The most desperate fighting was on the left, where the cavalry charged the line of wooded hills between Auberive and Souain. The French infantry on the extreme left were held up before they had advanced little more than half a mile, but, later on, they took trench after trench, and by midday were two miles in front of their starting-point. It was in this part of the line that the Colonial troops, led by General Marchand,[72] made a splendid advance, in the course of which their brave leader fell. He was standing on the parapet of a German trench, smoking his pipe and urging his men forward, when he was struck down.
All through the wet afternoon the battle continued, and only when twilight fell was it possible to reckon up the gains of the day. On a front of fifteen miles, the French had pushed forward, on the average, two and a half miles. Our allies had drawn near to the village of Tahure, but they had not captured it, neither had they seized the Butte[73] of Tahure which overlooks the railway, nor the Butte of Mesnil which you see to the south-east of Tahure. Eastward of the latter hill there is high ground from which spurs stretch out southwards like the open fingers of a hand. On each of the fingers of this Hand of Massiges,[74] as the French called it, the Germans had constructed a great stronghold of criss-crossed trenches with forts at intervals. It was as though five labyrinths lay side by side. So strong was the position that the Germans said it could be held against a whole army by two washerwomen with machine guns. The French, however, had already carried part of it, and also the farmhouse which you see on the westward edge of the high ground. The whole German first line had gone, and large parts of the second line west of Navarin Farm and east of Tahure had been captured.
For every yard of front which the French had won they had taken an unwounded prisoner, and for every mile, nine guns. During the fighting some 21,000 prisoners were captured. The Germans surrendered by hundreds at a time. Most of them had been without food for several days and were suffering from thirst, and all of them had been completely cowed by the terrible bombardment.
Though the French had made such good progress, the battle was far from over. German counter-attacks were already preparing and might be expected any moment. At all costs the enemy must be prevented from bringing up his reserves and strengthening his remaining line of defence. So while the French infantry worked like inspired giants all through the night, digging themselves in, building parapets, and installing their machine guns, heavy batteries lumbered and swayed forward over the scarred and pitted ground, and began a new bombardment from advanced positions. On the next day, Sunday, all the summits of the downs were cleared from Auberive to the Butte of Souain. A hill facing the Butte of Tahure was captured by the evening, and the northern slopes of the Hand of Massiges were won.
By means of artillery and bomb attacks the line slowly advanced and was knitted up all along its length. The fighting during Sunday was far more trying than that of Saturday. "If you only knew what these days and nights are like," wrote an officer; "condemned to remain crouching in the mud under an avalanche of shells, under an almost unceasing rain, with but few supplies brought up, in the midst of bodies more or less mangled by shot and shell, and in our ears always the groans of the dying and the moans of the wounded."
The Germans rushed up all the men that they could spare from other parts of the line, and on Monday the Crown Prince tried to break through the French trenches in the Argonne. His troops advanced after a gas attack, but they were too weak to do more than carry a few yards. It was not necessary to draw off a single man from the Champagne armies to repulse him.
The second great French effort began on Wednesday, 29th September, when an attack was launched against the German position to the west of Navarin Farm. Already the French had pierced the second line on a front of about five-eighths of a mile. They strove hard to widen the gap so that the cavalry might push through, but again and again they were repulsed, and all that they could do was to dig shelter trenches and cling to the breach in the face of a murderous fire that assailed them in front and in flank. With this check the great battle of Champagne may be said to have ended.
The French had probably about 110,000 casualties in the five days' fighting. It was estimated that the Germans lost 140,000 men, including 21,000 prisoners, and 121 guns. Despite their great sacrifice of life, the distance gained by the French was too small to be shown on an ordinary map. But we shall make a great mistake if we measure the effect of the French effort by the amount of ground gained. The aim and object of generalship is not to occupy territory, but to foil the enemy's plans and destroy his forces. The victory at the Marne stopped any further invasion of France and ruined the German plan, while the resistance in Flanders and Artois prevented the enemy from reaching the Channel ports. The Champagne battles threw the enemy upon the defensive; it wore down his numbers and disheartened him, and proved that his most strongly fortified lines could be pierced, if the Allies were willing to pay the cost.