THE FIRST OPERATIONS.
In any general view of the great war which aims both at preserving
proportion between its parts, and at presenting especially the main
lines in relief, the three weeks between the German sudden forcing of
war and the seventeen or eighteen days between the English declaration
and the main operations upon the Sambre, will have but a subsidiary
importance. They were occupied for at least half the period in the
mobilization of the great armies. They were occupied for the second
half of the period in the advance across the Rhine of German numbers
greatly superior to the Allies, and also through the plain of Northern
Belgium. The operation, as calculated by the German General Staff, was
delayed by but a very few days--one might almost say hours--by the
hastily improvised resistance of Liege, and the imperfect defence of
their country which was all the Belgian forces, largely untrained,
could offer.
We must, therefore, pass briefly enough over that preliminary period,
though the duty may be distasteful to the reader, on account of the
very exaggerated importance which its operations took, especially in
British eyes.
For this false perspective there were several reasons, which it is
worth while to enumerate, as they will aid our judgment in obtaining a
true balance between these initial movements and the great conflicts
to which they were no more than an introduction.
1. War, as a whole, had grown unfamiliar to Western Europe. War on
such a scale as this was quite untried. There was nothing in
experience to determine our judgment, and after so long a peace,
during which the habits of civil life had ceased to be conventioned
and had come to seem part of the necessary scheme of things, the first
irruption of arms dazzled or confounded the imagination of all.
2. The first shock, falling as it did upon the ring fortress of
Liege, at once brought into prominence one of the chief questions of
modern military debate, the value of the modern ring fortress, and
promised to put to the test the opposing theories upon this sort of
stronghold.
3. The violation of Belgian territory, though discounted in the
cynical atmosphere of our time, when it came to the issue was, without
question, a stupendous moral event. It was the first time that
anything of this sort had happened in the history of Christian Europe.
Historians unacquainted with the spirit of the past may challenge that
remark, but it is true. One of the inviolable conventions, or rather
sacred laws, of our civilization was broken, which is that European
territory not involved in hostilities by any act of its Government is
inviolable to opposing armies. The Prussian crime of Silesia, nearly
two centuries before, the succeeding infamies of 1864, and the forgery
of the Ems dispatch, the whole proclaimed tradition of contempt for
the sanctities of Christendom, proceeding from Frederick the Great,
had indeed accustomed men to successive stages in the decline of
international morals; but nothing of the wholly crude character which
this violation of Belgium bore was to be discovered in the past, even
of Prussia, and posterity will mark it as a curious term and possibly
a turning-point in the gradual loss of our common religion, and of the
moral chaos accompanying that loss.
4. The preparations of this country by land were not complete. Those
of the French were belated compared with those of the Germans, and the
prospect of even a short delay in the falling of the blow was
exaggerated in value by all the intensity of that anxiety with which
the blow was awaited.
To proceed from these preliminaries to the story.
* * * * *
The German Army had for its ultimate object, when it should be fully
mobilized, the passage of the greater part of its forces over the
Belgian Plain.
This Belgian Plain has for now many centuries formed the natural
avenue for an advance upon the Gauls.
It has been represented too often as a sort of meeting-place, where
must always come the shock between what is called Latin civilization
and the Germanic tribes. But this view is both pedantic and
historically false. There never was here a shock or conflict between
two national ideals. What is true is, that civilization spread far
more easily up from the Gauls through that fertile land towards the
forests of Germany, and that when the Roman Empire broke down, or
rather when its central government broke down, the frontier garrisons
could here depend upon wealthier and more numerous populations for the
support of their local government. That body of auxiliary soldiers in
the Roman army which was drawn from the Frankish tribes ruled here
when Rome could no longer rule. It was from Tournai that the father of
Clovis exercised his power; and in the resettlement of the local
governments in the sixth century, the Belgian Plain was the avenue
through which the effort of the civilized West was directed towards
the Rhine. It has Roman Cologne for its outpost; later it evangelized
the fringes of German barbarism, and later still conquered them with
the sword. All through the succeeding centuries the ambitions of kings
in France, or of emperors upon the Rhine, were checked or satisfied in
that natural avenue of advance. Charlemagne's frontier palace and
military centre facing the Pagans was rather at Aix than at Treves or
Metz; and though the Irish missionaries, who brought letters and the
arts and the customs of reasonable men to the Germans, worked rather
from the south, the later forced conversion of the Saxons, which
determined the entry of the German tribes as a whole into Christendom,
was a stroke struck northwards from the Belgian Plain. Caesar's
adventurous crossing of the Rhine was a northern crossing. The
Capetian monarchy was saved on its eastern front at Bouvines, in that
same territory. The Austro-Spanish advance came down from it, to be
checked at St. Quentin. Louis XIV.'s main struggle for power upon the
marches of his kingdom concentrated here. The first great check to it
was Marlborough's campaign upon the Meuse; the last battle was within
sound of Mons, at Malplaquet. The final decision, as it was
hoped--the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo--again showed what this
territory meant in the military history of the West. It was following
upon this decision that Europe, in the great settlement, decided to
curb the chaos of future war by solemnly neutralizing the Belgian
Plain for ever; and to that pact a seal was set not only by the French
and the British, but also by the Prussian Government, with what
results we know.
The entries into this plain are very clearly defined by natural
limits. It is barred a few hours' march beyond the German frontier by
the broad and deep river Meuse, which here runs from the rough and
difficult Ardennes country up to the Dutch frontier. The whole passage
is no more than twelve miles across, and at the corner of it, where
the Meuse bends, is the fortress of Liege. West of this fortress the
upper reaches of the river run, roughly east and west upon Namur, and
after Namur turn south again, passing through a very deep ravine that
extends roughly from the French town of Mezieres to Namur through the
Ardennes country. The Belgian Plain is therefore like a bottle with a
narrow neck, a bottle defined by the Dutch frontier and the Middle
Meuse on either side, and a neck extending only from the Ardennes
country to the Dutch frontier, with the fortress of Liege barring the
way. Now the main blow was to be delivered ultimately upon the line
Namur-Charleroi-Mons. That is, the situation was roughly that of the
accompanying diagram: by the bottle neck at D the whole mass of troops
must pass--or most of them--which are later to strike on the front AB.
To reach that front was available to the invader the vast network of
Belgian railways RRR crammed with rolling stock, and provided such
opportunities for rapid advance as no other district in Europe could
show. But all this system converged upon the main line which ran
through the ring of forts round Liege, L, and so passed through
Aix-la-Chapelle, A, and to Germany.
[Illustration: Sketch 33.]
The German Government, therefore, could not be secure of its intention
to pass great bodies through the Belgian Plain until Liege was
grasped, and it was determined to grasp Liege long before the
mobilization of the German forces was completed. For this purpose only
a comparatively small force, rapidly gathered, was available. It was
placed under the command of General von Emmerich, and its first bodies
exchanged shots with the Belgian outposts early in the afternoon of
Tuesday, August 4, 1914.
The hour and date should always be remembered for the solemnity which
attaches to the beginning of any great thing; and the full observer of
European affairs, who understands what part religion or superstition
plays in the story of Europe, will note this enormously significant
detail. The first Germans to cross the violated frontier accomplished
that act upon the same day and at the same hour as that in which
their forerunners had crossed the French frontier forty-four years
before.
The afternoon wore on to night, with no more than a conflict between
outposts. Just before midnight the cannonade was first heard. It also
was the moment in which the ultimatum delivered to Germany by this
country, by a coincidence, expired.[2]
This night attack with guns was only delivered against one sector of
the Liege forts, and only with field-pieces.
As to the first of these points, it will be found repeated throughout
the whole of the campaign wherever German forces attack a ring of
permanent works. For the German theory in this matter (which
experience has now amply supported) is that since modern permanent
works _of known and restricted position_ go under to a modern siege
train if the fire of the latter be fully concentrated and the largest
pieces available, everything should be sacrificed to the putting into
the narrowest area of all the projectiles available. The ring once
broken on a sufficient single sector point is broken altogether.
The second point, that only field-pieces as yet were used (which was
due to the fact that the siege train was not yet come up), is an
important indication of the weakness of the defence--on all of which
the enemy were, of course, thoroughly informed.
There were perhaps 20,000 men in and upon the whole periphery of
Liege, a matter of over thirty miles, and what was most serious, no
sufficient equipment or preparation of the forts, or, what was more
serious still, no sufficient trained body of gunners.
It is almost true to say that the resistance of Liege, such as it was,
was effected by rifle fire.
With the dawn of August 5th, and in the first four hours of daylight,
a German infantry attack upon the same south-eastern forts which had
been subjected to the first artillery fire in the night developed, and
after some loss withdrew, but shortly after the first of the forts,
that of Fleron, was silenced. The accompanying sketch map will show
how wide a gap was left henceforward in the defences. Further, Fleron
was the strongest of the works upon this side of the river. Seeing
that, in any case, even if there had been a sufficient number of
trained gunners in the forts, and a sufficient equipment and full
preparation of the works for a siege (both of which were lacking),
the absence of sufficient men to hold the gaps between would in any
case have been fatal to the defence. With such a new gap as this open
by the fall of Fleron, the defence was hopeless, even if it were only
to be counted in hours.
[Illustration: Sketch 34.]
It is high praise of the Belgian people and character to point out
that, after the fall of Fleron, for forty-eight full hours such a gap
was still contested by men, a great part of whom were little better
than civilian in training, and who, had they been all tried regulars,
would have been far too few for their task. General Leman, who
commanded them, knew well in those early hours of Wednesday, the 5th,
that the end had already come. He also knew the value of even a few
hours' hopeless resistance, not perhaps to the material side of the
Allied strategy, but to the support of those moral forces lacking
which men are impotent in maintaining a challenge. Not only all that
Wednesday, the 5th, but all the Thursday, the 6th, he maintained a
line against the pressure of the invaders with his imperfect and
insufficient troops.
During those forty-eight hours, the big howitzer, which is the type
of the heavy German siege train--the 225 mm.--was brought up, and it
is possible that a couple of the still larger Austrian pieces of 280
mm. (what we call in this country the 11-inch), which are constructed
with flat treadles to their wheels to fire from mats laid on any
reasonably hard surface (such as a roadway), had been brought up as
well. At any rate, in the course of the Thursday, the fort next
westward from Fleron, Chaudefontaine, was smashed. The gap was now
quite untenable, and the first body of German cavalry entered the
city. The incident has been reported as a _coup de main_, with the
object of capturing the Belgian general. Its importance to the
military story is simply that it proved the way to be open. In the
afternoon and evening of the day, the Belgians were retiring into the
heart of the city, and it is typical of the whole business that the
great railway bridge upon which the main communications depended was
left intact for the Germans to use.
With the morning of Friday, the 7th August, the first bodies of German
infantry entered the town. The forts on the north and two remaining
western forts upon the south of the river were still untaken, and
until a large breach should be made in the northern forts at least,
the railway communication of the German advance into the Belgian plain
was still impeded. Great masses of the enemy, and, in proportion to
those masses, still greater masses of advance stores were brought in.
In all that follows, until we reach the date of Monday, August 24th, I
propose to consider no more than the fortunes of the troops who passed
through Belgium to attack the French armies upon the Sambre and the
Meuse, with the British contingent that had come to their aid. And my
reasons for thus segregating and dealing later with contemporary
events in the south will appear in the sequel.
This reservation made--an important one in the scheme of this book--I
return to what I have called the preliminaries, the advance through
Belgium.
We have already seen that the reduction of the northern forts of Liege
was the prime necessity to that advance.
We have also seen that meanwhile it was possible and advisable to
accumulate stores for the advance as far forward as could be managed,
and that it was also possible, with caution, to bring certain
bodies--not the bulk of the army--forward through the Ardennes, to
command the passages of the Meuse above Liege, between that fortress
and Namur.
This latter operation was effected by the 12th of August, when the
town of Huy, with its bridge and its railway leading from the Belgian
Ardennes right into the Belgian Plain, was seized.
Meanwhile, upon the north of the river Meuse, cavalry and armed
motor-cars were similarly preparing the way for the general advance
when the northern forts of Liege should be dominated; and on this same
Wednesday, August 12th, the most advanced bodies of the invader lay in
a line roughly north and south from the neighbourhood of Diest along
the Gethe and thence towards Huy.
Of the outrages committed upon the civilian inhabitants in all these
country-sides, the Government of which was neutral, and the territory
of which was by the public law of Europe free not only from such
novel crimes but from legitimate acts of war, I shall not speak, just
as I shall not allude, save where they happen to have military
importance, to the future increase of similar abominations which
marked the progress of the campaign. For my only object in these pages
is to lay before the reader a commentary which will explain the
general strategy of the war.
[Illustration: Sketch 35.]
While this advance line of cavalry was engaging in unimportant minor
actions, or rather skirmishes (grossly exaggerated in the news of
those days), the attack on the northern forts of Liege, upon which
everything now depended, was opened. It was upon Thursday, August
13th, that the 280 mm. howitzers opened upon Loncin. Other of the
remaining forts were bombarded; but, as in the case of Fleron a week
before, we need not consider the subsidiary operations, because
everything depended upon the fort of Loncin, which, as the
accompanying diagram shows, commanded the railway line westward from
Liege. General Leman himself was within that work, the batteries
against which were now operating from _within_ the ring--that is, from
the city itself, or in what soldiers technically call "reverse"--that
is, from the side upon which no fort is expected to stand, the side
which is expected to defend and not to be attacked from. Whether
Loncin held out the full forty-eight hours, or only forty, or only
thirty-six, we do not know; but that moral factor to which I have
already alluded, and which must be fully weighed in war, was again
strengthened by the nature of such a resistance. For nearly all that
garrison was dead and its commander found unconscious when the
complete destruction of the work by the high explosive shells
permitted the enemy to enter.
[Illustration: Sketch 36.]
It was upon Saturday, the 15th of August, that the great bulk of the
two main German armies set aside for passage through the Belgian Plain
began to use the now liberated railway, and the week between that date
and the first great shock upon the Sambre is merely a record of the
almost uninterrupted advance, concentration, and supply of something
not far short of half a million men coming forward in a huge tide
over, above, and round on to, the line Namur-Charleroi-Mons, which was
their ultimate objective, and upon which the Anglo-French
body--perhaps half as numerous--had determined to stand.
[Illustration: Sketch 37.]
The story of that very rapid advance is merely one of succeeding
dates. By the 17th the front was at Tirlemont, by the 19th it was
across the Dyle and running thence south to Wavre (the first army),
the second army continuing south of this with a little east in it to a
point in front of Namur. On the 20th there was enacted a scene of no
military importance (save that it cost the invaders about a day), but
of some moral value, because it strongly impressed the opinion in this
country and powerfully affected the imagination of Europe as a whole:
I mean the triumphal march through Brussels.
Far more important than this display was the opening on the evening of
the same day, Thursday, August 20th, of the first fire against the
eastern defences of Namur. This fire was directed upon that evening
against the two and a half miles of trench between the forts of
Cognelee and Marchovelette, and in the morning of Friday, the 21st,
the trenches were given up, and the German infantry was within the
ring of forts north of the city. The point of Namur, as we shall see
in a moment, was twofold. First, its fortifications, so long as they
held out, commanded the crossings both of the Sambre and of the Meuse
within the angle of which the French defensive lay; secondly, its
fortified zone formed the support whereupon the whole French right
reposed. It was this unexpected collapse of the Belgian defence of
Namur which, coupled with the unexpected magnitude of the forces
Germany had been able to bring through the Belgian plain, determined
what was to follow.
Once Namur was entered, the reduction of the forts was not of
immediate importance, though it was immediately and successfully
achieved. For the German business was not here, as at Liege, to grasp
a railway within the zone of the fortifications, but to destroy the
buttress upon which the French depended for their defensive position,
and to prevent the French from holding the crossings over the two
rivers Sambre and Meuse at their junction.
With this entry of the Germans into Namur, their passage of the lines
upon Friday, August 21st, their capture of the bridgeheads on
Saturday, August 22nd, we reach the beginning of those great
operations which threatened for a moment to decide the war in the
West, and to establish the German Empire in that position to attain
which it had planned and forced the war upon its appointed day.
It behoves us before entering into the detail of this large affair to
see the plan of it clearly before our eyes.
* * * * *
I have already described that general conception underlying the whole
modern French school of strategy for which the best title (though one
liable to abuse by too mechanical an interpretation) is "the open
strategic square."
I have further warned the reader that, in spite of the way in which
the intricacy of organization inseparable from great masses and the
manifold disposition of a modern army will mask the general nature of
such an operation, that operation cannot be understood unless its
simplest lines are clear. I have further insisted that in practice
those lines remain only in the idea of the scheme of the whole, and
are not to be discovered save in the loosest way from the actual
positions of men upon the map.
We have seen that this "open strategic square" involved essentially
two conceptions--the fixed "operative corner" and the swinging
"manoeuvring masses."
The manoeuvring masses, at this moment when the great German blow fell
upon the Sambre and the Meuse, and when Namur went down immediately
before it, were (_a_) upon the frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine, (_b_)
in the centre of the country, (_c_) near the capital and to the west
of it, and even, some of them, upon the sea.
The operative corner was this group of armies before Namur on the
Sambre and Meuse, the 4th French Army under Langle, the 5th French
Army under Lanrezac, the British contingent under French.
We know from what has been written above in this book that it is the
whole business of an operative corner to "take on" superior numbers,
and to hold them as well as possible, even though compelled to
retreat, until the manoeuvring masses can swing and come up in aid,
and so pin the enemy.
We further know from what has gone before that the whole crux of this
manoeuvre lies in the power of the operative corner to stand the
shock.
It was the business of the French in this operative corner before
Namur and of their British Allies there to await and, if possible, to
withstand by a careful choice of position the first shock of enemies
who would certainly be numerically superior. It was the whole business
of the German commanders to make the shock overwhelming, in order that
the operative corner should be pounded to pieces, or should be
surrounded and annihilated before the manoeuvring masses could swing
up in aid. Should this destruction of the operative corner take place
before the manoeuvring masses behind it could swing, the campaign in
the West was lost to the Allies, and the Germans pouring in between
the still separated corners of the square were the masters for good.
It behoves us, therefore, if we desire to understand the campaign, to
grasp how this operative corner stood, upon what defences it relied,
in what force it was, what numbers it thought were coming against it,
and what numbers were, as a fact, coming against it.
To get all this clear, it is best to begin with a diagram.
Suppose two lines perpendicular one to the other, and therefore
forming a right angle, AB and BC. Suppose at their junction, B, a
considerable zone or segment, SSS, of a circle, as shaded in the
following diagram. Supposing the line AB to be protected along the
outer half of it, AK, by no natural obstacle--the state of affairs
which I have represented by a dotted line {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}; but suppose the second half of it,
KB, should be protected by a natural obstacle, though not a very
formidable one--such as I have represented by the continuous line
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}. Supposing the
perpendicular line BC to be protected by a really formidable natural
obstacle {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, and
supposing the shaded segment of the circle at B to represent a
fortified zone (1) accessible to any one within the angle KBC, as from
the arrow M; (2) inaccessible (until it was captured or forced) to any
one coming from outside the angle, as from the arrows NNN; (3)
containing within itself, protected by its ring of fortifications,
passages, PP, for traversing the two natural obstacles, {~GREEK SMALL
LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~} and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, which meet at the point {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER BETA~}.
[Illustration: Sketch 38.]
There you have the elements of the position in which the advance
corner of the great French square was situated just before it took the
shock of the main German armies. The two lines AB and BC are the French
and British armies lying behind the Sambre, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}, and the Middle Meuse, {~GREEK SMALL
LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, respectively; but the line
of the Sambre ceases to protect eastward along the dotted line {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~} beyond the point up to
which the river forms a natural obstacle, while from K to B the line is
protected by the river Sambre itself. The more formidable obstacle,
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, represents the
great trench or ravine of the Meuse which stretches south from Namur.
The town of Namur itself is at B, the junction of the two rivers; and
the fortified zone, SSS, is the ring of forts lying far out all round
Namur; while the passages, PP, over the obstacles contained within that
fortified zone, and accessible to the people _inside_ the angle from M,
but not to the people _outside_ the angle from NNN, are the bridges
across both the Sambre and the Meuse at Namur.
All this is, of course, put merely diagrammatically, and a diagram is
something very distant from reality. The "open strategic square" in
practice comes to mean little more than two main elements--one the
operative corner, the other a number of separate units disposed in all
sorts of different places behind, and generally denominated "the
manoeuvring mass." If you had looked down from above at all the French
armies towards the end of August, when the first great shock came, you
would have seen nothing remotely resembling a square.
[Illustration: Sketch 39.]
You would have seen something like Sketch 31 where the bodies enclosed
under the title A were the operative corner; various garrisons and
armies in the field, enclosed under the title B, were the manoeuvring
mass. But it is only by putting the matter quite clearly in the
abstract diagrammatic form that its principle can be grasped.
With this digression I will return and conclude with the main points
of debate in the use of the open strategic square.
We have seen that the operative corner is in this scheme deliberately
imperilled at the outset.
The following is a sketch map of the actual position, and it will be
seen that the topographical features of this countryside are fairly
represented by Sketch 39; while this other sketch shows how these
troops that were about to take the shock stood to the general mass of
the armies.
But to return to the diagram (which I repeat and amplify as Sketch
41), let us see how the Allied force in the operative corner before
Namur stood with relation to this angle of natural obstacles, the
two rivers Sambre and Meuse, and the fortified zone round the point
where they met.
[Illustration: Sketch 40.]
The situation of that force was as follows:--
[Illustration: Sketch 41.]
Along and behind {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
GAMMA~} stretched the 5th Army of the French, prolonged on its left by
the British contingent. I have marked the first in the diagram with the
figure 5, the second with the letters Br, and the latter portion I have
also shaded. At right angles to the French 5th Army stretched the
French 4th Army, which I have marked with the figure 4. It depended
upon the obstacle of the Meuse {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER DELTA~} for its defence, just as the French 5th Army depended
upon the Sambre, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
BETA~}. It must, of course, be understood that when one says these
forces "lay along" the aforesaid lines, one does not mean that they
merely lay behind them. One means that they held the bridges and
prepared to dispute the crossing of them.
Now, the French plan was as follows. They said to themselves: "There
will come against us an enemy acting along the arrows VWXYZ, and this
enemy will certainly be in superior force to our own. He will perhaps
be as much as fifty per cent. stronger than we are. But he will suffer
under these disadvantages:--
"The one part of his forces, V and W, will find it difficult to act in
co-operation with the other part of his forces, Y and Z, because Y and
Z (acting as they are on an outside circumference split by the
fortified zone SSS) will be separated, or only able to connect in a
long and roundabout way. The two lots, V and W, and Y and Z, could
only join hands by stretching round an awkward angle--that is, by
stretching round the bulge which SSS makes, SSS being the ring of
forts round Namur. Part of their forces (that along the arrow X) will
further be used up in trying to break down the resistance of SSS.
That will take a good deal of time. If our horizontal line AB holds
its own, naturally defended as it is, against the attack from V and W,
while our perpendicular line BC holds its own still more firmly
(relying on its much better natural obstacle) against YZ, we shall
have ample time to break the first and worst shock of the enemy's
attack, and to allow, once we have concentrated that attack upon
ourselves, the rest of our forces, the masses of manoeuvre, or at any
rate a sufficient portion of them, to come up and give us a majority
in _this_ part of the field. We shall still be badly outnumbered on
the line as a whole; but the resistance of our operative corner,
relying on the Sambre and Meuse and the fortress of Namur, will gather
much of the enemy unto itself. It will thus make of this part of the
field the critical district of the whole campaign. Our masses,
arriving while we resist, will give us a local superiority here which
will hold up the whole German line. We may even by great good luck so
break the shock of the attack as ourselves to begin taking the
counter-offensive after a little while, and to roll back either Y and
Z or V and W by the advance of our forces across the rivers when the
enemy has exhausted himself."
It will be clear that this calculation (whether of the expected and
probable least favourable issue--a lengthy defence followed by an
orderly and slow retreat designed to allow the rest of the armies to
come up--or of the improbable and more favourable issue--the taking of
the counter-offensive) depended upon two presumptions which the
commander of the Allies had taken for granted: (1) that the German
shock would not come in more than a certain admitted maximum, say
thirty per cent. superiority at the most over the Allied forces at
this particular point; (2) that the ring of forts round Namur would be
able to hold out for at least three or four days, and thus absorb the
efforts of part of the enemy as well as awkwardly divide his forces,
while that enemy's attack was being delivered.
Both these presumptions were erroneous. The enemy, as we shall see in
a moment, came on in much larger numbers than had been allowed for.
Namur, as we have already seen, fell, not in three or four days, but
instantly--the moment it was attacked. And the result was that,
instead of an orderly and slow retirement, sufficiently tardy to
permit of the swinging up of the rest of the French "square"--that is,
of the arrival of the other armies or manoeuvring masses--there came
as a fact the necessity for very rapid retirement of the operative
corner over more than one hundred miles and the immediate peril for
days of total disaster to it.
To appreciate how superior the enemy proved to be in number, and how
heavy the miscalculation here was, we must first see what the numbers
of this Allied operative corner were.
I have in Sketch 42 indicated the approximate positions and relative
sizes of the three parts of the Allied forces.
Beginning from the left, we have barely two army corps actually
present of the British contingent in the fighting line: for certain
contingents of the outermost army corps had not yet arrived. We may
perhaps call the numbers actually present at French's command when
contact was taken 70,000 men, but that is probably beyond the mark.
To the east lay the 5th French Army, three army corps amounting, say,
to 120,000 men, and immediately south of this along the Meuse lay the
4th French Army, another three army corps amounting to at the most
another 120,000 men.
We may then call the whole of the operative corner (if we exclude
certain cavalry reserves far back, which never came into play) just
over 300,000 men. That there were as many as 310,000 is improbable.
The French calculation was that against these 300,000 men there would
arrive at the very most 400,000.
That, of course, meant a heavy superiority in number for the enemy;
but, as we have seen, the scheme allowed for such an inconvenience at
the first contact.
That more than 400,000 could strike in the region of Namur no one
believed, for no one believed that the enemy could provision and
organize transport for more than that number.
A very eminent English critic had allowed for seven army corps of
first-line men as all that could be brought across the Belgian Plain.
The French went so far as to allow for ten, a figure represented by
the 400,000 men of the enemy they expected.
We had then the Allied forces expecting an attack in about the
superiority indicated upon this diagram, where the British contingent
and the two French armies are marked in full, and the supposed enemy
in dotted lines.
[Illustration: Sketch 42.]
Roughly speaking, the Allies were allowing for a thirty per cent.
superiority.
Now, lying as they did behind the rivers, and with the ring of forts
around Namur to shield their point of junction and to split the
enemy's attack, this superiority, though heavy, was not crushing. The
hopes of the defensive that it would stand firm, or at least retire
slowly so as to give time for the manoeuvring masses to come up was,
under this presumption, just. It was even thought possible that, if
the enemy attacked too blindly and spent himself too much, the
counter-offensive might be taken after the first two or three days.
As for the remainder of the German forces, it was believed that they
were stretched out very much in even proportion, without any thin
places, from the Meuse to Alsace.
Now, as a matter of fact, the German forces were in no such
disposition. 1. The Germans had added to every army corps a reserve
division. 2. They had brought through the Belgian plains a very much
larger number than seven army corps: they had brought nine. 3. They
had further brought against Namur yet another four army corps through
the Ardennes, the woods of which helped to hide their progress from
air reconnaissance. To all this mass of thirteen army corps, each
army corps half as large again as the active or first line allowed
for, add some imperfectly trained but certainly large bodies of
independent cavalry. We cannot accurately say what the total numbers
of this vast body were, but we can be perfectly certain that more than
700,000 men were massed in this region of Namur. The enemy was coming
on, not four against three, but certainly seven against three, and
perhaps eight or even nine against three.
The real situation was that given in the accompanying diagram (Sketch
43).
Five corps, each with its extra division, were massed under von Kluck,
and called the 1st German Army. Four more, including the Guards, were
present with von Buelow, and stretched up to and against the first
defences of Namur. Now, around the corner of that fortress, two Saxon
corps, a Wurtemberg corps, a Magdeburg corps, and a corps of reserve
under the Duke of Wurtemberg formed the 3rd Army, the right wing of
which opposed the forts of Namur, the rest of which stretched along
the line of the Meuse.
Even if the forts of Namur had held out, the position of so hopelessly
inferior a body as was the Franco-British force, in face of such
overwhelming numbers, would have been perilous in the extreme. With
the forts of Namur abandoned almost at the first blow, the peril was
more than a peril. It had become almost certain disaster.
[Illustration: Sketch 43.]
With the fall of Namur, the angle between the rivers--that is, the
crossings of the rivers at their most difficult part where they were
broadest--was in the hands of the enemy, and the whole French body,
the 4th and 5th Armies, was at some time on that Saturday falling
back.
The exact hour and the details of that movement we do not yet know. We
do not know what loss the French sustained, we do not know whether any
considerable bodies were cut off. We do not know even at what hour the
French General Staff decided that the position was no longer tenable,
and ordered the general retreat.
All we know is that, so far from being able to hold out two or three
days against a numerical superiority of a third and under the buttress
of Namur, the operative corner, with Namur fallen and, not 30 per
cent., but something more like 130 per cent. superiority against it,
began not the slow retreat that had been envisaged, but a retirement
of the most rapid sort.
Such a retirement was essential if the cohesion of the Allied forces
was to be maintained at all, and if the combined 4th and 5th French
Armies and British contingent were to escape being surrounded or
pierced.
By the Saturday night at latest the French retirement was ordered; by
Sunday morning it was in full progress, and it was proceeding
throughout the triangle of the Thierarche all that day.
But the rate of that retirement, corresponding to the pressure upon
the French front, differed very much with varying sections of the
line. It was heaviest, of course, in those advanced bodies which had
lain just under Namur. It was least at the two ends of the bow, for
the general movement was on to the line Maubeuge-Mezieres. The farther
one went east towards Maubeuge, the slower was the necessary movement,
and to this cause of delay must be added the fact that von Kluck,
coming round by the extreme German line, had farthest to go, and
arrived latest against the line of the Allies.
Therefore the British contingent at the western extreme of the Allied
line felt the shock latest of all, and all that Sunday morning the
British were still occupied in taking up their positions. They had
arrived but just in time for what was to follow.
It was not till the early afternoon of the Sunday that contact was
first taken seriously between Sir John French and von Kluck. At that
moment the British commander believed, both from a general and
erroneous judgment which the French command had tendered him and from
his own air work, that he had in front of him one and a half or at the
most two army corps; and though the force, as we shall see in a
moment, was far larger, its magnitude did not appear as the afternoon
wore on. Full contact was established perhaps between three and four,
by which hour the pressure was beginning to be severely felt, and upon
the extreme right of the line it had already been necessary to take up
defensive positions a little behind those established in the morning.
But by five o'clock, with more than two good hours of daylight before
it, the British command, though perhaps already doubtful whether the
advancing masses of the enemy did not stand for more men, and
especially for more guns than had been expected, was well holding its
own, when all its dispositions were abruptly changed by an unexpected
piece of news.
It was at this moment in the afternoon--that is, about five
o'clock--that the French General Staff communicated to Sir John French
information bearing two widely different characteristics: the first
that it came late; the second that had it not come when it did, the
whole army, French as well as British, would have been turned.
The first piece of information, far too belated, was the news that
Namur had fallen, and that the enemy had been in possession of the
bridge-heads over the Sambre and the Meuse since the preceding day,
Saturday. Consequent upon this, the enemy had been able to effect the
passage of the Sambre, not only in Namur itself, but in its immediate
neighbourhood, and, such passages once secured, it was but a question
of time for the whole line to fall into the enemy's hands. When
superior numbers have passed one end of an obstacle it is obvious that
the rest of the obstacle gradually becomes useless.[3] At what hour
the French knew that they had to retire, we have not been told. As we
have seen, the enemy was right within Namur on the early afternoon of
Saturday, the 22nd, and it is to be presumed that the French
retirement was in full swing by the Sunday morning, in which case the
British contingent, which this retirement left in peril upon the
western extreme of the line, ought to have been warned many hours
before five o'clock in the afternoon.
To what the delay was due we are again as yet in ignorance, but
probably to the confusion into which the unexpected fall of Namur and
the equally unexpected strength of the enemy beyond the Sambre and the
Meuse had thrown the French General Staff.
At any rate, the news did come thus late, and its lateness was of
serious consequence to the British contingent, and might have been
disastrous to it.
The second piece of news, on the other hand, was the saving of it; and
that second piece of news was the information that Sir John French had
in front of him not one German army corps, and possibly part or even
the whole of a second, but at least three. As the matter turned out,
the British contingent was really dealing first and last with four
army corps, and the essential part of the news conveyed was that the
extreme western portion of this large German force _was attempting to
turn the flank of the whole army_.
It was not only attempting to do so, it was in number sufficient to do
so; and unless prompt measures were taken, what was now discovered to
be the general German plan would succeed, and the campaign in the
West would be in two days decided adversely to the Allies--the same
space of time in which the campaign of 1815 was decided adversely to
Napoleon in just these same country-sides.
It is here necessary to describe what this German plan was.
The reader has already seen, when the general principles of the open
strategic square were described on a previous page, that everything
depends upon the fate of the operative corner. This operative corner
in the present campaign had turned out to be the two French armies,
the 4th and the 5th, upon the Lower Sambre and the Meuse, and the
British contingent lying to the left of the 5th on the Upper Sambre
and by Mons.
If the operative corner of a strategic open square is annihilated as a
military force, or so seriously defeated that it can offer no
effective opposition for some days, then the whole plan of a strategic
square breaks to pieces, and the last position of the inferior forces
which have adopted it is worse than if they had not relied upon the
manoeuvre at all, but had simply spread out in line to await defeat
in bulk at the hands of their superior enemy.
Now there are two ways in which a military force can be disposed of by
its opponent. There are two ways in which it can be--to use the rather
exaggerated language of military history--"annihilated."
The first is this: You can break up its cohesion by a smashing blow
delivered somewhere along its line, and preferably near its centre.
But if you do that, the results will never be quite complete, and may
be incomplete in any degree according to the violence and success of
your blow.
The second way is to get round the enemy with your superior numbers,
to get past his flank, to the back of him, and so envelop him. If that
manoeuvre is carried out successfully, you bag his forces entire. It
is to this second manoeuvre that modern Prussian strategy and tactics
are particularly attached. It is obvious that its fruits are far more
complete than those of the first manoeuvre, when, or if, it is wholly
successful. For to get round your enemy and bag him whole is a larger
result than merely to break him up and leave _some_ of him able to
re-form and perhaps fight again. Two things needful to such success
are (_a_) superior numbers, save in case of gross error upon the part
of the opponents; (_b_) great rapidity of action on the part of the
outflanking body, coupled, if possible, with surprise. That rapidity
of action is necessary is obvious; for the party on the flank has got
to go much farther than the rest of the army. It has to go all the
length of the arrow (1), and an element of surprise is usually
necessary. For if the army AA which BB was trying to outflank learned
of the manoeuvre in time he only has to retreat upon his left by the
shorter arrow (2) to escape from the threatened clutch.
[Illustration: Sketch 45.]
Now, von Kluck with his five army corps, four of which were in
operation against Sir John French, was well able to count on all
these elements. He had highly superior numbers, his superiority had
not been discovered until it was almost too late, and for rapidity of
action he had excellent railways and a vast equipment of petrol
vehicles.
What he proposed to do was, while engaging the British contingent of
less than two army corps with three full army corps of his own, to
swing his extreme western army corps right round, west through
Tournai, and so turn the British line. If he succeeded in doing that,
he had at the same time succeeded in turning the whole of the
Franco-British forces on the Sambre and Meuse. In other words, he was
in a fair way to accomplishing the destruction of the operative corner
of the great square, and consequently, as a last result, the
destruction of the whole Allied force in the West.
The thing may be represented on a sketch map in this form.
Of von Kluck's five corps, 1 is operating against the junction of the
English and French lines beyond Binche, 2, 3, and 4 are massing
against the rather more than one and a half of Sir John French at AA,
and 5, after the capture of Tournai, is going to take a big sweep
round in the direction of the arrow towards Cambrai, and so to turn
the whole line. Meanwhile, the cavalry, still farther west, acting
independently, is to sweep the country right out to Arras and beyond.
[Illustration: Sketch 46.]
The particular titles of corps are of no great value in following the
leading main lines of a military movement; but it may be worth
remembering that this "number 5," to which von Kluck had allotted the
turning movement, was the _Second_ German Corps. With its cavalry it
numbered alone (and apart from all the other forces of von Kluck which
were engaging the British line directly) quite three-quarters as many
men as all that British line for the moment mustered.
It was not possible, from local circumstances which the full history
of the war, when it is written, will explain, for the British
contingent to fall back in the remaining hours of daylight upon that
Sunday.
Belated by at the most twelve hours, as the news of the French
retirement had been, the British retirement followed it fully twenty
hours after. It was not until daylight of Monday, the 24th, that all
the organizations for this retirement were completed, the plans drawn
up, and the first retrograde movements made.
To permit a retirement before such a great superiority of the enemy to
be made without disaster, it was necessary to counter-attack not only
at this inception of the movement, but throughout all the terrible
strain of the ensuing eight days.
Here it may be necessary to explain why, in any retirement, continual
counter-attacks on the pursuing enemy are necessary.
It is obvious that, under equal conditions, the pursuing enemy can
advance as fast as can your own troops which are retreating before
him. If, therefore, a retreat, once contact has been established,
consisted in merely walking away from the enemy, that enemy would be
able to maintain a ceaseless activity against one portion of your
united force--its rear--which activity would be exercised against
bodies on the march, and incapable of defence. To take but one example
out of a hundred: his guns would be always unlimbering, shooting at
you, then limbering up again to continue the pursuit; unlimbering
again, shooting again--and so forth; while your guns would never
reply, being occupied in an unbroken retirement, and therefore
continually limbered up and useless behind their teams.
A retiring force, therefore, of whatever size--from a company to an
army--can only safely effect its retirement by detaching one fraction
from its total which shall hold up the pursuit for a time while the
main body gets away.
When this detached fraction is wearied or imperilled, another fraction
relieves it, taking up the same task in its turn; the first fraction,
which had hitherto been checking the pursuit, falls back rapidly on to
the main body, under cover of the new rearguard's fire as it turns to
face the enemy. And the process is kept up, first one, then another
portion of the whole force being devoted to it, until the retirement
of the whole body has been successfully effected, and it is well ahead
of its pursuers and secure.
[Illustration: Sketch 47.]
For example: two White army corps, I., II., as in the annexed diagram,
each of two divisions, 1, 2, and 3, 4, have to retire before a greatly
superior Black force, _abcde_. They succeed in retiring by the action
expressed in the following diagram. White corps No. I. first
undertakes to hold up the enemy while No. II. makes off. No. I.
detaches one division for the work (Division 2), and for a short time
it checks the movement of _a_, _b_, and _c_, at least, of the enemy.
Now _d_ and _e_ press on. But they cannot press on at any pace they
choose, for an army must keep together, and the check to _a_, _b_, and
_c_ somewhat retards _d_ and _e_. They advance, say, to the positions
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}.
[Illustration: Sketch 48.]
Next, White corps No. II. stops, puts out one of its divisions (say 4)
to check _d_ and _e_, while its other division either helps or falls
back, according to the severity of the pressure, and White corps No.
I. makes off as fast as it can. _a_, _b_, _c_, no longer checked by a
White rearguard, are nevertheless retarded from two causes--first,
the delay already inflicted on them; secondly, that they must not, if
the army is to keep together, get too far ahead of their colleagues,
_d_ and _e_, which White corps II. is holding up.
[Illustration: Sketch 49.]
Thus, on the second or third day the retreat of White is being secured
by an increasing gap between pursued and pursuers. The process is
continued. Every succeeding day--if that process is successful--should
further widen the gap until White can feel free from immediate
pressure.
Such is the principle--modified indefinitely in practice by variations
of ground and numbers--under which a retirement must be conducted if
it is to have any hope of ultimate success in saving the pursued.
But it is clear that the process must always be a perilous one. Unless
the most careful co-ordination is maintained between the moving parts
of the retreat; unless the rearguard in each action falls back only
_just upon_ and not a _little while after_ the precise moment when it
can last safely do so; unless the new rearguard comes into play in
time, etc., etc.--the pursuers may get right in among the pursued and
break their cohesion; or they may get round them, cut them off, and
compel them to surrender. In either case the retreating force ceases
to exist as an army.
In proportion as the pursuers are numerous (mobility being equal)
compared with the pursued, in that proportion is the peril. And with
the best luck in the world some units are sure to be cut off, many
guns lost, all stragglers and nearly all wounded abandoned in the
course of a pressed retreat, and, above all, there will be the
increasing discouragement and bewilderment of the men as the strain,
the losses, and the ceaseless giving way before the enemy continue day
after day with cumulative effect.
The accomplishment of such a task, the maintenance of the "operative
corner" in being during its ordeal of retreat before vastly superior
numbers, and in particular the exceedingly perilous retirement of the
British contingent at what was, during the first part of the strain,
the extreme of the line, are what we are now about to follow.
The initial counter-attack, then, on this Monday, the first day of the
retreat, was undertaken by the 2nd British Division from the region of
Harmignies, which advanced as though with the object of retaking
Binche. The demonstration was supported by all the artillery of the
1st Army Corps, while the 1st Division, lying near Peissant, supported
this action of the 2nd. While that demonstration was in full activity,
the 2nd Corps to the west or left (not all of it was yet in the field)
retired on to the line Dour-Frameries, passing through Quaregnon. It
suffered some loss in this operation from the masses of the enemy,
which were pressing forward from Mons. When the 2nd Corps had thus
halted on the line Dour-Frameries, the 1st Corps, which had been
making the demonstration, took the opportunity to retire in its turn,
and fell back before the evening to a line stretching from Bavai to
Maubeuge.
[Illustration: Sketch 50.]
The 2nd Corps had entrenched itself, while the 1st Corps was thus
falling back upon its right; and when it came to the turn of the 2nd
Corps to play the part of rearguard in these alternate movements, the
effort proved to be one of grave peril.
[Illustration: Sketch 51.]
Since the whole movement of the enemy was an outflanking movement,
the pressure upon this left and extreme end of the line was
particularly severe. The German advance in such highly superior
numbers overlapped the two British corps to _their_ left or west,
which was at this moment the extreme end of the Allied Franco-British
line. They overlapped them as these pursuing Black units overlap the
lesser retiring White units. It is evident that in such a case the
last unit in the line at A will be suffering the chief burden of the
attack. An attempt was made to relieve that burden by sending the and
Cavalry Brigade in this direction to ride round the enemy's outlying
body; but the move failed, with considerable loss to the 9th Lancers
and the 18th Hussars, which came upon wire entanglements five hundred
yards from the enemy's position. There did arrive in aid of the
imperilled end of the line reinforcement in the shape of a new body.
One infantry brigade, the 19th, which had hitherto been upon the line
of communications, reached the army on this its central left near
Quarouble and a little behind that village before the morning was
spent. It was in line before evening. This reinforcement lent some
strength to the sorely tried 2nd Corps, but it had against it still
double its own strength in front, and half as much again upon its
exposed left or western flank, and it suffered heavily.
By the night of that Monday, the 24th of August, however, the whole of
the British Army was again in line, and stretched from Maubeuge, which
protected its right, through Bavai, on to the fields between the
villages of Jenlain and Bry, where the fresh 19th Infantry Brigade had
newly arrived before the evening, while beyond this extreme left again
was the cavalry.
The whole operation, then, of that perilous Monday, the first day of
the retreat, may be planned in general as in Sketch 52. At the
beginning, at daybreak, you have the three German army corps lying as
the shaded bodies are given opposite to the unshaded, which represent
the British contingent of not quite two full army corps. By nightfall
the British contingent, including now the 19th Brigade of infantry,
lay in the positions from Maubeuge westward, with the 1st Corps next
to Maubeuge, the 2nd Corps beyond Bavai, the 1st being commanded by
Sir Douglas Haig, the 2nd by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien; while the
Germans lay more or less as the dotted shaded markings are.
The fortress of Maubeuge was, under these circumstances, clearly a
lure. An army in the field in danger of envelopment will always be
tempted to make for the nearest fortified zone in order to save
itself. The British commander was well advised in his judgment to
avoid this opportunity, and that for two reasons. First, that the
locking up of any considerable portion of the Anglo-French force in
its retirement would have jeopardized the chance of that
counter-offensive which the French hoped sooner or later to initiate;
secondly, that, as will be seen later, the works of Maubeuge were
quite insufficient to resist for more than a few days a modern siege
train.
[Illustration: Sketch 52.]
This point of Maubeuge and of its fall must be discussed later; for
the moment all we need note is that the fortress afforded for a few
hours--that is, during the night of Monday to Tuesday, the 24th-25th
August--support to the British line during its first halt upon the
rapid and perilous retirement from Mons.
Meanwhile the whole of the French 5th Army had been falling back with
equal rapidity, and upon its right the 4th Army had followed soon; and
as this French retirement had preceded the retirement of the British,
its general line lay farther south.
On the other hand, from the nature of the topography in this section
of the Franco-Belgian border, the units of the French command had to
fall back farther and more rapidly in proportion as they stretched
eastward. The attack of the enemy in forces of rather more than two to
one had come, as we have seen, not only from across the line of the
Sambre, but, once Namur had fallen, from across the line of the Meuse
at right angles to the line of the Sambre. Therefore the 5th and the
4th Armies, contained within the triangle bounded by the Sambre and
Meuse, retiring from blows struck from the direction of the arrows 1-5
over all that hilly and wooded country known as the Thierache, were,
as to the extreme salient of them at A, compelled to a very rapid
retirement indeed; and on this Sunday night the French line was
deflected southward, not without heavy losses, until either on that
night or on the Monday morning it joined up with the forces which
stretched northward through and from Mezieres. An attempt to
counter-attack through the precipitous ravines and deep woods on to
the valley of the Semois had failed, and the line as a whole ran, upon
this night between the Sunday and the Monday, much as is indicated
upon the accompanying sketch.
[Illustration: Sketch 53.]
From this it will be seen that the British contingent away upon the
extreme left was in very grave peril, not only because the turning
movement was wholly directed round their exposed flank, but also
because, their retirement having come late, they stood too far forward
in the general scheme at this moment, and therefore more exposed to
the enemy's blow than the rest of the line. With this it must be
remembered Tournai had already fallen. It was very imperfectly held by
a French Territorial brigade, accompanied by one battery of English
guns; and the entering German force, in a superiority of anything you
like--two, three, or four to one--easily swept away the resistance
proffered in this quarter.
These German forces from Tournai had not yet, by the nightfall of
Monday, come up eastward against the British, but they were on the
way, and they might appear at any moment. The corps next to them, the
4th of von Kluck's five, was already operating upon that flank, and
the next day, Wednesday, 26th of August, was to be the chief day of
trial for this exposed British wing of the army.
So far the operations of the British Army had not differed greatly
from the expected or at least one of the expected developments of the
campaign.
The operative corner, if it should not have the luck, through losses
or blunders on the part of the enemy, to take the counter-offensive
after receiving the third shock, is intended to retire, and to draw
upon itself a maximum of the enemy's efforts.
But between what had been intended as the most probable, and in any
case perilous, task of this body (which comprised, it will be
remembered, six French and ultimately two British army corps) turned
out, within twenty-four hours of the retreat, and within forty-eight
of the fall of Namur, to be an operation of a difficulty so extreme as
to imperil the whole campaign, and in this operation it was the
British force upon the outer left edge of the line--the unsupported
extremity round which the enemy made every effort to get--which was
bound to receive the severest treatment. This peculiar burden laid
upon the Expeditionary Force from this country was, of course, gravely
increased by the delay in beginning its retreat, which we have seen to
be due to the delay in the communication to it by the French of the
news of the fall of Namur. On account of this delay not only was the
extreme of the line which the British held immediately threatened with
outflanking, but it still lay somewhat forward of the rest of the
force. It was in danger of being turned round its exposed edge C, not
only because it lay on the extreme of the line, but also because,
instead of occupying its normal position, AB, which it would have
occupied had the retreat begun with all the rest, it actually occupied
the position CD, which made it far more likely to be surrounded than
if it had been a day's march farther back, as it would have been if
the French Staff work had suffered no delays.
[Illustration: Sketch 54.]
There lay in the gap formed by this untoward tardiness in the British
retirement, at the point M, the fortress of Maubeuge. It was
garrisoned by French reserves, or Territorial troops, not of the same
quality as the active army, and its defensive power was, even if the
old ring of fortress theory had proved sound, of very doubtful order.
The French 5th Army being no longer present to support the British
right, but having fallen back behind the alignment of that right,
General Sir John French had no support for what should have been his
secure flank save this fortress of Maubeuge, and it will be evident
from the above diagram that the enemy, should he succeed in
outflanking the British line, would compel it to fall back within the
ring of forts surrounding Maubeuge. To avoid destruction it would have
no alternative but to do that. For, counting the forces in front of it
and the forces trying to get round its back, it was fighting odds of
two to one.
Maubeuge was a stronghold that had played a great part in the
revolutionary war. Its resistance in the month of October 1793 had
made possible the French victory of Wattigines, just outside its
walls, and had, perhaps, done more than any other feat of arms in that
year to save the French Revolution from the allied governments of
Europe. It was, indeed, full of historic memories, from the moment
when Caesar had defeated the Nervii upon the Sambre just to the west of
the town (his camp can still be traced in an open field above the
river bank) to the invasion of 1815.
But this role which it had played throughout French history had not
led to any illusion with regard to the role it might play in any
modern war; and at the best Maubeuge, in common with the other
ill-fortified points of the Belgian frontier, suffered from the only
error--and that a grave one--which their thorough unnational political
system had imposed upon the military plan of the French. This error
was the capital error of indecision. No consistent plan had been
adopted with regard to the fortification of the Belgian frontier.
The French had begun, after the recuperation following upon the war of
1870, an elaborate and very perfect system of fortification along
their German frontier--that is, along the new frontier which divided
the annexed territory of Alsace-Lorraine from the rest of the country.
They had taken it for granted that the next German attempt would be
made somewhere between Longwy and Belfort. And they had spent in this
scheme of fortification, first and last, the cost of a great campaign.
They had spent some three hundred million pounds; and it will be
possible for the reader to gauge the magnitude of this effort if he
will consider that it was a military operation more costly than was
the whole of the South African War to Great Britain, or of the
Manchurian War to Russia. The French were wise to have undertaken this
expense, because it had hitherto been an unheard-of offence against
European morals that one nation in Christendom should violate the
declared neutrality of another. And the attack upon Belgium as a means
of invading France by Germany had not then crossed the mind of any but
a few theorists who had, so to speak, "marched ahead" of the rapid
decline in our common religion which had marked now three
generations.
But when the French had completed this scheme of fortification, Europe
heard it proposed by certain authorities in Prussia that, as the cost
of invading France through the now fortified zone would be
considerable, the German forces should not hesitate to originate yet
another step in the breakdown of European morality, and to sacrifice
in their attack upon France the neutrality of Belgium, of which
Prussia was herself a guarantor.
Men have often talked during this war, especially in England, as
though the crime accompanying Prussian activities in the field were
normal to warfare; and this error is probably due to the fact that war
upon a large scale has never come home to the imagination of the
country, and that it is without experience of invasion.
Yet it is of the very first importance to appreciate the truth that
Prussia in this campaign has postulated in one point after another new
doctrines which repudiate everything her neighbours have held sacred
from the time when a common Christianity first began to influence the
states of Europe. The violation of the Belgian territory is on a par
with the murder of civilians in cold blood, and after admission of
their innocence, with the massacre of priests, and the sinking without
warning of unarmed ships with their passengers and crews. To regard
these things as something normal to warfare in the past is as
monstrous an historical error as it would be to regard the reign of
terror during the French Revolution as normal to civil disputes within
the State. And to appreciate such a truth is, I repeat, of especial
moment to the understanding of the mere military character of the
campaign. For if the violation of Belgium in particular had not been
the unheard of thing it was, the fortification of the Franco-Belgian
frontier with which we are here concerned would have had a very
different fortune.
As it was, the French could never quite make up their minds--or rather
the French parliamentarians could never make up their minds--upon the
amount of money that might wisely be expended in the defence of this
neutral border. There were moments when the opinion that Prussia
would be restrained by no fear of Europe prevailed among the
professional politicians of Paris. The fortification of the Belgian
frontier was undertaken in such moments; a full plan of it was drawn
up. But again doubt would succeed, the very large sums involved would
appal some new ministry, and the effort would be interrupted. To such
uncertainty of aim characteristic of parliamentary government in a
military nation was added, unfortunately, the consideration of the
line of the Meuse. Liege and Namur were fortresses of peculiar
strength, Antwerp was thought the strongest thing in Europe; and that
triangle was conceived, even by many who believed that the violation
of Belgian territory would take place, as affording a sufficient
barrier against the immediate invasion of France from the north-east.
Those who made this calculation did not forget that fortresses are
nothing without their full complement of men, guns, and stores; but
they could neither control, nor had they the elements properly to
appreciate, the deficiency of organization in a foreign and not
military country.
For all these causes Maubeuge, in common with other points along the
Belgian frontier less important than itself, was left imperfect. Even
if the ring fortress had remained after 1905 what it had been before
that date, and even if modern howitzer fire and modern high explosives
had not rendered its tenure one of days rather than months, Maubeuge
was not a first-class fortress. As it was, with fortifications
unrenewed, and with the ring fortress in any case doomed, Maubeuge was
a death-trap.
The role assigned to the fortress in the original French plan was no
more than the support of the retiring operative corner, as it
"retreated, manoeuvred, and held the enemy." Maubeuge was considered
as part of a line beyond which the operative corner would not have to
fall before the rest of the square, the "manoeuvring mass," had swung
up. Hence it was that the French General Staff and its Chief had put
within the ring of its insufficient forts nothing more than a garrison
of Territorials--that is, of the older classes of the reserve.
Had the British General accepted the lure of Maubeuge as Bazaine did
the lure of Metz in 1870, the Expeditionary Force would have been
destroyed. But it would have been destroyed, not after a long delay,
as was the army at Metz, but immediately; for Maubeuge was not Metz,
and the fortress power of resistance of to-day is not that of a
generation ago. Maubeuge, as a fact, fell within a fortnight of the
date when this temptation was offered to the sorely pressed British
army, and had that temptation been yielded to, the whole force would
have been, in a military sense, annihilated before the middle of
September.
What preserved it was the immediate decision undertaken upon that
Monday night to proceed, in spite of the fatigues that were already
felt after the first day's retreat, with a retirement upon the
south-west, and to proceed with it as vigorously as possible.
It was not yet daylight upon the morning of Tuesday, August 25th, when
the move began. The Field-Marshal counted justly upon some exhaustion
in his immensely superior enemy, especially in those troops of his
upon the west (the 2nd German Corps) which had to perform the heavy
marching task of getting round the end of the British line. This
element, combined with the considerable distance which the British
marched that morning, saved the army; though not until another week of
almost intolerable suffering had passed, and not until very heavy
losses indeed had been sustained. The great Maubeuge-Bavai road, which
is prolonged to Eth, and which was, roughly, the British front of that
night, was cleared shortly after sunrise. A couple of brigades of
cavalry and the divisional cavalry of the 2nd Corps covered the
operation on the centre of the right, in front of the main body of the
2nd Corps, while the rest of the cavalry similarly covered the exposed
western edge and corner of the line.
Delays, with the criticism of which this short summary has no concern,
had forbidden the whole force which should have been present with the
British Army in Flanders at the outset of the campaign to arrive in
time, and the contingents that had already come up had taken the
shock, as we have already described, in the absence of the 4th
Division. This 4th Division had only begun to detrain from the
junction at Le Cateau at the same hour that General Sir John French
was reading that Sunday message which prompted his immediate
retirement from before Mons. When the full official history of the war
comes to be written, few things will prove of more credit to the
Expeditionary Force and its command than the way in which this belated
division--belated through no fault of the soldiers--was incorporated
with the already existing organization, in the very midst of its
retreat, and helped to support the army. There are few parallels in
history to the successful accomplishment of so delicate and perilous
an operation.
At any rate, in less than forty-eight hours after its arrival, the 4th
Division--eleven battalions and a brigade of artillery--were
incorporated with the British line just as the whole force was falling
back upon this Tuesday morning, the 25th; and the newly arrived
division of fresh men did singular service in the further covering of
the retirement. General Snow, who was in command of this division,
was deployed upon a line running from just south of Solesmes, on the
right, to a point just south of La Chatrie, upon the road from Cambrai
to Le Cateau, upon his left; and, as will be seen by the accompanying
sketch map, such a line effectually protected the falling back of the
rest of the force. Behind it the 1st and the 2nd British Corps fell
back upon the line Cambrai to Landrecies. The small inset map shows
how the various points in this two days' retreat stood to one another.
[Illustration: Sketch 55.]
This line from Landrecies towards Cambrai had already been in part
prepared in the course of that day--Tuesday--and entrenched, and it
may be imagined what inclination affected commanders and men towards
a halt upon that position. The pressure had been continuous and heavy,
the work of detraining and setting in line the newly arrived division
had added to the anxieties of the day, and an occupation of the
prepared line seemed to impose itself. Luckily, the unwisdom of such a
stand in the retirement was perceived in time, and the British
Commander decided not to give his forces rest until some considerable
natural object superior to imperfect and hurriedly constructed
trenches could be depended upon to check the enemy's advance. The
threat of being outflanked was still very grave, and the few hours'
halt which would have been involved in the alternative decision might,
or rather would, have been fatal.
The consequences, however, to the men of this decision in favour of
continual retirement were severe. The 1st Corps did not reach
Landrecies till ten o'clock at night. They had been upon the move for
eighteen hours; but even so, the enemy, in that avalanche of advance
(which was possible to him, as we now know, by the organization of
mechanical transport), was well in touch. The Guards in Landrecies
itself (the 4th Brigade) were attacked by the advance body of the 9th
German Army Corps, which came on in overwhelming numbers right into
the buildings of the town, debouching from the wood to the north under
cover of the darkness. Their effort was unsuccessful. They did not
succeed in piercing or even in decisively confusing the British line
at this point; and, packed in the rather narrow street of Landrecies,
the enemy suffered losses equivalent to a battalion in that desperate
night fighting. But though the enemy here failed to achieve his
purpose, his action compelled the continued retreat of men who were
almost at the limit of exhaustion, and who had now been marching and
fighting for the better part of twenty-four hours.
In that same darkness the 1st Division, under Sir Douglas Haig, was
heavily engaged south-east of Maroilles. They obtained ultimately the
aid of two French reserve divisions which lay upon the right of the
British line, and extricated themselves from the peril they were in
before dawn. By daylight this 1st Corps was still continuing its
retirement in the direction of Wassigny, with Guise as its objective.
[Illustration: Sketch 56.]
Meanwhile the 2nd Corps, which had not been so heavily attacked, and
which lay to the west--that is, still upon the extreme of the
line--had come, before the sunset of that Tuesday, the 25th, into a
line stretching from Le Cateau to near Caudry, and thence prolonged by
the 4th Division towards Seranvillers.
[Illustration: Sketch 57.]
It will be seen that this line was bent--its left refused. This
disposition was, of course, designed to meet the ceaseless German
attempt to outflank on the west; and with the dawn of Wednesday, the
26th, it was already apparent how serious would be the task before
this 2nd Corps, which covered all the rest of the army, and, in a
sense, the whole of the Anglo-French retirement. General Sir Horace
Smith-Dorrien, who was here in command, was threatened with a disaster
that might carry in its train disaster to the whole British
contingent, and ultimately, perhaps, to the whole Franco-British line.
Although the German bodies which were attempting the outflanking had
not yet all come up, the field artillery of no less than four German
corps was already at work against this one body, and a general action
was developing upon which might very well depend the fate of the
campaign. Indeed, the reader will do well to fix his attention upon
this day, Wednesday, the 26th August, as the key to all that followed.
There are always to be found, in the history of war, places and times
which are of this character--nuclei, as it were, round which the
business of all that comes before and after seems to congregate. Of
such, for instance, was the Friday before Waterloo, when Erlon's
counter-orders ultimately decided the fate of Napoleon; and of such
was Carnot's night march on October 15, 1793, which largely decided
the fate of the revolutionary army.
The obvious action to take in such a position as that in which the 2nd
Corps found themselves was to break contact with the enemy, to call
for support from the 1st Corps, and to maintain the retreat as
indefatigably as it had already been maintained in the preceding
twenty-four hours.
But men have limits to their physical powers, which limits commonly
appear sharply, not gradually, at the end of a great movement. The 1st
Corps had been marching and fighting a day and a night, and that after
a preceding whole day of retirement from before Mons. It was unable to
execute a further effort. Further, the general in command of the 2nd
Corps reported that the German pressure had advanced too far to permit
of breaking contact in the face of such an attack.
It would have been of the utmost use if at this moment a large body of
French cavalry--no less than three divisions--under General Sordet,
could have intervened upon that critical moment, the morning of
Wednesday, the 26th, to have covered the retirement of the 1st Corps.
They were in the neighbourhood; the British commander had seen their
commander in the course of the 25th, and had represented his need.
Through some error or misfortune in the previous movement of this
corps--such that its horses were incapable of further action through
fatigue--it failed to appear upon the field in this all-important
juncture, and General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was left facing
overwhelming odds, which in artillery--the arm that was doing all the
heavy work of that morning--were not less than four to one.
The fact that the retirement was at last made possible was due more
than anything else to the handling of the British guns upon this day,
and to the devotion with which the batteries sacrificed themselves to
the covering of that movement; while the cavalry, as in the preceding
two days, co-operated in forming a screen for the retreat.
It was about half-past three in the afternoon when the general in
command of this exposed left flank judged it possible to break
contact, and to give the order for falling back. The experiment--for
it seems to have been no more secure than such a word suggests--was
perilous in the extreme. It was not known whether the consequences of
this fierce artillery duel against an enemy of four-fold superiority
had been sufficient to forbid that enemy to make good the pursuit.
Luckily, as the operation developed, it was apparent that the check
inflicted upon such enormous odds by the British guns was sufficient
for its purpose. The enemy had received losses that forbade him to
move with the rapidity necessary to him if he was to decide the
matter. He failed to press the retiring 2nd British Corps in any
conclusive fashion: this 2nd Corps, the left wing, was saved; and with
it the whole army, and perhaps the whole line.
The retreat of this body, which had thus covered all its comrades,
continued under terrible conditions of strain (and after so heavy an
action) right through the afternoon, and on hour after hour through
the darkness; but though such an effort meant the loss of stragglers
and of wounded, of guns whose teams had been destroyed, of material,
and of all that accompanies a perilous retreat, one may justly say
that well before midnight of that Wednesday, the 26th, the operation
had proved successful and its purpose was accomplished.
Two more days of almost equal strain were, as we shall see, to be
suffered by the whole army before it had reached a natural obstacle
behind which it could draw breath (the river Oise), and might fairly
be regarded as no longer in peril of destruction; but the breaking
point that had come on that Wednesday, the 26th, had been successfully
passed without disaster, and had been so passed, in the main, by
virtue of the guns.
This critical day, upon which depended the fortunes certainly of the
British contingent, and in some degree of all the "operative corner"
of the French plan, turned in favour of the Allies, not only through
the military excellence of the action which was broken off by Sir
Horace Smith-Dorrien during the afternoon, but also through the vigour
and tenacity of the retreat.