and lasted till August 26--though the major part of it was fought in
the last six of those days.
I shall not go into details about it here, except to recall that it was
in this fighting that General Castelnau lost his oldest son, stricken
almost at the father's side.
A German military telegram intercepted on August 27 said:
"On no account make known to our armies of the west [that is to say,
the right wing, in Belgium] the checks sustained by our armies of the
east [the left wing, in Lorraine]."
So much depended on those plans which Castelnau and Dubail and
Foch--and very particularly Foch!--had frustrated.
Joffre realized what had been achieved. And on August 27 he issued the
following "order of the day":
"The First and Second armies are at this moment giving an example of
tenacity and of courage which the commander-in-chief is happy to bring
to the knowledge of the troops under his orders.
"These two armies undertook a general offensive and met with brilliant
success, until they hurled themselves at a barrier fortified and
defended by very superior forces.
"After a retreat in perfect order, the two armies resumed the offensive
and, combining their efforts, retook a great part of the territory they
had given up.
"The enemy bent before them and his recoil enabled us to establish
undeniably the very serious losses he had suffered.
"These armies have fought for fourteen days without a moment's respite,
and with an unshakable confidence in victory as the reward of their
tenacity.
"The general-in-chief knows that the other armies will be moved to
follow the example of the First and Second armies."
Now, where were those other armies? And what were they doing?
France had then eight armies in the field, and was soon to have a
ninth--commanded by General Foch.
There was the First army, under General Dubail; the Second, under
General Castelnau; the Third, under General Sarrail; the Fourth, under
General Langle de Cary; the Fifth, under General Franchet d'Espérey;
the Sixth, under General Manoury; the Seventh and Eighth armies are not
mentioned in the Battle of the Marne, and I have not been able to find
out where they were in service.
The First and Second armies, fighting in Lorraine, we know about. They
developed, in that battle, more than one great commander of whose
abilities Joffre hastened to avail himself. On the day he issued that
order commending the First and Second armies, the generalissimo called
Manoury from the Lorraine front, where he had shown conspicuous
leadership, and put him in command of the newly-created Sixth army,
which was to play the leading part in routing Von Kluck. And on the
next day (August 28) Joffre called Foch from Lorraine to head the new
Ninth army, which was to hold the center at the Battle of the Marne and
deal the smashing, decisive blow.
In two days, while his troops were retreating before an apparently
irresistible force, Joffre created two new armies, put at the head of
each a man of magnificent leadership, and intrusted to those two armies
and their leaders the most vital positions in the great battle he was
planning.
The German soldiers facing Joffre were acting on general orders printed
for them eight years before, and under specific orders which had been
worked out by their high command with the particularity of machine
specifications. And all their presumptions were based on the French
doing what Teutons would do in the same circumstances. Their
extra-suspender-button efficiency and preparedness were pitted against
the flexible genius of a man who could assemble his two "shock" armies
in two days and put them under the command of men picked not from the
top of his list of available commanders, but practically from the
bottom.
The Third, Fourth and Fifth armies of Joffre were those which had
sustained the terrific onslaught in the north and had been fighting in
retreat, practically since the beginning.
On August 25 Joffre declared; "We have escaped envelopment"--thanks
largely to the action in Lorraine, holding back the Bavarians--and,
clearly seeing that he could not hope for favorable results from a
great battle fought in the north, he gave the order for retreat which
meant the abandonment of north-eastern France to the Hunnish hordes.
What anguish that order caused him we shall never know. He realized to
the full what the people of that great, prosperous part of France would
have to suffer. He was aware what the loss of those resources would
mean to the French, and also what their gain would mean to the Germans.
He understood the effect of retreat upon the morale of his men. And he
must have been aware of the panic his order would create throughout the
yet-uninvaded parts of France where no one could know at what point the
invasion would be checked. He knew that the nation's faith in him
would be severely shaken, and that even his army's faith in him would
be put to a supreme test.
But when a man trains himself to be a commander of men, he trains
himself to go through, heroically and at any cost, what he believes
must be done. To sacrifice one's self comes comparatively easy--given
compelling circumstances and an obedient soul. But to sacrifice others
never becomes easy to a man who respects the rights of others. And we
shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake
ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency
makes it easy for them to order great mental and physical suffering.
General Foch detached himself, on August 29, from his beloved Twentieth
corps and betook himself to the little village of Machault, about
twenty miles northeast of Châlons-sur-Marne, where he found assembled
for his command an army made up of units from other armies. They were
all more or less strange to one another and to him.
There was the Ninth army corps, from Tours, made up of Angevins (men
such as Foch had learned to know when he was at Saumur) and Vendeans
(the Bretons' south neighbors). Some of these men had been fighting
without respite for nine days as they fell back, with the Fourth army,
from the Belgian border. With them, since August 22, had been the
remarkable Moroccan division under General Humbert.
Then there was the Eleventh corps of Bretons and Vendeans, which had
been through the same terrible retreat.
And--not to enumerate too far--there was that Forty-second division of
infantry which was destined to play one of the most dramatic,
thrilling, forever-memorable parts in all warfare. It had been in the
Ardennes, and had fallen back, fighting fiercely as it came.
To help him command these weary men whose hearts were heavy with
forebodings for France, Foch had, as he himself has said, "a general
staff of five or six officers, gathered in haste to start with, little
or no working material, our note books and a few maps."
"Those who lived through these tragic hours near him," says René Puaux,
"recall the chief questioning the liaison officers who did not know
exactly where the different units were, punctuating his questions with:
'You don't know? Very well, then go and find out!'; putting together
in his head the mosaic of which there were still so many pieces
missing; gradually visioning a plan for bringing them together;
calculating his effectives; estimating approximately his reserves of
ammunition; discovering his bases of food supply."
And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable
to get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law,
Captain Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.
"It was not, however," M. Puaux says, "the time for personal emotions.
The father effaced himself before the soldier. There was nothing to be
thought of save the country."
Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.
XIV
THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to
take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.
On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his
general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south
of Châlons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would
permit the retreat of his armies.
If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than
the Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal
go beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.
He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he
deemed they would be most effective: the First army, under General
Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General
Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General
Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining
the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army,
under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet
d'Espérey; then the little British army of three corps, under General
Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.
So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received
orders--at once terrible and immensely flattering--that he was to
occupy the center of Joffre's battle line and to sustain the onslaught
of Von Buelow and the famous Prussian Guards.
In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from
Joffre the now historic message:
"The moment has come for the army to advance at all costs and allow
itself to be slain where it stands rather than give way."
The men to whom this order was relayed by their commanders had,
five-sixths of them, been ceaselessly engaged, without one single day's
rest of any kind and much of the time without night rest either, for
fourteen days, fighting as they fell back, and falling back as they
fought; the skin was all worn from the soles of their feet, and what
shoes they had left were stuck to their feet with blood.
"They had marched under a torrid sky," says Louis Madelin, "on
scorching roads, parched and suffocated with dust. In reality they
moved with their hearts rather than with their legs. According to
Pierre Lasserre's happy expression, 'Our bodies had beaten a retreat,
but not our hearts,' . . . But when, worn out with fatigue, faces
black with powder, blinded by the chalk of Champagne, almost dying,
they learned Joffre's order announcing the offensive, then the faces of
our troops from Paris to Verdun beamed with joy. They fought with
tired limbs, and yet no army ever showed such strength, for their
hearts were filled with faith and hope."
At daybreak on Sunday, the 6th, Foch pitched his headquarters in a
modern château near the little village of Pleurs, which you probably
will not find on any map except a military one, but it is some six
miles southeast of Sézanne. And the front assigned to Foch ran from
Sézanne to the Camp de Mailly, twenty-five miles east by a little
south. The Marne was twenty-five miles to north of him. Between him
and its south bank were many towns and villages; the clay pocket (ten
miles long) called the Marshes of St. Gond, but far from marshy in that
parching heat; and north of that the forest of Epernay. His vanguards
were north of the marshes. But as that Sunday wore on, the Prussian
Guards drove Foch's Angevins and Vendeans of the Ninth Corps back and
occupied the marshes. The Bretons on the east of Foch's line were
obliged to dislodge, and the Moroccans and Forty-second Division had to
yield on Foch's left.
Thus, at nightfall of the first day's fighting, Foch's new army had
given ground practically everywhere.
The next day the German attack became fiercer, and it seemed that more
ground must be yielded.
That was the day when Foch made his memorable deduction: "They are
trying to throw us back with such fury I am sure that means things are
going badly for them elsewhere and they are seeking compensation."
He was right! Von Kluck was retiring in a northeasterly direction
under Manoury's blows; and even Von Buelow (whom Foch faced) was
withdrawing parts of his troops from the line at Foch's left.
But the attempt to break through the center Foch held, waxed fiercer as
the Germans realized the strength opposing them on their right.
And on Tuesday, the 8th, Foch was unable to hold--save at certain
points--and had to move his headquarters eleven miles south, to Plancy.
He had now reached the Aube, beyond which Joffre had decreed that he
must not retire. On its north bank his gallant army must, if it could
not do otherwise, "allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than
give way."
On that evening he sent Major Réquin to the Forty-second Division with
orders for the morrow. The most incredible orders!
The enemy had found his point of least resistance--on his right wing.
He ought to strengthen that wing, but he could not. All the reserves
were engaged--and the enemy knew it as well as he did. And it is a
fixed principle of war not to withdraw active troops from one part of
the line to strengthen another.
Only one part of his army had had any success that day: Toward evening
the Forty-second Division and the Moroccans had made an irresistible
lunge forward and driven the enemy to the north edge of the marshes.
They were weary--those splendid troops--but they were exalted; they had
advanced!
Foch believes in the power of the spirit. He appealed to the
Forty-second to do an extraordinary thing--to march, weary as it was,
from left to right of his long line and brace the weak spot. And to
cover up the gap their withdrawal would make he asked General Franchet
d'Espérey to stretch out the front covered by his right wing and
adjoining Foch's left.
In a letter to me, Lieutenant-Colonel (then Major) Réquin gives some
graphic bits descriptive of that historic errand. He was a sort of
liaison officer between General Grossetti, commanding the Forty-second
Division, and the latter's chief, General Foch, his special duty being
to carry General Foch's orders to General Grossetti and to keep the
army chief informed, each evening, how his commands were being carried
out.
"It was 10 P.M.," he writes, "when I roused General Grossetti from his
sleep in the straw, in the miserable little shell-riddled farm of
Chapton.
"The order astonished him; but like a disciplined leader, he started to
execute it with all the energy of which this legendary soldier was
capable."
The Forty-second came! While they were marching to the rescue the
Prussian Guard in a colossal effort smashed through Foch's right. They
were wild with joy. The French line was pierced. They at once began
celebrating, at La Fère-Champenoise.
When this was announced to Foch he telegraphed to general headquarters:
"My center gives way, my right recedes; the situation is excellent. I
shall attack."
For this, we must remember, is the man who says: "A battle won is a
battle in which one is not able to believe one's self vanquished."
He gave the order to attack. Everything that he cared about in this
world was at stake. This desperate maneuver would save it all--or it
would not. He gave the order to attack--and then he went for a walk on
the outskirts of the little village of Plancy. His companion was one
of his staff officers, Lieutenant Ferasson of the artillery; and as
they walked they discussed metallurgy and economics.
There could be nothing more typically French or more diametrically
opposed to the conceptions of French character which prevailed in other
countries before this war. And I hope that if Lieutenant Ferasson
survives, he will accurately designate (if he can) exactly where Foch
walked on that Wednesday afternoon, September 9, when, his center
having given way, his right wing receded, he pronounced the "situation
excellent," gave the order for attack, and went out to discuss
metallurgy.
Toward six o'clock on that evening the Germans, celebrating their
certain victory, saw themselves confronted by a "new" French army
pouring into the gap they had thought their road to Paris.
The Forty-second Division (more than half dead of fatigue, but their
eyes blazing with such immensity and intensity of purpose it has been
said the Germans fled, as before spirits, when they saw these men) had
not only blocked the roundabout road to Paris; they had broken the
morale of Von Buelow's crack troops. Without this brilliant maneuver
and superb execution the successes of all the other armies must have
gone for naught.
"To be victorious," said Napoleon, "it is necessary only to be stronger
than your enemy at a given point and at a given moment."
Foch's preferred way to take advantage of that given point and moment
is with reserves, which he called the reservoirs of force. "The art of
war consists in having them when the enemy has none."
But as there were no reserves available at that first Battle of the
Marne, he exemplified his other principle that conditions must be met
as they arise.
"I still seem," says René Puaux, "to hear General Foch telling us, one
evening after dinner at Cassel several months later, about that
maneuver of September 9.
"He had put matches on the tablecloth"--some red matches which Colonel
Réquin treasures as a souvenir--"and he illustrated with them the
disposition of the troops engaged. For the Forty-second Division he
had only half a match, which he moved here and there with his quick,
deft fingers as he talked.
"The match representing the Twelfth German Corps (which with the
Prussian Guard was cutting the gap in Foch's weak spot) was about to
make a half-turn which would bring it in the rear of the French armies.
"The general, laying down the half-match that was the Forty-second
Division, made an eloquent gesture with his hand, indicating the move
that the Forty-second made.
"'It might succeed,' he said, laconically, 'or it might fail. It
succeeded. Those men were exhausted; they won, nevertheless.'"
At nine o'clock the next morning (September 10) the Forty-second
entered La Fère-Champenoise, where they found officers of the Prussian
Guard lying, dead drunk, on the floors in the cantonments, surrounded
by innumerable bottles of stolen champagne wherewith they had been
celebrating their victory.
Two days later Foch was at Châlons, to direct in person the crossing of
the Marne by his army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
"The cavalry, the artillery, the unending lines of supply wagons," says
Colonel Réquin, "the infantry in two columns on either side of the
road; all this in close formation descending like a torrent to resume
its place of battle above the passage on the other side of the river;
was an unforgettable sight and one that gave all who witnessed it an
impression of the tremendous energy General Foch has for the command of
enormous material difficulties."
XV
SENT NORTH TO SAVE THE CHANNEL PORTS
Germany's plan to enter France by the east gate, in Lorraine, was
frustrated with the aid of Foch.
Her plan to smash through the center of the armies on the Marne was
frustrated, with the very special aid of Foch.
Blocked in both these moves, there was just one other for Germany to
make, then, on the western front.
And on September 14, Joffre, instead of celebrating the victory on the
Marne, was deep in plans to forestall an advance upon the Channel
ports, and began issuing orders for the transfer of his main fighting
bodies to the north.
All this, of course, had to be done so as to leave no vulnerable spot
in all that long battle line from Belfort to Calais.
Joffre had clearly foreseen the length of that line. He predicted it,
as we have seen, in 1912. Doubtless he had foreseen also that it would
be too long a line to direct from one viewpoint, from one general
headquarters. What he was too wise to try to foresee before the war
began was, which one of France's trained fighting men he would call to
his aid as his second in command. He waited, and watched, before
deciding that.
And late in the afternoon of October 4 he telegraphed to General Foch
at Châlons, telling him that he was appointed first in command under
the generalissimo, and asking him to leave at once for the north, there
to coordinate the French, English and Belgian forces that were opposing
the German march to the sea.
Five weeks previously Foch had been called to the vicinity of Châlons
to assemble an army just coming into existence. Now he was called to
leave Châlons and that army he had come to know--that army of which he
must have been so very, very proud--and go far away to another task of
unknown factors.
But in a few hours he had his affairs in order and was ready to leave.
It was ten o'clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to
be whirled from the Marne to the Somme.
At four in the morning he was at Breteuil, where General Castelnau had
the headquarters of his new army, created on September 20 and
designated to service on Manoury's left. General Castelnau had not yet
heard of the generalissimo's new order. He was sound asleep when the
big gray car came to a stop at the door of his headquarters after its
one-hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through silent towns and dark,
war-invested country.
Six weeks ago Foch had been his subordinate. Then they became equals
in command. Now the magnificent hero of Lorraine who, before the war,
had done so much on the Superior War Council to aid Joffre in
reorganizing the army, rose from his bed in the chill of a fall morning
not yet dawned, to greet his superior officer.
Some black coffee was heated for them, and for two hours they discussed
the problems of this new front--Castelnau as eager to serve under Foch,
for France, as, eight weeks ago, Foch had been to serve under
Castelnau. If the sublime unselfishness of such men could have
communicated itself to some of the minor figures of this war, how much
more inspiring might be the stories of these civilian commanders!
At six o'clock Foch was under way again--to Amiens, Doullens, St. Pol,
and then, at nine, to Aubigny, where General Maud'huy had the
headquarters of his army, holding the line north of Castelnau's.
The difficulties of Foch's new undertaking were not military alone, but
diplomatic. He had to take account of the English and Belgian armies,
each under independent command, and each small. It was the fitness of
Foch for the diplomacy needed here, as well as his fitness for the
great military task of barring the enemy from the Channel ports, that
determined Joffre in nominating him to the place.
In 1912 General Foch had been the head of the French military
commission sent to witness the British army maneuvers at Cambridge.
He speaks no English; and not many British generals at that time spoke
much French. Yet he somehow managed to get on, with the aid of
interpreters, so that his relations with the British officers were not
only cordial, in a superficial social way, but important in their
results of deepened understanding on his part and of respect on theirs.
His study of what seemed to him the military strength and weakness of
France's great neighbor and ally was minute and comprehensive.
In his opinion, the soldiers of Britain were excellent; but he was
fearful that their commanders lacked seasoned skill to direct them
effectively. This lack he laid to that apparent inability to believe
in the imminence of war, which was even more prevalent in Britain, with
her centuries of inviolate security, than in France.
Two years before the long-suspended sword fell, Foch foresaw clearly
what would be the difficulties in the way of England when she should
gird herself for land conflict. Doubtless he had resolved in his mind
plans for helping her to meet and to overcome them.
Now he was placed where he could render aid--where he _must_ render aid.
After the Battle of the Marne Sir John French wanted his army moved up
north, nearer to its channel communications--that is to say, to its
source of supplies. And on October 1 Joffre began to facilitate this
movement. It was just well under way when Foch arrived in the north.
And on October 9 the gallant Belgian army withdrew from Antwerp and
made its way to the Yser under cover of French and British troops.
Foch soon saw that an allied offensive would not be possible then; that
the most they could hope to do was to hold back the invading forces.