The establishment of the army of Manoury on the left of the French armies so as to fall on the right flank of the Germans when they marched on Paris; the establishment of a strong army under one of the best French generals at the center for the purpose of encountering the main weight of the German army; such were the two decisions of the French commander in chief, taken on August 25 and 27, 1914, which contained in germ the victory of the Marne, waged and won two weeks later.
[CHAPTER XI]
FIGHTING AT BAY
The forces of France also had been fighting to protect their retreat southward in these August days of 1914. After the passages of the Sambre were forced, during the great Mons-Charleroi battle, the Fifth French Army was placed in very perilous straits by the failure of the Fourth Army, under General Langle, to hold the Belgian river town of Givet. Hard pressed in the rear by General von Bülow's army, and on their right by General von Hausen commanding the Saxon Army and the Prussian Guard, the Fifth Army of France had to retire with all possible speed, for their path of retreat was threatened by a large body of Teutons advancing on Rocroi.
On August 23, 1914, holding their indomitable pursuers in check by desperate rear-guard action, with their two cavalry divisions under General Sordêt galloping furiously along the lines of the western flank to protect the retiring infantry and guns, the Fifth Army unexpectedly turned at Guise. At that point considerable reenforcements in troops and material arrived, making the Fifth Army the strongest in France. It now defeated and drove over the Oise the German Guard and Tenth Corps, and then continued its retirement. But the left wing of the French army was unsuccessful, and Amiens and the passages of the Somme had to be abandoned to the invaders.
On Sunday, August 23, 1914, the Fourth Army, operating from the Meuse, was heavily outnumbered by the Saxon army around the river town of Dinant. They fell back, after furious fighting for the possession of the bridges, which the French engineers blew up as the army withdrew southward to the frontier. Soon after, at Givet, the Germans succeeded in wedging their way across the Meuse. Some advanced on Rocroi and Rethel, and other corps marched along the left bank of the Meuse, through wooded country, against a steadily increasing resistance which culminated at Charleville, a town on the western bank of the river. There a determined stand was made.
On August 24, 1914, the town of Charleville was evacuated, the civilians were sent away to join multitudes of other homeless refugees, and then the French also retired, leaving behind them several machine guns hidden in houses, placed so that they commanded the town and the three bridges that connected it with Mézières.
The German advance guards reached the two towns next day, August 25, 1914, which, as we know, witnessed the British retirement toward Le Cateau. Unmolested, they rode across the three bridges into the quiet, empty streets. Suddenly, when all had crossed, the bridges were blown up behind them by contact mines, and the German cavalrymen were raked by the deadly fire of the machine guns. Nevertheless, finding their foes were not numerous, they made a courageous stand, waiting for their main columns to draw nearer. Every French machine gunner was silenced by the Guards with their Maxims; but when the main invading army swept into view along the river valley, the French artillery from the hills around Charleville mowed down the heads of columns with shrapnel. Still the Teutons advanced with reckless courage. While their artillery was engaged in a duel with the French, German sappers threw pontoon bridges across the river, and finally the French had to retire. Between Charleville and Rethel there was another battle, resulting in the abandonment of Mézières by the French.
The retreating army crossed the Semois, a tributary of the Meuse, which it enters below Mézières, and advanced toward Neufchâteau; but they were repulsed by the Germans under the Duke of Württemberg. At Nancy on August 25, 1914, there was another engagement between the garrison of Toul and the army of the Crown Prince of Bavaria; after fierce onslaughts the garrison was compelled to yield and retire. Finally, on August 27, 1914, at Longwy, a fortified town near Verdun, the army of the German crown prince succeeded in bursting into France after a long siege, and marched toward the Argonne. Thus from the western coast almost to Verdun there was a general Franco-British retreat.