The Battle of the Marne

by G. H. Perris

GENERAL BONNAL AND THE BRITISH ARMY

[59] 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.”