A Short History of the Great War

by A. F. Pollard

Cambrai did not therefore fall until another series of actions had been fought in the first nine days of October. The Scheldt canal to the north of it had proved a formidable obstacle, and Haig determined to press the attack from the south, where the Fourth Army had prepared the way on 29 September by destroying the Hindenburg line at Bellicourt and Bellenglise. On 3 October Rawlinson attacked again between Le Catelet and Sequehart and captured those villages, Gouy, Ramicourt, and the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme line. On the 4th and 5th further progress was made by the taking of Beaurevoir and Montbrehain, while north of Le Catelet the Germans were driven from their positions east of the canal, which were occupied by the Third Army. On the 8th the final phase in the battle for Cambrai began. The chief fighting was on the line secured on the 3rd. An American division captured Brancourt and Prmont, and British divisions Serain, Villers-Outreaux, and Malincourt north-east of Le Catelet. New Zealanders south of Cambrai took Lesdain and Esnes, and three British divisions Serainvillers, Forenville, and Niergnies, penetrating the southern outskirts of Cambrai, while to the north of it Canadians captured Ramillies, crossed the canal at Point d'Aire and entered the city on that side. During the night the whole of it fell into our hands; the Germans were driven back in disorder to within two miles of Le Cateau; and Bohain was reached ten miles east of Bellicourt and a similar distance south-west of Le Cateau. By the 10th the advance had been carried to the line of the Selle river, on which the Germans made another stand, while farther south the French pushing east of St. Quentin, cleared the Oise-Sambre canal as far north as Bernot. On the 10th Le Cateau fell, and by the 13th the British had gained the west bank of the Selle as far north as Haspres.

A great wedge had thus been thrust into the German line, leaving pronounced salients to the north of it round Lille and Douai, and to the south-east of it between the Oise and the Aisne. It was the policy of the Entente to eschew the destruction which fighting in cities involved, and it was particularly desirable to compel the Germans to retreat from Lille and its industrial neighbourhood by threats of encirclement rather than by frontal attack. To complete the process begun on the south, the advance in the north was now resumed; and on 14 October Belgian forces with a French army under Dgoutte and the British Second Army under Plumer attacked the whole front in Flanders between Dixmude and the Lys at Comines. Their success was even more striking than it had been on 28 September; the Belgians and French carried Courtemarck, Roulers, and Iseghem, while the British pushed along the north bank of the Lys until on the 16th they held it as far as Harlebeke, farther east than Ostend and even than Bruges. On the 15th the Belgians captured Thourout and the British Menin, crossing the Lys at various points and taking Comines on the 16th. The effect of this advance was to precipitate a comprehensive German retreat both north and south. The coveted Belgian coast had at last to be abandoned: Ostend fell on the 17th, Zeebrugge and Bruges on the 19th, and by the 21st the Germans were twenty miles from the sea, striving to stand on the Lys canal in front of Ghent. To the south the withdrawal was no less complete: both Lille and Douai were entered on the 17th; Tourcoing and Roubaix soon followed; and by the 21st our Second and Fifth armies had advanced to the Scheldt on a front of twenty miles, forming nearly a straight line with the First, Third, and Fourth on the Selle.

There the battle had been renewed on the 17th, as soon as our advancing lines of communication had been sufficiently repaired to bear the strain. The attack was made south of Le Cateau by the Fourth Army, employing British and American troops in co-operation with Dbeney's French armies on our right. The country was difficult and the fighting stiff, but by nightfall on the 19th the Germans had been driven across the Oise and Sambre canal at all points south of Catillon, and on the 20th the Third and part of the First armies took up the struggle on the Selle north of Le Cateau. Here again it was severe, especially at Neuvilly, Solesmes, and Haspres, but the whole of the Selle positions on both banks were secured, while north-east of its junction with the Scheldt the First Army had occupied Denain. On the 23rd a combined attack was made by the Fourth and Third armies, though progress was limited to the front north of the bend of the Sambre at Ors. Between that point and a few miles south of Valenciennes our troops advanced six miles up to the outskirts of the forest of Mormal and Le Quesnoy in spite of the intervening streams which had been swollen by rain, of the wooded country, and of the stubborn resistance of the Germans. These battles of the Selle between 17-25 October yielded to British armies alone 21,000 prisoners and 450 guns, and on the 26th Ludendorff resigned. Meanwhile the French were gradually squeezing the Germans out of their salient between the Oise and the Aisne back upon the Serre. Chalandry and Grandlup, near that river, were occupied on the 22nd, and east of the Aisne some progress was made in the Argonne by the capture of Olizy and Termes on the 15th; but till nearly the end of October the Americans west of the Meuse were held up by their commissariat difficulties, though east of it they had captured Brabant and Consenvoye and pushed forward their line to a level with that on the western bank.

It was only on the Meuse and on the Lys that the enemy front showed the last vestiges of stability at the end of October. The surrender of Bulgaria had been followed by that of Turkey, and Austria was on the verge of collapse. Her hold on the Balkans had gone, her southern provinces were rising in sympathy with the Serbian and Jugo-Slav advance, in the north the Czecho-Slovaks were preparing to join, and even Hungary was refusing to supply the starving capital with food. Unless Italy struck quickly, Fiume and Trieste and the whole north-eastern Adriatic coast would pass into the hands of the insurgents. The moment had come to forestall the Jugo-Slavs and deliver a blow which might overthrow the Hapsburg Empire before it collapsed of itself. Since the repulse of the Austrian offensive on the Piave in June, the Italian front had remained quiescent during the critical months of the war, though picked Italian divisions had done good fighting with the French at Reims, and the Italians in Albania had pursued the Austrian forces after they had been beaten by the Serbs and French and abandoned by the Bulgars. On the night of 23-24 October the Tenth Italian Army, consisting of two British and two Italian divisions commanded by Lord Cavan, attacked the island of Grave di Papadopoli in the Piave and completed its conquest on the 25th and 26th. Simultaneously Giardino's Italians with a French division attacked in the region of Mt. Grappa, but retired to their original position after taking a number of prisoners. On the 25th they were more successful, capturing Mt. Pertica and repulsing Austrian counter-attacks on the 26th. On the 27th the decisive movement began with Cavan's crossing of the Piave, and on the same day the Austrian Government requested Sweden to transmit to President Wilson an offer which was equivalent to surrender. At the front the Austrians continued to counter-attack very heavily at Mt. Pertica; but on the Piave they completely collapsed, and the breach of their line on the 27th was followed by a disorderly flight. The booty was colossal, the heterogeneous troops of the moribund Hapsburg Empire surrendered wholesale, and on 3 November their dying government submitted to the terms of an armistice imposed by General Diaz. On that day Italians landed at Trieste, where insurgents had taken over the government on 31 October; but an Austrian Dreadnought at Pola which had hoisted the Croat revolutionary flag was sunk by the daring act of two Italian officers.

Germany now stood alone, and any defence she might otherwise have made on her frontiers was hopelessly compromised by the position of her armies on their far-flung line in France and Belgium. Nemesis for the invasion of Belgium had at last overtaken the invader. The problem of withdrawing in safety was rendered insoluble by the battles of the first week in November and the consequent convergence of the Allies on Germany's remaining lines of communication. The decisive blows were delivered right and left by the American and British wings. Towards the end of October the Americans had surmounted their difficulties of transport and organization, and were breaking down the German resistance, which had been weakened by the transfer of troops to the British front, between Grandpr and the Meuse. On 1 November the German line was broken and the Americans advanced three or four miles. On the 2nd they doubled that distance and were in Buzancy; on the 3rd they repeated their success, while the French on their left cleared the Argonne and reached Le Chesne. German resistance also broke down on the east bank of the Meuse, and the Americans made for Montmdy. But their advance was most rapid on the west bank, where on the 7th they leapt forward to Sedan. The Germans were thus deprived of their great lateral line connecting the eastern and western sectors of their front, and were driven back against the barrier of the Ardennes; and a great French offensive into Lorraine was being prepared under Mangin. This provision somewhat weakened the less essential advance of the French in the centre between the Aisne and the Oise, but the progress of the American wing left the Germans no option but retreat in the centre, and three French armies under Dbeney, Mangin, and Guillaumat were rapidly converging upon Hirson. The remains of the Hunding position were taken on 5 November, and Marle and Guise were captured farther north-west. Vervins, Montcornet, and Rthel fell on the 6th. Hirson and Mezires were reached and the Belgian frontier crossed on the 9th. On the 10th the Italians entered Rocroi, and on the morning of the 11th the Allies were converging on Namur.

This rapid pursuit of the German centre had been made possible by the coup de grce given to the German armies in the battle of the Sambre. Haig regarded the capture of Valenciennes as an essential preliminary, and on 1-2 November corps of the First and Third armies attacked a six-mile front to the south of the town. The line of the Rhonelle was forced and Valenciennes fell on the 2nd. The line of the Scheldt was thus turned, and besides falling back in front towards the forest of Mormal the Germans had to begin evacuating the Tournai bend of the river. But the decisive blow was still to come. It was delivered on 4 November by the First, Third, and Fourth armies on a thirty-mile front, between Valenciennes and Oisy on the Sambre, which was continued by Dbeney's army southwards to the neighbourhood of Guise. In Haig's restrained language a great victory was won which definitely broke the enemy's resistance. Nineteen thousand prisoners were taken on the British front and 5000 on the French. On the first day Landrecies and Le Quesnoy fell and half the forest of Mormal was overrun; and the remaining operations consisted of a pursuit. On the 7th Bavai was captured, and Cond during the following night; on the 8th our troops were twelve miles east of Landrecies in Avesnes and on the outskirts of Maubeuge, which fell on the 9th. On that day also Tournai was occupied, and the Second Army crossing the Scheldt on a wide fronting reached Renaix. On the 10th they were close to Ath and to Grammont, and early on the 11th Canadians captured Mons.

The British Army ended the war on the Western front where it had begun to fight, and at 11 a.m. on that day the struggle ceased from end to end of the fighting line in accordance with an armistice signed six hours before. Its terms were severe, the immediate evacuation of all the conquered territory and withdrawal behind the Rhine, leaving the whole left bank and all the important bridgeheads open to Allied occupation, and a neutral zone on the right bank; the repatriation of all the transported inhabitants and Allied prisoners of war; the quashing of the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bukarest, and the withdrawal of all German troops from territories formerly belonging to Russia, Rumania, and Turkey; the surrender of thousands of guns, locomotives, aeroplanes, of all submarines fit for sea, and of the better part of the German Navy. The Germans had no choice: their armies were in flight along roads choked with transport towards an ever narrowing exit, and they could only escape if given time, which they could only obtain by surrender. They yielded to avoid a Sedan which would have destroyed their armies as a fighting force. But they gained one at least of the objects for which they had fought. The Fatherland was saved from the abomination of desolation which the Germans had spread far and wide in their enemies' homes; and except for a corner in East Prussia and another in Alsace, German soil had remained immune from invasion.

The surrender might have had the saving grace of common sense had it not been delayed so long; but it required the imminence of military destruction and an intimation from President Wilson that peace could not be concluded with those who had made the war, to provoke that revolution which competent observers had from the beginning declared to be an inevitable result of a German defeat. It was precipitated by an order to the German Fleet to go out and fight. That again had been anticipated as a counsel of despair, but few foresaw that the order would be disobeyed. The German genius for organization had tried the strength of its human material beyond the limits of endurance. The crews mutinied, and the spirit of revolt spread in the first week of November to Kiel and other ports, and thence throughout the whole of Germany. Every German throne, grand-ducal or royal, toppled into the dust, and on the 9th the Kaiser abdicated, fleeing like the Crown Prince to Holland, and leaving it to a government of Socialists to sign the terms of surrender. With the imperial crown went that imperial creation, the German Navy; and the crowning humiliation was its peaceful transference to Scapa Flow on 21 November, to be scuttled by its crews on 21 June 1919. Navies had gone in the past to the bottom, beaten and wrecked like the Spanish Armada, or battered to pieces and sunk as at Trafalgar; but never yet had Britain's sea-power led home a captive fleet without a fight. The curtain rang down on a fitting scene, a proof beyond all precedent of British command of the sea, and a yet more solemn demonstration that the ultimate factor in war consists in a people's spirit and not in its iron shards.