Loss of horses forced them to leave behind whole batteries of heavy howitzers and trains of ammunition wagons, for these days of the retreat were days of heavy rain. To shorten the length of their columns, as well as to gain time, the hurrying troops plunged into by-roads. These, cut up by the weight of the guns, speedily became impassable. How hasty was the retreat is proved by the headquarters staff of the 2nd army leaving behind them at Montmirail maps, documents, and personal papers, as well as letters and parcels received by or waiting for the military post.
Following the track of General von Kluck's army, Mr. Gerald Morgan, another special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, wrote:—
At Vareddes horses and men littered the ground. Semi-permanent entrenchments had been suddenly abandoned. Alongside the German artillery positions I saw piles of unexploded shells which the Germans had abandoned in their hurry. These shells were in wicker baskets, three to a basket. The Germans had had there many batteries of field guns, both three-inch and five-inch, and had meant evidently to make a determined resistance. But their artillery positions were plainly so badly placed that the French were able to blow them, literally to drench them, out. An avenue of large trees along the roadside, trees which the Germans hoped to use as a shelter, had been torn to pieces and flung to the ground by the French artillery as by strokes of lightning. The German dead had almost all been hit by shells or by shrapnel. A German aeroplane, brought down during the engagement, lay in the fields like a big dead bird.
I followed the line of the German retreat as far as a village called May. From the number of accoutrements thrown away along the road I judged the retreat was in bad order and greatly hurried.
The scene on the battlefield was rather terrible. There was no one to bury the dead, for the French army had gone on in pursuit, and the villagers had almost all left the country some days before.
The German infantry position was in a valley. The entrenchments had undoubtedly been dug with a view to maintaining them permanently, but the fault lay in the artillery position. The German guns—evidently a large number—had been placed on a ridge behind the infantry position. This ridge was exposed to a fire from the French artillery on a ridge opposite, a fire which completely silenced the German guns, and left the German infantry to its fate. Few of the infantry escaped.
On the day after the Germans had been driven across the Marne, Mr. Wm. Maxwell, driving into the, at ordinary times, pleasant little town of Meaux, found it deserted:—
Its houses are standing; its churches and public buildings are untouched, yet its streets are silent, its windows shuttered, and its doors closed. It might be a plague-stricken city, forsaken by all except a few Red Cross nurses, who wait for the ambulances bringing the wounded from the battlefield.
Leaving the town with a feeling akin to awe, I came upon a new surprise. Walking calmly along the public road in broad day were men in Prussian uniform, and—more amazing still—women in the dark gellab or cloak of the Moors. This was certainly startling, but the explanation was waiting on the road to the east, and it was written in gruesome signs—dead men lying in the ditches—Zouaves in their Oriental dress, Moors in their cloaks, French soldiers in their long blue coats, and Germans in their grey. Every hundred yards or so lay a disembowelled horse with a bloody saddle. This was the ragged edge of the battlefield of the Marne, and the men and women in Prussian and Moorish dress were harmless civilians who had gone to bury the dead and to succour the wounded. It was raining torrents; the wind was bitterly cold, and they had covered themselves with the garments of the dead.
Passing along this road I came to a wood, where one of these civilian burial parties had dug a pit in which they laid the friend and foe side by side. Fresh mounds of earth that told their own story guided me to a path, where the battle had blazed, a trail of splintered shells, broken rifles, bullet-riddled helmets, blood-stained rags, with which the dying had stopped their wounds, tiny bags in which the German soldier had hoarded his crumbs of biscuit, letters with the crimson imprint of fingers, showing how in the hour of agony and death men's thoughts turn to the beloved ones they are leaving for ever.
Four miles east of Meaux the hills rise sharply to the north, and are covered with trees. Beyond this wood a broad undulating plain stretches northward over cultivated fields dotted with farmsteads. A hundred paces in front, on a gentle slope, the earth has been levelled in several places that are sown with brass cylinders, whose charge sent the shells on their deadly flight.
In these emplacements lie some gunners; their heads have been shattered by shells. Under an apple-tree, laden with green fruit, two livid faces turn to the pitiless sky; one man grasps a letter in his hand—it is a woman's writing. Dark huddled patches among the cabbages and the trampled wheat, brown stains on the path, fragments of blood-stained lint, broken rifles and bayonets, bullet-pierced helmets and rent cloaks—all the débris of battle show where the fight was fiercest.
On the crest of the rise are the trenches; they extend for nearly a mile parallel with the edge of the wood, and are thrown back on the west. They are deep trenches, protected with mounds of earth, and were not made hurriedly. About them lie the dead.
The position of the trenches and gun emplacements shows that here the enemy met a flanking attack from the west and north, and covered the retreat of their centre. It is not difficult to picture what happened.
Scenes like these, the aftermath of the storm of war, were repeated up the valley of the Marne from Meaux to beyond Chalons. Terrific in its intensity the whirlwind had passed as swiftly as it had come.
No estimate has been formed of the loss of life in this vast encounter. It is certain, however, that all the suppositions hitherto advanced have been far below reality. Equally is it certain that this was one of the most destructive battles even in a war of destructive battles. Since the losses on the side of the victorious troops in killed and wounded exceeded 80,000 men, the losses on the side of the vanquished must have been more than three times as great.
That at first sight may appear exaggerated. There exist, nevertheless, good grounds for concluding that such a figure is within the truth. The Germans made a series of grave tactical mistakes. When he discovered the error into which he had fallen, General von Kluck properly decided to withdraw. Had the rest of the German line in conformity with his movement fallen back upon the north bank of the Marne, their repulse, though serious, would not have been a disaster. But it is now manifest that, from a quarter in which the situation was not understood, imperative orders were received to press on.
These orders evidently led von Bülow to attempt a stand upon the Petit Morin. General von Kluck, in face of the attack by the British and by the 6th French army on the Ourcq, realised that retirement on his part could not be delayed. But the retreat of his left from the Petit Morin exposed the army of von Bülow to an attack in flank. By that attack in flank, as well as in front, von Bülow's troops were forced at Château-Thierry to cross the Marne in full flight. Passing a deep and navigable river in such circumstances is, of all military operations, perhaps, the most destructive and dangerous, and this, from the German standpoint, formed one of the worst episodes of the battle.
Again, probably in obedience to the same imperative orders, the army of von Hausen remained before Sezanne until its decisive defeat was foregone, and its escape to the last degree jeopardised. In the retreat, consequently, the losses were terribly heavy. But even these were less than the losses which fell upon the army of Duke Albert. With almost inconceivable obstinacy and ill-judgment that army clung to its positions at Vitry until pressed by the French forces on both flanks. All the way across the valley of the Marne and over the highlands it had consequently to run a gauntlet of incessant attacks.