The Battle of the Marne

Says Mr. Joseph Reinach (La Guerre sur le Front Occidental, 1914–15, ch. v. sec. 7): “Bernhardi has classed the capitals of Europe in two categories: those whose capture has a decisive importance from the military point of view, like Paris and Vienna, and those whose importance is much smaller. To take Paris, what glory! to enter Paris, what a gage! But the same Bernhardi, the master of all the German generals, and before him all the greatest captains, all the oracles of the military art, Moltke, Jomini, insist that the aim of war must be fixed as high as possible, and this aim is the complete ruin of the enemy State by the destruction, the putting out of action, of its armies. Only an enemy completely disarmed will bow to the will of the conqueror.... The opinion that prevailed with the German Staff is that to attack Paris before having finished with the Allied Armies would be a fault entailing very serious consequences.... The event does not prove that this opinion was mistaken.”

45

This message, first published by Le Matin, February 27, 1918, was dispatched by Mr. Gerard, United States Ambassador in Berlin, on the morning of September 8, to his colleague in Paris, Mr. Myron Herrick, who received it late on the same evening. It read as follows: “Extremely urgent. September 8. The German General Staff recommends that all Americans leave Paris via Rouen and Le Havre. They will have to leave soon if they wish to go.—Gerard.” It is added that the message was sent on the pressing wish of the German Staff, and that it was doubled, one copy going via Switzerland, and the other via Rome.

When this document was penned, the struggle had been proceeding on the Ourcq for two days and a half; Kluck had withdrawn nearly all his forces from the Marne; and the British and d’Espérey’s Armies were advancing rapidly northward. How, in these circumstances, could the German General Staff imagine that they could arrange “soon” a triumphant entry into Paris? There is one, and only one, fact in the military situation that they could build upon. At 5 a.m. on September 8, the right wing of Foch’s Army had broken down, and was in full retreat toward Fère Champènoise. If they really accepted this as such a promise of victory as to justify the warning to the Americans of Paris, the German Staff must have been in an infatuated state of mind.

It is possible, however, that the message was only a reckless piece of propaganda on their part, intended, at a critical moment, to awe the neutrals of America, Switzerland, and Italy, and to frighten some good Americans out of Paris. In no case can a warning conveyed on September 8 countenance the idea that the entry into Paris was originally intended to occur before a decisive victory had been won.

46

In the Gaulois, “Une Cause de la Defaite Allemande sur la Marne.”

47

M. Reinach states this, adding: “There was, it seems, an exchange of messages between the Staff and Kluck. Finally, theory prevailed” (La Guerre, p. 145; Commentaires de Polybe, vol. iv. p. 198).

According to an article in the Renaissance, September 2, 1916, Kluck had previously favoured the advance on Paris, quoting a reply of Blücher to Schwartzenberg in 1814: “It is better to go to Paris; when one has Paris, one has France.” At a council held at German Headquarters after the battle of Guise and St. Quentin, says the writer, Kluck went over to the advice of Moltke.

48

M. Hanotaux (Histoire Illustrée, especially ch. xxxvii., and in the Rev. des Deux Mondes, March 1919) has his own picturesque theory of these events, supported by rather frail evidence. It is, briefly, that there was an antagonism between Kluck, who wished to complete his enveloping movement, and Bülow, who after Guise had persuaded the Grand Staff to renounce it in favour of a frontal action against the French centre in which he would be the chief actor. After Charleroi and after Guise, Bülow had had to call Kluck to his aid. They were natural antagonists, the junker and the popular soldier. Moltke and the Staff hesitated between them, and then decided for Bülow. Bülow was to lead the attack; Kluck was ordered to remain between the Oise and the Marne to watch the region of Paris. But he refused to be thus thwarted of his victory, and rode impetuously on toward Provins, overrunning Bülow’s slower approach. Maunoury’s attack caught him in flagrante delicto. All this is plausible enough except the statement that Kluck was ordered to remain north of the Marne. Had he done so, the same result would have been produced two or three days sooner.

M. Hanotaux also states that Marwitz’s three cavalry divisions had been ordered on September 1 to carry out a raid to the gates of Paris, destroying railways as they went, but that “Kluck had other views” (La Manœuvre de la Marne).

49

The author of Die Schlachten an der Marne says: “Kluck knew there were troops to the left of the British, but did not know their exact strength.”

In his book Comment fut sauvé Paris, M. P. H. Courrière cites the following order issued by General von Schwerin at dawn on September 5, and afterwards found on the battlefield: “The IV Reserve Corps continues to-day the forward march, and charges itself, north of the Marne, with the covering of the north front of Paris; the IV Cavalry Division will be added to it. The II Corps advances by the Grand Morin valley below Coulommiers, and directs itself against the east front of Paris.”

50

General von Freytag-Loringhoven says: “It was proved on the Marne that the age of armies numbering millions, with their improved armament and widely extended fronts, engenders very special conditions.... The envelopment of the whole host of the enemy is a very difficult matter” (Deductions, pp. 79–80).

51

M. Maurice Barrés, Echo de Paris, June 1, 1916. But General Maunoury had telegraphed at midnight on August 31 to General Joffre reporting that Kluck seemed to be leaving the direction of Paris.

52

General Cherfils describes the extent of Gallieni’s authority as being in a state; of “nebulous imprecision.” The position appears to have been this: The entrenched camp of Paris, under the old regulations, was under the control of the Minister of War, not the Generalissimo, who could claim the services of a part of the garrison if he left enough men to assure the safety of the city, subject to a protest by the Governor, but could not touch its munitions or supplies. On his appointment as Military Governor of Paris (August 26), Gallieni had asked that the garrison, then consisting of four divisions of Territorials, should be reinforced. The 6th Army was accordingly placed under his orders. On the same day, the entrenched camp was placed, by the Minister, M. Millerand, under the superior orders of General Joffre. There was thus a threefold command, Maunoury being under Gallieni, and Gallieni under Joffre.

General Bonnal (Les Conditions de la Guerre Moderne, p. 56) says that it was “in virtue of his own initiative, based on the powers of the Governor of a place left to its own forces,” that Gallieni ordered Maunoury, on the morning of September 4, to prepare to take the offensive.

For particulars of Gallieni’s communications with General Joffre and Sir John French, see the work named, the same author’s long article in the Renaissance, September 4, 1915, and an article in that review on September 2, 1916. According to the last named, it was at 2.50 p.m. on September 4 that the Commander-in-Chief authorised the advance of Maunoury’s Army; and Gallieni’s orders were that it was to bring its front up to Meaux on the next day, and to “attack” on the morning of the 6th.

Gallieni’s control over Maunoury’s Army ceased when, by the development of the battle of the Ourcq, it passed out of the region of the entrenched camp of Paris. In August 1915, the old rules on the “Service de Place” were altered to give the French Commander-in-Chief absolute authority over fortresses and their governors, and full power to dispose of their resources.

53

“La Bataille de l’Ourcq”; Paul H. Courrière, in the Renaissance, September 1, 1917.

54

In his dispatch of September 17, 1914, Sir John French does not mention any visit or message from General Gallieni, and only speaks of receiving General Joffre’s request to turn about, made during their interview on Saturday, September 5. In his volume 1914, he does mention the visit, but attributes to Gallieni the statement that Maunoury would move east toward the Ourcq “on Sunday the 6th.” This suggests that the move actually made on the 5th was not at the time known at British Headquarters.

55

Die Schlachten an der Marne (p. 107 of French edition).

56

Chaps. VI.-X. For further details of the actions traced in these chapters, see the works of Marshal French, Von Bülow, M. Hanotaux, Generals Mallaterre, Canonge, and Palat, M, Victor Giraud, Lord Ernest Hamilton, Mr. G. Campbell, and others named above, and the following:

“Guides Michelin pour la visite des Champs de Bataille” (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1917–18).

Vol. I. L’Ourcq (Meaux–Senlis–Chantilly).

Vol. II. Les Marais de Saint Gond (Coulommiers–Provins–Sézanne).

Vol. III. La Trouée de Revigny (Chalôns–Vitry-Bar-le-Duc).

Excellent guides, containing good chronological summaries of the fighting on the left, centre, and right, with maps and other illustrations.

La Bataille de la Marne. By Gustave Babin (Paris: Plon. 1915). With 9 plans. One of the first day by day narratives of the battle, based on Staff information.

La Victoire de la Marne. By Louis Madelin, with 2 plans. A well-written sketch by a historian who was on the Staff at Verdun (Paris: Plon. 1916).

Avant-propos Stratégiques. By Col. F. Feyler, the well-known Swiss military writer (Paris: Payot. 1916).

Les Campagnes de 1914. By Champaubert (General Malleterre).

Collections of the French official bulletins published by Payot, and reports of the French Devastation Commission by Hachette.

Les Champs de l’Ourcq. By José Roussel-Lepine (Paris: Plon. 1919). Especially good in its descriptions of the Ourcq countryside.

La Rôle de la Cavalerie Française à l’aile gauche de la première bataille de la Marne. By J. Hethay (Paris. 1919). Includes an account of the strange raid of the 5th Division, 1st Cavalry Corps, into Villers-Cotterets Forest and region of La Fertê-Milon, ordered by General Bridoux on the morning of September 8. It was driven hither and thither for several days, at last escaping in fragments to the west; but it created some little alarm and disturbance on Von Kluck’s lines of communication.

Les Marais de Saint Gond. By Charles le Goffic (Paris: Plon. 1916). A standard work on this part of the battle.

“Mondemont.” Article by “Asker,” in L’Illustration, July 3, 1915. Many valuable articles will be found in the files of this weekly journal.

La Victoire de Lorraine. By A. Bertrand (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1917).

Morhange et les Marsouins de Lorraine. By R. Christian-Frogé (Berger-Levrault. 1917).

Sous Verdun. By M. Genevois (R. Hachette. 1916).

Die Schlacht an der Marne. By Major E. Bircher, of the Swiss General Staff. Contains a bibliography of 150 works and a number of useful maps and plans (Berne: Paul Haupt).

57

Avec Charles Péguy de la Lorraine à la Marne, by Victor Boudon (Paris: Hachette). Péguy, a sort of mystical Tory-Socialist, or, as M. Lavisse says, “Catholic-Anarchist,” was author-editor of Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine.

58

M. Hanotaux (p. 126) says that Gallieni’s order of September 4 was “an order for deployment, not for the offensive,” and he adds that the Governor intended that the cavalry should feel the way. There is no evidence of cavalry activity on the 5th; and it is manifest that the encounter before St. Soupplets was a complete surprise for the 6th Army.

59

Sir John French, in his dispatch, says: “I should conceive it to have been about noon on the 6th September, after the British Forces had changed their front to the right, and occupied the line Jouy le Chatel–Faremoutiers–Villeneuve le Comte, … that the enemy realised the powerful threat that was being made against the flank of his columns moving south-east, and began the great retreat which opened the battle.” This is a significant mistake. We now know that Bülow sent a first warning of an Allied concentration towards the west on the afternoon of September 5 to Kluck, who by then had his own information from the IV Reserve Corps. A few hours later Kluck was fully aware of his danger; and, as he has since stated to an interviewer, decided “in five minutes” how to meet it.

Field-Marshal French (1914, ch. 5), wrongly, I think, considers that Kluck “manifested considerable hesitation and want of energy.”

60

Several French volumes hint the first criticism, and it is expressed very definitely by General Bonnal in the article already referred to on the battle of the Ourcq in La Renaissance of September 4, 1915. The substance of General Bonnal’s charge is as follows:

“Unfortunately, the British Army, rather hesitant after its checks at Le Cateau, Landrecies, and Compiègne, lost time in displacements dictated by prudence, and did not give the 6th Army in time all the help desirable.” Maunoury had asked for it at noon on Sept. 4; and the Generalissimo’s directions of that night anticipated the British being at Coulommiers and Changis on the evening of the 5th. But, on the afternoon of the 4th, the head of Sir John French’s Staff had announced to Gallieni for that night “an order of movement the result of which was to distance the British Army at once from the 6th and the 5th Armies.” (If this movement was not the further retirement asked for by General Joffre, we do not know what is meant.) “Marshal French occupied during the 5th positions north and south of Rozoy, facing east. But this disposition placed the British Army much to the rear, to the west, of the line first fixed, and permitted the German II Corps, reported in the morning at Coulommiers, to repass the Marne and escape to the north-west. Fearing its appearance on the Ourcq, General Gallieni wrote on the 6th to Marshal French praying him at once to advance in accordance with the orders of General Joffre. On his side, the latter telegraphed to General Maunoury, on the 6th, asking him constantly to support the British left. In consequence, the chief of the 6th Army sent to Meaux the same evening the 8th Division (4th Corps), which had just detrained at Paris.” (This division actually came in on the morning of the 6th.) “If the presence of the 8th Division on his left did not determine Marshal French immediately to take the offensive” (what this means we do not know, for the British offensive had commenced on the morning of the 6th), “it was because at this moment he was much concerned as to the pretty considerable interval between his right and the left of the 5th Army. Yet this interval was watched by the Cavalry Corps of General Conneau.”

“On the evening of the 6th, the British Army reached the line of the Grand Morin, in contact on its right with the 5th Army. Unfortunately this contact was so close that the British Army thought it necessary to march level with and on the same lines as the 5th, which had great difficulty in assuring its route, having to drive before it four corps of Von Bülow’s Army.”

General Bonnal concludes his criticism with a not very amiable homily on the insufficient training of the old British Army, and the inadequacy of its Staff work. Generals not trained as in France and Germany had, he says, a tendency “to practise the linear order,” to move their troops in deployed formation, supporting their flanks on neighbouring bodies, and taking a thousand precautions that lead to delay. That is why “the British Army, composed of officers and men full of strength, vigour, and energy, took more than two days to cover the 20 kilometres between the Grand Morin and the Marne, when, on the 6th, they ought to have marched on the nearest enemy.”

For similar comments, see “La Bataille de la Marne, Recit Succinct,” by General Canonge (Le Correspondant, September 25 and October 10, 1917), with details of the battle.

One sentence of M. Hanotaux is more to the point than all these criticisms and suppositions: “No doubt, if the encounter had not been produced, a little prematurely perhaps, in the region of St. Soupplets–Penchard, at noon on the 5th, the whole army of Von Kluck would have been south of the Marne in the evening; while Maunoury would have taken it in reverse on the north bank. Kluck would then have been closed in” (Histoire, ch. 38, p. 184).

An interesting attempt to justify Gallieni against Joffre, and to challenge the latter’s strategy at this time, will be found in La Genèse de la Bataille de la Marne, by General H. Le Gros (Paris: Payot). He quotes Joffre as complaining to the Government (on Sept. 4) that Gallieni was seeking to “push him into a premature offensive.”

61

Four days later, in the village inn at Pezarches, Madame, an upstanding woman of about thirty, told me of the following incident:

“On Sunday morning my mother had gone to church, and I remained at home with my father and my little boy. My father left us to get some tobacco. Going out for a moment with the child, I saw a group of horsemen in the street, and said to myself: ‘We are saved. It is the Belgians!’ When I returned, to my surprise, they were in the house, sitting in my room and in the café. An officer asked me to cook him a couple of eggs. I noticed that one of the men was wounded, and asked whether it was painful. He nodded, and I went to the kitchen. There I saw, on the window-sill, a spiked helmet. I nearly fainted! So they were Germans! I managed to take in the eggs. Then the officer asked me, very politely, to show him my left hand, and, pointing to the wedding-ring, said: ‘You are married?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, trembling. ‘Your husband is a soldier?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You have a child?’ ‘No, I have no children,’ I said, ‘But I saw him. You are hiding him because you have heard that the Germans cut off the hands of French children. That is false. We never hurt women or children. Bring your little boy.’ But, as I persisted that it was not my child, he said no more. He and the others paid in German money for what they had, and left. A quarter of an hour later the firing began.”

62

1914, ch. 4.

63

Le Petit Journal, September 9, 1917.

64

In Courtacon, I found eighteen of the two dozen small brick houses completely destroyed by fire, after having been sacked. The pretext given was that villagers had betrayed the German troops—part of the Guard Cavalry Division—to the Allies. The single room of the village school presented an unforgettable exhibition of malice. Dirty straw, remnants of meals, torn books, and broken cartridge cases littered the floor. Piles of half-burnt straw showed that a hurried attempt had been made to destroy the building; there were two such piles under the bookcase and the tiny school museum, which consisted of a few bottles of metal and chemical specimens. Amid this filthy chaos, the low forms, the master’s desk, and wall-charts inculcating “temperance, kindness, justice, and truth,” stood as they had done on the day before the summer holidays. As I turned to leave, I saw, written across the blackboard in bold, fine writing, evidently as the lesson of that day, the words: “À chaque jour suffit sa peine”—“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” as our English version has it. Under this motto, all unconscious of it, these brutes had slept and wakened to their incendiary work—men of a nation that boasted itself the pioneer in Europe of elementary schooling. Could any recording angel have conceived a more biting irony?

65

M. Madelin says that 7000 German corpses were found. The figure may be doubted.

66

Le Goffic, Les Marais de St. Gond.

67

Au Centre de la Bataille de la Marne, by the Abbé Neret, Curé of Vertus, who gives the hours named.

68

I rely upon the article by M. le Goffic, “La Defense du Mont Août,” in La Liberte, September 7, 1918, embodying the narrative of an eye-witness, who mentions the following curious details: “A black cow, maddened by the bombardment, charged the trenches, leaped aside when a shell burst, sniffed the smoke, and stamped in the shell-holes. Slowly, a shepherd, a big, careless ruffian, climbed the slope with his five white sheep. For a moment he stopped level with us, 500 yards to the right. As though by accident, his five sheep were on his left, on our side; and immediately shells began to arrive in fours, the range lengthening each time by a hundred yards. But we were not in range.” This perhaps rather imaginative correspondent thinks that the Germans mistook dead for living Frenchmen on the slopes of Mont Août, and that that is why they did not seek to occupy it.

69

General Canonge, in his historical sketch, confirms my own inquiries. The embryo of the myth is to be found in the “Official Résumé,” published on June 8, 1915, in the Bulletin des Armées, according to which, on the evening of September 9, Foch’s Army, “moving from west to east toward Fère Champènoise, took in flank the Prussian Guard and the Saxon Corps which were attacking south-east of this locality. This audacious manœuvre decided the success.” This was presently elaborated, with various romantic decorations.

70

Canonge, after two inquiries on the spot, and with written evidence in addition, says that the 42nd Division left Broyes between 2 and 3 pm., reached Linthelles about 5 p.m., stopped there, and then bivouacked in the zone Linthes–Linthelles–Ognes–Pleurs, passing the night there “in general reserve,” and moving away only about 5 a.m. on September 10. Fère Champènoise, he adds, was evacuated by the Germans, after an orgie of 24 hours, at about 5.30 p.m. on the 9th, but was traversed during the greater part of the night by German troops coming from Connantre and Gourgancon. Connage thinks that, “on sight of the troops of the 42nd Division, those of General Dubois, certain now of support, advanced, and the Division then stopped and turned back to night-quarters.” Bülow, he believes, had ordered his retreat at 3.30 p.m. The first French detachment entered Fère Champènoise at 7 a.m. next day.

71

Giraud (Histoire, p. 166) gives a rather different report of this dialogue. I rely upon an article in L’Illustration of Jan. 9, 1915, containing a long passage from the diary of “an officer who was the soul of the defence”—doubtless, Captain Heym himself.

72

Colonel Feyler’s Avant-Propos Stratégiques (Paris: Payot. 1915) are particularly valuable for a pitiless analysis of the “moral manœuvre” represented in early German accounts of the first part of the campaign.

73

Major-General Maurice says: “I am convinced that history will decide that it was the crossing of the Marne in the early hours of the 9th by the British Army which turned the scale against Kluck and saved Maunoury at a time of crisis.... That an army which on August 23 had been all but surrounded by an enemy who outnumbered it by two to one should have fought its way out, retreated 170 miles, and then immediately turned about and taken a decisive part in the battle which changed the course of the campaign of 1914, is as wonderful an achievement as is to be found in the history of war” (Forty Days, pp. 183–4).

74

Hanotaux, Histoire Illustrée, vol. vii. pp. 132–8.