For with the growth of commerce the rivers had been linked up with a network of canals, and over these, with joints represented by scores of bridges, had been spun a webwork of railways branching in all directions into sidings. Lille itself is but the centre of half a hundred industrial villages and smaller towns, the heart of a huge ganglion of commerce and manufacture.
Farther south we come to the coalfield. Of the discovery of the coalfield all this modern activity is the outcome. There the industry changes in character. Cotton mills give place to ironworks and blast furnaces. The face of the country is dotted with great mounds of "spoil." Its general aspect is grimier. In all directions it is cut up by narrow, badly-paved and rutty lanes, tracks leading mostly from the pits and works to the villages of the pitmen and ironworkers. To the tangle of canals and railways and railway sidings there is added this third tangle of foot and cart tracks, made for the most part as haphazard and as convenience directed. Through this maze of ways and byways the only guiding lines are the usually straight and excellent French main roads which sweep across the country from town to town with an imperial disregard of local obstacles. The plan and purpose of the main roads is largely military, and has come down from the days of the Roman occupation.
Such in brief are the main features of the country. As will be seen in the following pages, their bearing upon the operations of the war is of the first importance.
CHAPTER IV
THE BATTLE OF YPRES—FIRST PHASE
The main body of the British forces arrived in French Flanders on October 11. It will be recalled that in his dispatch Sir John French states that the movement from the Aisne began on October 3. Why, it may be asked, were eight days taken to complete this transfer if it was so urgent?[3]
Well, in the first place the withdrawal of the British forces from the Aisne had to be carried out in detail. To have effected the withdrawal in mass would at once have aroused the observation and suspicion of the enemy. Next the forces thus withdrawn in detail, and in detail replaced by French troops, had to be massed at a convenient place secure from hostile intelligence hunters. Finally this main body of the British army had to be sent forward to the new line of front as a whole. Thus it was that the 2nd Army Corps, under the command of General Sir H. Smith-Dorrien, detrained at Bethune on the same day, October 11, that the 3rd Army Corps under the command of General Pulteney detrained at St. Omer. These towns are some twenty miles apart. Coincidently with the detrainment of the infantry and the guns, the 2nd and 3rd Divisions of the British cavalry advanced under the command of General Allenby and occupied the little town of Aire, which lies nearly half-way between them. By this move a front was formed from near Lens, where the French line ended across the country north-westward to the coast. The gap, so far as outflanking the Allied forces was concerned, was closed.
In the latter part of September, as a prelude to their scheme, the Germans had occupied Lille. An occupying force which they had left there on their advance towards Paris had been driven out by the British. They now detached for the seizure of the city the 19th Active Corps and the 7th Reserve Corps. In the face of this overwhelming strength the British troops in Lille, part only of a division from Dunkirk, had no alternative but to retire. It was a bitter day for the inhabitants of Lille which witnessed the departure of these defenders, welcomed only a little while before with every demonstration of public joy.
Besides these two German army corps who, based on Lille, began at once to drive westward towards Boulogne, a powerful mobile column, consisting of four divisions of cavalry, supported by horse artillery and three brigades of Jaegers, crossed the Lys, and passing to the south of Ypres, made a dash through Bailleul for Hazebrouck, covering at once the flank of the main advance from a possible attack from Dunkirk, and carrying out a turning movement against such French forces as were then supposed to be holding Bethune. These German troops, the two army corps and the flying column, though mustering in all more than 150,000 men, were only the vanguard of the mass intended to be thrown forward. It is clear that their expectation was that of attack from Dunkirk on the one side and from Bethune on the other. The flying column advanced to Hazebrouck, and the cavalry occupied the Forest of Nieppe to the south of that town without opposition.
Meanwhile the Belgian army, which had evacuated Antwerp two days before on October 9, was on its way westward along the coast covered by the British troops under the command of General Sir Henry Rawlinson. All the probabilities appeared to be that both the Belgian army and these British troops would be cut off.
We may judge then of the surprise of these German forces when, along the line of the Aa, they came suddenly up against this massive wall of the British army supposed to be on the Aisne. Sir John French, however, had not transferred his army to Northern France in order to stand on the defensive. The wall of British troops was in rapid movement. On this same day, October 11, the British cavalry dashed across the Aa, swept the German horse through and out of the Forest of Nieppe, and drove them as far as the Mont des Cats. There the Germans attempted, at the end of a flight of some fourteen miles, to make a stand. In the attack upon the Forest of Nieppe the British cavalry of the 6th Division had carried out to the north a movement which threatened the German force from the rear. When this was discovered the German retreat became a flight. Reaching the Mont des Cats their horses were blown, but they were compelled to defend that position if possible because the Jaegers, evacuating Hazebrouck under cover of their cavalry, had thrown themselves into Meteren and Bailleul. This cavalry fight, in which on both sides more than 20,000 men took part, though relatively, perhaps, but one of the minor episodes of the war, was, in fact, of its kind colossal. It was a clash of sabre against sabre, man to man. In numbers the Germans had an advantage of about three to two, and that advantage ought to have been decisive, but apart from the fact that their mounts hard ridden across country, were winded, the superiority of the British was so marked that they had not hesitated earlier in the campaign, and with success, to attack the German horse when the enemy had a proportion of two to one. In cavalry fighting skill, spirit and cohesion count for more than numbers.