To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  THE BATTLE OF THE FRONTIERS

  The war plans of both France and Britain were vitiated by Belgium’s vigorous affirmation of its neutrality.60 The second Moroccan crisis in 1911 had made clear to Brussels not only the danger of war, but also the probability of German invasion. A meeting in the foreign ministry on 16 September 1911 recognized that Belgium must be ready to defend itself against the German army or stand accused by Britain and France of complicity with Berlin.61 But Belgium continued to treat all its neighbours, even the Dutch, as possible enemies.

  Before 1911 Belgium had taken solace in the memory of 1870, arguing that it was far more sensible for the German army to drive into France with its left wing, so trapping the French armies against the Belgian border, than to use its right to push them south where the French could trade space for time. But in 1870 the British had been the defenders of Belgium’s neutrality. By 1912 the Belgians reckoned that Britain saw Belgium’s neutrality as a protectorate established in Britain’s interests, not their own. The Entente with France undermined Britain’s impartiality, and the operational importance of Belgium to the British army’s calculations was made clear by Britain’s military attaché in Brussels. The possibility of a British landing to seize Antwerp was scouted both in 1906 and in 191162

  Grey reiterated his country’s guarantee to Belgium in 1913, just as Poincaré had done three times in the course of the previous year. By contrast, the Germans gave several indications in 1913 and 1914 that any Belgian hopes that a European war would bypass the Low Countries were misplaced. The Belgian military attaché in Berlin reported that Moltke had been enquiring about what Belgium would do if a large foreign army crossed its territory. On 6 November 1913 the Kaiser and Moltke warned King Albert that Belgium should throw in its lot with that of Germany in the coming war. Thus, scrupulous neutrality boxed Belgium into a position of international political purity but strategic and military absurdity. If invaded by the Germans, it would ultimately depend on the other powers to eject them. But it was not prepared to see those powers as allies; it was not even willing, in the event of war, to subscribe to objectives that went beyond the defence of its own independence. The fact that in 1914 Belgium felt itself to have been abandoned by France and—to a lesser extent—Britain was in large part the necessary military consequence of its own pre-war policy. The logical corollary of its strict neutrality in peacetime was preparation for a self-sufficient defence in war.63

  King Albert had been impressed but not intimidated by what Wilhelm and Moltke had said to him. A member of his household and a contemporary at the École Militaire in Brussels, Emile Joseph Galet, argued that the Belgian army should be ready to mobilize at the first sign of impending war, and that once mobilization was complete the units of the Belgian army should concentrate on the frontier facing its enemy (who would by then have declared his hand). What in essence Albert and Galet wanted was a defence on the Meuse, its flanks resting on the fortresses of Namur and Liege. This had been the basis of the army’s autumn manoeuvres in 1913, and it was the planning task assigned to General de Ryckel when he was appointed deputy chief of the general staff in December.64

  However, the effect of their intervention in planning was to deepen the discord within Belgian military counsels. Albert had been responsible for the formation of a Belgian general staff in 1910. Its chief, Jungbluth, fell out with the minister of war and was retired in 1912. Not until May 1914 was his successor appointed, de Selliers de Moranville, a compromise candidate and an officer of the gendarmerie. Only in July 1914 itself did the general staff take in hand plans for concentrating the army: its first contact with the railway authorities was on the 29th of that month. Many on the staff remained wedded to an all-round defence that reflected Belgium’s espousal of neutrality. Its pivot was Antwerp, and the task of the field army was to delay an invader’s advance but not to sacrifice itself uselessly. On this basis the defensive powers of Namur and Liège alone would be enough to secure the frontiers, and the field army should be massed in central Belgium. The implications were that units would begin their concentration while still mobilizing, that the concentration itself would be completed 60 kilometres back from the frontier, and that the border strongholds would be held only by over-age garrison troops. As late as 1 August 1914 de Selliers de Moranville was pushing for a concentration in central Belgium that was compatible with a war against France as well as against Germany.65

  Belgium’s strategy was not the only aspect of the defence of its neutrality that was in disarray. Although universal conscription was adopted in 1909, it had been accompanied by a reduction of the period of service in the infantry to only fifteen months. The 1911 Moroccan crisis moved army reform up the agenda, but only in 1913 was the army’s size fixed as a proportion of the population. The aim was to have a force marginally superior to the numerical difference between the German and French armies (deemed to be three corps), and therefore sufficient to give the Germans pause for thought before invading France by way of Belgium. The case for neutrality was preserved by observing that such a force, if added to the German army, would give it such a preponderance as to persuade the French not to go to war in the first place.66 The annual contingent of recruits was increased from 13,300 to 33,000, so enabling the six youngest classes to form a field army of 180,000, while the older classes were incorporated as garrison troops. This scheme would be fully effective in 1926, when it would give Belgium a maximum strength of 340,000 men. The view of the French military attache on 1 May 1914 was that ‘the Belgian army could not be mobilized in 1914, neither in its new form which lacks men, cadres, staffs, material, nor its old form which has been smashed; it will have to improvise a temporary organization’.67 Three months later, confronted with crisis, de Brocqueville, the minister of war, resolved to split the existing regiments in two and to incorporate eight (not five) of the current classes into the field army, so as to give it an immediate total of 117,000 men. This left 200,000 to man Belgium’s fortifications; the remaining male population was liable for service in the Garde Civique. But the consequence of instant expansion was a loss in tactical effectiveness. The cohesion of units was sacrificed, and the already inadequate supply of trained officers was further diluted by their being spread over too many formations. On mobilization the 6th division had only two officers per company. The experience of most officers for most of the year had been to command, in Galet’s words, ‘phantom battalions and skeleton companies’:68 thus, their knowledge was theoretical and their experience of actual leadership minimal. Manoeuvres in the 3rd division in May 1914 revealed that only a third of the troops understood the principles of fire control or movement. Moreover, the rapid expansion of the field army deepened the imbalance between manpower and equipment levels. Organized in six large divisions, the field army possessed only 102 machine-guns and had no heavy artillery.

  On mobilization the king, not the chief of the general staff, became commander-in-chief. The first decision which confronted him was the choice of the army’s concentration area. On the one hand its lack of cohesion and low level of training favoured the central position, so delaying contact with the Germans for as long as possible. On the other, an army as improvised as Belgium’s would clearly need all the help it could get from fixed positions, and these were forward on the frontier. To confuse matters further, the advocates of a forward deployment at the beginning of August were not now Albert and Galet, but a young guard of staff officers swayed by the French advocates of the offensive. Albert himself was more pragmatic. He realized that not to work with the grain of existing general staff planning would cause further chaos, and so recognized that he had no choice but to implement a strategy of which he did not approve, albeit with modifications. The main Belgian forces concentrated on the River Gette, but two divisions of the field army were pushed forward to cover Liège and Namur respectively. Indicative of the confusion were the hopes of Max Deauville, a medical officer with the Belgian army: he looked forward to the arrival of the Fren
ch and ‘a new Waterloo’, despite the fact that in 1815 the French had been on the other side and it was the advent of the Prussians that had saved the Belgians.69

  In the event the Belgian army acquitted itself with much more distinction in the opening days of the war than it had a right to expect. The German envelopment depended on the swift capture of Liège. Erich Ludendorff, who in 1913 had forfeited his post as chief of operations on the general staff, allegedly as a penalty for his outspoken demands for increases in manpower, had planned that Liège would fall within forty-eight hours. He had visited the city, ostensibly as a tourist, in 1909. It was protected by a ring of twelve forts, all of recent construction, but designed for frontal rather than all-round defence. The intervals between the forts were meant to be filled with field fortifications, and Liège therefore required a stronger force than its garrison of 40,000 men and 400 guns. Leman, the garrison commander, was not sure what forces he would have available. The differences between the king and the general staff as to the field army’s concentration area meant that the possibility of the entire army advancing to the Meuse continued to be canvassed until 6 August. Galet would later argue that if the whole field army had been concentrated on the Meuse from the beginning of the war the Germans would have been stopped in their tracks. As it was, the Liège garrison, reinforced by the 3rd division, forestalled the Germans’ hopes of achieving surprise and a quick victory: the initial assaults on the morning of 5 August were repulsed with heavy losses. On 6 August Liège had the dubious distinction of being the first city in European warfare to suffer an aerial attack: bombs from a Zeppelin killed nine civilians. Leman now realized that elements of five German corps confronted him, and that German cavalry threatened to encircle him from the north, so he returned the 3rd division to the field army, and decided to put his efforts into the defence of the individual forts and not into the whole perimeter. Thus, during the night of 6/7 August, German brigades were able to infiltrate between the forts, and early on the morning of 7 August—in a typical piece of theatricality which earned him Germany’s highest decoration, the pour le mérite—Ludendorff himself took possession of the undefended citadel.

  However, the position of the Germans, both in general and specifically of those within the city, who were now effectively cut off from outside, was still precarious. The forts had been constructed to resist artillery calibres of up to 210 mm. In anticipation of this problem, in 1906–7 the German general staff— bypassing the War Ministry—had commissioned Krupp to develop a 420 mm mortar. But by 1914 only five were complete. The Germans therefore had to bring up four batteries of Austrian Skoda 305 mm howitzers, and not until 12 August could these guns open fire. The forts on the right bank of the Meuse were cleared by 13 August, and on the left by the 16th. The siege of Liège had lasted eleven days, not two. In practice, the delay to the German advance was at most a couple of days, as the concentration of the active corps was not completed until 13 August. But already operations were not going according to plan.

  At the southern end of his line Moltke’s fears of an early French offensive in Alsace and Lorraine proved well founded. The difficulty for the Germans of defending upper Alsace had resulted in the logical conclusion not to do so. With a speed that surprised the Germans and anticipated his own concentration, Joffre pushed VII corps from Belfort, south of the Vosges, into the southernmost lost province. He had told the commanders of 1st and 2nd armies on 3 August that their task was to fix as many German corps as possible, so freeing the French forces to the north. He also aimed to provide quick support for Russia. On 8 August French popular enthusiasm was fuelled by the news that the tricolour once again flew over Mulhouse. Dubail, commanding 1st army, now wanted to consolidate and complete his concentration; Joffre was determined to push on. However, the the advance of VII corps was dilatory and its reconnaissance inadequate. Two corps of the 7th German army retook Mulhouse and drove the French back across the frontier to Belfort.70

  The Germans had created a strong defensive network between Metz and Thionville, the Moselstellung. Its task was to secure the pivot of the right wing from any French thrust across the German lines of communication. But Joffre assumed that it also screened the main German concentration. He therefore decided to mask this sector, and to mount major thrusts across the frontier into Lorraine in the south and into the Ardennes in the north. His assumptions about German dispositions were wrong. Only five German divisions and a Landwehr corps held the Thionville-Metz sector, and the French therefore had a three-to-one superiority in mobile troops. In Lorraine, on the other hand, not six corps, as Joffre imagined, but eight, giving a total of over twenty-four divisions, opposed the twenty divisions of the 1st and 2nd French armies earmarked for the attack. Furthermore, the Germans were fighting in an area whose terrain was familiar, and whose defence had been long planned. Dubail’s 1st army was set the main objectives, Sarrebourg, and then Strasbourg. Its right was to be supported by the army of Alsace, newly created by combining VII corps with four other divisions and commanded by General Pau. On Dubail’s left was Castelnau’s 2nd army. Even before the war Castelnau had advised against an early offensive into Lorraine, preferring to take up a strong defensive position in front of Nancy. Joffre overruled him, insisting that there were no significant forces in front of the 2nd army.71

  Thus the second French invasion of Alsace, mounted on 14 August, was this time subordinate to the more major thrust north of the Vosges into Lorraine. The bulk of the 7th German army was therefore drawn north, and only four Landwehr brigades faced the army of Alsace. By 19 August Mulhouse was once again in French hands. Thereafter, however, Pau, distrustful of the reserve divisions that made up a large part of his command, restricted his activities to threatening the German flank from the security of the Vosges mountains.

  Pau’s caution left the 1st army with less support than it needed. Heeringen’s 7th German army was free to threaten Dubail’s flank, and forced him to extend southwards. Castelnau’s right had been instructed to support Dubail’s left, but on 18 August Joffre ordered the 2nd army to face north, rather than north-east. His intention was to hold the Germans in Lorraine and so enable the French 3rd and 4th armies to manoeuvre. The effect was to pull Castelnau’s command in two different directions. Bowed as it faced north and east, it lost contact with Dubail’s army. The German 6th and 7th armies, the latter subordinated to the command of the former, fell back on to prepared positions on the heights of Morhange and on Sarrebourg.

  Joffre continued to press the offensive. Castelnau intended that his attack should be echeloned from the right, but in fact XX corps on the left, commanded by Ferdinand Foch, had made better progress. Castelnau instructed Foch to halt while the rest of the army pivoted on its left. Foch’s corps— whether deliberately or not—disregarded these orders, and pushed on to the heights of Morhange. Although the 2nd army had been stripped of its cavalry, its aircraft had until now provided valuable intelligence, and indeed had warned Castelnau of the strength of the German positions on the 18th. But on 20 August early morning mist prevented any aerial reconnaissance. The Germans enjoyed an overall superiority of 328 battalions to 268, and of 1,614 field guns to 1,080. The French 1st and 2nd armies advanced into devastating fire. By the afternoon its victims included Castelnau’s own son. The advance of Foch’s corps had exposed the left flank of 2nd army’s two centre corps, and it was against these that the 6th German army directed its counter-attack. Thus the main defeat was inflicted not on Dubail but on Castelnau’s three corps on the Morhange heights. That night he ordered his army to fall back to the River Meurthe and the Grand Couronné de Nancy. Both Dubail and, further to the south, Pau were forced to conform. Castelnau’s priority was to recover his links with Dubail’s army, and he was ready to fall back yet further, to the Meuse or towards Épinal, to, accomplish that objective. In the event the force of his own attack on the 20th, plus the resistance of Fort Manonviller (sustained until the 27th), proved to have been enough to slow the German 6th army
’s pursuit, enabling Castelnau to break contact and establish the 2nd army in front of Nancy on the 23rd.

  MAP 7. BELGIUM AND NORTHERN FRANCE

  Joffre’s original plan for his advance north of the line Verdun-Metz embraced the possibility of using three armies, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. However, as early as 31 July Lanrezac, the commander of the 5th army, expected the Germans to cross the Meuse, and was increasingly anxious that he face north, towards Belgium, and not north-east. But, whatever his supporters said later, Lanrezac had not anticipated the full scale of the German envelopment. If he had, he would not—presumably—have been rash enough to advance into its jaws. He thought the Germans would come between Givet and Namur, and south of the Sambre.

  The problem for both Joffre and Lanrezac was what weight to attach to events in Belgium. For Joffre, persuaded that the main battle would be fought in the centre, the value of the Belgian army—if it had any—was that it extended his left flank as he advanced into Luxembourg. Thus, on 7 August the French thought the Belgians could do one of two things: either they could push their field army up to the Meuse, so aiding the French offensive in the Ardennes, or they could be ready to strike against the German right flank as it moved south of the Meuse. Joffre therefore saw the Belgian army as an adjunct to a grand allied conception orchestrated by himself and embracing northwestern Europe as its deployment zone. The Belgians, on the other hand, were convinced that they faced the main weight of the German army, knew that the Meuse positions had already been turned to the north of Liège, and were bent on protecting Belgian territory. Their plan was to hold on the line of the River Gette and wait for the French to come to them. Whereas the French expected the Belgians to fall back south on Namur, towards France, the Belgians intended to retreat north to the stronghold of Antwerp. Albert’s efforts to impress upon Joffre and his headquarters both Belgian plans and German designs were frustrated by the intermediaries through whom he had to communicate: the French military mission at Belgian headquarters appeared, according to Galet, ‘less inclined to accept our reports than to question them’.72 So persuasive were the convictions of Joffre’s emissaries that by 16 August even the Belgians began to doubt the wisdom of their own conclusions. Albert’s and Galet’s plans for a staged withdrawal were challenged by their own intelligence section, which played down the significance of the German concentrations on and across the Meuse.