by John Keegan
Eighth Army did not want the reinforcement of the Guard Reserve and XI Corps, as Ludendorff, newly appointed its Chief of Staff, told OHL on 28 August. They were sent all the same. Meanwhile the marching armies had been further weakened by the detachment of III Reserve Corps to contain the Belgian army in the Antwerp entrenched camp, of IV Reserve Corps to garrison Brussels and of VII Reserve Corps to besiege Maubeuge on the Sambre, where a large French garrison bravely held out behind enemy lines. The loss of five corps from the fighting line—one-seventh of the western army—actually eased Moltke’s logistical difficulties, which grew as the armies drew further away from Germany but closer together as they approached Paris on the overcrowded road network. Nevertheless, preponderance of force at the decisive point is a key to victory and Moltke’s dispersions made preponderance less rather than more likely of achievement. On 27 August, moreover, he further diminished his chance to secure a concentration of superior force by ordering the outer armies, von Kluck’s First, von Bülow’s Second, to fan out. First Army was to pass west of Paris, Second to aim directly for the fortified city, while Third was to pass to the east and Fourth and Fifth, still battling with the French armies defending the lower Meuse, to press westward to join them. Sixth and Seventh, operating on the front where the French had launched their opening offensive of the war, were to attempt to reach and cross the River Moselle.
The march west of Paris was the manoeuvre which Schlieffen had deemed the German army “too weak” to realise. If attempted, it might have proved so but the practicability of Moltke’s directive was not put to the test. The day after its issue, 28 August, von Kluck independently decided to change his line of march and move south-eastward, inside Paris, giving as his reasons the disappearance of any threat from the BEF, seemingly incapacitated by Le Cateau, and the desirability of finally disabling Fifth Army by a drive into its flank. Moltke, despite his quite precise order of 27 August that Kluck should go west of Paris, acquiesced and on 2 September went further. In a message to First and Second Armies, wirelessed from OHL’s temporary headquarters in Luxembourg, he announced that it was “the intention of the High Command to drive the French back in a south-easterly direction, cutting them off from Paris [italics supplied]. The First Army will follow the Second in echelon and will also cover the right flank of the armies.” This was an acceptance of events rather than an effort to determine them. Second Army had halted to recuperate from the effects of fighting and the long march, so that for First to echelon itself with it would entail a pause also. The French Fifth Army meanwhile was slipping away to the east, thus eroding the danger of an attack into its flank and distancing itself from Paris in so doing. The BEF was not disabled but had merely disappeared into the countryside, unhampered by the German cavalry as the advancing Germans had been by the French in Belgium in the opening weeks of the campaign, while the growing assemblage of Joffre’s new striking force in and around Paris remained undiscovered by the enemy altogether.83
Meanwhile the marching armies tramped on, fifteen and twenty miles a day in the heat of a brilliant late summer. “Soon we were crossing the last ridge that separated us from the Marne valley,” recorded Bloem. “It was another grilling, exhausting day. Twenty-five miles up hill and down dale under a blazing sun. To our left we could hear the guns of Bülow’s army with which we seemed nearly in touch again.” There were flashes of action, engagements between advance and rear guards, short, bitter little battles, such as that at Néry on 1 September, where the British 1st Cavalry Brigade and L Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, held up the progress of the German 4th Cavalry Division for a morning. L Battery’s gunners won three Victoria Crosses in their unequal contest with the enemy, which ended, a German historian recorded, “decidedly to the disadvantages of the German cavalry.”84 There was a great deal of bridge-blowing and re-bridging, as the armies negotiated the many-branched river system of the Paris basin, of contested delays at obstacles, of artillery exchanges, of brief outbursts of rifle fire, as scouts ran into outposts or the tail of a retreating column was overtaken by pursuers. For the vast majority on both sides, however, the last week of August and the first of September was an ordeal of day-long marches, begun before the sun rose, ended in the twilight. A trooper of the 4th Dragoon Guards, Ben Clouting, recorded that his regiment was roused at 4:30 on the morning of 1 September, 2 on the morning of the 2nd, 4:20 a.m. on the 3rd and 5th and 5 a.m. on the 6th. He remembered that the horses, beside which they often walked to spare their backs, “soon began to drop their heads and wouldn’t shake themselves like they normally did … they fell asleep standing up, their legs buckling. As they stumbled forward … they lost their balance completely, falling forward and taking the skin off their knees.” For the men, “the greatest strain … worse than any physical discomfort or even hunger was … fatigue. Pain could be endured, food scrounged, but the desire for rest was never-ending … I fell off my horse more than once, and watched others do the same, slowly slumping forward, grabbing for their horse’s neck, in a dazed, barely conscious way. At any halt men fell asleep instantaneously.”85
The infantry, who got no chance to ride, dropped behind the column of route in scores and these stragglers, “in grim determination … hobbled along in ones or twos … as [they] sought desperately to stay in touch with their regiments … Food came up from Army Service Corps ration dumps, which were just boxes of biscuits [and] tins of bully beef … Very occasionally, a chalk notice marked the food up for a particular regiment, but more often than not we just helped ourselves, stuffing what we could into every pocket.”86 Joffre, out on inspection of the French armies on 30 August, passed “retreating columns … Red trousers had faded to the colour of pale brick, coats were ragged and torn, shoes caked with mud, eyes cavernous in faces dulled by exhaustion and dark with many days’ growth of beard. Twenty days of campaigning seemed to have aged the soldiers as many years.” The French and British, long though their daily marches, were at least falling back on their lines of supply. The Germans marched ahead of theirs and often went without food, though, like the British, their need was for rest rather than rations. A French witness noticed on 3 September, when a unit of the invaders reached their billets for the night, “they fell down exhausted, muttering in a dazed way, ‘forty kilometres! forty kilometres!’ That was all they could say.”87
On 3 September von Kluck’s headquarters were installed in Louis XV’s chateau at Compiègne. It was there that he received Moltke’s wireless message of 2 September directing his First Army to follow Bülow’s Second “in echelon” to the south-east, in order to cut the French off from Paris.88 Kluck decided to interpret the order literally, as giving him freedom to veer further eastward still in pursuit of Lanrezac’s Fifth Army, to cross the River Marne and to initiate the decisive battle that Moltke actually intended to be delivered by the armies of the centre, coming west from the Meuse. The German strategic effort, though neither Moltke nor Kluck perceived it, was beginning to fall apart. “Moltke,” a French historian comments, “had never much believed in the possibility of manoeuvring masses … like his uncle [the elder Moltke], he thought it necessary to leave each army commander a wide freedom of movement.”89 Laxity of control had not mattered in 1870, when the front of battle was narrow and the opportunity for armies to diverge from the critical axis of advance correspondingly slight. Moltke the Younger’s easy reign over the far wider battlefront of 1914 had resulted in his right-hand army, the army on which all depended, first slipping to the south when it should have been marching south-westward, then turning south-eastward, at right angles to the direction which the plan of campaign laid down it must maintain for victory to be achieved.
Critics would later point out Schlieffen’s own inability to decide what track the right wing should take; apologists argue that Kluck was doing the right thing by keeping on Lanrezac’s heels. The truth is that he was being led by the nose. Every mile he marched in pursuit of the Fifth Army, once he had crossed the Oise and headed towards the
Marne, served Joffre’s purpose. The line on which Joffre wished to fight may have receded southward from the Somme to the Oise to the Marne; as the situation map shifted and August drew into September, the opportunity to deliver the disabling blow improved proportionately. For the further Kluck widened the gap between army and Paris to his right, without achieving the crucial overlap which would allow him to begin an encirclement of Lanrezac from the west, the more space he created for Joffre to position the “mass of manoeuvre” against the German flank. That mass, with the existing garrison of Paris, menaced a fiercer strike against Kluck than he could now hope to deliver at the enemy.
The creation of this “mass of manoeuvre” had been foreshadowed in Joffre’s General Instruction No. 2 of 25 August. Then he had said that it was to consist of VII Corps, of four Reserve divisions and perhaps another Active corps, which were to be transported to the west by rail. By 1 September it consisted of VII and IV Corps, taken from First and Third Armies, and the 55th, 56th, 61st and 62nd Reserve Divisions, the whole forming Sixth Army under General Maunoury; with it was associated the garrison of Paris, including the 45th Division, from Algeria, five Territorial Divisions, 83rd, 85th, 86th, 89th and 92nd, a brigade of Spahis and a brigade of fusiliers-marins.90 Together they constituted the Armies of Paris, under the overall command of General Gallieni. Gallieni, a veteran of the French wars of empire, was sixty-five in 1914, Maunoury sixty-seven; even in a war of old generals—Moltke was sixty-six, Joffre sixty-two—they might have appeared too elderly to find energy sufficient to mastermind a counterstroke against the largest army ever deployed in the field. Maunoury and Gallieni, however, were men of vitality, Gallieni exceptionally so. Recalled from retirement on 25 August to replace the ineffective General Michel as Military Governor of Paris, he had at once warned Messimy, Minister of War, that the enemy would be at the gates in twelve days to lay a siege the capital could not withstand. He demanded reinforcements, which could only be got from Joffre who was unwilling to release any and, as supreme commander with war powers, could not be overruled by ministers or even the President. Gallieni’s demands provoked a government crisis. Messimy, finding himself blamed for the dangers of which Gallieni was now warning, insisted on being dismissed rather than accept a new appointment and by so doing brought about the resignation of the whole ministry. Messimy was replaced by the tough and taciturn Millerand and departed to join the armies at the front as a major of reserve.91
The political upheaval shook Joffre’s imperturbability no more than military setback. He adhered to his routine of the long lunch, of a solid dinner and regular hours of sleep. Nevertheless, unlike Moltke, who remained secluded in his Luxembourg headquarters far from the scene of action, he also visited subordinate commanders and troops almost every day. He saw Lanrezac on 26, 28 and 29 August, visited the commanders of Third and Fourth Armies on 30 August and Lanrezac again on 3 September. He also saw Sir John French on 26 August and 3 September. The British were causing anxiety. French had been shaken by the intensity of the fighting at Mons, even more by that at Le Cateau, and had convinced himself that his army needed several days of rest before it could re-enter the line. As the retreat lengthened, he and his staff officers began to consider the eventuality of retiring to base, leaving France altogether and returning only when the troops had rested and re-equipped in England. He had come to believe that the French to left and right of him were retreating without warning, leaving him exposed to attacks by the advancing Germans. He next announced his intention of retiring below the Seine, in eight days of easy marching, and of transferring his stores from Rouen and Le Havre, on the English Channel, to St. Nazaire or even La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast. Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, demanded clarification in a series of telegrams. When none came, he took a destroyer to France, summoned French to the British embassy in Paris and left him in no doubt that his task was to co-operate with Joffre even at extreme risk to his own army.92
That meant its taking its place in the “mass of manoeuvre” which, by 3 September, was gathered north-west and west of Paris: the new Sixth Army, the Paris garrison, the BEF, the Fifth Army and, on its right, the Ninth Army, also new and commanded by General Ferdinand Foch. Foch, promoted from command of XX Corps, was a star in the ascendant. Lanrezac’s star fell on 3 September; Joffre motored to his headquarters at Sézanne that day to tell him he was replaced by Franchet d’Esperey. It was a painful meeting. They were friends and Lanrezac had been Joffre’s protégé. Now he was a man worn-out by the burden of confronting the danger he, almost alone, had foreseen of the German attack through Belgium. The two generals walked around the playground of the school where Fifth Army had its headquarters while Joffre explained that he judged his subordinate to have lost the power of decision. Then Lanrezac departed, accompanied by a single non-commissioned officer, not to be seen again in uniform.93
Hindenburg, in Austrian uniform
Schlieffen
Ludendorff, wearing the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross
The Kaiser disrributing Iron Crosses, Warsaw, September 1915
Conrad von Hötzendorf
Joffre and Haig at GQG, Chantilly, 23 December 1915
Pétain; behind him Joffre, Foch, Haig and Pershing
Kemal Ataturk (encircled) at Gallipoli
Brusilov
MOBILISATION
The Guard Pioneer Battalion leaves Berlin, August 1914
A Russian reservist bids farewell
French infantrymen off to the front
THE CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST, 1914
Belgian infantry await the invader, Louvain, 20 August 1914
Machinegun section of a French infantry regiment
French 75mm battery in action, Varreddes, 13 September 1914
THE CAMPAIGN IN THE EAST
German infantrymen of the 147th Regiment advancing in open order before Tannenberg. The regiment, later “von Hindenburg’s,” was local.
Russian transport on the road to Przemysl, September 1914
TRENCH WARFARE
Soldiers of the French 87th Regiment, 6th Division, at Côte 304, Verdun, 1916
The 1st Lancashire Fusiliers in a communication trench at Beaumont Hamel, Somme, late June 1916
A Grenadier Guards trench sentry, Somme, 1916
A working party of the Manchester Regiment going up the line, Serre, March 1917, before the battle of Arras
Gallieni, also a star in the ascendant, was meanwhile terrorising the municipality of Paris with his orders to put the city into a state of defence. On 2 September the government had, as in 1870, transferred its seat to Bordeaux. Joffre had incorporated the capital into the Zone of the Armies, where he ruled with total power, on 31 August. With constitutional authority, therefore, the Military Governor issued instructions to prepare the Eiffel Tower for destruction (it was the transmitting station for general staff radio communications), to lay demolition charges under the Seine bridges, to send all rolling stock useful to the enemy out of the Paris rail system, to provision the 2,924 guns of the fortifications with ammunition, to clear fields of fire for the artillery of trees and houses and to conscript the labourers to do the work. Paris, in 1914, was still a fortified city, surrounded by walls and a girdle of forts. It was also, under Gallieni’s command, constituted an Entrenched Camp, with improvised defences stretching out into its surrounding countryside, further to enhance the “obstacle of Paris” which had so troubled Schlieffen in the long years while he had been devising his plan.
Yet the obstacle had already done its work. On 3 September Schlieffen’s “strong right wing,” represented by Kluck’s First Army, had drifted forty miles to the east of Paris and was aligned to the south, with the Sixth Army and the Paris garrison behind it, the BEF on its right flank, the Fifth Army to its front and Foch’s Ninth Army menacing its left and threatening an irruption into the gap which had opened between it and Bülow’s Second Army. It was the existence of Paris and Lanrezac’s evasive manoeuvring that had brought about this r
esult.
Meanwhile the French railway system was hurrying to the front the forces with which Joffre planned to deliver his counterstroke. Since it centred on Paris, its network brought troops rapidly from the increasingly stabilised eastern sector to the critical points. By 5 September the Sixth Army consisted, besides Sordet’s Cavalry Corps and the 45th (Algerian) Division, of the VII Corps, brought from Alsace, and the 55th and 56th Reserve Divisions from Lorraine; the IV Corps was en route from Fourth Army. The Ninth Army, originally constituted as the Foch Detachment, comprised the IX and XI Corps transferred from Fourth Army, together with the 52nd and 60th Reserve Divisions and 9th Cavalry Division, the 42nd from Third Army and the 18th Division from Third Army. Between the Paris Entrenched Camp and the Marne, Joffre therefore disposed, at the opening of the great battle named after the river, of thirty-six divisions, including the BEF, strengthened by the arrival of four fresh brigades from England, while the German First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Armies opposing totalled just under thirty. Schlieffen’s “strong right wing” was now outnumbered, the result of Moltke’s failure to control his subordinates and of Joffre’s refusal to be panicked by early defeat. Much else had contributed to the mismatch, notably the logistic difficulties imposed on the Germans as their lines of communication lengthened, and the consequent easing of the problems of reinforcement and supply enjoyed by the French as they fell back on the centre. Nevertheless, the opening circumstances of the Battle of the Marne betrayed a failure of German generalship. It remained to be seen whether French generalship might yet pluck victory from the jaws of defeat.