The Battle of the Marne

by G. H. Perris

IV. Battles of Le Cateau, Guise, and Launois

During the night of August 25—while Smith-Dorrien’s men were defending themselves at Solesmes and Haig’s at Landrecies—General Maunoury received the order to disengage his divisions, and to hurry across country to Montdidier with his Staff, there to complete the formation and undertake the command of the new 6th Army. This distinguished soldier was sixty-seven years of age. Wounded in the war of 1870, he had taken a leading part in the development of the French artillery, directed the Ecole de Guerre, and restored a strict discipline in the garrison of the capital as Governor of Paris. Two of his phrases will help to characterise this gallant officer. The first was that in which, in the moment of victory, he spoke of himself as having for forty-four years directed all his energies toward “la revanche de 1870.” The other was addressed to a group of fellow-officers who were discussing certain German brutalities. He could not understand such things, he said, and added: “When we are in their country, we will give them a terrible lesson in humaneness.”[34]

The Army of the Somme consisted at the outset of the 7th Corps, taken from Alsace (minus its 13th Division, left in Lorraine; plus the 63rd Reserve Division and a Moroccan Brigade from the Châlons camp); the 55th and 56th Divisions of Reserve, taken from the Verdun–Toul region; the 61st and 62nd Divisions of Reserve, detached from the Paris garrison to Arras, under General d’Amade, and brought back from Arras to Amiens. It was constituted in the most unfavourable circumstances; and the idea of a flank attack from the Arras–Amiens region, in support of an offensive from the old line of secondary fortresses La Fère–Laon–Rheims, was no sooner conceived than it had to be abandoned. Maunoury was compelled to send his divisions off piecemeal from railhead to the battlefield. The chief body of them had had such rest as a long journey in goods-vans permits; d’Amade’s reservists had been routed in the north, and had lost heavily. If Kluck had not been absorbed in the effort to destroy Sir John French’s little band of heroes, Maunoury’s task could never have been fulfilled.

The debt was quickly repaid. The moment had come when the British must be relieved, or exterminated. Between Le Cateau and Cambrai, on August 26, the three infantry divisions and two cavalry brigades of the 2nd Corps, although worn by long marches, checked the onrush of seven German divisions and three mounted divisions, including some of the best Prussian troops, supported by at least a hundred batteries. Again trusting to his guns while he planned a double envelopment, Kluck allowed his enemy to escape. While this first experience of massed artillery fire revealed the fine quality of our “Old Contemptibles,” it is a debated question whether General Smith-Dorrien’s temerity was justified. He had been expressly ordered to continue the retreat, and General Allenby had warned him of the risk he ran. A sharp blow upon the German right flank by Sordet’s cavalry and some of d’Amade’s battalions relieved the perilous situation. But the British losses were heavy after as well as during the battle. At night, during the disengagement, the 1st Gordons marched into the camp of a German division, and were taken prisoner almost to a man. The following is the judgment of the British Commander-in-Chief upon this affair: “The magnificent fight put up by these glorious troops saved disaster, but the actual result was a total loss of at least 14,000 officers and men, about 80 guns, numbers of machine-guns as well as quantities of ammunition, war material and baggage, whilst the enemy gained time to close up his infantry columns marching down from the north-east.... The hope of making a stand behind the Somme or the Oise, or any other favourable position north of the Marne, had now to be abandoned, owing to the shattered condition of the army, and the far-reaching effect of our losses at the battle of Le Cateau was felt seriously even throughout the subsequent battle of the Marne, and during the early operations on the Aisne. It was not possible to replace our lost guns and machine-guns until nearly the end of September.”[35]

At this time Bülow was pursuing Sir Douglas Haig along the Guise road. On the 27th, the 2nd Munster Fusiliers were cut off, and killed or captured, except a handful saved by the 15th Hussars. On the 28th, the weary remnant of an army which had marched 90 miles in four days, fighting continually, tramped down the Oise valley, from La Fère to Noyon. That evening, Gough’s cavalry, at the south of the Somme near Ham, and Chetwode’s a little farther east, in covering the retreat, had to bear two severe attacks, which they effectually broke. On August 26, Sir John French had met Generals Joffre and Lanrezac at St. Quentin, and had again found the attitude of the latter officer unsatisfactory. On August 29, at 1 p.m., General Joffre visited the British Commander at the latter’s headquarters in the Château of Compiègne. “I strongly represented my position,” Sir John reported to Lord Kitchener, “to the French Commander-in-Chief, who was most kind, cordial, and sympathetic, as he has always been.” The Field-Marshal was persuaded from this time on that “our stand should be made on some line between the Marne and the Seine.”

The needed relief had already been arranged when the conference took place, by a movement which we may summarise as an inclination of the 6th and 5th French Armies toward each other across the British rear. Sordet’s three cavalry divisions had already passed from the right to the left of the British Army. D’Amade’s Divisions had done something to check Von Kluck’s advance by the Bapaume–Amiens and Peronne–Roye highroads. Nevertheless, Von der Marwitz’s cavalry was on the Somme on August 28. That day Lanrezac’s Army, which had retired from the line Avesnes–Chimay west-south-westward, took positions south of the Oise between La Fère and Guise. On the following day, August 29, while Joffre had gone from Lanrezac’s headquarters at Laon to consult Sir John French at Compiègne, Maunoury and Lanrezac struck two hard blows, the one eastward from the Santerre plateau toward Peronne, the other north-west from the Oise toward St. Quentin, against the two flanks of Kluck.

In the former action, between the villages of Villers Bretonneaux and Proyart, 15,000 French chasseurs and troops of the line arrested a larger German force for a day and a night, then falling back toward Roye. Lanrezac was more successful in the simultaneous battle of Guise (extending to Ribémont on the west, and eastward to Vervins), although its original aim was not carried out. This was to wheel about, and to strike westward. The delicate manœuvre might have ended disastrously, for Bülow was closer than was thought, but for a rapid return to the old front. The left of the 5th Army (18th and 3rd Corps) crossed the Oise toward St. Quentin in the morning of the 29th, but was stopped in view of the arrest of the right (1st and 10th Corps) by heavy German attacks. The 3rd Corps was then transferred to the right; and, to the east of Guise, a serious repulse was inflicted on the German X Corps and the Guard.

This seems to have been the strongest of several factors which now produced a deep disturbance of the German plans. On August 28, according to Bülow’s war-diary,[36] the High Command, probably under the impression of Le Cateau, had ordered the I Army to continue south-westward to the Seine below Paris, and the II Army to make straight for the capital. Guise altered the whole prospect. Bülow had had to ask aid from Kluck (who, till August 27 subject to Bülow, was then given an independence of command which continued till September 10). Kluck, evidently the more forceful personality, and opposed to an immediate descent on Paris, then proceeded south-east to the Oise about Compiègne. The new direction was at once accepted by General Headquarters—a momentous change which will be discussed presently. Other important results were attained by these actions. The British Force was freed, and retired to the north bank of the Aisne, between Compiègne and Soissons, there to reorganise. At the same time, the neighbouring French armies, albeit outnumbered, were so ranged as to close the breach thus left against Kluck and Bülow, Field-Marshal French, not having received reinforcements, had rejected Joffre’s request to “stand and fight,” and refused to budge when it was repeated by President Poincaré and Lord Kitchener.[37]

Dislocation became apparent on both sides at this juncture. Kluck’s liaison with Bülow was not very good, or the movements just described would not have been possible. A considerable gap had also developed between Hausen and Bülow. True, there was a corresponding void between the French 5th and 4th Armies, a distance of 25 miles held only by a few flying columns. But behind this breach, a few miles to the south (between Soissons and Château Porcien), the new so-called 9th Army had begun to form on August 27, under General Foch, fresh from his failure and success in Lorraine.

It is difficult now not to regard this appointment in the light of later fame.[38] But the commander of the 20th Corps was already distinguished. It is noteworthy that Ferdinand Foch was born within 4 miles and four months of Joffre—at Tarbes in the Upper Pyrenees, on October 2, 1851. Of a solid and comfortable middle-class family, he is said to have called the Generalissimo’s attention, when he was offered the army command, to the fact that he had a brother who was a Jesuit priest. Joffre swept the hinted objection aside. Foch, who had served as subaltern in the 1870 war, had risen to be brigadier-general when he was made director of the Ecole de Guerre. Later, he commanded successively the 13th Division, the 8th Corps, and the 20th, of Nancy.

The new force he was now called upon to lead—consisting of the 42nd Division of the 6th Corps, taken from the 3rd Army, the 9th and 11th Corps, taken from the 4th Army, the 1st Moroccan Division, and two reserve divisions from the 4th Army—was not yet ready to enter into action. Joffre’s purpose in creating and placing it was not only to strengthen his centre, but to preserve the offensive force of the 5th Army. The German Staff probably did not know of the existence of Foch’s “detachment.” It did know that, farther east, its central armies, those of Duke Albrecht of Würtemberg and the Prussian Crown Prince, were not doing as well as had been expected. On August 28, de Langle, having obtained the Generalissimo’s leave to suspend the retreat of the 4th Army for a day, and a day only,[39] drove the German IV Army back across the Meuse between Sedan and Stenay with his right, while, with his left, he struck at the Saxons between Signy-l’Abbaye and Novion-Porcien (sometimes called the battle of Launois), where, in particular, the 1st Moroccan Division dealt faithfully with the I Saxon (XII German) Corps. The 3rd French Army was also deliberate in its retirement toward and around the northern limits of the entrenched camp of Verdun, and, on the 29th, near Dun-sur-Meuse, almost completely destroyed one of the Crown Prince’s regiments which tried to cross the river.