THE FALL OF MAUBEUGE
[26] Four years passed ere a detailed account of the defence and fall of Maubeuge was published (La Verité sur le Siège de Maubeuge, by Commandant Paul Cassou, of the 4th Zouaves. Paris: Berger-Levrault). There are, in the case of this fortress, points of likeness to and of difference from that of Lille. In June 1910 the Ministry of War had decided that Maubeuge should be regarded as only a position of arrest, not capable of sustaining a long siege; and in 1913 the Superior War Council decreed that it should be considered only as a support to a neighbouring field army. It then consisted of an enceinte dating from Vauban, dominated by an outer belt of six main forts and six intermediate works about twenty years old, furnished with 335 cannon, none of which carried more than 6 miles. The garrison consisted of an infantry regiment, three reserve and six Territorial regiments. In the three weeks before the siege began, 30,000 men were engaged in digging trenches, laying down barbed wire, and making other defences.
The siege was begun by the VII Reserve Corps, a cavalry brigade, and a division from another corps, about 60,000 men, on August 25. On that and two following days effective sorties were made. On the 29th the bombardment began. One by one the forts were smashed by heavy guns and mortars, including 420 mm. pieces throwing shells of nearly a ton weight, firing from the safe distance of 9 or 10 miles. On September 1, all the troops available made a sortie, and a regular battle was fought. Some detachments reached within 250 yards of the German batteries, only to be mown down by machine-gun fire. After this two German attacks were repulsed. On September 5, however, the enemy got within the French lines, and on the 7th the place had become indefensible. At 6 p.m. the capitulation was signified, and on September 8, at noon, the garrison surrendered, General von Zwehl saying to General Fournier: “You have defended the place with a rare vigour and much resolution, but the war has turned against you.” The German Command afterward claimed to have taken at Maubeuge 40,000 prisoners, 400 guns, and a large quantity of war material.
[27] Statement of M. Messimy before the Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy, May 30, 1919, reported in the Paris Press the following day. In his evidence, M. Messimy blamed Joffre for not having been willing, in August 1914, to recognise the danger on the side of Belgium. Undoubtedly, he added, it was a fault of the French Command in 1912 and 1913 not to contemplate the prompt use of reserves, and to fall back on the Three Years’ Service law, “which no one would defend to-day.” M. Messimy argued that the doctrine of the offensive à outrance was common to the French and German Armies, and was at that time universal in military circles.
Joffre, Première Crise du Commandement, by Mermeix (Paris: Ollendorff. 1919), is a careful and unprejudiced study of the changes, ideas, and personal antagonisms in the French Army Commands during the first period of the war. It concludes with a section in which “Attacks upon Joffre” and “Explanations collected at the G.Q.G.,” are set forth on opposite pages.
[28] See note at top of p. 249.
[29] G. Blanchon, Le General Joffre, Pages Actuelles, 1914–5, No. 11 (Paris: Bloud et Gay).
[30] M. Arthur Huc, editor of the Dépêche de Toulouse, in which journal the interview was printed, March 1915.
[31] Statement by General Messimy at the Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy, April 28, 1919.
[32] For details, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,” Rev. des Deux Mondes, November 15, 1916; Engerand, loc. cit.; a vindication of General Dubail, by “Cdt. G. V.”: “La 1re Armée et la Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,” La Revue, January 1, 1917; Barrés: “Comment la Lorraine fut Sauvée,” Echo de Paris, September 1917.
[33] See p. 34. The mismanagement of this battle was the subject of evidence at the Metallurgical Commission of Inquiry on May 15, 1919.
[34] Miles, Le General Maunoury, Pages Actuelles, No. 49.
[35] French, 1914, ch. iv. The Hon. J. W. Fortescue (Quarterly Review, Oct. 1919), defending Smith-Dorrien, charges Lord French with “clumsy and ludicrous misstatements,” and questions the figures in the text.
[36] Meine Bericht zur Marneschlacht (Berlin: Scherl), notes, written in December 1914, on the operations of the II Army to the end of the battle of the Aisne. Bülow charges Kluck with not having informed German G.H.Q. of the gathering of Maunoury’s forces and the action of Proyart.
For the battle of Guise, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de Guise–St. Quentin,” Rev. des Deux Mondes, September 1, 1918.
[37] For his report of a stormy interview with Lord Kitchener at the Embassy in Paris on September 1, see 1914, ch. v. This account has, however, been strongly questioned by Mr. Asquith (speech at Newcastle, May 16, 1919), who says that Lord Kitchener did but convey the conclusions of the Cabinet, which had been “seriously disquieted” by Sir John French’s communications.
[38] See Foch, by Réné Puaux, and, above all, Foch’s own works, De la Conduite de la Guerre (3rd ed., 1915), Les Principes de la Guerre, 4th ed., 1917 (Paris: Berger-Levrault).
[39] “I see no inconvenience,” Joffre replied, “in your turning back to-morrow, 28th, in order to affirm your success, and to show that the retreat is purely strategic; but on the 29th every one must be in retreat.”
[40] For details of the last stages of the retreat and pursuit, see La Marche sur Paris de l’Aile Droite Allemande, by Count de Caix de Saint Aymour (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle); Gordon and Hamilton, op. cit.; and La Retraite de l’Armée Anglaise du 23 Août 1914, by Ernest Renauld, Renaissance, November 25, 1916.
On September 3, General Lanrezac was removed from the command of the French 5th Army—“because his views were contrary to a complete liaison with the British Army,” says M. Hanotaux (Rev. des Deux Mondes, March 1919); but this is a partial and inadequate statement. As we have seen, Lanrezac had been at issue with G.Q.G. from the beginning of the campaign.
M. Hanotaux quotes a note sent to the Minister of War, M. Millerand, on September 3, by General Joffre, who, “finding that the rapid recoil of the British Army, effected too soon and too quickly, had prevented Maunoury’s Army from coming into action in good conditions, and had compromised Lanrezac’s left flank,” described his intention thus: “To prepare a new offensive in liaison with the British and with the garrison of Paris, and to choose the battlefield in such a way that, by utilising on certain parts of the front prepared defensive organisations, a numerical superiority could be assured in the zone chosen for the principal effort.”
[41] An anonymous writer, “ZZZ,” in the Revue de Paris, September 15, 1917, says that Field-Marshal French’s communication was made on September 1 to the French Government—probably it was a result of the Kitchener interview—and was transmitted to Joffre by the Minister of War, who, subject to the full liberty and responsibility of the Generalissimo, favoured the idea of resistance on the north and north-east of Paris.
[42] Petit Parisien, June 16, 1916.
[43] Le Livre du Souvenir, by Paul Ginisty and Arsène Alexandre, pp. 75–6.