by Hew Strachan
This last idea, an attack with decisive rather than limited objectives, appealed to the amour propre of Crown Prince Rupprecht and his Bavarians. Even before Morhange and Sarrebourg, 6th army had broached the idea of an attack on Nancy. Moltke’s response, though indecisive, was not negative: lurking at the back of his mind was the possibility of a ‘super-Cannae’, a breakthrough on the left enabling the envelopment of the French army on both wings. The decision to follow up the victories at Morhange and Sarrebourg was thus quickly taken. A pause would allow the French time to regroup and redeploy. The fall of Liège suggested that Schlieffen had exaggerated the effectiveness of fortifications in delaying an attack. Moreover, the victories of the right wing made the case for disengaging Heeringen’s 7th army, and rerouting it via Metz to Belgium—never strong, given the available railway lines—yet weaker. Indeed, the reverse happened: the left wing was reinforced at the expense of the right. Six-and-a-half Ersatz divisions, intended to guard the lines of communication through Belgium, were directed instead to Lorraine. The strengthening of the German left wing fed the ire of post-war critics: at the time Moltke’s decision was welcomed.123
After Morhange, Castelnau had fallen back west of the River Meurthe, his left flank covered by the positions on the Grand Couronné de Nancy. Moltke therefore instructed the 6th and 7th armies to pass south, aiming for the gap at Charmes, between Toul and Épinal. A breakthrough here would allow the Germans to envelop Nancy. The effect of the German move was to place Castelnau’s 2nd French army on their flank as they marched south against Dubail’s 1st army. The weather, which had been poor on the 22nd and 23rd, cleared on the 24th, revealing the German movements to French aerial reconnaissance. On 25 August Castelnau took his opportunity and counter-attacked. His gains were limited, but the Germans were stopped. The weather broke again on the 26th. Already weakened in the Morhange and (particularly) Sarrebourg fighting, the 6th and 7th armies were not able to exploit their earlier victories. The ground over which they were attacking was well suited to the defence, and well fortified. Their line of communications between Dieuze and Lunéville came under fire from French batteries. The 7th was the weakest of the German armies, and the Ersatz divisions—although appropriate for their original task—were not ideal formations for the offensive. The Germans made some gains to the south, but were checked by 28 August. For ten days the front south of Verdun was stable: France’s redeployment to the west could proceed uninterrupted.
That Moltke was no longer thinking simply of an envelopment by the right wing is confirmed in his directive of 27 August. The line of march which he gave the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th armies remained south-west, with Kluck pointed south-west of Paris and Bülow on Paris itself. But at the same time the 6th and 7th were instructed to attack along the Moselle, and to break through between Toul and Épinal. The tough fighting in which the 6th and 7th armies were engaged generated the need for the 4th and 5th to relieve the pressure by attacking on the western side of France’s eastern fortifications. Moltke was therefore advancing on all points. The effect of this in practice would not be to maintain his thrust south-west, but to bring it south, and even south-east. If each army was to support the other in order to achieve a reciprocating effect in the advance, the overall alignment would be set by the left and by the centre, and not by the right.
This change in the alignment of the German advance was confirmed by the effects of the fighting in late August. Joffre set his retreating armies, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th, the task of limited counter-attacks so as to delay the German advance while his new concentration could be effected. On 27 August he instructed Lanrezac to turn and drive in a north-westerly direction towards St Quentin and the right wing of Bülow’s army, which was still bearing southwest. The manoeuvre the French 5th army had to execute was not easy: it had simultaneously to face north, towards Guise, in order to hold Bülow’s centre. Furthermore, Sir John French refused the co-operation of the BEF despite the fact that his I corps was ideally placed to join in by striking against Kluck’s left flank. Lanrezac prevaricated: Joffre was furious. Events justified both of them. The battle on 29 August did not go as Joffre anticipated, but Lanrezac fought it well: although effectively defeated at St Quentin, at Guise he used his artillery to good account and pushed Bülow back 5 kilometres on a 25-kilometre front. Bülow’s army was fought to a standstill, and its losses were high. Pausing for a thirty-six hour respite, on 30 August Bülow summoned Kluck to his support. If Kluck had continued on his original, south-westerly line of march he could have disrupted the formation of the French 6th army and enveloped the BEF. But the gap between the two German right-wing armies would have widened. By changing direction from south-west to south-east, Kluck’s army threatened the rear of Lanrezac’s 5th.
MAP 8. PARIS TO VERDUN
Rather than allowing gaps to appear in their line in their efforts to achieve a full envelopment, the Germans were opting to close up. Moltke’s orders of the 29th embodied the situation that had now developed. The 2nd, 4th, and 5th armies were given southern axes of advance, the 1st a south-eastern. The 3rd army, which had not been able to support the 2nd at Guise because of the need to rally to the 4th and 5th on the Meuse, now became the pivot. The atmosphere at OHL was confused. Many anticipated a decisive victory, achieved not by the right wing but by the three central armies on the Aisne, and by the encirclement of Verdun. Moltke’s moodiness interpreted the same situation negatively: his right wing was too weak for the tasks that confronted it, his left was unable to achieve a breakthrough, and his centre was pulled in both directions by the need to support in first one direction and then the other.
At GQG the situation was reversed: the staff was becoming desperate, while the commander-in-chief remained cool. Joffre’s plan of 25 August was awry. The retreat of the BEF, and the gap which it left to allow Kluck’s turn to the south-east, made a general counter-attack on the line Amiens-Reims impossible. Joffre’s principal task was to extricate the 5th army from its immediate danger, and to give time for a new army, the 9th (entrusted to Foch), to form on the 5th’s right, so as to fill the growing gap between it and the 4th. In these circumstances Berthelot, continuing to look away from the French left, advocated a breakthrough in the centre. Technically, such a conception was not incompatible with Joffre’s orders of 1 September. They allowed for a possible retreat as far as the southern bank of the Seine, so that the French line would form a great arc running south-east from Paris, and then north-east to Verdun. But for Joffre the pivot of the manoeuvre remained on the left, and round Paris rather than Amiens. He reckoned that the allied armies would not pass over to the attack until after 8 September.
The major imponderable in the execution of even this design was the role of the BEF. Was it, after Landrecies and Le Cateau, in a state fit to fight? And, if it was, would its commander allow it to do so? In practice, the first question had only arisen because of the second. The physical strains under which the BEF was labouring, the incorporation of 60 per-cent reservists, the long marches, and the losses suffered by II corps at Le Cateau were little different from those undergone by the soldiers of the other armies in August 1914. True, their line of retreat had deviated from their line of advance, and so pulled away from their communications and supplies. Moreover, administrative responsibility for supply was not integrated with the task of command, and the inspector-general of communications was therefore not formally subordinated to the quartermaster-general. But the consequences were not as serious as they might have been, partly because of the BEF’s small size, which enhanced its adaptibility, and partly because in practice responsibility was concentrated on the quartermaster-general, the highly competent and totally unflappable William Robertson.124 Nonetheless, in the mind of Sir John French the problems of the BEF were grievous. Kitchener, in his instructions to Sir John, had stressed the BEF’s small size, the limited reinforcements available, and the resulting need to minimize casualties. French’s sense of this responsibility deepened into desponde
ncy and despair. His GHQ seemed unable to form a balanced view of the state of the troops under its command. The original intention had been for the BEF to have no corps commands, so that GHQ would have direct control of the divisions. The available wirelesses were used to link GHQ with its cavalry division. Effective communications between GHQ and its corps broke down in the retreat. French sited his headquarters too far from his corps; he moved without notice. At Mons and Le Cateau Smith-Dorrien was left to take his own decisions. French bore a long-standing grievance against Smith-Dorrien, foisted on him as II corps’s commander at the last moment after the sudden death of Sir James Grierson, and this may have led him to exaggerate the weaknesses of II corps. Haig, commanding I corps, had determined even before the fighting started that French was an ‘old woman’ and ‘quite unfit for this great command at a time of crisis in our Nation’s history’.125 GHQ itself spent more time listening to the French than to either Smith-Dorrien or Haig. This gave Henry Wilson, although only deputy chief of staff, a key role— increased when Sir Archibald Murray, the chief of staff, suffered a temporary nervous collapse after Landrecies. Wilson had a low opinion of both French’s and Haig’s abilities, but proved in the retreat just as liable as the former to exaggerate the dangerous situation of the BEF.126
Sir John’s attitude towards his ally was soured by Lanrezac’s lack of cooperation, and by his conviction that the latter had left him in the lurch at Mons. Kitchener had told him that, if the French armies were defeated, he was to retreat along his own lines of communication to the coast. British strategic independence, which had been subordinated to the needs of the alliance in the lead-up to Mons, now reasserted itself. When even Wilson believed that the BEF should go ‘to Havre and home’ the Anglo-French alliance lost its principal advocate at British headquarters.127 French refused to support the 5th French army in the St Quentin/Guise battle, and on 30 August announced that he planned to pull the BEF out of the line for ten days, to refit west of Paris and behind the Seine. If this had happened Maunoury’s 6th army would have had to close up to cover Lanrezac’s flank, and Joffre’s chance of envelopment would have gone. The French commander-in-chief, who had never been fully apprised of Kitchener’s instructions to French, and who persisted in behaving as though his powers were those of an allied generalissimo, was perplexed. He appealed via Poincaré to the British government.
The French message reached a cabinet that was already exchanging one approach to British strategy for another. If France were defeated by Germany, Britain would be left without a major striking force on the continent, and its hopes of neutralizing the Channel ports and Belgium would be dashed for the foreseeable future. Britain had already discovered that its security needs meant that it could not abandon the Entente in July; now the same imperative meant that it had to stick by it in the field. Asquith and his ministers decided to support the French counter-attack. Furthermore, alarmed by the depressed tone of Sir John French’s missives, they sent Kitchener to France. Donning his field marshal’s uniform, the secretary of state met French on 1 September and told him that he must conform with Joffre’s desires. French might with justice have observed that his fault thus far had been to adhere too faithfully to Kitchener’s wishes, but his reaction was more petulant, and revolved round matters of etiquette rather than of strategy. Two days later Joffre poured oil on these wounds by replacing Lanrezac with the ebullient Franchet d’Esperey, whose corps had distinguished itself both on the Sambre and at Guise. Although Joffre still did not count on it, the conditions for the BEF’s cooperation were set.128
Ironically, the longer-term strategic effects of the BEF’s withdrawal rebounded to the allies’ advantage. On 31 August the 3rd and 4th French armies west of Verdun launched limited counter-attacks to enable themselves to face north rather than north-east, and so secure the right flank of Foch’s 9th army as it entered the line. Thus, Foch could concentrate on securing the right of the 5th army, potentially exposed to Kluck’s advance by the withdrawal of the BEF on its left. Moltke interpreted this manoeuvre as a general counterattack and concluded—when it failed to go further—that it had been successfully checked. He therefore focused his attentions on his centre and on Verdun, rather than on his right and Paris.129 On 2 September his orders expressed the intention to drive the French in a south-easterly direction. Without pause or preparation, Moltke was shifting the conceptual base of the German advance from envelopment to breakthrough. Not only did he expect his army commanders to grasp what he now proposed, he also hoped that they would implement it despite the fact that the French grip on Verdun and the heights of the Meuse would splinter their efforts. Aerial reconnaissance had indicated to OHL troop movements in the area of Paris. Kluck’s role, therefore, was no longer to lead the advance, but to turn westwards, following Bülow in echelon, to guard the German right flank. Kluck was understandably confused. He was already one day’s march ahead of Bülow. He was convinced that the BEF was out of the fight. To turn back would be to abandon the possible destruction of the French 5th army. He decided to go on. On 3 September his advanced units began to cross the River Marne.
The fact that Kluck’s 1st army was passing east of Paris was known to Joffre from 31 August. Intercepted German signals, some of them transmitted in clear, were confirmed by aerial observation.130 The manoeuvre, planned on 25 August to take place at Amiens, could now be resurrected round Paris. GQG was preoccupied with extracting the 5th army from Kluck’s clutches, and only slowly did it realize how immediate was the opportunity for an offensive. On 2 September Berthelot still favoured a withdrawal behind the Seine, but Belin and the rest of the 3eme bureau advocated consolidation on a more northerly line and then a general offensive, including an attack against Kluck’s flank using Maunoury’s 6th army. As yet, however, Gallieni, who had replaced the hapless Michel (the author of the 1911 proposals) as governor of Paris on 26 August, was more concerned for the direct protection of the capital. Although he had set about improving the defences of the city with considerable energy, he was pessimistic about his chances of success. Joffre’s argument—that the mobile army’s campaign in the field would prove Paris’s best shield—was at this stage still lost on him.
Late on 3 September Gallieni personally briefed the pilot who was to observe and report on the position of Kluck’s army early the following morning. The results of that observation confirmed him in the view that he had begun to form on the 3rd—that Maunoury’s 6th army should debouch from Paris eastwards, towards Meaux, and along the south bank of the Marne. Independently but simultaneously, Joffre at GQG had come to the same conclusion. The subsequent polemics, claiming Gallieni as the author of the manoeuvre on the Marne, do more than neglect Joffre’s development of the plan from 25 August onwards. They fail to take into account the fact that Gallieni’s conception was local, concerning itself with the situation around Paris and with Kluck’s 1st army; Joffre’s plan embraced the whole front and depended as much on the situation in the centre and on the right as on the left.
Common to both of them was the question of the BEF’s co-operation. On the afternoon of 3 September GHQ had been told that there appeared to be no Germans in front of them, and French agreed that the BEF would move eastwards, to close the breach between it and the 5th army against Kluck’s threatened envelopment. However, French was not yet fully briefed on the developments in GQG’s thinking. Murray believed that Joffre’s intention was to fall back south of the Seine—a move still favoured by Berthelot and not finally quashed by Joffre until the morning of 4 September. Therefore, if the BEF moved east to support the 5th army while the French armies fell back, it would uncover its left flank.131 Stung by the memory of Mons, French changed his mind once more and reverted to the idea of pulling the BEF back behind the Seine. If this had happened Kluck would have been free to parry any blow by Maunoury’s 6th army. Both Joffre and Gallieni, therefore, planned the 6th army’s movement not simply to drive into Kluck’s flank, since a thrust north of the Marne, not south, wou
ld do this to much greater effect, but to rally to the BEF. By closing the 6th army up with the BEF south of the Marne, the BEF would be supported on both its flanks and the two armies would be in a position to support the 5th by striking Kluck’s outer flank.132 This was the nub of an agreement reached between Gallieni and Sir Archibald Murray on the afternoon of the 4th.
While Gallieni and Murray were meeting at Melun, Franchet d’Esperey and Henry Wilson were consorting at Bray-sur-Seine. At 12.45 p.m. Joffre had asked the 5th army commander whether he would be ready to co-operate in the attack. Given the pressure on the 5th army over the previous few days the reply might well have been negative. However, Franchet d’Esperey reckoned that, if the BEF could pivot quickly and if Foch’s 9th army could support on the right, the 5th army could play its role. The Gallieni-Murray plan required the BEF to continue its retreat for a further day to create room for the 6th army south of the Seine. The Franchet d’Esperey-Wilson plan assumed that the BEF would halt to complete its alignment with the 5th army, and that the 6th army would attack north of the Marne, at right-angles to the main line, on the River Ourcq. Fortunately the coolest head at GHQ, Macdonogh’s, was at Bray. His clear exposition of the BEF’s position combined with Franchet d’Esperey’s fierce energy—’seen from the back’, one witness recalled, ‘his head reminded one of a howitzer shell’133—to clinch the plan that would become the Marne battle. At 10 p.m. that evening Joffre issued his orders. The 6th army was to cross the Ourcq in the direction of Château Thierry, the BEF was to advance east towards Montmirail, the 5th army was to turn north—although its first task would be to hold until the BEF’s advance told on the Germans—and the 9th army was to cover the 5th’s right flank along the marshes of St Gond. The attack was to begin on the morning of the 6th.