A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS
I. THE GERMAN PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
“Errors,” “vanities”? These words must be justified, however gently,
however briefly. To regard the battle of the Marne without reference to
the grievous beginnings that led to and shaped it would be to belittle
and falsify a subject peculiarly demanding care for true perspective.
The battle may be classed as negatively decisive in that it arrested
the invasion long enough to enable the Allies to gain an equality
of forces, and so to prevent a final German victory; it was only
positively decisive in the larger sense that it re-created on a sounder
base the military spirit and power of France, which alone among the
Western Allies seriously counted in that emergency, and, by giving the
army a new direction, the nation a new inspiration, made it possible
for them to sustain the long struggle that was to follow. Perilous
illusions, military as well as pacifist, were buried beside the Marne.
A fashion of thought, a whole school of teaching was quietly sunk in
its waters. The French mind rose to its full stature as the nature of
the surprise into which it had fallen broke upon it.
This surprise was threefold. In the first place, the German plan of
campaign was misconceived. That plan was grandiose in its simplicity.
It rested upon a sound sense of the separation of the Allies: their
geographical dispersion, which gave the aggressor the advantages
famous in the career of Frederick the Great, as in that of Napoleon;
the diversity of character, power, and interest within the Entente,
which was, indeed, hardly more than an improvisation, without any
sort of common organ, so far; its lack of unity not only in command
but in military theory and practice generally. The first of these
data indicated to the German Command the Frederician succession of
swift offensives; the second narrowed the choice for the first effort,
and suggested an after-work of political intrigue; the third had
fortified Prussian pride and discipline with a daring strategy and
an armament superior, in most respects, to anything the rest of the
world had conceived to be possible. Which of the three great States,
then, should be first struck down? The wildest Pan-Germanist could
not reply “England,” in face of her overwhelming sea-power. So the
British Empire, with the North Sea and Channel coasts, were, for the
moment, ignored. Its internal problems, its peaceful, almost neutral,
temper, its slow-mindedness in European affairs, were more regarded
than the trivial military force which alone England could at once offer
its friends. For speed was to be of the essence of the plan. Remained
France and Russia; and here political as well as military calculations
entered. The inchoate Empire of the East would, it was thought, be the
slower in getting to its feet. Would a new Moscow expedition break its
will for self-defence? The author of the “Willy-Nicky” letters imagined
a better way. France would stand by her ally. The “Republic of the
Rochettes and Steinheils,” however, was not naturally impregnable;
when it was finished, would not “dear Nicky” be glad to return to the
Drei-Kaiserbund, the old Bismarckian order, and to join in a friendly
rearrangement of the world? So the conclusion, with all the neatness
of a professorial thesis: Russia was to be held up——actively, on the
south, by the Austro-Hungarian armies, passively on the north, by a
screen of German troops——while France, as the principal enemy, was
swiftly crushed. Thus far, there should have been no surprise.
It was otherwise with the plan of campaign itself, and there are
details that will remain in question till all the archives are opened.
Yet this now appears the only plan on which Germany could hope to bring
an aggressive war to a successful issue. A repetition of the triumph of
1870 would not be enough, for, if France resisted as long this time,
everything would be put in doubt. The blow must be still more swift and
overwhelming. To be overwhelming, it must at once reach not portions,
but the chief mass, of the French armies. But nowhere in the world had
military art, working upon a favourable terrain, set up so formidable
a series of obstacles to grand-scale manœuvre as along the line of the
Meuse and Moselle Heights and the Vosges. A piercing of this line at
the centre, between the fortified systems of Verdun–Toul on the north
and Epinal–Belfort on the south, might be an important contributory
operation; in itself it could not give a speedy decision. A mere
diversion by Belgium, in aid of a main attack in Lorraine, would not
materially alter this calculation. The full effects of surprise, most
important of all factors in a short struggle, could only be expected
where the adversary was least prepared, which was certainly across the
north. These offensive considerations would be confirmed by a defensive
consideration: German Lorraine, also, was so fortified and garrisoned
as to be beyond serious fear of invasion. In neither direction could
Alsace provide favourable conditions for a great offensive.
The political objects of the war being granted, these arguments would
lead to the strategical conclusion: the strongest possible force will
be so deployed, on a vast arc stretching from southern Lorraine to
Flanders, that its superiority may at once be brought fully into play.
The method was a variant drawn from the teaching of Clausewitz and
Schlieffen. The “march on Paris” occupied in the plan no such place
as it long held in the popular imagination. The analogy of closing
pincers has been used to describe the simultaneous onset of seven
German armies ranged in a crescent from the Vosges to Brussels; but
it is uncertain whether the southern wing was originally intended to
participate immediately in the destructive stroke, or whether this
purpose followed upon the collapse of the first French offensives. The
latter supposition is the more probable; and we may, therefore, rather
picture a titanic bolas ending in five loaded cords, of which the
two outer ones are the most heavily weighted. These two outer masses
were (_a_) Kluck’s and Bülow’s Armies on the west; (_b_) the Crown
Prince of Bavaria’s and Heeringen’s on the east. Approximately equal,
they had very different functions, the road of the one being open, of
the other closed; the one, therefore, being essentially offensive,
the other provisionally defensive. Between these two masses, there
were three lesser forces under Hausen, the Duke of Würtemberg, and
the Imperial Crown Prince. While the eastern armies held the French
forces as originally concentrated, the western mass, by an immense
envelopment, was to converge, and the three inner bodies were to
strike direct, toward the north-centre of France——perhaps toward the
upper Seine, but there could hardly be a precise objective till the
invasion developed[2]——destroying any resistance in their path. The
eastern thrust which actually followed appears, on this hypothesis, as
an auxiliary operation rather than part of a double envelopment: we
shall see that, delivered at the moment when the Allies in the west
were being driven in between Le Cateau and Givet, it failed against a
successful defence of the only open road of the eastern frontier, the
Gap of Charmes, and that it again failed a fortnight later. The other
German armies went triumphantly forward. In every part of the field is
evident the intention to conceal, even to hold back, the movements of
approach, and so to articulate and synchronise them that, when the hour
of the decisive general action had arrived, there should be delivered a
single, sudden, knock-out blow.
II. THE FORCES IN PLAY
In every part the German war-machine was designed and fitted to deliver
such a blow. Its effective force was the second great element of
surprise for the Entente.
It is now clear that, taking the field as a whole, France was not
overwhelmed by superior numbers. True, as a French official report
says, “the military effort of Germany at the outset of the war
surpassed all anticipations”; but the element of surprise lay not
in numbers, but in fighting quality and organisation. Of the whole
mass mobilised in August 1914, one quarter was sent to the East.
The remainder provided, in the last week of August, for employment
against Belgium and France, an effective force of about 80 infantry
divisions——45 active, 27 reserve, mixed Ersatz brigades presently
grouped in 6 divisions, and 4 Landwehr divisions in course of
formation,[3] with about 8 divisions of cavalry,——about a million and a
half of men, for the most part young, highly trained and disciplined,
including 115,000 re-engaged non-commissioned officers (double the
strength of the French company cadres). Of the prodigious mass of
this west-European force, about a half was directed through Belgium,
and——essential fact——nearly a third passed to the west of the Meuse.
The French, on the other hand, admirably served by their railways,[4]
put at once into the field 86 divisions (47 active, 25 reserve, 12
Territorial, and 2 Moroccan), of which 66 were at the front, with 7
divisions of cavalry, on the eve of the critical battles of the Sambre
and the Gap of Charmes, in the third week of August. Before the battle
of the Marne, all French active troops had been withdrawn from the
Italian frontier, only a few Territorials being left there. An exact
numerical comparison cannot yet be made. It seems certain, however,
that, including five British and six Belgian divisions, in the whole
field the Allies were not outnumbered. There was no great difference in
cavalry.
But there was a vital difference in the infantry organisation, as to
which the French Command had been completely deceived. Not only had it
failed to foresee the creation of brigades of Ersatz troops (to say
nothing of the Landwehr divisions which appeared in September): it had
never contemplated the use of reserve formations as troops of shock. In
the French Army, the reserve battalions, regiments, and divisions were
so many poor relations——inadequate in younger officers and non-coms,
insufficiently armed (especially in artillery), insufficiently trained
and disciplined, and, accordingly, destined only for lesser tasks.
When, as occurred almost at once under pressure of the successful
example of the enemy, reserve divisions and groups of divisions had
to be thrown into the front line, the homogeneity of the armies and
the confidence of their chiefs suffered. Meanwhile, realising a plan
initiated in 1913, the German Staff had created 16 army corps of
reserves, of which 13 were used on the Western front, where they proved
as solid as the regulars, and were given tasks as responsible in all
parts of the field. The main mass of attack, therefore, consisted not
of 22, but 34, army corps——a difference larger than the strength of the
two armies of Kluck and Bülow to which the great enveloping movement
was entrusted.[5] Without this supplementary force——the result not
of numbers available, but of superior training and organisation——the
invasion could hardly have been attempted, or would assuredly have
failed. On the other hand, as we shall see, had it been anticipated,
the French plan of campaign must have been profoundly modified.
The balance in armament was not less uneven. The French 3-inch
field-gun from the first justified the highest expectations of its
rapidity and accuracy of fire. But in pieces of heavier weight and
longer range the inferiority was flagrant. While Frenchmen had been
counting their “75” against heavier but less handy German guns, while
they were throwing all the gravamen of the problem of national defence
on three-years’ service, the enemy was developing a set of instruments
which immensely reinforced his man-power. Instead of resting content
with light guns, he set himself to make heavier types more mobile. The
peace establishment of a German active corps included 160, a French
only 120, guns. It was, however, in weight, rather than numbers, that
the difference lay. Every German corps had 16 heavy 5·9-inch mortars.
The French had no heavy artillery save a few batteries of Rimailho
6·1-inch rapid-fire pieces, and a few fortress cannon. In addition
to 642 six-piece batteries of horse and field artillery (3·1-inch
field-gun and 4·1-inch light howitzer), the German armies had, in all,
before the mobilisation, 400 four-piece batteries of 5·9-inch howitzers
and 8·2-inch mortars. The German artillery alone at the outset had
aviators to correct their fire. “Thus,” says General Malleterre,
speaking from experience in the long retreat[6]——“thus is explained the
terrible surprise that our troops suffered when they found themselves
overwhelmed at the first contact by avalanches of projectiles, fired
from invisible positions that our artillery could not reach. For there
was this of unexpected in the German attack, that, before the infantry
assault, the deployment of units was preceded by showers of shells
of all calibres, storms of iron and fire arresting and upsetting our
shaken lines.”
In air services, in petrol transport, and in the art of field defences,
also, the French were outmatched. Aviation was essentially their sport
and science; but the army had shown little interest in it, and had made
only a beginning in its two main functions——general reconnaissance
and the ranging of artillery fire.[7] Thus ill-prepared for a modern
large-scale offensive, France had not acquired the material or the
tactic of a strategical defence. The light and rapid “75” had been
thought of almost exclusively as an arm of attack, in which weight and
range were now become the master properties. Its remarkable qualities
for defence began to appear in the unfortunate actions presently to
be traced, and were only fully understood many months later, when
“barrage” fire had been elaborated. The mitrailleuse was essentially
a French invention; but its greatest value——in defence——was not yet
appreciated. The numerical provision of machine-guns was the same as
that of the German Army (though differently organised). It was owing
to a more considerable difference of tactical ideas that a legend grew
up of an actual German superiority in this arm. In the French Army,
all defensive methods were prejudiced; in the German, they were not.
The deep trenches that might have saved much of Belgium and northern
France were scouted, until it was too late, as incompatible with the
energy and pride of a great army. The lessons from recent wars drawn,
among others, by the Russian State Councillor, Jean de Bloch, fifteen
years before,[8] went for nothing. “It is easy to be ‘wise after the
event,’” writes Field-Marshal French; “but I cannot help wondering why
none of us realised what the most modern rifle, the machine-gun, motor
traction, the aeroplane, and wireless telegraphy would bring about. It
seems so simple when judged by actual results.... I feel sure that, had
we realised the true effect of modern appliances of war in August 1914,
_there would have been no retreat from Mons_.”[9]
While the German armies were born and bred in the old offensive spirit,
their masters had seen the difficulties created by the development of
modern gunfire. With a tireless and pitiless concentration of will, the
men had been organised, trained, and in every essential way provided,
to carry out an aggressive plan of campaign. Yet their generals did
not despise scientific field-works, even in the days of their first
intoxication, as witness any French story of the battle of Morhange, or
this characteristic note on the fighting in the region of Neufchateau
and Palliseul: “The enemy, whom our aeroplanes and cavalry had not been
able to discover, had a powerful defensive organisation: fields of wire
entanglement on the ground; wide, deep holes concealing pikes and sword
blades; lines of wire 2 yards high, barbed with nails and hooks. There
were also, unfortunately, in certain of our corps, insufficiencies of
instruction and execution, imprudences committed under fire, over-bold
deployments leading to precipitate retreats, a lack of co-ordination
between the infantry and the artillery. The enemy profited by our
inexperience of the sort of defence he had organised.”[10] For the
German soldiers at the outset of the war, this was only a passing
necessity. The principle of the instant strategical offensive well
expressed the spirit of an authoritarian Government bent on aggression,
of its constituency, at once jealous and servile, and its war-machine,
sustained by a feverishly developed industrialism. None of these
conditions obtained under the Third Republic. Of the weaknesses of the
French Army in tactical science, one result is sufficiently tragic
proof; in the first month of the war, 33 army corps and divisional
generals were removed from their commands.[11]
III. THE FRENCH WAR DOCTRINE
It was not the fault, but the glory, of France that she lived upon a
higher level, to worthier ends, than her old enemy. But if we find
reason to suspect that, the nation having accepted the burden of
taxation and armed service, its arms and preparation were not the
best of their kind, that a superstitious fidelity to conservative
sentiments and ideas was allowed to obscure the hard facts of the
European situation and the changing nature of modern warfare, the fact
that certain critics have plunged rashly into the intricacies of a most
difficult problem, or the risk of being corrected when more abundant
information appears, must not prevent us from facing a conclusion that
is important for our subject. We do not espouse any partisan thesis,
or question any individual reputation; we can do no more here than
open a line of inquiry, and no less than recall that the men whose
responsibility is in cause had suddenly to challenge fate on evidence
at many points slighter than now lies before any studious layman.
In every detail, Germany had the benefit of the initiative. The French
Staff could not be sure in advance of British and Belgian aid or of
Italian neutrality, and it was bound to envisage the possibility of
attack by the Jura, as well as by Belgium. It could not be sure that
any smaller strength would secure the Lorraine frontier; and it was
possibly right in regarding a defeat on the east as more dangerous
than a defeat in the north. The distrust of fortification, whether of
masonry and steel, or of field-works, may have become exaggerated by
a too lively sense of the power of the newer artillery; but it had a
certain basis in the fear of immobilising and paralysing the armies.
To discover a happy mean between a dangerous obstinacy in defending
a frontier, and a dangerous readiness to abandon precious territory
and its people in order to preserve freedom of movement, was perhaps
beyond any brain of that time. Nevertheless, when all allowances have
been made, it must be said (1) that the importance of gaining time
by defensive action was never realised, and this chiefly because of
dogmatic prepossessions; (2) that the actual concentration expressed
a complete misjudgment of the line of greatest danger; and (3) that
these two faults were aggravated by the kind of offensive upon which
all hopes were placed. The misapprehension of the German system of
reserves, referred to above, and therefore of the total effective
strength of the enemy, had led the French Staff to conclude that
there was nothing to fear west of the Meuse, and at the same time had
confirmed a temperamental belief in the possibility of crippling the
attack by a rapid and unrestrained offensive. The whole conception was
erroneous.
For Belgium, there was no other hope than a provisional defensive. In
any war with Germany, the principal object for France, it now seems
evident, must be to stave off the _coup brusqué_ till Russia was fully
ready, and England could bring more aid. But the traditional dogma
was in possession; any doubt was damned as a dangerous heresy. The
chief lesson of 1870 was now thought to be the folly of passivity.
Looking back upon events, many French soldiers recognise, with General
Malleterre, that the French strategy should have been “a waiting
disposition behind a powerfully-organised Meuse front, with a mass of
manœuvre ready to be directed against the principal attack.” “But,”
adds this writer, “our minds had been trained in these latter years to
the offensive _à outrance_.”[12] They had been trained in part upon
German discussions, the deceptive character of which, and the very
different facts behind, were not realised. At its best, for instance in
Foch’s lectures at the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre (1895–1901), there
was in this teaching somewhat too much of emotion, too little of cold
analysis. The faith in sheer energy and will is placed too high, the
calculation of means to ends too slightly insisted upon. It is true, it
is, indeed, a truism, that “the battle must not be purely defensive,”
that “every defensive battle must be terminated by an offensive action,
or it will lead to no result.” Foch himself, before he had risen to the
supreme direction of the Allied armies, had learned to recognise that,
with millions of men in play, no effort of will can suddenly give a
decision, that the defensive may have to continue for months, even for
years, a new war-machine may have to be built up, ere a victorious
reaction becomes possible.
In the General Staff instructions of October 28, 1913, the doctrine
had received its extremest expression. The milder instructions of
1895 were condemned as based upon the “most dangerous” idea that
a commander might prefer defence on a favourable, to attack on an
unfavourable, ground. “In order to avoid all misunderstanding on so
important a point of doctrine, the new instructions admit only a single
justification for the defensive in combat, that is, the necessity of
economising troops on certain points in order to devote more forces
to attacks; so understood, the defensive is, properly speaking, no
more than an auxiliary of the offensive.” “The offensive alone leads
to positive results”; this is the sole permissible rule governing the
conduct of operations. Attacks must be pressed to the extremity without
_arrière-pensée_ or fear of heavy losses: “every other conception
must be rejected as contrary to the very nature of war” (art. 5). “A
Commander-in-Chief will never leave to his adversary the priority of
action on the pretext of waiting for more precise information; he
will, from the beginning of the war, stamp it with such a character of
violence and determination that the enemy, struck in his morale and
paralysed in action, will perhaps find himself compelled to remain on
the defensive” (art. 6). “All the decisions of the command must be
inspired by the will to seize and keep the initiative”; and they must
be pursued “even if the information collected up to then on the forces
and dispositions of the enemy be obscure and incomplete.” The plan
should, indeed, be supple, so that changes can be made according to
new information; but “success in war depends more on perseverance and
tenacity than on ability in the conception of the manœuvre” (art. 15).
“The French Army,” added the Commission which elaborated these rules,
“returning to its traditions, now admits in the conduct of operations
no law other than that of the offensive.”
Fortunately, no code can do more than hamper the natural elasticity of
the French mind. But the direction of the armies from top to bottom,
and even the traditional aim of keeping in hand a mass of manœuvre,
which had figured strongly in the teaching of Foch and other military
writers of ten or fifteen years before, were affected by the current
prescriptions of the Staff. We cannot here attempt to trace the growth
of the perversion. The spirit of the French command on the eve of the
war is, however, sufficiently evidenced in its actual dispositions; and
we know that it threw its only mass of manœuvre (the 4th Army) into
the Belgian Ardennes in the third week of August, and had to fight
the battle of the Marne without any general reserve. In brief, along
with every arm and method of defence, the service of information, the
preparation of battle, and the art of manœuvre——which is irreconcilable
with a dogma of universal and unconditional attack——were depreciated
and prejudiced.[13] In the strength and weakness of this creed, France
entered the war.
The results in the lesser commands were serious enough. Speaking of the
advance into the Ardennes, M. Hanotaux, in general an apologist of the
old school, says that it was conducted “in an extremely optimistic
mood,” that “mad bayonet charges were launched at a mile distance
from the enemy without artillery preparation,” and that, “doubtless,
the spirit of the offensive, ill-regulated and ill-restrained, among
officers as well as men, was one of the causes of our reverse.”
Officers and men took only too literally the rules on which they had
been trained. Strengthened by the general belief in a short war, and
by an exaggerated idea of the importance of first results, a like
infatuation governed the strategy and the tactics of the French armies.
A succession of surprises marks the light regard for information of the
enemy’s means and movements, as a series of instant reverses measures
the scorn for well-pondered manœuvre. Was France required by her
Eastern ally to attack at once? The attack need not have surpassed the
proportions of holding actions punctuating a stout defence. Was Belgium
closed to the French armies by the old treaty of neutrality? That did
not justify a plan of campaign which left the north uncovered to a
German aggression. For all that followed from disunity of the Allied
commands, England and Belgium share the responsibility. Had they, as
well as Russia, been long in alliance, and Italy’s neutrality assured
in advance, all might have gone otherwise; probably, indeed, there
would have been no war. These circumstances do not afford excuse for a
radically unsound conception of the danger and the reply.
A German attack through Belgium had been much and long discussed.
If few would have said before the event, as the German Chancellor
and Foreign Secretary pleaded immediately afterward, that it was
“a question of life and death for the Empire,” “a step absolutely
required,” it was at least more than probable; and we have Marshal
Joffre’s word for it that the contingency was contemplated by the
French Staff.[14] But two doubts remained, even in vigilant minds.
Would the invasion by the north be large or small, and would it be more
or less extensive, proceeding only by Belgian Luxembourg and the Meuse
valley, or also by a more daring sweep across the Flanders plain into
the valley of the Oise? Moltke had advocated a march to the North Sea
coast, and a descent by the Channel ports, through the _trouée_ of the
Oise, upon Paris, turning not merely the principal line, but the whole
system, of the French fortresses. Bernhardi had toyed with the idea of
an even more extensive movement, violating Dutch territory, but seemed
at last to favour the more limited project, “the army of the right wing
marching by the line Trêves–Stenay, crossing Luxembourg and southern
Belgium.” In fact, neither of these ways was taken. The invasion
pursued a middle route, Holland being avoided, the descent upon the
coast deferred, and armies thrown across both the Flanders plain and
the difficult country of the Belgian Ardennes.
Notwithstanding the advertisement of the Kaiser’s chief Ministers in
their famous pleas in justification, on the first day of the war, the
French Staff do not seem to have anticipated anything more in the north
than an attack by Luxembourg and the Ardennes, or to have altered their
dispositions to meet it until the middle of August. We do not yet fully
know what are the reasons for the arrest of the German offensive after
the effective reduction of Liège, until August 19. Instead of six
days, with, perhaps, three more for re-concentration, the German right
wing took sixteen days in crossing Belgium. As this week of Belgium’s
vicarious sacrifice saved France, it cannot be supposed to have been a
voluntary delay made simply for the purpose of deceiving the Allies.
It had that effect, however. Thwarted at Liège, the German command did
everything it could to conceal the true nature of the blow it was about
to deliver——by terrorising the population and occupying the mind of the
world with its atrocities, by the ubiquitous activity of its cavalry
screen, by avoiding Western Flanders and the coast, and by holding up
the advance of its first three armies behind the line of the Gette and
the Meuse till everything was ready. The Allies altogether failed to
pierce the veil of mystery covering the final concentration. They were
deceived (1) as to the main direction of the coming onslaught, (2) as
to its speed, (3) as to its power in men and armament. General Sordet’s
cavalry got little information during their Belgian wanderings; the
few French aviators still less. No doubt, the Allies hoped for a
longer Belgian resistance, especially at Liège and Namur, as the enemy
expected a shorter. The French Staff clung blindly to its belief that
it need expect, at most, only an attack by the Meuse valley and the
Ardennes.[15]
The first French plan of campaign, then, envisaged solely the eastern
and north-eastern frontier. The original concentration placed the
two strongest armies, the 1st and 2nd (Dubail and Castelnau——each
five corps) between Belfort and Toul; the 3rd and 5th (Ruffey and
Lanrezac——three and five corps respectively) from Verdun to Givet,
where the Meuse enters Belgium; the 4th (de Langle de Cary——three
corps) supporting the right, at its rear, between the Argonne and the
Meuse. Of 25 reserve divisions, three were kept in the Alps till Italy
declared her neutrality, three garrisoned Verdun, and one Epinal. The
remainder were grouped, one group being sent to the region of Hirson,
one to the Woevre, and one before Nancy. There was also a Territorial
group (d’Amade) about Lille. These dispositions are defended as being
supple and lending themselves to a redirection when the enemy’s
intentions were revealed.[16] We shall see that, within a fortnight,
they had to be fundamentally changed, Lanrezac being sent into the
angle of the Sambre and Meuse, de Langle bringing the sole reserve
army in on his right, and Ruffey marching north into the Ardennes——a
north-westerly movement involving awkward lateral displacements, the
crossing of columns, and oblique marches. Some of the following failure
and confusion resulted from the dislocating effect of a conversion so
vast.
IV. THE THREE FRENCH OFFENSIVES
Instead of an initial defensive over most of the front, with or without
some carefully chosen and strongly provided manœuvre of offence——as
the major conditions of the problem would seem to suggest——the French
campaign opened with a general offensive, which for convenience we must
divide into three parts, three adventures, all abortive, into Southern
Alsace, German Lorraine, and the Belgian Ardennes. The first two of
these were predetermined, even before General Joffre was designed for
the chief command; the second and third were deliberately launched
after the invasion of Belgium was, or should have been, understood.
A fourth attack, across the Sambre, was designed, but could not be
attempted.
The first movement into Alsace was hardly more than a raid, politically
inspired, and its success might have excited suspicions. Advancing
from Belfort, the 1st Army under Dubail took Altkirch on August 7,
and Mulhouse the following day. Paris rejoiced; General Joffre hailed
Dubail’s men as “first labourers in the great work of _la revanche_.”
It was the last flicker of the old Gallic cocksureness. On August 9,
the Germans recovered Mulhouse. Next day, an Army of Alsace, consisting
of the 7th Corps, the 44th Division, four reserve divisions, five
Alpine battalions, and a cavalry division, was organised under General
Pau. It gained most of the Vosges passes and the northern buttress of
the range, the Donon (August 14). On the 19th, the enemy was defeated
at Dornach, losing 3000 prisoners and 24 cannon; and on the following
morning Mulhouse was retaken——only to be abandoned a second time on the
25th, with all but the southern passes. The Army of Alsace was then
dissolved to free Pau’s troops for more urgent service, the defence of
Nancy and of Paris.
The Lorraine offensive was a more serious affair, and it was embarked
upon after the gravity of the northern menace had been recognised.[17]
The main body of the Eastern forces was engaged——nine active corps
of the 2nd and 1st Armies, with nine reserve and three cavalry
divisions——considerably more than 400,000 men, under some of the most
distinguished French generals, including de Castlenau, unsurpassed
in repute and experience even by the Generalissimo himself; Dubail,
a younger man, full of energy and quick intelligence; Foch, under
whose iron will the famous 20th Corps of Nancy did much to limit the
general misfortune; Pau, who had just missed the chief command; and de
Maud’huy, a sturdy leader of men. As soon as the Vosges passes were
secured, after ten days’ hard fighting, on August 14, a concerted
advance began, Castelnau moving eastward over the frontier into the
valley of the Seille and the Gap of Morhange, a narrow corridor flanked
by marshes and forests, rising to formidable cliffs; while Dubail,
on his right, turned north-eastward into the hardly less difficult
country of the Sarre valley. The French appear to have had a marked
superiority of numbers, perhaps as large as 100,000 men; but they were
drawn on till they fell into a powerful system, established since the
mobilisation, of shrewdly hidden defences, with a large provision
of heavy artillery, from Morville, through Morhange, Bensdorf, and
Fenetrange, to Phalsburg——the Bavarian Army at the centre, a detachment
from the Metz garrison against the French left, the army of Von
Heeringen against the right. The French command can hardly have been
ignorant of these defences, but must have supposed they would fall
to an impetuous assault. Dubail held his own successfully throughout
August 19 and 20 at Sarrebourg and along the Marne-Rhine Canal, though
his men were much exhausted. Castelnau was immediately checked, before
the natural fortress of Morhange, on August 20. His centre——the famous
20th Corps and a southern corps, the 15th——attacked at 5 a.m.; at 6.30
the latter was in flight, and the former, its impetuosity crushed
by numbers and artillery fire, was ordered to desist. The German
commanders had concentrated their forces under cover of field-works and
heavy batteries. Under the shock of this surprise, at 4 p.m., Castelnau
ordered the general retreat. Dubail had to follow suit.
Happily, the German infantry were in no condition for an effective
pursuit, and the French retirement was not seriously impeded. The
following German advance being directed southward, with the evident
intention of forcing the Gap of Charmes, and so taking all the French
northern armies in reverse, the defence of Nancy was left to Foch,
Castelnau’s centre and right were swung round south-westward behind
the Meurthe, while Dubail abandoned the Donon, and withdrew to a line
which, from near Rozelieures to Badonviller and the northern Vosges,
made a right-angle with the line of the 2nd Army, the junction covering
the mouth of the threatened _trouée_. In turn, as we shall see (Chap.
III. sec. iii.), the German armies here suffered defeat, only five days
after their victory. But such failures and losses do not “cancel out,”
for France had begun at a disadvantage. Ground was lost that might have
been held with smaller forces; forces were wasted that were urgently
needed in the chief field of battle. Evidently it was hoped to draw
back parts of the northern armies of invasion, to interfere with their
communications, and to set up an alarm for Metz and Strasbourg. These
aims were not to any sensible extent accomplished.
Despite the improbability of gaining a rapid success in a wild forest
region, the French Staff seems to have long cherished the idea of
an offensive into the Belgian Ardennes in case of a German invasion
of Belgium, the intention being to break the turning movement by
a surprise blow at its flank. By August 19, the French were in a
measure prepared for action between Verdun and the Belgian Meuse.
Ruffey’s 3rd Army (including a shortlived “Army of Lorraine” of six
reserve divisions under Maunoury), and Langle de Cary’s 4th Army,
brought northwards into line after three or four days’ delay, counted
together six active corps and reserve groups making them nearly
equal in numbers to the eleven corps of the Imperial Crown Prince
and the Duke of Würtemberg. But, behind the latter, all unknown till
it debouched on the Meuse, lay hidden adroitly in Belgian Luxembourg
another army, the three corps of the Saxon War Minister, Von Hausen.
Farther west, the disparity of force was greater, Lanrezac and Sir John
French having only about seven corps (with some help from the Belgians
and a few Territorial units) against eleven corps left to Bülow and
Kluck after two corps had been detailed to mask the Belgian Army in
Antwerp. Neither the Ardennes nor the Sambre armies could be further
strengthened because of the engagements in Lorraine and Alsace.
A tactical offensive into the Ardennes, a glorified reconnaissance and
raid, strictly limited and controlled, might perhaps be justified.
The advance ordered on the evening of the defeat of Morhange, and
executed on the two following days, engaging the only general reserve
at the outset in a thickly-wooded and most difficult country, was too
large for a diversion, and not large enough for the end declared: it
failed completely and immediately——in a single day, August 22——with
heavy losses, especially in officers.[18] Here, again, there was an
approximate equality of numbers; again, the French were lured on to
unfavourable ground, and, before strong entrenchments, crushed with
a superiority of fire. Separated and surprised——the left south-west
of Palliseul, the centre in the forests of Herbeumont and Luchy, the
Colonial Corps before Neufchateau and Rossignol, where it fought
literally to the death against two German corps strongly entrenched,
the 2nd Corps near Virton——the body of the 4th Army was saved only by a
prompt retreat; and the 3rd Army had to follow this movement. True, the
German IV Army also was much exhausted; and an important part of the
enemy’s plan missed fire. It had been soon discovered that the Meuse
from Givet to Namur was but lightly held; and the dispatch thither of
the Saxon Army, to cut in between the French 4th and 5th Armies, was a
shrewd stroke. Hausen was late in reaching the critical point, about
Dinant, and, by slowness and timidity, missed the chance of doing
serious mischief.
Meanwhile, between the fields of the two French adventures into German
Lorraine and Belgian Luxembourg, the enemy had been allowed without
serious resistance to occupy the Briey region, and so to carry over
from France to Germany an iron- and coal-field of the utmost value.
“Briey has saved our life,” the ironmasters of the Rhineland declared
later on, with some exaggeration. Had it been modernised, the small
fortress of Longwy, situated above the River Chiers three miles from
the Luxembourg frontier, might have been an important element in a
defence of this region. In fact, its works were out of date, and were
held at the mobilisation by only two battalions of infantry and a
battery and a half of light guns. The Germans summoned Colonel Darche
and his handful of men to surrender on August 10; but the place was
not invested till the 20th, the day on which the 3rd Army was ordered
to advance toward Virton and Arlon, and to disengage Longwy. Next day,
Ruffey was north and east of the place, apparently without suspecting
that he had the Crown Prince’s force besieging it at his mercy. On the
22nd, it was too late; the 3rd and 4th Armies were in retreat; Longwy
was left to its fate.[19]
V. THE BATTLE OF CHARLEROI–MONS
The completest surprise naturally fell on the west wing of the Allies;
and, had not the small British force been of the hardiest stuff, an
irreparable disaster might have occurred. Here, with the heaviest
preponderance of the enemy, there had been least preparation for any
hostilities before the crisis was reached. On or about August 10, we
war correspondents received an official map of the “Present Zone of
the Armies,” which was shown to end, on the north, at Orchies——16
miles S.E. of Lille, and 56 miles inland from Dunkirk. The western
half of the northern frontier was practically uncovered. Lille had
ceased to be a fortress in 1913, though continuing to be a garrison
town; from Maubeuge to the sea, there was no artificial obstacle, and
no considerable body of troops.[20] The position to be taken by the
British Expeditionary Force——on the French left near Maubeuge——was only
decided, at a Franco-British Conference in London, on August 10.[21]
On August 12, the British Press Bureau announced it as “evident” that
“the mass of German troops lie between Liège and Luxembourg.” Three
days later, a Saxon advance guard tried, without success, to force the
Meuse at Dinant. Thus warned, the French command began to make the new
disposition of its forces which has been alluded to.
Lanrezac had always anticipated the northern attack, and had made
representations on the subject without effect.[22] At last, on August
16, General Joffre, from his headquarters at Vitry-le-François, in
southern Champagne, agreed to his request that he should move the 5th
Army north-westward into the angle of the Sambre and Meuse. At the same
time, however, its composition was radically upset, the 11th Corps and
two reserve divisions being sent to the 4th Army, while the 18th Corps
and the Algerian divisions were received in compensation. On August
16, the British Commander-in-Chief, after seeing President Poincaré
and the Ministers in Paris, visited the Generalissimo at Vitry; and it
was arranged that the Expeditionary Force, which was then gathering
south of Maubeuge, should move north to the Sambre, and thence to the
region of Mons. On the same day, General d’Amade was instructed to
proceed from Lyons to Arras, there to gather together three Territorial
divisions of the north which, reinforced by another on the 21st and
by two reserve divisions on the 25th, ultimately became part of the
Army of the Somme. Had there been, on the French side, any proper
appreciation of the value of field-works, it might, perhaps, not have
been too late to defend the line of the Sambre and Meuse. It was four
or five days too late to attempt a Franco-British offensive beyond the
Sambre.
To do justice to the Allied commanders, it must be kept clearly in
mind that they had (albeit largely by their own fault) but the vaguest
notion of what was impending. Would the mass of the enemy come by the
east or the west of the Meuse, by the Ardennes or by Flanders, and in
what strength? Still sceptical as to a wide enveloping movement, Joffre
was reluctant to adventure too far north with his unready left wing;
but it seemed to him that, in either case, the intended offensive of
the French central armies (the 3rd and 4th) across the Ardennes and
Luxembourg frontier might be supported by an attack by Lanrezac and the
British upon the flank of the German western armies——the right flank,
if they passed by the Ardennes only; the left, if they attempted to
cross the Flanders plain toward the Channel. Thus, it was provisionally
arranged with the British Commander that, when the concentration of the
Expeditionary Force was complete, which would not be before the evening
of August 21, it should advance north of the Sambre in the general
direction of Nivelles (20 miles north-east of Mons, and half-way
between Charleroi and Brussels). If the common movement were directed
due north, the British would advance on the left of the 5th Army; if
to the north-east or east, they would be in echelon on its left-rear.
General Joffre recognised that the plan was only provisional, it being
impossible to define the projected manœuvre more precisely till all was
ready on August 21, or till the enemy revealed his intentions.
It was only on the 20th that two corps of the French 5th Army reached
the south bank of the Sambre——one day before Bülow came up on the
north, with his VII Corps on his right (west), the X Reserve and X
Active Corps as centre, the Guard Active Corps on his left, and the
VII Reserve (before Namur) and Guard Reserve Corps in support. In
this posture, on the evening of August 20, Lanrezac received General
Joffre’s order to strike across the Sambre. Namur was then garrisoned
by the Belgian 4th Division, to which was added, on the 22nd, part of
the French 8th Brigade under General Mangin. Lanrezac had not even
been able to get all his strength aligned on the Sambre when the shock
came.[23] On the 21st, his five corps were grouped as follows: The
1st Corps (Franchet d’Espérey) was facing east toward the Meuse north
of Dinant, pending the arrival, on the evening of the 22nd, of the
Bouttegourd Reserve Division; the 10th Corps (Defforges), with the 37th
(African) Division, on the heights of Fosse and Arsimont, faced the
Sambre crossings at Tamines and Auvelais; the 3rd Corps (Sauret) stood
before Charleroi, with the 38th (African) Division in reserve; the 18th
Corps (de Mas-Latrie) was behind the left, south of Thuin. Of General
Valabrègue’s group of reserve divisions, one was yet to come into line
on the right and one on the left.
Could Lanrezac have accomplished anything by pressing forward into the
unknown with tired troops? The question might be debatable had the
Allies had only Bülow to deal with; but, as we shall see, this was by
no means the case. Meanwhile, the British made a day’s march beyond the
Sambre. On the 22nd they continued the French line west-north-westward,
still without an enemy before them, and entrenched themselves, the
5th Cavalry Brigade occupying the right, the 1st Corps (Haig) from
Binche to Mons, and the 2nd Corps (Smith-Dorrien) along the canal to
Condé-on-Scheldt. West and south-west of this point, there was nothing
but the aforesaid groups of French Territorials. The I German Army not
yet having revealed itself, the general idea of the French command,
to attack across the Sambre with its centre, and then, if successful,
to swing round the Allied left in a north-easterly direction against
what was supposed to be the German right flank, still seemed feasible.
But, in fact, Kluck’s Army lay beyond Bülow’s to the north-west, on the
line Brussels–Valenciennes; it is quite possible, therefore, that a
preliminary success by Lanrezac would have aggravated the later defeat.
[Illustration: Battle of Charleroi–Mons]
However that may be, the programme was at once stultified by the
unexpected speed and force of the German approach. The bombardment
of the nine forts of Namur had begun on August 20. Bülow’s Army
reached the Sambre on the following day, and held the passages at
night. Lanrezac’s orders had become plainly impossible, and he did
not attempt to fulfil them. Early on the afternoon of the 21st, while
Kluck approached on one hand and Hausen on the other, Bülow’s X Corps
and Guard Corps attacked the 3rd and 10th Corps forming the apex of
the French triangle. These, not having entrenched themselves, and
having, against Lanrezac’s express orders, advanced to the crossings
between Charleroi and Namur, there fell upon strong defences flanked
by machine-guns, and were driven back and separated. Despite repeated
counter-attacks, the town of Chatelet was lost. On the 22nd, these
two French corps, with a little help from the 18th, had again to
bear the full weight of the enemy. Their artillery preparation was
inadequate, and charges of a reckless bravery did not improve
their situation.[24] Most desperate fighting took place in and around
Charleroi. The town was repeatedly lost and won back by the French
during the day and the following morning; in course of these assaults,
the Turcos inflicted heavy losses on the Prussian Guard. While the 10th
Corps, cruelly punished at Tamines and Arsimont, fell back on Mettet,
the 3rd found itself threatened with envelopment on the west by Bülow’s
X Reserve and VII Corps, debouching from Chatelet and Charleroi.
That evening, the 22nd, Lanrezac thought there was still a chance of
recovery. “The enemy does not yet show any numerical superiority,” he
wrote, “and the 5th Army, though shaken, is intact.” The 1st Corps
was at length free, having been relieved in the river angle south
of Namur by the 51st Reserve Division; the 18th Corps had arrived
and was in full action on the left about Thuin; farther west, other
reserves were coming up, and the British Army had not been seriously
engaged. The French commander therefore asked his British confrère to
strike north-eastward at Bülow’s flank. The Field-Marshal found this
request “quite impracticable” and scarcely comprehensible. He had
conceived, rightly or wrongly, a very unfavourable idea of Lanrezac’s
qualities; and the sight of infantry and artillery columns of the
5th Army in retreat southward that morning, before the two British
corps had reached their positions on either side of Mons, had been
a painful surprise. He was already in advance of the shaken line of
the 5th Army; and news was arriving which indicated a grave threat of
envelopment by the north-west. French had come out from England with
clear warning that, owing to the impossibility of rapid or considerable
reinforcement, he must husband his forces, and that he would “in no
case come in any sense under the orders of any Allied General.” He now,
therefore, replied to Lanrezac that all he could promise was to hold
the Condé Canal position for twenty-four hours; thereafter, retreat
might be necessary.
On the morning of the 23rd, Bouttegourd and D’Espérey opened an attack
on the left flank of the Prussian Guard, while the British were
receiving the first serious shock of the enemy. The French centre,
however, was in a very bad way. During the afternoon the 3rd Corps gave
ground, retreating in some disorder to Walcourt; the 18th was also
driven back. About the same time, four surprises fell crushingly upon
the French command. The first was the fall of Namur, which had been
looked to as pivot of the French right. Although the VII Reserve Corps
did not enter the town till 8 p.m., its resistance was virtually broken
in the morning. Most of the forts had been crushed by the German 11-
and 16-inch howitzers; it was with great difficulty that 12,000 men, a
half of the garrison, escaped, ultimately to join the Belgian Army at
Antwerp, Secondly, the Saxon Army, hitherto hidden in the Ardennes and
practically unknown to the French Command, suddenly made an appearance
on Lanrezac’s right flank. On the 23rd, the XII Corps captured Dinant,
forced the passages of the Meuse there and at Hastière, drove in the
Bouttegourd Division (51st Reserve), and reached Onhaye. The 1st Corps,
thus threatened in its rear, had to break its well-designed attack on
the Prussian Guard, and face about eastward. It successfully attacked
the Saxons at Onhaye, and prevented them from getting more than one
division across the river that night, so that the retreat of the French
Army from the Sambre toward Beaumont and Philippeville, ordered by
Lanrezac on his own responsibility at 9 p.m., was not impeded. Thirdly,
news arrived of the failure of the French offensive in the Ardennes.
The fourth surprise lay in the discovery that the British Army had
before it not one or two corps, as was supposed until the afternoon of
August 23, but three or four active corps and two cavalry divisions
of Kluck’s force, a part of which was already engaged in an attempt
to envelop the extreme left of the Allies. Only at 5 p.m.——both the
intelligence and the liaison services seem to have failed——did the
British commander, who had been holding pretty well since noon against
attacks that did not yet reveal the enemy’s full strength, learn from
Joffre that this force was twice as large as had been reported in the
morning, that his west flank was in danger, and that “the two French
reserve divisions and the 5th French Army on my right were retiring.”
About midnight the fall of Namur and the defeat of the French 3rd and
4th Armies were also known. In face of this “most unexpected” news,
a 15-miles withdrawal to the line Maubeuge–Jenlain was planned; and
it began at dawn on the 24th, fighting having continued through the
previous night.
Some French writers have audaciously sought to throw a part, at least,
of the responsibility for the French defeat on the Sambre upon the
small British Expeditionary Force. An historian so authorised as M.
Gabriel Hanotaux, in particular, has stated that it was in line,
instead of the 20th, as had been arranged, only on the 23rd, when
the battle on the Sambre was compromised and the turning movement
north-eastward from Mons which had been projected could no longer save
the situation; and that Sir John French, instead of destroying Kluck’s
corps one by one as they arrived, “retreated after three hours’ contact
with the enemy,” hours before Lanrezac ordered the general retreat
of the 5th Army.[25] It is the barest justice to the first British
continental Army, its commander, officers, and men, professional
soldiers of the highest quality few of whom now survive, to say that
these statements, made, no doubt, in good faith, are inaccurate, and
the deductions from them untenable. It was not, and could not have
been, arranged between the Allied commands that French’s two corps
should be in line west and east of Mons, ready for offensive action,
on August 20, when Lanrezac’s fore-guards were only just reaching the
Sambre. General Joffre knew from Sir John, at their meeting on August
16, that the British force could not be ready till the 21st; and it
was then arranged that it should advance that day from the Sambre to
the Mons Canal (13 miles farther north). This was done. Bülow had
then already seized the initiative. If the British could have arrived
sooner, and the projected north-easterly advance had been attempted,
Bülow’s right flank might have been troubled; but the way would have
been left clear for Kluck’s enveloping movement, with disastrous
consequences for the whole left of the Allies. It is not true that the
British retreat preceded the French, or that it occurred after “three
hours’ contact with the enemy.” Lanrezac’s order for the general
retreat was given only at 9 p.m.; but his corps had been falling back
all afternoon. Kluck’s attack began at 11 a.m. on the 23rd, and became
severe about 3 p.m. An hour later, Bülow’s right struck in between
Lanrezac’s 3rd and 18th Corps, compelling them to a retreat that left a
dangerous gap between the British and French Armies. From this time the
British were isolated and continuously engaged. “When the news of the
retirement of the French and the heavy German threatening on my front
reached me,” says the British commander (in his dispatch of September
7, 1914), “I endeavoured to confirm it by aeroplane reconnaissance;
and, as a result of this, I determined to effect a retirement to the
Maubeuge position at daybreak on the 24th. A certain amount of fighting
continued along the whole line throughout the night; and, at daybreak
on the 24th, the 2nd Division made a powerful demonstration as if to
retake Binche,” to enable the 2nd Corps to withdraw. The disengagement
was only procured with difficulty and considerable loss. Had it been
further delayed, the two corps would have been surrounded and wiped
out. They were saved by courage and skill, and by the mistakes of
Kluck, who failed to get some of his forces up in time, and spent
others in an enveloping movement when a direct attack was called for.
Such, in brief, is the deplorable story of the breakdown of the
first French plan of campaign. By August 25, the local panics of the
preceding days were arrested; but from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps
the Allied armies were beaten back, and their chief mass was in full
retreat. King Albert had shepherded his sorely stricken regiments
into the entrenched camp of Antwerp, where, and in West Flanders,
they were to drag upon the invader for nearly two months to come. For
the rest, Belgium was conquered, much of it ravaged. The forces to
which it had looked for aid were disappearing southward, outnumbered,
outweighed in material of war, and severely shaken. But the heroic
Belgians never thought of yielding. On August 25, they made a valuable
diversion, striking out from Antwerp, and forcing the small German
watching force to retire to near Brussels. This and the landing of 2000
British Marines at Ostend sobered the enemy, and caused the detention
of two corps (the III and IX Reserve) before the Scheldt fortress.
The shortlived victories of Rennenkampf and Samsonov at Gumbinnen and
in the Masurian Lake region, threatening a greater invasion of East
Prussia, also affected slightly the distribution of German troops,
though it probably stimulated the urgency of the Western invasion. The
French eastern armies were to keep inviolate the pivot of Verdun, the
crescent of the Nancy hills, and the line of Epinal–Belfort. The tiny
garrison of Longwy resisted till August 26, that of Montmédy till the
30th. Maubeuge held out from August 25 to September 7,[26] and might
be expected to hold longer. The front of the retreating armies was
never broken; but at what a price was their cohesion purchased——the
abandonment of a wide, rich tract of the national territory, with much
of its hapless population.
Enough has been said to show that the reverses of the beginning
of the war which led to the long retreat were due not only to the
brutal strength of the German invasion, but to bad information, bad
judgment, bad organisation, an ill-conceived strategy and reckless
tactics, on the side of the Allies. The impact on the north and
north-west (including now the Crown Prince’s Army) of some 28 army
corps——considerably over a million men——provided with heavy artillery,
machine-guns, transport, and material on a prodigious scale, had never
been dreamed of, and proved irresistible.
We shall now have the happier task of following the marvellous rally of
will and genius by which these errors were redeemed.