Illustrations

      Author’s note: Images of the campaigns of 1914 are rare. Those professing to portray combat are often posed or faked, and many contemporary captions are wilfully or accidentally inaccurate. The pictures in this book have been chosen with these realities in mind, to give the most vivid possible impression of what the battlefields looked like, while recognising that few can be appropriately placed and dated, and some predate the war.

      Kaiser Wilhelm II (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

      Poincaré and the Tsar, St Petersburg, July 1914 (© Interfoto/Alamy)

      Asquith and Lloyd George (Private collection)

      Pasic (Imagno/Getty Images); Berchtold (akg/Imagno); Sazonov (© RA/Lebrecht Music & Arts); Grey (Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Churchill (Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Bethmann Hollweg (DPA/Press Association Images)

      Russians solicit divine assistance (Mirrorpix)

      Moltke (The Granger Collection/Topfoto); Ludendorff (Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Hindenburg (Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Kitchener (Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Lanrezac (Mary Evans/Epic/Tallandier)

      Conrad (© Ullsteinbild/Topfoto); Joffre (© Roger Viollet/Topfoto); French (© Roger Viollet/Topfoto); Haig (© Roger Viollet/Topfoto); Falkenhayn (Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Franchet d’Espèrey (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

      Russians in Galicia (Mirrorpix)

      Serbian troops advance (© Robert Hunt Library/Mary Evans)

      Putnik (© The Art Archive/Alamy)

      Potiorek (Getty Images)

      Corporal Egon Kisch (© IMAGNO/Lebrecht)

      Austrian troops conduct a mass execution of Serbian civilians (© Robert Hunt Library/Mary Evans)

      An Austrian siege piece (Photo12/Ann Ronan Picture Library)

      Kluck (akg-images)

      Bülow (© INTERFOTO/Alamy)

      French troops, before the deluge (© Roger-Viollet/Topfoto)

      Belgians in action (Underwood Archives/Getty Images)

      The legendary French soixante-quinzes (Roger-Viollet/Rex Features)

      Smith-Dorrien (Mirropix)

      Wilson, Foch and Huguet (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

      Murray (Universal History Archive/UIG/The Bridgeman Art Library)

      Germans advance (RA/Lebrecht Music & Arts)

      Frenchmen display offensive spirit (Mirrorpix)

      Austro-Hungarian cavalry in Galicia (© Robert Hunt Library/Mary Evans)

      The British deploy on their first battlefield (© IWM (Q 53319))

      British troops await the enemy

      Samsonov (DeAgostini/GettyImages)

      Russians under attack

      Russian prisoners after Tannenberg (© Robert Hunt Library/Mary Evans)

      Rennenkampf (RIA Novosti)

      Fortunino Matania’s painting of L Battery’s action at Néry (© David Cohen Fine Art/Mary Evans Picture Library)

      The Middlesex under fire (R.C. Money. LC GS 1126. Reproduced with the permission of Leeds University Library)

      A Suffolk girl at the handle of a Lowestoft tram (© IWM (Q 31032)

      Russian soldiers in bivouac (David King Collection)

      A