ESTABLISHING THE WESTERN FRONT
The Battles Of The Aisne
Throughout the war there was an undercurrent of criticism against the
dispersion of British forces and dissipation of British energy, and
the briefest history of it cannot avoid a certain amount of
discursiveness. The reason, if not the justification, is the same in
both cases; for happily or unhappily the British Empire is scattered
all over the globe, and unless colonies were to be abandoned to enemy
attacks and the natural forces of native discontents, they had to be
defended in part at least by British troops. Fortunately the task
required but a fraction of the military strength which Germany needed
to hold Alsace-Lorraine in time of peace, and long before the end
Great Britain received from her dominions fourfold the help in Europe
that she had to lend them overseas. The rally to the British flag was
to us one of the most inspiring, and to the Germans one of the most
dispiriting, portents in the war; but it took time to bear its fruits,
and meanwhile the cause of civilization had to rely upon the gallantry
of French armies and the numerically weak British forces fighting on
the Marne and on the Aisne.
The human eye is ever longing to pierce the veil of the future, but it
was perhaps as well that men could not foresee, as the Allies drove
the Germans across the lower reaches of the Aisne, how long that river
would be reddened with the blood of the contending forces. They
thought that the tide of invasion would recede as fast as it had
advanced, and it was only as the days of German resistance lengthened
into weeks, and the weeks into months of the longest battle in
history, that staffs and armies and peoples began to grasp the awful
potentialities of scientific progress in the art of modern war. The
battle without a morrow had long been the ideal consummation for
victorious strategy, but no one had yet foreseen the battle without an
end and armies without flanks. That sooner or later one or other
combatant would be outflanked had been the universal assumption of the
strategist; but in the autumn of 1914 the combatant forces gradually
extended their fronts in the effort until they rested upon the
frontier of Switzerland and the sea, and the deadlock of a deadly
embrace began which was not effectively broken until the wrestling of
four years wore down the strength of the wrestlers and left the final
decision in the hands of new-comers to the European field of battle.
The deadlock was no part of the original German plan, but German
forethought during the advance to the Marne had provided entrenchments
in the rear for the event of a retreat, and the natural strength of
the forest of St. Gobain, the Chemin des Dames, and the Argonne as
well as a study of the campaign of 1814 had suggested an obvious line
of defence. It was not, however, expected by the Entente higher
command which proceeded with its frontal attack on the assumption that
the Germans were merely fighting rearguard actions to secure their
further retirement; and it was only when the German front refused to
budge that pressure spread out to the Allied left wing in an attempt
to turn the German right flank, which would have stood more chance of
success had it come a fortnight earlier as a first instead of a second
thought. An even better alternative might have been to revert to
Joffre's original plan, which had failed in August on the Saar, to
thrust forward against the Crown Prince and threaten the left of the
Germans and the communications of their forces in Belgium and northern
France. But it is easier on paper after the event than it was in
action at the time to convert an improvised defensive into a
considered offensive strategy; and the Germans themselves had occasion
during the autumn and the rest of the war to regret that their second
thoughts had not come first.
The battle of the Aisne began, like that of the Marne, on Sunday, 13
September. The Germans' retreat had taken them north of the river
except at a few bridgeheads, but the river was deep and its crossings
were all commanded by fire from German batteries concealed on the
slopes rising up from the northern bank. Maunoury's 6th Army attacked
on the left from Compiègne and the Forêt de l'Aigle to Soissons, and
several divisions were got across. From Soissons eastward for fifteen
miles to Pont-Arcy the line of attack was held by the British Army;
the whole of the 4th Division got across near Venizel, and most of the
5th and 3rd Divisions farther east, but the Germans succeeded in
holding the bridge at Condé. The 2nd Division was also only partially
successful in the region of Chavonne, but the whole of the 1st got
across at Pont-Arcy and Bourg. On Monday, Maunoury pressed forward up
the heights, capturing Autrèches and Nouvron, but, like the British on
his right between Vregny and Vailly, he found the German positions
impregnable on the plateau. Haig's First Corps was more successful
farther east; Vendresse and Troyon were captured and the Chemin des
Dames was almost reached. But D'Esperey's 5th French army could make
little impression on the Craonne plateau; Foch's 9th was unable to
force the Suippe to the east of Reims, and Langle's 4th, while it
occupied Souain, was similarly held up in Champagne.
On the 15th the Germans counter-attacked. Maunoury was driven out of
Nouvron and Autrèches, the British were forced back from Vregny almost
to the river, and the Moroccan troops withdrew on Haig's right flank.
There was a lull on the 16th, and on the 17th Maunoury recovered the
quarries of Autrèches; but east of Reims the 9th Army had fallen back
from the Suippe, and the Prussian Guard had captured Nogent l'Abbesse
and was threatening Foch's connexion with Langle in Champagne. The
18th saw little progress on either side, except along the Oise, where
Maunoury had as early as the 15th begun to outflank the German right.
This success, coupled with the stalemate along the rest of the front,
suggested to Joffre a change of strategy. Numerically the opposing
forces were not unequal, but the Germans had all the advantages of
position. To attack up carefully protected slopes with a river in the
rear and its crossings commanded by the enemy's fire, promised little
hope of success, and threatened disaster in case of failure and
retreat. Accordingly, Joffre, taking some risks by weakening his
centre, began on the 16th to lengthen and strengthen his left by
forming two new armies. Castlenau gave up his command of the 2nd to
Dubail in Lorraine and took over the new 7th, and a 10th was entrusted
to Maud'huy, another of the professors of military history to whom the
French and the Russian armies owed so much of their generalship. By
the 20th Maunoury had swung his left round until it stretched at a
right angle from Compiègne north to the west of Lassigny. Castelnau's
7th continued the line north through Roye to the Albert plateau; and
on the 30th Maud'huy's 10th took up the tale through Arras to Lens.
But if the impact of equal forces on the Aisne flattened them out
towards the west, it had the same effect in the other direction,
though here it was the Germans who took the offensive in trying to
penetrate Sarrail's flank on the Meuse and thus get behind the whole
front of the Allies. Verdun was the nut to be cracked, but Sarrail had
been extending its defences so as to put the city beyond the reach of
the German howitzers and surrounding it with miles of trenches and
wire-entanglements; and the Germans preferred to attempt another
method than frontal attack. About the 20th four new corps, chiefly of
Württemburgers, appeared in Lorraine, bringing their forces up to
seven against Sarrail's three; and an attack was made on Fort Troyon
on the Meuse which reduced it to a dust-heap but failed to carry the
Germans across the river. A more serious onslaught was made on the
23rd against St. Mihiel, which was captured while the neighbouring
forts of Paroches and the Camp des Romains were destroyed. But again
the Germans were prevented from pushing their advantage, and were left
with no more than a wonderful salient which looked on the map like
Germany putting out its tongue at France and resisted all efforts to
repress this insolence until the closing months of the war.
Having achieved but a sterile success to the south of Verdun, the
Crown Prince encountered a greater failure to the west. On 3 October
he attacked Sarrail's centre in the forest of the Argonne, seeking to
recapture St. Menehould, the headquarters he had abandoned on 14
September. His troops were caught in La Grurie wood and so badly
mauled that they temporarily lost Varennes and the main road through
the Argonne to Verdun. Foiled in both these directions, the Germans
revenged themselves by bombarding Reims in the centre and ruining its
cathedral; "the commonest, ugliest stone," wrote a German general,
"placed to mark the burial-place of a German grenadier is a more
glorious and perfect monument than all the cathedrals in Europe put
together." The bombardment did not help them much; Neuvillette, which
they had seized two miles north of Reims, was lost again on 28
September, and the French also recovered Prunay, the German occupation
of which had driven a wedge between Foch's and Langle's armies. On the
other hand, Berry-au-Bac, where the great road crossed the Aisne and
the French often reported progress, remained in German hands for four
years longer. Both sides were now firmly entrenched, and their armies
were learning that new art of trench warfare which was to tax their
ingenuity, test their endurance, and drain their strength, until years
later this war of positions once more gave place to a war of movement.
The lines had become stabilized, and between Reims and the Alps they
did not alter by half a dozen miles at any point from September 1914
until September 1918. The question of October was whether and where
they would be fixed between the Aisne and the sea.
Joffre's outflanking move was promptly countered, if not indeed
anticipated, by the German higher command, and in the first days of
October there was a general drift of German forces towards their right
and the Channel ports. Most and the best of the new levies were sent
into Belgium, and the stoutest troops in the fighting line were
shifted from East to West. Alsace was almost denuded; the Bavarians
were moved from Lorraine towards Lille and Arras, and the Duke of
Württemberg into Belgian Flanders. Von Bulow was sent to face
Castelnau and Maud'huy between the Oise and the Somme, and only Von
Kluck and the Crown Prince with a new general, Von Heeringen, from
Alsace were left to hold the line of the Aisne. Von Moltke was
superseded by Falkenhayn, and a new phase came over German strategy.
The knock-out blow against France had failed, and the little British
Army threatened to grow. France had been the only foe the Germans had
counted in the West, but a new enemy was developing strength, and the
German front was turned to meet the novel danger.
The British Army made a movement which was sympathetic with this
change and symptomatic of the future course of the war. It was clearly
out of place along the Aisne in trenches which could be held by French
territorials and where its long communications crossed those of three
French armies. It was needed in Flanders close to its bases and to the
Channel ports which the Germans had now resolved to seize in the hope
of cutting or straining the Anglo-French liaison and furthering their
new campaign on land and sea against their gathering British foes. The
idea had occurred to Sir John French before the end of September, and
on the 29th he propounded it to Joffre; Joffre concurred, called up an
8th Army under D'Urbal to support and prolong the extension of the
line into Flanders, and placed Foch in general charge of the
operations north of Noyon. The transport began on 3 October and was
admirably carried out, though some of the ultra-patriotic English
newspapers did their best to help the enemy by their enterprise in
evading the Censor and giving news of the movement to the public; for
if business was business to the profiteer, news was news to its
vendors.
For a fortnight the British were on the road and out of the fight,
which was left for the most part to Castelnau's 7th and Maud'huy's
10th Armies; and strenuous fighting it was for all-important objects.
There was little profit in a British out-march round the German flank
in Flanders unless the links between it and the Oise could be
maintained, and the Germans were as speedily reinforcing and extending
their right as we were preparing to turn it. At first Castelnau seemed
to be making rapid and substantial progress; he captured Noyon on 21
September, was pushing on by Lassigny to Roye, and optimistic maps in
the English press depicted the German right being bent back to St.
Quentin and the French outflanking it as far north-east as Le Catelet.
These were not intelligent anticipations. Von Kluck had been
reinforced, and a desperate battle ensued from the 25th to the 28th,
in which Castelnau was driven back from Noyon and Lassigny. This
counter-attack was repulsed with great losses at Quesnoy and Lihons a
little farther north, but Maud'huy was not less heavily engaged north
of the Somme in a several days' struggle for the Albert plateau. The
line established was supposed to run through Combles and Bapaume, and
it was not till long afterwards that the public realized how far it
had sagged to the westwards, or what that sagging meant when the
British had to fight their way up to Bapaume.
North of that watershed the fronts were fluid, if the scattered bodies
of French Territorials and German cavalry could be said to constitute
a front at all; and there was a strenuous race and struggle to turn
the respective flanks. Neither side, it was soon apparent, would
succeed in that object, and the practical question was at what point
the outflanking contest would reach the coast. The German ambition was
to push their right as far south as the mouth of the Seine, while the
Allies hoped to thrust their left to the north until it joined the
Belgian Army at Antwerp. Maud'huy had entered Arras on 30 September,
and some of his Territorials pushed forward to Lille and Douai. During
the first three days of October he was fighting hard on the eastern
slopes of Vimy Ridge but was compelled to fall back on Arras, while
the Germans occupied Lille and Douai and their cavalry penetrated as
far as Bailleul, Hazebrouck, and Cassel. But the British from the
Aisne were moving up towards their positions on Maud'huy's left, the
Aire-La Bassée Canal being fixed as the point of their junction, and
the 7th Division, with a division of cavalry, had landed at Ostend and
Zeebrugge while the Naval Division was sent to assist in the defence
of Antwerp. The Allied dream of a front along the Scheldt to Antwerp,
barring German access to the sea, seemed on the verge of realization;
but dramatic as the moment was, the tension would have been far more
acute had men grasped what a difference possession of the Belgian
coast was to make in the course of the war.
Success was missed by the Allies because it had been a more urgent
task to break the German offensive on the Marne than to save the
remnants of Belgian soil and assist the detached Belgian Army; and the
whole of our available force had been sent to the vital spot.
Isolation is always dubious strategy, but there were sound as well as
natural motives behind the decision which led the Belgian Army after
the German occupation of Brussels on 20 August to fall back
north-westwards on Antwerp instead of southwards to join the Allies at
Mons and Charleroi. The isolation did not involve ineffectiveness, and
so far away as the Marne the Allies experienced the benefit of Belgian
fighting at Antwerp. Three successive sorties alarmed the Germans for
the safety of their far-flung right and its communications, and
diverted reserves from their front in France to their rear in Belgium
(see Map, p. 34). The first began on 24 August and drove the Germans
from Malines, while 2000 British marines landed at Ostend. Then the
Belgian right stretched out a hand towards the British and captured
Alost, while the left struck at Cortenburg on the line between
Brussels and Louvain. The communications of the capital were thus
threatened on three sides, and the Germans had to recall at least
three of their corps from France. It was this interference with their
vital plans in France, coupled with the panic produced by the Belgian
advance, which provoked the Germans into their barbarities at Louvain,
Malines, and Termonde. Schrecklichkeit was to deter the contemptible
Belgian Army from spoiling a mighty German success. That was the view
of the German staff, and a soldiery prone as ever to pillage and
rapine, needed little encouragement to extend to civilians, women, and
children the violence which their leaders organized against cathedrals
and cities.
Panic produces plots in all countries--in the minds of the
panic-stricken, and Germans no doubt believed in the tales of civilian
conspiracies which they used to justify their military crimes. Major
Von Manteuffel ordered the systematic destruction of Louvain, with its
ancient university and magnificent library. The Cathedral and Palais
de Justice at Malines were ruined by bombardment after the Belgian
troops had left it; and Termonde was burnt because a fine was not paid
in time. Massacre, looting, and outrage attained a licence which only
the Germans themselves had equalled during the Thirty Years' War. It
and other orgies were a natural expression of German militarism; for
excessive restraint in one direction provokes relaxation in others,
and the tighter the bond of martial law, the less the respect for
civil codes. The proverbial licence of soldiery is the reaction
against their military discipline.
The second, called "the great sortie" from Antwerp, nearly coincided
with the battle of the Marne. It began on 9 September: Termonde was
reoccupied, but the main effort was towards Aerschot and Louvain.
Aerschot was recaptured on the 9th, though the fiercest struggle took
place at Weerde between Malines and Brussels. Kessel, just outside
Louvain, was taken on the 10th, but German reinforcements began to
arrive on the 11th, and two days later the Belgians were back in their
positions on the Nethe, their retirement being marked, as before, by a
fresh series of German atrocities. A third sortie induced by
representations of the French higher command and by the impression
that the German forces before Antwerp had been reduced, was planned
for 26-27 September, and some fighting occurred at Alost and Moll. But
by this time the new Germany strategy was at work, and the
"side-shows" of the first phase of the war became the main objectives
of the second. The French Army was fairly secure in its trenches and
the way to Paris was barred. But the approach to the Channel ports was
not yet closed, and Antwerp was on the way to the Belgian coast. It
was a fine city to ransom; its loss might convince the Belgians that
there was no hope for their independence; and historical Germans
bethought themselves of Napoleon's description of Antwerp as a pistol
pointed at England's heart. Its fall would be some consolation for the
lack of a second Sedan, and on 28 September the siege began.
The Antwerp defences had been, like those of Liège and Namur, designed
by Brialmont, and were begun in 1861. But the rapid growth of the city
and the increasing range of guns made Brialmont's ring of forts, which
was drawn little more than two miles from the walls, useless as a
protection against bombardment, and twenty years later a wider circle
of forts, which was barely completed when war broke out, was begun ten
miles farther out, beyond the Rupel and the Nethe, and extending
almost to Malines. One of the objects of the Belgian sorties had been
to keep this ring intact and prevent the German howitzers from being
brought up within range of the city. But there are only two means by
which forts can be made effective defences; either their artillery
must be equal in range and power to that of the attacking force, or
the attacking force must be prevented by defending troops from
bringing its howitzers within range. Neither of these two conditions
was fulfilled. The Belgian trenches, so far as any had been dug, were
close under this outer ring of forts, and the German 28-cm. howitzers
had an effective range of at least a mile and a half longer than that
of any guns the Belgians could mount. These howitzers had already
disposed of the fortifications of Liège, Namur, and Maubeuge, and it
was only a question of days and hours when they would make a breach in
the outer defences of Antwerp.
Their fire was concentrated on Forts Waelhem and Wavre, south and east
of Antwerp. Both had been destroyed by 1 October, and the reservoir
near the former, which supplied the city with water, was broken down,
flooding the Belgian trenches north of the Nethe, beyond which they
had now taken refuge. Farther to the left Termonde was seized by
German infantry and the Belgians driven across the Scheldt. On the 2nd
the Government resolved to leave Antwerp, but its departure and the
flight of the civilians were postponed by the arrival of Mr.
Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, and first a brigade of Royal
Marines and then two naval brigades of splendid but raw and ill-armed
recruits. They were at once sent out to help the Belgians to defend
their trenches along the north bank of the Nethe against the German
numbers and their more effective shells. On the 5th and following
night both the left and centre of the defence were pierced, the
Germans crossed the Nethe, and began to concentrate their howitzers on
the inner line of ramparts. On the 7th the exodus from the city began
by land and water, and amid heartrending scenes a quarter of a million
people strove to reach the Dutch frontier or safety on the sea. The
Belgian and British troops did their best to hold off the Germans
while the flight proceeded and the city was subject to bombardment. It
was doubtful whether any would get away, for the Germans had at last
begun serious fighting up the Scheldt in order to cut off the retreat
towards Zeebrugge and Ostend. In the narrow gap between the intruding
Germans and the Dutch frontier some were forced across the latter and
interned; others fell into the enemy's hands; and less than a third of
the first Naval Brigade escaped to England. On the 9th the bombardment
ceased, and on the 10th the Germans made their formal entry into a
well-nigh deserted city. They had got their pistol pointed at the
heart of England, but like Napoleon they learnt that it was a pistol
which could only be fired by sea-power.
Most of the Belgian Army with the remnants of the British forces got
away to the coast through the gap beyond the Scheldt which Von Beseler
had failed to close in time; and it is impossible to say whether the
gallant efforts of the Royal Marines and naval brigades did more to
facilitate this escape than the postponement of the retreat, caused by
their arrival, did to frustrate it. As an end in itself the expedition
for the relief of Antwerp was a failure; but it was designed to
subserve a larger operation, the scope of which has not yet been
revealed. At the time of its dispatch there may still have been hopes
for the success of Joffre's larger strategical scheme of bending back
the German flank in Flanders behind the Scheldt; and obviously, if the
failure of the Germans at the Marne and a successful defence of
Antwerp by the Entente should induce the Dutch to intervene, the
German position in the West would be completely turned. In either case
"other and more powerful considerations," as the Admiralty expressed
it on 17 October, prevented the "large operation" of which the
expedition of the Naval Division had been merely a part, from being
carried out; and the "powerful consideration" may have been the forces
which Germany was massing at Aix and in Belgium to defeat the Entente
strategy in Flanders.
The Campaigns In Artois
The fall of Antwerp was as fatal to our scheme of controlling the
Scheldt as Castlenau's and Maud'huy's successful defence between the
Oise and Arras had been to the German project of reaching the mouth of
the Seine; and it still remained to be seen at what point the
expanding pressure upon the opposing flanks would impinge upon the
coast. Neither side had yet reconciled itself to or perhaps conceived
of such a stalemate to their strategy. Rawlinson's 7th Division of
infantry and 3rd of cavalry had not been landed at Zeebrugge and
Ostend on 6 October to defend those ports or even the Yser, and the
fresh German armies advancing through Belgium were not intended to
waste their strength on the ridges in front of Ypres or floods around
Dixmude. The Germans hoped, if not to turn the Entente flank, at least
to seize Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne; and Joffre and French were
planning to make La Bassée, Lille, and Menin the pivot of a turning
movement which should liberate Brussels, isolate Von Beseler in
Antwerp, and threaten the rear of the German position along the Aisne.
To render these plans feasible it was necessary that La Bassée and
Lille should be held and that the indefinite German flank in Flanders
should be outreached; and thus the country from Arras northwards to
the coast became the ground on which the autumn campaign in the West
was doomed to be decided.
Antwerp fell amid a fluid front. On 9 October Maud'huy's 10th Army was
holding up in front of Arras; but his Territorials were falling back
on Lille and its environment as the Belgians retreated to join
Rawlinson at Ostend. French's three corps were on their way to prolong
and establish Maud'huy's left, and an 8th French army under D'Urbal
was designed to fling the line yet farther north. But the Germans were
bent on a similar object, and their masses of cavalry, released from
the front on the Aisne by its settlement into trenches, were keeping
open the country and the issue. The rival armies were like two doors
swinging towards one another on the same hinge; but they were not
wooden or rigid, and the banging together began at the hinge near La
Bassée and extended northwards to the coast in a concussion spread
over several days. On 11 October Smith-Dorrien's 2nd Corps reached the
La Bassée Canal between Aire and Béthune, while Gough's cavalry was
clearing the German patrols out of the forest of Nieppe. On the 12th
he attempted a frontal attack on La Bassée, but found the German
position too strong, and determined to try to wheel round it on the
north. This movement had some success; the 3rd Division drove the
Germans from village to village until on the 17th Aubers and Herlies,
north to north-east of La Bassée, were taken by assault. But the
Germans were simultaneously and in the same way driving in the French
Territorials; on the 13th they occupied Lille, and on the 19th an
Irish brigade which had advanced beyond Herlies to Le Pilly was cut
off and captured. So far as the 2nd Corps was concerned the doors had
banged together.
Pulteney's 3rd was moving towards collision on the left. It detrained
from St. Omer on the 11th, drove the Germans out of Meteren on the
13th, occupied Bailleul and Armentières and then crossed the Lys,
gaining a line from Le Gheir, north of Armentières, to Bois Grenier by
the 17th. An attempt to clear the right bank farther north failed
against the opposition of the German front from Radinghen to
Frelinghien and thence along the river. Here, too, the way was barred,
but north of the Lys there was as yet no stable control. There were
some French and British cavalry and some weak detachments of infantry;
but Haig's 1st Corps had not yet completed its transport from the
Aisne, Rawlinson's 7th Division was being expanded into a 4th Corps,
and the Belgian Army was painfully making its retreat from Antwerp. On
the 13th Von Beseler was in Ghent, on the 14th in Bruges, and on the
16th in Ostend. The outflanking here was being done by the Germans
with uncomfortable rapidity. On the day that the Germans entered
Ostend, the Belgians were driven out of the forest of Houthulst and
took refuge far behind the Yser. Four French cavalry divisions
recovered the forest on the 17th, but the 7th British Division which
had occupied Roulers on the 13th was driven back to a line south-east
of Ypres running through Zandvoorde, Gheluvelt, and Zonnebeke (see
Map, p. 288).
D'Urbal's 8th French army now, however, came up to support the
exhausted Belgians and assist in holding the Yser from Dixmude to the
sea, where British warships were assembled to harass the German flank
along the dunes; and Sir John French thought the moment had come for
an offensive wheel round Menin towards the Scheldt. Haig's 1st Corps
was expected shortly to fill the gap between Rawlinson's 4th and
D'Urbal, and Rawlinson was instructed to advance on the 18th, seize
Menin, and then await Haig, who was to move through Ypres on to
Thourout, Bruges, and Ghent. In England it was confidently expected
that the Germans, who had arrived at Ostend on a Friday, would enjoy
but a week-end visit to the seaside resort, and the newspapers were
not more sadly optimistic or ill-informed than headquarters in France.
The orders given on the 18th and 19th could only have been the outcome
of complete ignorance of the strength of the German Army, which was as
much underestimated by the Intelligence Department on the spot as it
was later exaggerated by writers on the campaign. In reality four new
German Corps were already at Brussels or Courtrai mainly from
Württemberg and Bavaria, and although the presence in them of men with
grey beards and boys with none gave rise to some ill-timed
satisfaction in the British press, these Landsturm troops were not to
be despised. Rawlinson moved on Menin on the 19th, but was stopped
three miles away by the German masses coming from Courtrai, and had to
entrench on a line running east of Gheluvelt. On the same day the 1st
Corps detrained at St. Omer and marched towards Ypres. Instead of
advancing on Thourout and beyond, it had to dig itself in on a line of
defence from Rawlinson's left at Zonnebeke to Bixschoote, where the
French began their own and the Belgian front along the Yser to
Nieuport.
The impact of the opposing forces had flattened them out until they
extended to the coast, and the point at which they reached it remained
fixed for four years to a day. Instead of a brilliant strategical run
round the enemy's flanks to a distant goal in his rear, there was
fated to be a strenuous scrimmage all along the line. It was a
democratic sort of war, depending for its decision upon the stoutness
of the pack rather than on the genius of the individual. The pressure
was differently distributed at different periods during those endless
years; now it was Ypres, now Verdun, then the Somme and the Chemin des
Dames that was selected for the special push; and in time as their
man-power began to fail the Germans laid greater stress on the
concrete of their lines. But the line was never really broken, and no
flank was ever fully turned. It wavered at places and times now in
favour of one side and now in that of the other; but the end only came
when the whole was pushed back by superior weight of numbers,
advancing at an average rate of less than a mile a day.
The first great trial of strength is associated in British minds with
the first battle of Ypres. The French dwell rather on the equally
strenuous struggle farther south round Arras under Foch. For the line
of battle stretched north from the Albert plateau for a hundred miles,
and we can hardly claim that the boys and the middle-aged men, at whom
some were inclined to scoff, in Flanders were the pick of the German
troops sent into the fray. The glory of the defence consisted rather
in the resistance of better troops to superior numbers backed by a
vast preponderance of artillery. The estimates of the German forces
are still little more than conjectures; and the figures of a million
and a half Germans to half a million French, British, and Belgians, or
of fifty corps to twelve and a half, will probably be corrected when
the German statistics are known. If it is further true that at the
actual points of fighting the disproportion was five to one, we need
no further illustration of the ills which inadequate co-ordination
imposes on an Alliance, and inadequate staff-work and intelligence on
any fighting force. The Allied tactics were probably not so clumsy nor
the German troops so feeble as these thoughtless estimates imply.
It was not a struggle in which there was much scope for strategy on
either side, because there had been no fixed data on which to base it.
Each combatant had been bent on out-flanking the other before the sea
was reached and success denied; but neither knew from day to day or
hour to hour where his own or the enemy's line would be. It was idle
to plan at headquarters the investment of places which might at the
moment be well behind the lines, or the defence of others which the
enemy might already have passed; and the alleged inexplicable nature
of the German strategy seems to be largely due to an antedating of the
establishment of a line of battle. They might have done better to
concentrate on Arras with a view to breaking the Anglo-French liaison
on the La Bassée Canal and isolating the British Army, than to
distribute their onslaughts over a front of a hundred miles. But the
problem was to outflank a wing which was still in the air, and not to
break a line which was not yet formed; and even if it were in
existence, subsequent experience would have justified the conviction
that success was to be obtained by pressure along an extended front
rather than by concentration on limited sectors like Verdun, or even
the 18-mile front of the battle of the Somme. The struggle which
closed the autumn campaign in the West was not, in fact, a new battle
fought on a preconceived plan, but the final clash of armies seeking
to outmarch each other's flanks in a battle begun on the Marne; and
the popular German advertisement of a new campaign against the Channel
ports and a different enemy than the French was merely a fresh coat of
paint designed to cover a structure that had gone to pieces.
Apart from the effort to outflank, neither side could therefore have
any definite plan, and neither was able to choose the scene of
conflict. Two years later, when they withdrew to the Hindenburg lines,
the Germans admitted freely enough that the earlier line had been none
of their choice, and it was certainly none of ours. It was, in fact,
imposed upon both the combatants by that same balance of forces which
eventually also imposed upon them, against their will, the deadlock in
the West. On 19 October Sir John French was still hoping that Haig
could outflank the Germans at Ghent, and the presence of the Kaiser on
the coast a few days later suggests that his generals still cherished
the idea of an outmarch rather than a break-through. It was the
British Navy that put the final check on that design, and accident
played its part. Three Brazilian monitors of shallow draught but heavy
armament had been purchased by the Admiralty in August: they could
work inshore even along the shallow waters of the Belgian coast which
precluded counter-attack by submarines, and from 18 to 28 October
their guns swept the Belgian shore for six miles inland and repelled
the onslaught of the German right on Nieuport. Haig's outflanking
project had been rendered equally impossible by the strength of the
German resistance to Rawlinson's move on Menin, and by the 21st both
sides had been pinned down to a ding-dong soldiers' battle all along
the front. Its chronology is as important as its localities, and it is
hard to follow the course of the struggle if the narrative loses
itself in the different threads of the various corps engaged. For all
were fighting at the same time, and the only generalizations possible
are that the struggle tended to concentrate from both wings towards
the apex at Ypres and to culminate in the combat of the last day of
the month.
This bird's-eye view and lack of information about the details do less
than justice to the crucial battle, which Maud'huy under Foch's
general direction waged against the Germans round Arras and both they
and the French regard as one of the decisive incidents in the war.
Clearly, if Von Buelow succeeded in breaking through towards Doullens
or Béthune there was little to stop his reaching Boulogne or
Abbeville, and the British Army would be first isolated and then
driven into the sea. The struggle for Arras began on the 20th, after
the Germans had secured an initial advantage by seizing Lens, and Von
Buelow was given the Prussian Guard to achieve its capture. The climax
was reached on the 24th in an attempt to take the important railway
junction of Achicourt just south of the city. Arras itself was reduced
almost to ruins by the German bombardment; but Maud'huy's men held
good, and on the 26th were even able to take the offensive. The
Germans were driven out of their most advanced positions, though they
held the Vimy Ridge, and accepting defeat before Arras, transferred
some of their best troops, including the Prussian Guards, farther
north. Possibly this relinquishment was the worst of their tactical
mistakes, but the higher commands on both sides had learnt the cost of
persisting in attempts to break through, and Falkenhayn may well have
thought it best to seek a weaker spot.
Maud'huy's successful resistance made it possible for Smith-Dorrien's
2nd Corps to hold a line north of the La Bassée Canal, though not the
line on which he had first come up against the Germans advancing from
Lille. That formed a right angle, stretching north-east from Givenchy
to Herlies and then north-west to Fauquissart; but on the 22nd his
right was driven out of Violaines, and the salient had to be evacuated
by withdrawal to a line in front of Givenchy, Festubert, and Neuve
Chapelle. On the 27th Neuve Chapelle was taken by the Germans. A
gallant attack by Indian troops, who had been brought up from
Marseilles to assist Smith-Dorrien's tried and depleted corps, checked
their advance on the 28th and drove them back into Neuve Chapelle; and
another German attack was held before Festubert. Here Sir James
Willcock's Indian Corps had a hard task for the next few days, and a
breach in our lines on 2 November was only repaired by a desperate
charge of the Gurkhas. The winter of northern France was to have more
effect on their physique than German warfare on their moral, and after
a final assault on Givenchy--one of the virgin pivots of the war in
the West--on 7 November, the battle in front of the 2nd Corps subsided
into an artillery duel. The fighting in front of Pulteney's 3rd Corps,
which carried on the line from Smith-Dorrien's left towards Ypres, was
overshadowed by the struggle round that city; but it had enough to do
to maintain the connexion. Its hold on the left bank of the Lys north
of Armentières was strenuously disputed; on the 20th the Germans
seized Le Gheir at the south-east corner of Ploegstreet Wood, but were
immediately driven out. They took it again on the 29th and some
trenches in the wood with no more permanent success, but managed on
the 30th to take and retain St. Yves a little farther north.
This was part of the Ypres fighting, and downwards from the coast the
surge of battle was also drawn into that maelstrom. The British naval
guns had destroyed the attraction of the dunes, and the Germans turned
towards the inland marshes along the Yser. On the 23rd they crossed it
and advanced to Ramscapelle, but were driven back by the Belgians,
while fourteen unsuccessful attacks were made the following night on
Dixmude, farther south. A more successful attempt was made on the 24th
and 25th on Schoorbakke, and the Germans advanced towards the railway
embankment near Pervyse. The Belgians now bethought themselves of the
expedient their forbears had found effective in the days of William
the Silent and Alexander Farnese. The Yser was dammed at Nieuport, the
sluices were opened above Dixmude, and slowly the river rose above its
banks and spread over the meadow-flats the Germans were striving to
cross. Men were drowned and guns submerged, and presently an
impassable sheet of water protected the Belgians on the railway from
Nieuport to Dixmude. The Germans, however, made two more efforts to
pierce the Belgian line north and south of the inundation. On the 30th
they seized Ramscapelle, but were expelled by the French on the 31st,
and on 7 November a determined attack was made on Dixmude, now
defended by Admiral Ronarc'h and his French marines. It succeeded
after three days' fighting and a heavy bombardment on the 10th. But
Dixmude had, as was natural in a country which had generally feared
attack from France, been built on the eastern bank of the Yser; and
the Germans were never able to debouch across the river (see Map, p.
288).
The capture of Dixmude coincided with the last attack on Ypres. That
famous battle was but an act in the drama played along the Flanders
front, and it may not have been more decisive and was perhaps less
dramatic than the battle of Arras. But the act extended throughout the
play, and gradually attracted more and more attention. It was a
natural continuation of the outflanking struggle, and there was no
interval between the British attempt to get to Ghent and the German
effort to reach the Channel ports. The two ambitions here clashed in
front of Ypres. Rawlinson's failure before Menin left him facing
south-east, while the expulsion of the Belgians and then the French
Territorials from the Houthulst forest left Haig and the French
contingents facing north-east from Bixschoote to Zonnebeke; the apex
of this Ypres salient was at Becelaere. D'Urbal's 8th Army from
Bixschoote north to Dixmude played a subsidiary part similar to that
of Pulteney's 3rd Corps farther south; but had it not been for the
supports he was able to send to Haig's assistance, the Germans would
assuredly have broken through.
The attack began from the apex to our right at Zillebeke on the 21st,
and its momentum showed that nothing more than stubborn defence was
possible. The 7th Division bore the brunt of the attack, and Haig's
1st Corps was precluded from a counter-offensive by the need of
detaching supports to the south-east of Ypres, where long stretches of
line were only held by cavalry, and Pulteney was being pressed in
front of Ploegstreet. On the 23rd the Germans made an impetuous
onslaught on Langemarck, but the pressure was relieved by a French
advance on the left and their taking over the line of our 1st
Division, which enabled Haig to move in support of the centre.
Nevertheless the Germans drove it from Becelaere and got into Polygon
Wood. At night on the 25th they struck at Kruseik, between Gheluvelt
and Zandvoorde. There followed a suspicious lull, and on the 29th the
reinforced Germans drove against the centre of the 1st Corps at
Gheluvelt; an initial success was reversed later on in the day, but on
the 30th the attack shifted towards the right at Zandvoorde, and the
1st Division was forced back a mile to Zillebeke, while the 2nd
conformed and the 2nd Cavalry Division was driven from Hollebeke back
to St. Eloi. The Kaiser arrived that day and the crisis on the morrow.
Gheluvelt was the point selected for the blow, and the 1st Division
was thrust back into the woods in front of Hooge, where headquarters
were heavily shelled. The flank of the 7th Division was thus exposed,
and the Royal Scots Fusiliers were wiped out. Fortunately the arrival
of Moussy with part of the 9th French Corps averted further disaster,
though he had to collect regimental cooks and other unarmed men to
help in holding the line. Allenby's cavalry farther south was in
equally desperate straits near Hollebeke, and he was only saved by the
transference of Kavanagh's 7th brigade from the north of Hooge to his
assistance. North of the Ypres-Menin road the German attack had not
been seriously pressed, and it was from this direction that help came
between 2 and 3 p.m., the hour which Sir John French once described as
the most critical in the Ypres battle. The main instrument was the 2nd
Worcesters, who fell upon the German advanced and exposed right, and
retook Gheluvelt by a bayonet charge. This relieved the pressure on
the 7th Division, and by nightfall their positions had been regained.
But the battle was not yet over. On 1 November the Germans renewed
their attack on Allenby and captured Hollebeke and Messines, and then
in the night Wytschaete. Luckily on that day the French 16th Corps
arrived and recovered Wytschaete. The Germans themselves now needed
reinforcements and time to recover, and for some days there was little
fighting except an unequal artillery duel. On the 6th a German attack
on Zillebeke nearly succeeded, but was eventually repulsed by a charge
of the Household Cavalry. Another pause followed, but the Germans were
bent on one more effort, and the Prussian Guards were brought up from
Arras to make it on the 11th. They charged on the Menin road against
Gheluvelt and drove the 1st Division back into the woods behind; but
then they were held, and counter-attacks recovered most of the lost
positions. The Germans by this time were tired of Ypres, though they
continued for four days longer to struggle for Bixschoote, where
Dubois and his Zouaves put up a splendid and successful defence, and a
few spasmodic attempts were made at Zillebeke and elsewhere between 12
and 17 November. Then, with the arrival of further French
reinforcements, the Germans desisted, and the line of battle in
Flanders sank into an uneasy winter torpor. The second as well as the
first thoughts of the German command for the campaign of 1914 in the
West had come to nought, or to what was nearly as bad, a stalemate;
and the East was calling with an urgent and distracting voice to other
fields of battle.