The Battle of the Rivers

by Edmund Dane

Even more important, however, from a military standpoint, is the southern side of this plateau. The only means of approaching the plateau from that side is either up the clefts or side valleys, or from the western end where the level gradually falls. But an attack made up one of the side valleys could be assailed from both sides. In possession of the plateau above, the defence, while keeping its force undivided, could move that force to any point where attack was threatened, having itself no clefts or fissures to deal with. It will be seen, therefore, that the ridge formed a sort of vast ready-made castle, big enough to stretch from London to beyond Oxford, or from Liverpool to Manchester, and that the quarries and galleries made it habitable, at all events on the banditti level of existence.

As Sir John French has pointed out,[19] owing to the patches of wood on the upper slopes and tops of the bluffs, only small areas of the plateau were open to view from the tops of bluffs on the south side of the river. Hence the movements of the defenders were, looked at from across the river, to no small extent concealed.

Two further military features of the ridge should be noted. One is the fact that its steep northern slope forms one side of the valley of the Lette, and that, therefore, it is bounded by a river on both sides; the other is, that some eight miles from its eastern end at Craonne the plateau narrows to a mere neck less than a mile wide, and that across this neck is carried the Oise and Aisne canal.

Not relying, however, merely on the natural features of the place, the Germans dug along the plateau lines of entrenchments connected by galleries with other trenches in the rear where reserves, not in the firing line, were held. These back trenches formed living places. The mass of men was too large, for any save the smaller proportion, to find shelter in the quarries.

It will be seen, therefore, that the business of turning the Germans out of such a fastness could be no easy matter.

On the choice of this position two questions suggest themselves. How was it that the Germans came to pitch upon this place—for there can be no doubt the choice was deliberate[20]—and what operations did they intend to undertake on the strength of its possession?

The answers to these questions are in no sense speculations in the secrets of War Offices. Those secrets it would be idle to profess to know. Like the observations made in preceding pages, the answers are deductions from admitted facts and events, perfectly plain to anyone who has knowledge enough of military operations to draw them. Only ignorance can assume that no true commentary can be written concerning a campaign save upon official confidences.

As to the German choice of this position, it should not be forgotten that the present war represents the fourth campaign which the Prussians have fought in this area of France. In forming their plans they had, we ought to presume, considered—bearing in mind the difference in military conditions—not only the war of 1870-1, but the campaign of Frederick William II., and the campaign of Blucher in 1814. A little earlier it was said that this arena offers great facilities for defence. The reason is that, since there is here a system of rivers flowing to a conjunction near Paris, it is always open to the defence to attack in superior force between any two of the rivers, while the assailant must, in advancing from east to west, have his forces divided by one or more of the streams. The whole German plan was intended to obviate and to overcome that difficulty, and yet the plan came to grief because, at the moment when their forces were divided by the Marne and by the Grand Morin, the defence were able to attack them in superior force on their extreme right—the vital point—and when the crossing of the rivers made it difficult to meet that attack.[21]

Foreseeing, however, the possibility, though not accepting the probability, of having to stand for a time on the defensive, the German General Staff, we cannot now doubt, had formed the subsidiary and provisional plan of concentrating, as far as possible and in case of necessity, between two of the rivers—the Oise and the Aisne—in positions which could be held with a minimum of numbers.