General Lanrezac to decide. Berthelot cheerily informed Lanrezac that since the French were about to drive through the Ardennes on their way into Germany, the more enemy troops committed to Belgium, “the easier it will be for us to break through their center.” It was one of those typical orders from Berthelot that, in the words of historian Hew Strachan, “did not always accord with reality or with realism.”13 Still, Joffre was downright optimistic. “The moment of decisive action,” he informed War Minister Messimy, “is near.”14
JOFFRE’S THROWAWAY COMMENT THAT French and Lanrezac were to decide on the manner of cooperation between their forces was ingenuous, at best. For the first two meetings between the two British and French field commanders had not gone well. The arrogant, combative, and mercurial John French had left Vitry-le-François on Sunday, 16 August, less than impressed with Joffre and his staff. “Au fond, they are a low lot,” he informed London, “and one always has to remember the class these French generals mostly come from.”15 Apparently, the noble squire from Kent had not found a suitable confrère in the humble artisan from the Pyrenees. When Sir John incredibly asked GQG to place Sordet’s cavalry corps as well as two French infantry divisions under his command, Joffre was not amused. He brusquely refused.16
The next day’s meeting between French and Lanrezac at Rethel had been equally disastrous. Lanrezac’s chief of staff, Alexis Hély d’Oissel, met the British contingent with a tart, “At last you’re here; it’s not a moment too soon. If we are beaten we will owe it all to you!”17 From there, the meeting went downhill. When Lanrezac informed Sir John that the Germans were at the Meuse near Huy, the field marshal in halting French twice inquired what they were doing there and what they were going to do. Lanrezac, who knew no English, allowed his acerbic bile to pour forth. “Pourqoui sont-ils arrivés?” he snapped at French. “Mais pour pêcher dans la rivière!”* Henry Wilson, deputy chief of the British General Staff, impeccably translated that for Sir John: “He says they’re going to cross the river, sir.”18 Tit-for-tat, when Lanrezac asked French for his fresh cavalry division to supplement Sordet’s weary cavalry corps, the field marshal declined. Finally, Sir John stated that the BEF could not be ready for action until 24 August.19 It would then deploy left of Lanrezac’s Fifth Army on the Sambre. The French must have wondered about the value of British intervention on the Continent.
What to Joffre and Lanrezac could only have seemed haughty behavior on the part of Field Marshal French was, in fact, rooted in British tradition and in “Johnnie” French’s orders. Horatio Herbert Lord Kitchener, Britain’s most famous colonial soldier and in 1914 secretary of state for war, had sent Sir John off to France with the specific instruction “that your command is an entirely independent one, and that you will in no case come in any sense under the orders of any Allied General.”20 As well, Kitchener—soon nicknamed “the Great Poster” for the famous recruiting poster in which his blazing eyes, martial mustache, and pointing finger loomed over the message your country needs you—had warned the field marshal to exercise “the greatest care … towards a minimum of losses and wastage.” Knowing the French military’s penchant for the all-out offensive (l’offensive à outrance), Kitchener had further admonished his field commander to give “the gravest consideration” to likely French attempts to deploy the BEF offensively “where large bodies of French troops are not engaged, and where your Force may be unduly exposed to attack.” Sir John meant fully to adhere to those instructions.*
IN THE REAL WAR, Lanrezac’s weary soldiers moved into position on the afternoon of 20 August. In essence, Fifth Army formed a giant inverted V in the Sambre-Meuse triangle pointing toward the northeast, with German Second Army to the north and Third Army to the east. Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps remained on the Meuse, guarding Lanrezac’s right flank, while Gilbert Defforges’s X Corps (with African 37th ID) held the left flank. In the center, Henri Sauret’s III Corps (with African 38th ID) and Eydoux’s XI Corps advanced along the Sambre River between Namur and Charleroi. This vanguard spied the first units of Bülow’s Second Army at 3 PM on 20 August. Later that night, as previously noted, Joffre ordered Third and Fourth armies to storm the Ardennes, the heart and soul of his grand design, and Lanrezac to attack the enemy on the Sambre around Charleroi. As well, he “requested” Field Marshal French “to co-operate in this action” on the left of French Fifth Army by advancing across the Mons-Condé Canal “in the general direction of Soignies.”21 Henry Wilson was ecstatic. All the years of planning for British formations to be deployed alongside the French on the Continent were finally coming to fruition. “To-day we start our forward march, and the whole line from here [Le Cateau] to Verdun set out,” he wrote home on 21 August. “It is at once a glorious and an awful thought, and by this day [next] week the greatest action that the world has ever heard of will have been fought.”22
General Wilson’s burst of enthusiasm was ill founded. The British, Lanrezac furiously informed Joffre, reported that they would not be ready to advance on his left flank for another two days. Around noon on 21 August, Lanrezac demanded precise instructions from Joffre. While he awaited a reply, Lanrezac mulled over his options.23 Should he cross the Sambre and deny Bülow the heights on the northern side? Or should he entrench his forces on the southern bank and await the arrival of the British on his left flank—as well as the start of the advance into the Ardennes by Third and Fourth armies? In no case was he willing to fight in the Valley of the Sambre, the coal pits and slag heaps of le borinage. The “keen intellect” of Saint-Cyr many times had posed similar problems to his students; now he prevaricated and kept his corps commanders in the dark for forty-eight hours.
Joffre let Lanrezac stew. “I leave it entirely to you to judge the opportune moment for you to decide when to commence offensive operations.”24 But then GQG instructed Fifth Army to advance without the British. Precious time had been squandered. Already on the morning of 20 August, Bülow’s advance guard of cavalry and bicycle units had found two bridges unguarded between Namur and Charleroi. Numerous German cavalry formations in their field-gray uniforms had been mistaken by the local Walloon population as being “English” and showered with food and gifts.
At noon on 21 August, 2d ID of Plettenberg’s Guard Corps had reached the north shore of the Sambre. But Bülow proved to be as cautious as Lanrezac. Neither his cavalry scouts nor his aerial reconnaissance could confirm whether an entire French army was south of the Sambre. Moreover, he wanted at all cost to maintain contact with his left wing (Max von Hausen’s Third Army) and his right wing (Kluck’s First Army) during the advance. Yet his corps commanders were chomping at the bit. After some indecision concerning Bülow’s intentions, Arnold von Winckler decided to storm the bridges at Auvelais and Jemeppe-sur-Sambre with his 2d Guard Division (GD). Farther to the west, Max Hofmann’s 19th ID of Emmich’s X Corps likewise took the bridges at Tergné. With two bridgeheads secured against repeated French counterattacks, the Germans were ready to advance against Lanrezac’s main force the next day.
General von B�
�low hurled three corps against French Fifth Army on 22 August—only to discover that the French had preempted him with an attack of their own. At his headquarters at Chimay, thirty kilometers from the front, Lanrezac at first had become incapacitated, mulling over his options. He neither approved nor disapproved a suggestion from the commanders of III and X corps to counterattack and retake the lost bridges. Without orders, Sauret and Defforges charged the German positions in the early-hour mists of 22 August, flags unfurled, bugles blaring, bayonets fixed—and without artillery support. Both attacks were brutally beaten back around Arsimont with “staggering losses.” Tenth Corps’ desperate bayonet charges were mowed down by the machine guns of the Prussian Guard; those of III Corps ran headlong into a fierce assault by Emmich’s X Corps.25 The fields were littered with six thousand French dead and wounded; the roads soon clogged with thousands of Belgian civilians fleeing the deadly mayhem.
In fact, a bloody and confused melee (what military theorists call a “battle of encounter”) quickly developed in le borinage. All along the Sambre, a ragged, unplanned series of battles ensued. By late afternoon, Lanrezac’s center had collapsed, with two corps retreating at great loss of life; by nightfall, nine divisions of French III and X corps had been driven ten kilometers back from the Sambre at Charleroi by a mere three divisions of German X Corps and Guard Corps. The entire center and right of French Fifth Army seemed on the point of collapse. On the French left near Fontaine, two divisions of Einem’s VII Corps hurled Sordet’s cavalry corps back across the Sambre, exposing the right flank of the late-arriving BEF at Mons. At 8:30 PM, Lanrezac informed Joffre of the day’s “violent” events. “Defforges’ X Corps suffered badly. … Large numbers of officers hors de combat. 3rd Corps and its 5th Division heavily engaged before Chatelet. … The Cavalry Corps, extremely fatigued, no longer in contact with l’armée W[ilson]”26—that is, with the British.
That night, Lanrezac again considered his options. He decided to resume the offensive on 23 August. Perhaps he could strike Bülow’s Second Army in the flank from the east. Thus, he shifted Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps on the right north toward Namur and ordered Fourth Army to advance on the Meuse. But before Lanrezac could mount his offensive with Fifth Army, a series of disastrous reports from the fronts arrived at Chimay: Fortress Namur had capitulated; French Third and Fourth armies were heavily engaged in the Ardennes and could not come to his rescue; the BEF had been forced to retreat at Mons; and lead elements of German Third Army had crossed the Meuse at Givet. Lanrezac at once grasped the gravity of the situation. He now faced the dire prospect of Bülow’s ponderous advance from the north being augmented by a flanking attack on both his right rear (German Third Army) and his left front (German First Army). Still, his troops fought valiantly, grudgingly yielding ground. General von Kirchbach reported late on 23 August that his X Reserve Corps had been shattered and would not be able to resume the attack the next day. He need not have worried: At 9:30 PM, Lanrezac, appreciating that he had suffered a major defeat, ordered a general retreat to the line Givet-Maubeuge, to begin at three o’clock the next morning.27 Joffre spied therein a decided lack of “offensive spirit,” but Lanrezac’s action likely saved Fifth Army from annihilation.
AS THE FIGHTING LEFT the broken landscape of slag heaps and pitheads, it entered a gentler, more open, agricultural countryside. At this point, there were no physical obstacles to slow down the German advance—or the French retreat. The situation was ripe with choice.
Charles Lanrezac had good reason to fear for his Fifth Army. The immediate, mortal danger lay on his right flank facing east. The Grand quartier général remained blissfully ignorant of the danger. Joffre continued to insist that Moltke had deployed but six corps in the “weak” center of the German line, where he had in fact marshaled eight. Moreover, he was certain that the Germans would not fight in the rugged terrain of the Ardennes but instead make their stand just east of the forest. He had a point. The Ardennes was wooded, hilly, and irregular, oftentimes shrouded in fog and rain, traversed by muddy paths and roads, and cut by countless streams and ravines. Julius Caesar in 57 bc had taken ten days to cross “the forest of Arden.” The woods had been “full of defiles and hidden ways.” The enemy had been elusive and clever. “Wherever a cave, or a thicket, or a morass offered them shelter,” he recorded, “thither they retired.” Only what today are called “small-group tactics” had allowed Caesar eventually to “extirpate this race of perfidious men.”28
On 21 August, Joffre ordered his armies to attack the enemy “wherever encountered” throughout the Ardennes—the centerpiece of his deployment plan.29 Once across the forest between Liège and Bastogne, the French armies were to turn west and deliver a fatal right hook to the left flanks of German First, Second, and Third armies racing through Belgium. To maintain the element of surprise, no supply columns were attached to the French armies. The campaign began at six o’clock on a chilly morning shrouded by gray fog and rain; it ended late at night in dense mist following a heavy rain. Surprise and chaos were the order of the day. Few of Joffre’s commanders had bothered to study the terrain. Some of the more optimistic had maps of the Rhineland; of the Ardennes, only a very few had tourist maps or crude maps torn out of railway timetables.30
General Ruffey commanded Third Army at Verdun. An apostle of heavy artillery—which had earned him the sobriquet “le poète du canon”—Ruffey had made many enemies in the French army for seemingly slighting the famous 75s and for championing what Ferdinand Foch in 1910 had satirized as the “sport” of airpower. On 21 August, Ruffey moved his headquarters up to Marville to lead IV, V, and VI corps against Arlon. On his left, Fourth Army under Langle de Cary at Stenay pointed toward Neufchâteau. Already past the mandatory retirement age (sixty-four) in 1914, the energetic, bantam-like Langle de Cary had been entrusted by Joffre with breaking the back of the German offensive. In addition to his own three corps and Jules Lefèvre’s colonial corps, Fourth Army had been augmented by Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps (Fifth Army) and Pierre Dubois’s IX Corps (Second Army), giving it a fighting strength of about 160,000 men. To guard against a possible German thrust from Fortress Metz against the flank and rear of Third Army, Joffre had created the Army of Lorraine, composed entirely of reserve divisions, under General Maunoury. The three French armies numbered 377 battalions with 1,540 guns. They were to attack along a forty-kilometer front and to penetrate the Ardennes Forest to a depth of at least a dozen kilometers. Unfortunately, Ruffey was never informed of the creation or the mission of the Army of Lorraine. But it seemed to matter little at the time. Neither Sordet’s riders nor French aviators had spied any major German troop concentrations. “No serious opposition need be anticipated on the day of August 22nd,” GQG cheerily informed Ruffey and Langle de Cary.31
Joffre had entrusted Ruffey and Maunoury not only to carry out the centerpiece of his famous Plan XVII, but also to secure France’s vital iron-mining and steel-producing region, with an annual output of five million tons in 1913. German forces advancing from Metz-Thionville had already occupied or were threatening the great steel plants at Fraisans, Hayange, Longwy, and Briey. Other vital steel producers needed to be secured at Saint-Étienne, Fourchambault, Anzin, and Denain, among other places. France’s industrial war effort hung in the balance.
On that dismal morning of 22 August, Third and Fourth armies did not encounter the anticipated light German screen in the Ardennes, but rather the full weight of ten army corps. The southern Ardennes region around Metz-Thionville was held by Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia’s Fifth Army; it was advancing against the French fortress belt of Longwy and Montmédy—and eventually Verdun. To Wilhelm’s immediate right in the central and northern Ardennes around Luxembourg was Duke Albrecht of Württemberg’s Fourth Army; it was advancing against Neufchâteau. As the hub of the German wheel, the two armies (236 battalions with 1,320 guns)32 could afford to move at a relatively leisurely pace—much like the inside of a line of marchers in a band maki
ng a ninety-degree right turn—while waiting for the outer-rim armies of the pivot wing, or Schwenkungsflügel, to quick-march across Belgium and on to Paris.
But Crown Prince Wilhelm and his chief of staff, Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, were anxious for battle honors. On 21 August, they decided on their own initiative to mount an offensive against the French fortified cities of Longwy and Montmédy and “ruthlessly defeat everything that stood [in] between” at Longuyon, in the angle of the Chiers and Crusnes rivers. When Moltke reminded them that according to the concentration plan, “defense by Fifth Army imperative, not attack,” they simply ignored him.33 Visions of his own Cannae danced through the crown prince’s head.34 Despite the fact that Fifth Army’s offensive in the direction of Virton would create a twenty-kilometer-wide gap between Wilhelm’s army and that of Duke Albrecht, Moltke did not press his case. Thus, by 21 August, after Liège and Brussels had fallen, German Fourth and Fifth armies were advancing on a southwesterly course, while French Third and Fourth armies were moving up to the Ardennes on a northeasterly trajectory. A head-on collision was inevitable.
The Marne, 1914 Page 18