It is important to realise that the consequences we have to trace arose, not chiefly from individual blundering, but from the nature of the invasion, from a plan of campaign resting upon the need and expectation of a rapid victory, and the French manner of meeting it. To this need every lesser aim, however promising in itself, had been sacrificed. King Albert was allowed to carry his army into the shelter of Antwerp, there to prepare for the battle of the Yser. Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, all the coast of Flanders and the Channel, with its hinterland, and with them the sea communications of England, were ignored in obedience to the strategical doctrine of the major objective, and in the sure belief that if this were attained, the rest would follow easily. The watching world was staggered by the immense boldness of these criminals. Joffre was in no wise intimidated, never thought of temporising, immediately saw that a most daring crime can only be overcome by a still more daring virtue, and set all his mind to the task of gathering the utmost force in the best position for the decisive test. That meant abandoning the north; so be it—he, too, must stake all on a blow.
After rescuing the armies from a deadly constraint on the frontier, after preparing a mass of manœuvre which would restore to him the initiative, after so lengthening the retreat that a virtual equality of forces was obtained, Joffre’s aim was to reach a level front whence, his flanks being safe, he could swing round the whole line in a sudden riposte. His wings were now, in a measure, protected; and the same process which had brought the Allied forces near their reserves, their supplies and their most favourable battleground had attenuated the enemy’s columns, dislocated their line, and prejudiced their power of manœuvre. The dilemma which Paris presented in the west, Verdun repeated at the other end of the line, 170 miles away. There, too, the beginnings of a modern defensive system were being extemporised. Sarrail had just succeeded Ruffey in command of the 4th Army; he would have defended, did, indeed, afterwards defend, his circle of forts and hill-trenches as Gallieni would have defended the capital. The Imperial Crown Prince was faced by a replica of Kluck’s problem—to attack the fortress of the Meuse Heights, and to that extent to neglect the French field armies; or to neglect the fortress, and risk all that might, and did, happen. Either the invaders must entangle themselves upon these protruding points, and so weaken the intermediate forces, or they must go forward to the crucial encounter leaving a peril unreduced upon either flank. That the Crown Prince’s answer was the same as Kluck’s indicates that it was not their individual answer only, but the decision of the Grand Staff.
On the west, there are, before the battle of the Marne, three main stages in the development of this result: the loss of a week at the outset in Belgium, which enabled the French command to shift its forces north-westward, and the British Army to assemble; the failure of the surprise on the Sambre and Meuse to produce a decision; and the failure, on or south of the Somme, either to envelop or to break the retreating masses. On the east, where there was less possibility of surprise or manœuvre, a like inability to pierce or envelop appeared in five successive failures: that of the Gap of Charmes on August 25; the battle of the Mortagne, at the beginning of September; the battle of the Grand Couronné of Nancy on September 4–11; that of Fort Troyon on September 8–13; and that of the Crown Prince’s Army in course of the main battle of the Marne. To the German marching wing the most important mission had been entrusted; and its failure must be adjudged the most grave.
Its greatest exponents have admitted that the danger of dislocation is inherent in the tactic of envelopment; Clausewitz himself laid it down that the manœuvre should only be attempted when the force attacked is wholly engaged with the assailant’s centre.[50] After the Sambre, the German armies never had this opportunity; and ere they could change a plan that had governed all their dispositions, it had aggravated the disorder natural in so violent a pursuit. What at first sight looks like a sudden change of fickle fortune is, in fact, the logical end of an immense strategical deception, of weaknesses in an imposing organism discovered by a higher intelligence, and exploited by a higher prudence and courage. However the lesser questions we have touched be answered in the light of fuller knowledge, it seems sure that history will pronounce Joffre’s master idea one of the boldest and soundest conceptions to be found in military annals. It dominated the ensuing battle, which thus yielded an essentially strategic victory. Gallieni has been justly praised for the promptitude with which he took advantage of Kluck’s “adventurous situation.” The only alternative for the latter, however, was another situation hardly, if at all, less adventurous; and the choice was imposed upon him—as, at the other end of the line, upon the Crown Prince—by the French Commander-in-Chief. The manœuvrer had become the manœuvred before the battle began.
CHAPTER V
THE ORDER OF BATTLE
I. Gallieni’s Initiative
It was in the early hours of September 3 that the first definite evidence of Kluck’s divergence south-eastward was reported to the Military Government of Paris; but the officers in charge did not venture to disturb their weary chief, who received the news only when he rose in the morning.[51] At noon, he issued to the garrison the following note: “A German army corps, probably the Second, has passed from Senlis southward, but has not pursued its movement toward Paris, and seems to have diverged to the south-east. In a general way, the German forces which were in face of the 6th Army appear to be oriented toward the south-east. On our side, the 6th Army is established to the north-east of the entrenched camp on the front Mareil-en-France–Dammartin–Montgé. The British Army is in the region south of the Marne and the Petit Morin, from Courtevroult (west) to beyond La Ferté-sous–Jouarre (east).”
During the day, the news, the importance of which Gallieni immediately realised, was confirmed; the evening bulletin issued in Bordeaux announced that “the enveloping march of the enemy seems definitely conjured.” Perceiving the opportunity of striking a hard, perhaps a decisive, blow at the enemy’s flank, the Governor appears to have resolved at once to set Maunoury’s Army in movement,[52] and then to have proceeded to urge the Commander-in-Chief to make this the commencement of the general offensive which was to have taken place some days later, when the armies had re-formed behind the Seine. “If they do not come to us, we will go to them,” said Gallieni to his Chief of Staff, General Clergerie;[53] and at about 9 a.m. on September 4, he issued to the 6th Army the following order: “In consequence of the movement of the German armies, which appear to be slipping across our front in a south-easterly direction, I intend to send your army forward against their flank, that is to say in an eastward direction, in touch with the British troops. I will indicate your direction of march when I know that of the British Army; but take forthwith your dispositions so that your troops may be ready to march this afternoon, and to launch to-morrow (September 5) a general movement to the east of the entrenched camp.”