Next, White corps No. II. stops, puts out one of its divisions (say 4) to check d and e, while its other division either helps or falls back, according to the severity of the pressure, and White corps No. I. makes off as fast as it can. a, b, c, no longer checked by a White rearguard, are nevertheless retarded from two causes—first, the delay already inflicted on them; secondly, that they must not, if the army is to keep together, get too far ahead of their colleagues, d and e, which White corps II. is holding up.
Sketch 49.
Thus, on the second or third day the retreat of White is being secured by an increasing gap between pursued and pursuers. The process is continued. Every succeeding day—if that process is successful—should further widen the gap until White can feel free from immediate pressure.
Such is the principle—modified indefinitely in practice by variations of ground and numbers—under which a retirement must be conducted if it is to have any hope of ultimate success in saving the pursued.
But it is clear that the process must always be a perilous one. Unless the most careful co-ordination is maintained between the moving parts of the retreat; unless the rearguard in each action falls back only just upon and not a little while after the precise moment when it can last safely do so; unless the new rearguard comes into play in time, etc., etc.—the pursuers may get right in among the pursued and break their cohesion; or they may get round them, cut them off, and compel them to surrender. In either case the retreating force ceases to exist as an army.
In proportion as the pursuers are numerous (mobility being equal) compared with the pursued, in that proportion is the peril. And with the best luck in the world some units are sure to be cut off, many guns lost, all stragglers and nearly all wounded abandoned in the course of a pressed retreat, and, above all, there will be the increasing discouragement and bewilderment of the men as the strain, the losses, and the ceaseless giving way before the enemy continue day after day with cumulative effect.
The accomplishment of such a task, the maintenance of the "operative corner" in being during its ordeal of retreat before vastly superior numbers, and in particular the exceedingly perilous retirement of the British contingent at what was, during the first part of the strain, the extreme of the line, are what we are now about to follow.
The initial counter-attack, then, on this Monday, the first day of the retreat, was undertaken by the 2nd British Division from the region of Harmignies, which advanced as though with the object of retaking Binche. The demonstration was supported by all the artillery of the 1st Army Corps, while the 1st Division, lying near Peissant, supported this action of the 2nd. While that demonstration was in full activity, the 2nd Corps to the west or left (not all of it was yet in the field) retired on to the line Dour-Frameries, passing through Quaregnon. It suffered some loss in this operation from the masses of the enemy, which were pressing forward from Mons. When the 2nd Corps had thus halted on the line Dour-Frameries, the 1st Corps, which had been making the demonstration, took the opportunity to retire in its turn, and fell back before the evening to a line stretching from Bavai to Maubeuge.
