THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.
On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south of Châlons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would permit the retreat of his armies.
If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than the Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal go beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.
He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he deemed they would be most effective: the First army, under General Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army, under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet d'Espérey; then the little British army of three corps, under General Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.
So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received orders—at once terrible and immensely flattering—that he was to occupy the center of Joffre's battle line and to sustain the onslaught of Von Buelow and the famous Prussian Guards.
In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from Joffre the now historic message:
"The moment has come for the army to advance at all costs and allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than give way."
The men to whom this order was relayed by their commanders had, five-sixths of them, been ceaselessly engaged, without one single day's rest of any kind and much of the time without night rest either, for fourteen days, fighting as they fell back, and falling back as they fought; the skin was all worn from the soles of their feet, and what shoes they had left were stuck to their feet with blood.
"They had marched under a torrid sky," says Louis Madelin, "on scorching roads, parched and suffocated with dust. In reality they moved with their hearts rather than with their legs. According to Pierre Lasserre's happy expression, 'Our bodies had beaten a retreat, but not our hearts,' … But when, worn out with fatigue, faces black with powder, blinded by the chalk of Champagne, almost dying, they learned Joffre's order announcing the offensive, then the faces of our troops from Paris to Verdun beamed with joy. They fought with tired limbs, and yet no army ever showed such strength, for their hearts were filled with faith and hope."