Thus was completed the strategic manoeuvre defined by the instructions of the General in Chief on September 11 and developed during the five following weeks with the ampleness we have just seen. The movements of troops carried out during this period were methodically combined with the pursuit of operations, both defensive and offensive, from the Oise to the North Sea.
Five armies co-ordinated.
On October 22 our left, bounded six weeks earlier by the Noyon district, rested on Nieuport, thanks to the successive deployment of five fresh armies—three French armies, the British Army, and the Belgian Army.
Thus the co-ordination decided upon by the General in Chief attained its end. The barrier was established. It remained to maintain it against the enemy's offensive. That was the object and the result of the battle of Flanders, October 22 to November 15.
The German attack in Flanders was conducted strategically and tactically with remarkable energy. The complete and indisputable defeat in which it resulted is therefore significant.
The forces of which the enemy disposed for this operation between the sea and the Lys comprised:
German forces between the sea and the Lys.
(1) The entire Fourth Army commanded by the Duke of Württemberg, consisting of one naval division, one division of Ersatz Reserve, (men who had received no training before the war,) which was liberated by the fall of Antwerp; the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Reserve Corps, and the Forty-eighth Division belonging to the Twenty-fourth Reserve Corps.
(2) A portion of another army under General von Fabeck, consisting of the Fifteenth Corps, two Bavarian corps and three (unspecified) divisions.
(3) Part of the Sixth Army under the command of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. This army, more than a third of which took part in the battle of Flanders, comprised the Nineteenth Army Corps, portions of the Thirteenth Corps and the Eighteenth Reserve Corps, the Seventh and Fourteenth Corps, the First Bavarian Reserve Corps, the Guards, and the Fourth Army Corps.