V. Fable and Fact of a bold Manœuvre
That evening, Foch conceived a manœuvre so characteristic of the man, so evidently after his own heart, that the facts of its execution have been hidden under a mass of sparkling fable. “If, by whatever mental vision,” the master had said in one of his lectures, “we see a fissure in a dam of the defence, or a point of insufficient resistance, and if we are able to join to the regular and methodical action of the flood the effect of a blow with a ram capable of breaking the dam at a certain place, the equilibrium is destroyed, the mass hurls itself through the breach, and overwhelms all obstacles. Let us seek that place of weakness. That is the battle of manœuvre. The defence, overthrown at one point, collapses everywhere. The barrier pierced, everything crumbles.” That it was Foch, not Bülow, who had been on the defensive makes no difference: Foch never thought of war in pure defensive terms. Now he saw his opportunity.
There was no subtlety in the object. A rush which fails to produce a complete breach opens a flank plainly inviting attack; and the Staff at Plancy had had its eyes fixed all day upon the new German flank, 6 miles long, from Mont Août to Corroy. Twice the 9th Corps had struck at it without success. The boldness of Foch’s design lay, not in its objective, which was evident, but in the means proposed for its execution. The right of the 9th Corps could do no more; its left, the Moroccan Division, had lost the south bank of the marshes, and was hard put to it to hold the hills around Mondemont. Nothing remained but the 42nd Division, which, though greatly fatigued, was in somewhat better posture about Soisy. Two demands now competed in the mind of the French commander. He regarded Mondemont as a key-position to be defended at all costs; and the removal of Grossetti, without compensation, would gravely endanger it. But more than in any position he believed in forcing a result by a well-directed blow when the enemy offered the chance. D’Espérey’s 10th Corps, it is true, had before it the chance of breaking across Bülow’s communications at St. Prix and Baye; it had otherwise no pressing call to make such a movement. Farther south, there were both need and opportunity—the need of relieving the 9th and 11th Corps, the opportunity of a decisive action. Grossetti, then, must come to Linthes, and d’Espérey’s 51st Division, in reserve of the 10th Corps, must take his place west of Mondemont. D’Espérey’s loyalty in agreeing to this arrangement cannot be too warmly praised. The comradeship of arms, so influential a factor in the victory of the Marne, was nowhere more admirably illustrated.
But dawn on September 9 broke upon a situation aggravated to the extreme, in which the projected manœuvre might well seem a blunder of recklessness. Bülow and Hausen had summoned their exhausted men to undertake a last essay. On the French left, Mondemont fell at 3 a.m. Two hours later, the Guard and the two Saxon Corps burst upon the centre and right with all their remaining force. Neither the 9th nor the 11th Corps was in a condition to meet this trial; but, in general, they faced it bravely. At 9 a.m., the 21st Division (11th Corps) could resist no more, and fell back from Oeuvy to Hill 129, south of Corroy, whence its commander, Radiguet, wrote to Foch: “My troops could not hold out any longer under a bombardment such as we have suffered for the last two hours. They are in retreat all along the line. It is the same with the 22nd Division. I am going to try, with my artillery and what I can gather of infantry, to rally on the plateau south of Corroy. My regiments have fought admirably, but they have an average of only four or five officers left.”
Foch replied from Plancy, at 10.15 a.m.: “The 42nd Division will arrive on the front Linthes–Pleurs. Whatever be the position, more or less in retreat, of the 11th Corps, we count on resuming the offensive with the 42nd Division toward Connantre and Corroy, an offensive in which the 9th Corps will have to take part against the (German) right from Morains to Fère Champènoise. The 42nd Division has been on the way since 8.30, and will be ready to go into action about midday. The 10th Corps has liberated it. The 10th is at our disposition, and has orders to support the Moroccan Division to prevent the enemy penetrating to the west of the Marshes of St. Gond.” On receiving similar instructions, Dubois sent two squadrons of hussars to make a provisional link between the 9th and 11th Corps, and intimated to his divisional commanders not only that they must stand firm, but that, in the classic phrase of Joffre, “no failing will now be tolerated.”
Blind words, only to be justified on the lines of Nogi’s apophthegm: “Victory is to him who can resist for another quarter of an hour.” They were hardly uttered when Mont Août, the north-eastern bastion of Dubois’ line, stubbornly defended for five days, was lost. Much of the artillery of the Prussian Guard had been concentrated on this outlying watch-tower of the Sezanne hills; and, in those early days of the war, nerves were not so steeled that a position heavily bombarded and definitely turned could be long held. Of the two brigades of the 52nd Reserve Division, the 104th had been detached to Moussy’s 17th Division; the 103rd remained under the command of General Battesti. Of the former, the 5th battalion, 320th Regiment, under Commandant Meau (known as an author under the pseudonym “Jean Saint-Yves”) was posted on the north slopes of Mont Août; two companies of the 51st Chasseurs were on the east; and Lt.-Col. (afterwards General) Clandor, with the 6th battalion, was in the wood at the foot of the hill. Meau, with wounded head bound in bloody bandages, “like a Crimean veteran,” as a combatant says, was keeping his men firm under a rain of light and heavy shells commencing at about 9.30 a.m., and Clandor was also determined to hold, when it suddenly became known that the 103rd Brigade, on their right, had received an order to retreat, apparently given by Battesi in alarm at the extent of the enemy’s advance.[67] First in twos and threes, then in masses, the reservists left the woods that cover the eastern slopes of the hill, and hurried westward, groups of horsemen galloping past them, and gun-teams plunging through the meadows. The whole line was thus shaken; and, shortly afterward, the two batteries which had hitherto sustained the men on the crest were silenced by German guns that had got round behind Ste. Sophie Farm. At 11.45 a.m., Moussy gave Meau and Clandor orders to fall back; but their obstinacy had its reward—Mont Août was never occupied by the enemy. The debris of Battesti’s brigades were rallied during the early afternoon on the hills of Allemant and Chalmont. A part of Moussy’s Division was driven south, and, after a gallant recoil at Ste. Sophie Farm, drew off to the west.
What had become of Grossetti and the 42nd, the last hope of the French centre? From Soisy to Linthes is a march of only 12 miles, and they were to have started at dawn—had started, Foch said, at 8.30 a.m. Exhaustion, hitches in the replacement by the 51st, and the needs of Mondemont may explain the harrowing delay. Messengers were sent out, without result. Foch, fuming at Plancy, issued note upon note to encourage his lieutenants. “Information shows,” he wrote at noon, “that the German Army, after having marched without rest since the beginning of the campaign, has reached the extreme limit of fatigue. Order no longer exists in their units; regiments are mixed together; the Command is confused. The vigorous offensive of our troops has thrown surprise into the ranks of the enemy, who thought we should not offer any further opposition. It is of the highest importance to profit by these circumstances. In the decisive hour when the honour and safety of the French Fatherland are at stake, officers and soldiers will draw from the energy of our race the strength to stand firm till the moment when the enemy will collapse, worn out. The disorder prevailing among the German troops is a sign of our coming victory; by continuing with all its force the effort begun, our army is certain to stop the march of the enemy and to drive him from our soil. But every one must share the conviction that success will fall to him who can endure longest.”
There were, in fact, disorders in the invading host. All morning, Prussian and Saxon soldiery had been making public revel in Fère Champènoise, breaking open and pillaging houses and shops, drinking, dancing, and singing in the streets. Nevertheless, the fighting columns advanced steadily. At 1 p.m. the Guard reached Nozay and Ste. Sophie Farms and entered Connantre, and the Saxons Gourgancon. Radiguet’s Division of the 11th Corps, after a brave stand at Oeuvy, drifted before them, first to Fresnay, then to Faux and Salon. Foch did not waver in his intentions. “The 42nd Division is marching from Broyes to Pleurs,” he wrote at 1 p.m. “It should face east between Pleurs and Linthes, so as to attack afterward in the direction of the trouée between Oeuvy and Connantre. The attack will be supported on the right by the 11th Corps, on the left by all available elements of the 9th Corps, which will take for their objective the road between Fère Champènoise and Morains.” The meaning of the word trouée as here used must not be mistaken. It presumably meant the highroad to Fère Champènoise. There was no such “gap” between the Prussian and Saxon forces as some writers have imagined; and they were both, at the time of this note, three miles or more south of the line Oeuvy–Connantre.
Though the situation was not so simple as the idea of a “gap” would suggest, Foch had accurately gauged its character and the peculiar weakness of the German advance. It has been noted that this was at first inclined (partly by the lie of the roads) in a south-westerly direction. One result was to relieve the pressure on the French extreme right, where the 60th Reserve Division withdrew easily from Mailly to Villiers-Herbisse, while de l’Espée’s cavalry received strong support from the neighbouring army. On their east flank, therefore, the Saxons had to move with care. On their right, the Prussian Guard had been attracted westward, and there checked, at 4 p.m., by an attack of portions of the 9th Corps. The Saxons had progressed more easily, and had overrun the Prussians by several miles, thus prolonging the flank at which Foch intended to strike. There was no “fissure” at this time, but rather an overlapping; when, on the following day, a real gap opened between Bülow’s and Hausen’s Armies (on the Epernay and Châlons roads respectively), the retreat was too fast for the French to take advantage of it.
Foch’s design was the classic combination of flank and frontal attack. Grossetti was to drive east-north-east from Linthes–Pleurs, beside the main road and railway, toward Fère Champènoise, while, on his left, Dubois gave what aid he could in the same direction, and Eydoux came up from the south. It was to be the same famous manœuvre that Maunoury and the British had commenced three days before, without immediate success, but from which the whole “effect of suction,” with its momentous consequences, had arisen. Thanks to those three days of heroic effort and sacrifice, Foch’s success was instant and complete, though it was not such as the fables have it.[68] Indeed, the enemy did not wait for the assault. He bolted. A doubtful story goes that a German aviator observed the approach of Grossetti’s columns, and gave Von Bülow’s Staff timely warning. The truth appears to be that the German retreat had been ordered between 3 and 5 p.m. At 6, under a red sunset, the 42nd Division arrived, and, supported by three, later increased to five, groups of artillery, moved slowly forward from the line Linthes–Linthelles, to bivouac near Pleurs.[69] The 9th Corps alone came into touch with the enemy; and a rearguard resistance was enough to impede its hastily re-formed ranks. At daybreak on the 10th, the 34th Brigade entered Fère Champènoise, which had been evacuated the previous evening, picking up 1500 stragglers; while the 42nd Division was occupying Connantre, where 500 men of the Grenadier Guards were made prisoner at the château. As Grossetti’s columns crossed the hills in the dawn-light, the air was poisonous with rotting humanity, and spectral forms arose begging for a cup of water. They were men wounded in the surprise of the 8th who had lain in the open for nearly three days.
The front of the 9th Army was restored; and, weary but exultant, it prepared to go forward to the general victory. Whether, in the end, the movement of the 42nd Division counted for anything in this result, we can know, if ever, only when the German archives are opened. The chief factor lay not in the form of any particular manœuvre, but in the sheer persistence of the French centre. Foch and his men won by Nogi’s “quarter of an hour.”