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FOCH THE MAN
A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies
by
CLARA E. LAUGHLIN
With Appreciation by Lieut.-Col. Edouard Réquin
of the French High Commission to the United States
With Illustrations
Revised and Enlarged Edition
[Frontispiece: Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference.]
New York -------- Chicago
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
Fleming H. Revell Company
First Printing - November 11, 1918
Second Printing - November 19, 1918
Third Printing - November 29, 1918
Fourth Printing - December 7, 1918
Fifth Printing - January 9, 1919
Sixth Printing - May 1, 1919
DEDICATION
TO THE MEN WHO HAVE FOUGHT UNDER GENERAL
FOCH'S COMMAND. TO ALL Of THEM, IN ALL
GRATITUDE. BUT IN AN ESPECIAL WAY TO THE MEN
OF THE 42D DIVISION, THE SPLENDOR OF
WHOSE CONDUCT ON SEPTEMBER 9, 1914,
NO PEN WILL EVER BE ABLE
ADEQUATELY TO COMMEMORATE.
[Illustration: Hand-written letter from Foch.]
[Illustration: Page 1 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin
to Clara Laughlin.]
[Illustration: Page 2 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin
to Clara Laughlin.]
[Transcriber's note: The letter in the second and third illustrations
is shown translated on the following page.]
Dear MADEMOISELLE LAUGHLIN:
I have read with the keenest interest your sketch of the life of
Marshal Foch. It is not yet history: we are too close to events to
write it now, but it is the story of a great leader of men on which I
felicitate you because of your real understanding of his character.
Christian, Frenchman, soldier, Foch will be held up as an example for
future generations as much for his high moral standard as for his
military genius.
It seems that in writing about him the style rises with the noble
sentiments which inspire him.
Thus in form of presentation as well as in substance you convey
admirably the great lesson which applies to each one of us from the
life of Marshal Foch.
Please accept, Mademoiselle, this expression of my respectful regards.
LT.-COLONEL E. RÉQUIN.
"THEY SHALL NOT PASS!"
Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak
And gazed on a world of red,--
Red with the blood of heroes,
The living and the dead;
A mighty force of Evil strove
With freemen, mass on mass.
Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak
And cried: "They shall not pass!"
The Spirits of Love and Sacrifice,
The Spirit of Freedom, too,--
They called to the men they had dwelt among
Of the Old World and the New!
And the men came forth at the trumpet call,
Yea, every creed and class;
And they stood with the Spirits who called to them,
And cried: "They shall not pass!"
Far down the road of the Future Day
I see the world of Tomorrow;
Men and women at work and play,
In the midst of their joy and sorrow.
And every night by the red firelight,
When the children gather 'round
They tell the tale of the men of old.
These noble ancestors, grim and bold,
Who bravely held their ground.
In thrilling accents they often speak
Of the Spirits Three on the mountain peak.
O Freedom, Love and Sacrifice
You claimed our men, alas!
Yet everlasting peace is theirs
Who cried, "They shall not pass!"
ARTHUR A. PENN.
_Reprinted by permission of M. Witmark & Sons, N. Y._
_Publishers of the musical setting to this poem._
CONTENTS
I. WHERE HE WAS BORN
Stirring traditions and historic scenes which surrounded him in
childhood.
II. BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
The horsemarkets at Tarbes. The school. Foch at twelve a student of
Napoleon.
III. A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
What Foch suffered in the defeat of France by the Prussians.
IV. PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
Foch begins his military studies, determined to be ready when France
should again need defense.
V. LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER
Begins to specialize in cavalry training. The school at Saumur.
VI. FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY
Seven years at Rennes as artillery captain and always student of war.
Called to Paris for further training.
VII. JOFFRE AND FOCH
Parallels in their careers since their school days together.
VIII. THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR
Where Foch's great work as teacher prepared hundreds of officers for
the superb parts they have played in this war.
IX. THE GREAT TEACHER
Some of the principles Foch taught. Why he is not only the greatest
strategist and tactician of all time, but the ideal leader and
coordinator of democracy.
X. A COLONEL AT FIFTY
Clemenceau's part in giving Foch his opportunity.
XI. FORTIFYING FRANCE
How the Superior War Council prepared for the inevitable invasion of
France. Foch put in command at Nancy.
XII. ON THE EVE OF WAR
True to his belief that "the way to make war is to attack" Foch
promptly invaded Germany, but was obliged to retire and defend his own
soil.
XIII. THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE
How the brilliant generalship there thwarted the German plan; and how
Joffre recognized it in reorganizing his army.
XIV. THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
"The Miracle of the Marne" was Foch. How he turned defeat to victory.
XV. SENT NORTH TO SAVE CHANNEL PORTS
Foch's skill and diplomacy in that crisis show him a great coordinator.
XVI. THE SUPREME COMMANDER
How Foch stopped the German drive that nearly separated the French and
English armies.
XVII. BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES
The completest humiliation ever inflicted on a proud nation.
XVIII. DURING THE ARMISTICE--AND AFTER
How Foch carries himself as victor.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
The room in which Ferdinand Foch was born
The house in Tarbes where Foch was born
Ferdinand Foch as a schoolboy of twelve
The school in Tarbes
Marshall Joffre--General Foch
General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General Pershing
General Foch--General Pershing
Marshal Foch, Executive head of the allied forces
Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France
FOREWORD TO REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
When the Great War broke out, one military name "led all the rest" in
world-prominence: Kitchener. Millions of us were confident that the
hero of Kartoum would save the world. It was not so decreed. Almost
immediately another name flashed into the ken of every one, until even
lisping children said _Joffre_ with reverence second only to that
wherewith they named Omnipotence. Then the weary years dragged on, and
so many men were incredibly brave and good that it seemed hard for
anyone to become pre-eminent. We began to say that in a war so vast,
so far-flung, no one man _could_ dominate the scene.
But, after nearly four years of conflict, a name we had heard and seen
from the first, among many others, began to differentiate itself from
the rest; and presently the whole wide world was ringing with it: Foch!
He was commanding all the armies of civilization. Who was he?
Hardly anyone knew.
Up to the very moment when he had compassed the most momentous victory
in the history of mankind, little was known about him, outside of
France, beyond the fact that he had been a professor in the Superior
School of War.
Now and then, as the achievements of his generalship rocked the world,
someone essayed an account of him. They said he was a Lorrainer, born
at Metz; they said his birthday was August 4; they said he was too
young to serve in the Franco-Prussian war; and they said a great many
other things of which few happened to be true.
Then, as the summer of 1918 waned, there came to me from France, from
Intelligence officers of General Foch's staff, authoritative
information about him.
And also there came those, representing France and her interests in
this country, who said:
"Won't you put the facts about Foch before your people?"
If I could have fought for France with a sword (or gun) I should have
been at her service from the first of August, 1914, when I heard her
tocsin ring, saw her sons march away to fight and die on battlefields
as familiar to me as my home neighborhood.
Not being permitted that, I have yielded her such service as I could
with my pen.
And when asked to write, for my countrymen, about General Foch, I felt
honored in a supreme degree.
In due course we shall have many volumes about him: his life, his
teachings, his writings, his great deeds will be studied in minutest
details as long as that civilization endures which he did so much to
preserve to mankind.
But just now, while all hearts are overflowing with gratefulness to
him, it may be--I cannot help thinking--as valuable to us to know a
little about him as it will be for us to know a great deal about him
later on.
My sources of information are mainly French; and notable among them is
a work recently published in Paris: "Foch, His Life, His Principles,
His Work, as a Basis for Faith in Victory," by René Puaux, a French
soldier-author who has served under the supreme commander in a capacity
which enabled him to study the man as well as the General.
French, English and some few American periodicals have given me bits of
impression and some information. French military and other writers
have also helped. And noted war correspondents have contributed
graphic fragments. The happy fortune which permitted me to know
France, her history and her people, enabled me to "read into" these
brief accounts much which does not appear to the reader without that
acquaintance. And distinguished Frenchmen, scholars and soldiers,
including several members of the French High Commission to the United
States, have helped me greatly; most of them have not only close
acquaintance with General Foch, having served as staff officers under
him, but are eminent writers as well, with the highest powers of
analysis and of expression.
Lieutenant-Colonel Édouard Réquin of the French General Staff, who was
at General Foch's side from the day Foch was made commander of an army,
has been especially kind to me in this undertaking; I am indebted to
him, not only for many anecdotes and suggestions, but also for his
patience in reading my manuscript for verification (or correction) of
its details and its essential truthfulness.
And I want especially to record my gratefulness to M. Antonin
Barthélemy, French Consul at Chicago, the extent and quality of whose
helpfulness, not alone on this but on many occasions, I shall never be
able to describe. Through him the Spirit of France has been potent in
our community.
Thus aided and encouraged, I have done what I could to set before my
countrymen a sketch of the great, dominant figure of the World War.
The thing about Foch that most impresses us as we come to know him is
not primarily his greatness as a military genius, but his greatness as
a spiritual force.
Those identical qualities in him which saved the world in war, will
serve it no less in peace--if we study them to good purpose.
As a leader of men, his principles need little, if any, adaptation to
meet the requirements of the re-born world from which, we hope, he has
banished the sword.
Not to those only who would or who must captain their fellows, but to
every individual soul fighting alone against weakness and despair and
other foes, his life-story brings a rising tide of new courage, new
strength, new faith.
For the young man or woman struggling with the principles of success;
for the man or woman of middle life, fearful that the time for great
service has gone by; to the preacher and the teacher and other moulders
of ideals--to these, and to many more, he speaks at least as
thrillingly as to the soldier.
This is what I have tried to make clear in my simple sketch here
offered.
I
WHERE HE WAS BORN
Ferdinand Foch was born at Tarbes on October 2, 1851.
His father, of good old Pyrenean stock and modest fortune, was a
provincial official whose office corresponded to that of secretary of
state for one of our commonwealths. So the family lived in Tarbes, the
capital of the department called the Upper Pyrénées.
The mother of Ferdinand was Sophie Dupré, born at Argèles, twenty miles
south of Tarbes, nearer the Spanish border. Her father had been made a
chevalier of the empire by Napoleon I for services in the war with
Spain, and the great Emperor's memory was piously venerated in Sophie
Dupré's new home as it had been in her old one. So her first-born son
may be said to have inherited that passion for Napoleon which has
characterized his life and played so great a part in making him what he
is.
There was a little sister in the family which welcomed Ferdinand. And
in course of time two other boys came.
[Illustration: The Room in Which Ferdinand Foch was Born.]
[Illustration: The House in Tarbes Where Foch was Born.]
These four children led the ordinary life of happy young folks in
France. But there was much in their surroundings that was richly
colorful, romantic. Probably they took it all for granted, the way
children (and many who are not children) take their near and intimate
world. But even if they did, it must have had its deep effect upon
them.
To begin with, there was Tarbes.
Tarbes is a very ancient city. It is twenty-five miles southeast of
Pau, where Henry of Navarre made his dramatic entry upon a highly
dramatic career, and just half that distance northeast of Lourdes,
whose famous pilgrimages began when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy of
seven.
He must have heard many soul-stirring tales about little Bernadette,
the peasant girl to whom the grotto's miraculous qualities were
revealed by the Virgin, and whose stories were weighed by the Bishop of
Tarbes before the Catholic Church sponsored them. The procession of
sufferers through Tarbes on their way to Lourdes, and the joyful return
of many, must have been part of the background of Ferdinand Foch's
young days.
Many important highways converge at Tarbes, which lies in a rich,
elevated plain on the left bank of the River Adour.
The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch was a
little boy it had fewer than half that many.
For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of
one very long street, running east and west over so wide a stretch of
territory that the town was called Tarbes-the-Long. Here and there
this "main street" is crossed by little streets running north and south
and giving glimpses of mountains, green fields and orchards; and many
of these are threaded by tiny waterways--small, meandering children of
the Adour, which take themselves where they will, like the chickens in
France, and nobody minds having to step over or around them, or
building his house to humor their vagaries.
Tarbes was a prominent city of Gaul under the Romans. They, who could
always be trusted to make the most of anything of the nature of baths,
seem to have been duly appreciative of the hot springs in which that
region abounds.
But nothing of stirring importance happened at or near Tarbes until
after the battle of Poitiers (732), when the Saracens were falling back
after the terrible defeat dealt them by Charles Martel.
Sullen and vengeful, they were pillaging and destroying as they went,
and probably none of the communities through which they passed felt
able to offer resistance to their depredations--until they got to
Tarbes. And there a valiant priest named Missolin hastily assembled
some of the men of the vicinity and gave the infidels a good
drubbing--killing many and hastening the flight, over the mountains, of
the rest.
This encounter took place on a plain a little to the south of Tarbes
which is still called the Heath of the Moors.
When Ferdinand Foch was a little boy, more than eleven hundred years
after that battle, it was not uncommon for the spade or plowshare of
some husbandman on the heath to uncover bones of Christian or infidel
slain in what was probably the last conflict fought on French soil to
preserve France against the Saracens. And there may still have been
living some old, old men or women who could tell Ferdinand stories of
the 24th of May (anniversary of the battle) as it was observed each
year until the Revolution of 1789. At the southern extremity of the
battlefield there stood for many generations a gigantic equestrian
statue, of wood, representing the holy warrior, Missolin, rallying his
flock to rout the unbelievers. And in the presence of a great
concourse singing songs of grateful praise to Missolin, his statue was
crowned with garlands by young maidens wearing the picturesque gala
dress of that vicinity.
Some forty-odd years after Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with
his twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to
Spain to fight the Moors. And when that ill-starred expedition was
defeated and its warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland--so
the story goes--finding no pass in the Pyrénées where he needed one
desperately, cleaved one with his sword Durandal.
High up among the clouds (almost 10,000 feet) is that Breach of
Roland--200 feet wide, 330 feet deep, and 165 feet long. A good
slice-out for a single stroke! And when Roland had cut it, he dashed
through it and across the chasm, his horse making a clean jump to the
French side of the mountains. That no one might ever doubt this, the
horse thoughtfully left the mark of one iron-shod hoof clearly
imprinted in the rock just where he cleared it, and where it is still
shown to the curious and the stout of wind.
It is a pity to remember that, in spite of such prowess of knight and
devotion of beast. Roland perished on his flight from Spain.
But, like all brave warriors, he became mightier in death even than he
had been in life, and furnished an ideal of valor which animated the
most chivalrous youth of all Europe, throughout many centuries.
With such traditions is the country round about Tarbes impregnated.
It has been suggested that the name Foch (which, by the way, is
pronounced as if it rhymed with "hush") is derived from Foix--a town
some sixty miles east of St. Gaudens, near which was the ancestral home
of the Foch family.
Whatever the relatives of Ferdinand may have thought of this as a
probability, it is certain that Ferdinand was well nurtured in the
history of Foix and especially in those phases of it that Froissart
relates.
Froissart, the genial gossip who first courted the favor of kings and
princes and then was gently entreated by them so that his writing of
them might be to their renown, was on his way to Blois when he heard of
the magnificence of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix. Whereupon the
chronicler turned him about and jogged on his way to Foix. Gaston
Phoebus was not there, but at Orthez--150 miles west and north--and,
nothing daunted, to Orthez went Froissart, by way of Tarbes, traveling
in company with a knight named Espaing de Lyon, who was a graphic and
charmful raconteur thoroughly acquainted with the country through which
they were journeying. A fine, "that-reminds-me" gentleman was Espaing,
and every turn of the road brought to his mind some stirring tale or
doughty legend.
"Sainte Marie!" Froissart cried. "How pleasant are your tales, and how
much do they profit me while you relate them. They shall all be set
down in the history I am writing."
So they were! And of all Froissart's incomparable recitals, none are
more fascinating than those of the countryside Ferdinand Foch grew up
in.
II
BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of an
Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.
Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet
animals. There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the
business of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first
that little Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.
He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young. And
all his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.
A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but
certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.
Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it
was a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with
pleasure.
In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have
found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes
on the days of the horse markets and races:
"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with
streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and
exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races
of the southern provinces and the mountains.
"There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of
vigorous proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about
something or other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.
"There are men of the Basque province--small, muscular and proud, agile
of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and
childlike in deed.
"There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and
circumstance--educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern
warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of
experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their
Spanish neighbors.
"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength
under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored
faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of
primitiveness--vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a
little subnormal in expression.
"Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in
a pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues,
there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes
itself, each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners,
speech, which make them easily distinguishable one from another."
It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.
If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the
impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange folk
might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on
glowing page.
[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy.]
[Illustration: The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the
Military Academy.]
But that was not the way it served him.
I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think of
those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and the
crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to the
great days of his life that began in 1914--the days when his
comprehension of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them
and harmonize them with one another, meant almost as much to the world
as his military genius.
Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many
centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left. The old
castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned
warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth. The old
palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's
father had his office.
There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but
very dear to the people of Tarbes nevertheless.
Ferdinand and his brothers and sister were very piously reared, and at
an early age learned to love the church and to seek it for exaltation
and consolation.
Later on in these chapters we shall see that phase of a little French
boy's training in its due relation to a maréchal of France, directing
the greatest army the world has ever seen.
The college of Tarbes, where Ferdinand began his school days, was in a
venerable building over whose portal there was, in Latin, an
inscription recording the builder's prayer:
"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
Ferdinand was a hard student, serious beyond his years, but not
conspicuous except for his earnestness and diligence.
When he was twelve years old, his fervor for Napoleon led him to read
Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the Empire." And about this time
his professor of mathematics remarked of him that "he has the stuff of
a polytechnician."
The vacations of the Foch children were passed at the home of their
paternal grandparents in Valentine, a large village about two miles
from the town of St. Gaudens in the foothills of the Pyrénées. There
they had the country pleasures of children of good circumstances, in a
big, substantial house and a vicinity rich in tranquil beauty and
outdoor opportunities. And there, as in the children's own home at
Tarbes, one was ashamed not to be a very excellent child, and, so,
worthy to be descended from a chevalier of the great Napoleon.
In the mid-sixties the family moved from Tarbes to Rodez--almost two
hundred miles northeast of their old locality in which both parents had
been born and where their ancestors had long lived.
It was quite an uprooting--due to the father's appointment as paymaster
of the treasury at Rodez--and took the Foch family into an atmosphere
very different from that of their old Gascon home, but one which also
helped to vivify that history which was Ferdinand's passion.
There Ferdinand continued his studies, as also at Saint-Étienne, near
Lyons, whither the family moved in 1867 when the father was appointed
tax collector there.
And in 1869 he was sent to Metz, to the Jesuit College of Saint
Clément, to which students flocked from all parts of Europe.
He had been there a year and had been given, by unanimous vote of his
fellow students, the grand prize for scholarly qualities, when the
Franco-Prussian war began.
Immediately Ferdinand Foch enlisted for the duration of the war.
III
A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
There is nothing to record of Ferdinand Foch's first soldiering except
that from the dépôt of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, in his home
city of Saint-Étienne, he was sent to Chalon-sur-Saône, and there was
discharged in January, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris.
He did not distinguish himself in any way. He was just one of a
multitude of youths who rushed to the colors when France called, and
did what they could in a time of sad confusion, when a weak government
had paralyzed the effectiveness of the army--of the nation!
Whatever blows Ferdinand Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in
helping to avert France's catastrophe. But he was like hundreds of
thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the
anguish he suffered because of what he could not do to save France from
humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has contributed to
the glory of new France.
At the time when his Fall term should have been beginning at Saint
Clément's College, Metz was under siege by the German army, and its
garrison and inhabitants were suffering horribly from hunger and
disease; Paris was surrounded; the German headquarters were at
Versailles; and the imperial standards so dear to young Foch because of
the great Napoleon were forever lowered when the white flag was hoisted
at Sedan and an Emperor with a whole army passed into captivity.
How much the young soldier-student of the Saône comprehended then of
the needlessness of the shame and surrender of those inglorious days we
do not know. He cannot have been sufficiently versed in military
understanding to realize how much of the defeat France suffered was due
to her failure to fight on, at this juncture and that, when a stiffer
resistance would have turned the course of events.
But if he did not know then, he certainly knew later. And as soon as
he got where he could impress his convictions upon other soldiers of
the new France he began training them in his great maxim: "A battle is
lost when you admit defeat."
What his devotion to Saint Clément's College was we may know from the
fact of his return there to resume his interrupted studies under the
same teachers, but in sadly different circumstances.
He found German troops quartered in parts of the college, and as he
went to and from his classes the young man who had just laid off the
uniform of a French soldier was obliged to pass and repass men of the
victorious army of occupation.
The memory of his shame and suffering on those occasions has never
faded. How much France and her allies owe to it we shall never be able
to estimate.
For the effect on Foch was one of the first acid tests in which were
revealed the quality of his mind and soul. Instead of offering himself
a prey to sullen anger and resentment, or of flaring into fury when one
time for fury was past and another had not yet come, he used his sorrow
as a goad to study, and bent his energies to the discovery of why
France had failed and why Prussia had won. His analysis of those
reasons, and his application of what that analysis taught him, is what
has put him where he is to-day--and _us_ where _we_ are!
From Metz, Foch went to Nancy to take his examination for the
Polytechnic at Paris.
Just why this should have been deemed necessary I have not seen
explained. But it was, like a good many other things of apparent
inconsequence in this young man's life, destined to leave in him an
impress which had much to do with what he was to perform.
I have seldom, if ever, studied a life in which events "link up" so
marvelously and the present is so remarkably an extension of the past.
Nancy had been chosen by General Manteuffel, commander of the First
German Army Corps, as headquarters, pending the withdrawal of the
victors on the payment of the last sou in the billion-dollar indemnity
they exacted of France along with the ceding of Alsace-Lorraine. (For
three years France had to endure the insolent victors upon her soil.)
And with the fine feeling and magnanimity in which the German was then
as now peculiarly gifted General Manteuffel delighted in ordering his
military bands to play the "Retreat"--to taunt the sad inhabitants with
this reminder of their army's shame.
Ferdinand Foch listened and thought and wrote his examinations for the
school of war.
Forty-two years later--in August, 1913--a new commandant came to Nancy
to take control of the Twentieth Army Corps, whose position there,
guarding France's Eastern frontier, was considered one of the most
important--if not _the_ most important--to the safety of the nation.
The first order he gave was one that brought out the full band strength
of six regiments quartered in the town. They were to play the "March
Lorraine" and the "Sambre and Meuse." They were to fill Nancy with
these stirring sounds. The clarion notes carrying these martial airs
were to reach every cranny of the old town. It was a veritable tidal
wave of triumphant sound that he wanted--for it had much to efface.
Nancy will never forget that night! It was Saturday, the 23d of
August, 1913. And the new commandant's name was Ferdinand Foch!
Less than a year later he was fighting to save Nancy, and what lay
beyond, from the Germans.
And _this_ time there was to be a different story! Ferdinand Foch was
foremost of those who assured it.
IV
PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
Ferdinand Foch entered the Polytechnic School at Paris on the 1st of
November, 1871, just after he had completed his twentieth year.
This school, founded in 1794, is for the technical education of
military and naval engineers, artillery officers, civil engineers in
government employ, and telegraphists--not mere operators, of course,
but telegraph engineers and other specialists in electric
communication. It is conducted by a general, on military principles,
and its students are soldiers on their way to becoming officers.
Its buildings cover a considerable space in the heart of the great
school quarter of Parts. The Sorbonne, with its traditions harking
back to St. Louis (more than six centuries) and its swarming thousands
of students, is hard by the Polytechnic. So is the College de France,
founded by Francis I. And, indeed, whichever way one turns, there are
schools, schools, schools--of fine arts and applied arts; of medicine
in all its branches; of mining and engineering; of war; of theology; of
languages; of commerce in its higher developments; of pedagogy; and
what-not.
Nowhere else in the world is there possible to the young student, come
to advance himself in his chosen field of knowledge, quite such a
thrill as that which must be his when he matriculates at one of the
scores of educational institutions in that quarter of Paris to which
the ardent, aspiring youth of all the western world have been directing
their eager feet from time immemorial.
Cloistral, scholastic atmosphere, with its grave beauty, as at Oxford
and Cambridge, he will not find in the Paris Latin Quarter.
Paris does not segregate her students. Conceiving them to be studying
for life, she aids them to do it in the midst of life marvelously
abundant. They do not go out of the world--so to speak--to learn to
live and work in the world. They go, rather, into a life of
extraordinary variety and fullness, out of which--it is expected--they
will discover how to choose whatever is most needful to their success
and well-being.
There is no feeling of being shut in to a term of study. There is,
rather, the feeling of being "turned loose" in a place of vast
opportunity of which one may make as much use as he is able.
To a young man of Ferdinand Foch's naturally serious mind, deeply
impressed by his country's tragedy, the Latin Quarter of Paris in those
Fall days of 1871 was a sober place indeed.
Beautiful Paris, that Napoleon III had done so much to make splendid,
was scarred and seared on every hand by the German bombardment and the
fury of the communards, who had destroyed nearly two hundred and fifty
public and other buildings. The government of France had deserted the
capital and moved to Versailles--just evacuated by the Germans.
The blight of defeat lay on everything.
In May, preceding Foch's advent, the communards--led by a miserable
little shoemaker who talked about shooting all the world--took
possession of the buildings belonging to the Polytechnic, and were
dislodged only after severe fighting by Marshal MacMahon's Versailles
troops.
The cannon of the communards, set on the heights of Pére-Lachaise (the
great city of the dead where the slumber of so many of earth's most
illustrious imposed no respect upon the "Bolsheviki" of that cataclysm)
aimed at the Pantheon, shot short and struck the Polytechnic. One
shell burst in the midst of an improvised hospital there, gravely
wounding a nurse.
At last, on May 24, the Polytechnic was taken from the revolutionists
by assault, and many of the communards were seized.
In the days following, the great recreation court of the school was the
scene of innumerable executions, as the wretched revolutionists paid
the penalty of their crimes before the firing squad. And the students'
billiard room was turned into a temporary morgue, filled with bodies of
those who had sought to destroy Paris from within.
The number of Parisians slain in those days after the second siege of
Paris has been variously estimated at from twenty thousand to
thirty-six thousand. And all the while, encamped upon the heights
round about Paris, were victorious German troops squatting like Semitic
creditors in Russia, refusing to budge till their account was settled
to the last farthing of extortion.
The most sacred spot in Paris to young Foch, in all the depression he
found there, was undoubtedly the great Dôme des Invalides, where,
bathed in an unearthly radiance and surrounded by faded battle flags,
lies the great porphyry sarcophagus of Napoleon I.
With what bitter reflections must the young man who had been nurtured
in the adoration of Bonaparte have returned from that majestic tomb to
the Polytechnic School for Warriors--to which, on the day after his
coronation as Emperor, Napoleon had given the following motto:
"Science and glory--all for country."
But, also, what must have been the young southerner's thought as he
lifted his gaze on entering the Polytechnic and read there that
self-same wish which was inscribed over the door of his first school in
Tarbes:
"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
The edifice in which part of the Polytechnic was housed was the ancient
College of Navarre, and a Navarrias poet of lang syne had given to the
Paris school for his countrymen this quaint wish, repeated from the
inscription he knew at Tarbes.
France had had twelve different governments in fourscore years when
Ferdinand Foch came to study in that old building which had once been
the college of Navarre. Houses of cards rather than houses of
permanence seemed to characterize her.
Yet she has always had her quota--a larger one, too, than that of any
other country--of those who look toward far to-morrows and seek to
build substantially and beautifully for them.
That forward-looking prayer of old Navarre, and recollection of the
centuries during which it had prevailed against destroying forces, was
undoubtedly an aid and comfort to the heavy-hearted youth who then and
there set himself to the study of that art of war wherewith he was to
serve France.
Among the two hundred and odd fellow-students of Foch at the
Polytechnic was another young man from the south--almost a neighbor of
his and his junior by just three months--Jacques Joseph Césaire Joffre,
who had entered the school in 1869, interrupted his studies to go to
war, and resumed them shortly before Ferdinand Foch entered the
Polytechnic.
Joffre graduated from the Polytechnic on September 21, 1872, and went
thence to the School of Applied Artillery at Fontainebleau.
Foch left the Polytechnic about six months later, and also went to
Fontainebleau for the same special training that Joffre was taking.
Both young men were hard students and tremendously in earnest. Both
were heavy-hearted for France. Both hoped the day would come when they
might serve her and help to restore to her that of which she had been
despoiled.
But if any one, indulging in the fantastic extravagancies of youth, had
ventured to forecast, then, even a tithe of what they have been called
to do for France, he would have been set down as madder than March
hares know how to be.
V
LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER
When Ferdinand Foch graduated, third in his class, from the artillery
school at Fontainebleau, instead of seeking to use what influence he
might have commanded to get an appointment in some garrison where the
town life or social life was gay for young officers, he asked to be
sent back to Tarbes.
No one, to my knowledge, has advanced an explanation for this move.
To so earnest and ambitious a student of military art (Foch will not
permit us to speak of it as "military science") sentimental reasons
alone would never have been allowed to control so important a choice.
That he always ardently loved the Pyrenean country, we know. But to a
young officer of such indomitable purpose as his was, even then, it
would have been inconceivable that he should elect to spend his first
years out of school in any other place than that one where he saw the
maximum opportunity for development.
"Development," mind you--not just "advancement." For Foch is, and ever
has been, the kind of man who would most abhor being advanced faster
than he developed.
He would infinitely rather be prepared for a promotion and fail to get
it than get a promotion for which he was not thoroughly prepared.
Nor is he the sort of individual who can comfortably deceive himself
about his fitness. He sustains himself by no illusions of the variety:
"If I had so-and-so to do, I'd probably get through as well as
nine-tenths of commanders would."
He is much more concerned to satisfy himself that his thoroughness is
as complete as he could possibly have made it, than he is to "get by"
and satisfy the powers that be!
So we know that it wasn't any mere longing for the scenes of his happy
childhood which directed his choice of Tarbes garrison when he left the
enchanting region of Fontainebleau, with its fairy forest, its
delightful old town, and its many memories of Napoleon.
His mind seems to have been fixed upon a course involving more cavalry
skill than was his on graduating. And after two years at Tarbes, with
much riding of the fine horses of Arabian breed which are the specialty
of that region, he went to the Cavalry School at Saumur, on the Loire.
King René of Anjou, whose chronic poverty does not seem to have
interfered with his taste for having innumerable castles, had one at
Saumur, and it still dominates the town and lends it an air of
medievalism.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century Saumur was one of the chief
strongholds of Protestantism in France and the seat of a Protestant
university.
But the revocation of the Edict of Nantes granting tolerance to the
Huguenots, brought great reverses upon Saumur, whose inhabitants were
driven into exile. And thereupon (1685) the town fell into a decline
which was not arrested until Louis XV, in the latter part of his reign,
caused this cavalry school to be established there.
It is a large school, with about four hundred soldiers always in
training as cavalry officers and army riding masters. And the riding
exhibitions which used to be given there in the latter part of August
were brilliant affairs, worth going many miles to see.
There Ferdinand Foch studied cavalry tactics, practiced "rough riding"
and--by no means least important--learned to know another type of
Frenchman, the men of old Anjou.
In our own country of magnificent distances and myriad racial strains
we are apt to think of French people as a single race: "French is
French."
This is very wide of the truth. French they all are, in sooth, with an
intense national unity surpassed nowhere on earth if, indeed, it is
anywhere equaled. But almost every one of them is intensely a
provincial, too, and very "set" in the ways of his own section of
country--which, usually, has been that of his forbears from time
immemorial.
In the description I quoted in the second chapter, showing some of the
types from the vicinity of Tarbes which frequent its horse market, one
may get some idea of the extraordinary differences in the men of a
single small region which is bordered by many little "pockets" wherein
people go on and on, age after age, perpetuating their special traits
without much admixture of other strains.
Not every part of France has so much variety in such small compass.
But every province has its distinctive human qualities. And between
the Norman and the Gascon, the Breton and the Provençal, the man of
Picardy and the man of Languedoc, there are greater temperamental
differences than one can find anywhere else on earth in an equal number
of square miles--except in some of our American cities.
To the commander of General Foch's type (and as we begin to study his
principles we shall, I believe, see that they apply to command in civil
no less than in military life) knowledge of different men's minds and
the way they work is absolutely fundamental to success.
And his preparation for this mastery was remarkably thorough.
At Saumur he learned not only to direct cavalry operations, but to know
the Angevin characteristics.
In each school he attended, beginning with Metz, he had close class
association with men from many provinces, men of many types. And this
was valuable to him in preparing him to command under-officers in whom
a rigorous uniformity of training could not obliterate bred-in-the-bone
differences.
Many another young officer bent on "getting on" in the army would have
felt that what he learned among his fellow officers of the provincial
characteristics was enough.
But not so Ferdinand Foch.
Almost his entire comprehension of war is based upon men and the way
they act under certain stress--not the way they might be expected to
act, but the way they actually do act, and the way they can be led to
act under certain stimulus _of soul_.
For Ferdinand Foch wins victories with men's souls--not just with their
flesh and blood, nor even with their brains.
And to command men's souls it is necessary to understand them.
VI
FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY
Upon leaving the cavalry school at Saumur, in 1878, Ferdinand Foch went,
with the rank of captain of the Tenth Regiment of Artillery, to Rennes,
the ancient capital of Brittany and the headquarters of France's tenth
army corps.
He stayed at Rennes, as an artillery captain, for seven years.
It is not a particularly interesting city from some points of view, but
it is a very "livable" one, and for a student like Foch it had many
advantages. The library is one of the best in provincial France and has
many valuable manuscripts. There is also an archaeological museum of
antiquities found in that vicinity, many of them relating to prehistoric
warfare. Some good scientific collections are also treasured there.
What is now known as the University of Rennes was styled merely the
"college" in the days of Foch's residence there. But it did
substantially the same work then as now, and among its faculty Foch
undoubtedly found many who could give him able aid in his perpetual study
of the past.
Rennes especially cherishes the memory of Bertrand du Guesclin, the great
constable of France under King Charles V and the victorious adversary of
Edward III. This brilliant warrior, who drove the English, with their
claims on French sovereignty, out of France, was a native of that
vicinity. And we may be sure that whatever special opportunity Rennes
afforded of studying documents relating to his campaigns was fully
improved by Captain Foch.
In that time, also, Foch had ample occasion to know the Bretons, who are,
in some respects, the least French of all French provincials--being much
more Celtic still than Gallic, although it is a matter of some fifteen
hundred years since their ancestors, driven out of Britain by the
Teutonic invasions, came over and settled "Little Britain," or Brittany.
The Bretons maintained their independence of France for a thousand years,
and only became united with it through the marriage of their last
sovereign, Duchess Anne, with Charles VIII, in 1491 and--after his
death--with his successor, Louis XII.
And even to-day, after more than four centuries of political union, the
people of Brittany are French in name and in spirit rather than in
speech, customs, or temperament. Many of them do not speak or understand
the French language. Few of them, outside of the cities, have conformed
appreciably to French customs. Quaint, sturdy, picturesque folk they
are--simple, for the most part, superstitious, tenacious of the old,
suspicious of the new, and governable only by those who understand them.
Foch must have learned, in those seven years, not only to know the
Bretons, but to like them and their rugged country very well. For he has
had, these many years past, his summer home near Morlaix on the north
coast of Brittany. It was from there that he was summoned into the great
war on July 26, 1914.
In 1885 Captain Foch was called to Paris and entered the Superior School
of War.
This institution, wherein he was destined to play in after years a part
that profoundly affected the world's destiny, was founded only in 1878 as
a training school for officers, connected with the military school which
Louis XV established in 1751 to "educate five hundred young gentlemen in
all the sciences necessary and useful to an officer."
One of the "young gentlemen" who profited by this instruction was the
little Corsican whom Ferdinand Foch so ardently venerated.
The building covers an area of twenty-six acres and faces the vast
Champ-de-Mars, which was laid out about 1770 for the military school's
use as a field for maneuvers.
This field is eleven hundred yards long and just half that wide. It
occupies all the ground between the school buildings and the river.