The Story of the Great War (Vol. 1-8). Various Authors
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have been easier of solution. But Maubeuge held out until September 7, 1914, and by that time the prime results of the battles of the Marne had been achieved. To this problem Verdun was the key, for from Metz through Verdun ran the main line, less than one-half the length of line to the Belgian bases of supplies, and, owing to the nature of the country, a line that could be held with a quarter the number of men. But Verdun stood, and General Joffre held the two armies back to back, converging on the point at Verdun.
Such was the country over which the battles of the Marne were fought, such were the numbers and dispositions of the several armies on each side, and such, as far as can be judged, were the plans and counterplans of the strategic leaders in the great conflict.
CHAPTER XIV
FIRST MOVES IN THE BATTLE
The first movement in this concerted plan was taken by the German extreme right. This was the closing in of General von Kluck's army in a southeasterly direction. It was a hazardous move, for it required General von Kluck to execute a flank march diagonally across the front of the Sixth French Army and the British Expeditionary Force. At this time, according to the dispatches from Sir John French, the British army lay south of the Marne between Lagny and Signy-Signets, defending the passage of the river and blowing up the bridges before General von Kluck.
On September 4, 1914, air reconnaissances showed that General von Kluck had stopped his southward advance upon Paris, and that his columns were moving in a southeasterly direction east of a line drawn through Nanteuil and Lizy on the Ourcq. Meanwhile the French and British generals more effectually concealed their armies in the forests, doing so with such skill that their movements were unmarked by the German air scouts. All that day General von Kluck moved his forces, leaving his heavy artillery with about 100,000 men on the steep eastern bank of the Ourcq and taking 150,000 troops south across the Marne toward La Ferté Gaucher. He crossed the Petit Morin and the Grand Morin, all unconscious that scores of field glasses were trained upon his troops.
Probably believing that the British army had been hurried to the aid of General Sarrail, General von Kluck advanced confidently. Having concealment in view, the commanders of the French army and the British army between them had left a wide gap between the two armies. Through one of these apparently unguarded openings a strong body of uhlan patrols advanced, riding southward until they reached Nogent, south of Paris, and seemingly with the whole rich country of central France laid wide open to a sharp and sudden attack. Among the many strange features of this series of the battles of the Marne this must certainly be reckoned as one. Though possessing an unequaled military organization, though priding itself on its cavalry scouts, though aided by aerial scouts, and though well supplied with spies, yet the Allied armies, with the age-old device of a forest, were able to cloak their movements from this perfectly organized and powerful invading army. Much of the credit of this may be assigned to the French and English aircraft, which kept German scouting aircraft at a distance. But the Allied generals were astounded at the result of their maneuver, which, as they admitted afterward, was merely a military precautionary measure against the discovery of artillery sites, and a device to keep the enemy in general ignorance.
On Saturday, September 5, 1914, at the extreme north of the line of the two armies facing each other across the Ourcq, an artillery duel began. The offensive was taken by the French, and though in itself it was not more striking than any of the artillery clashes that had marked the previous month's fighting, it was significant, for it marked the beginning of the battles of the Marne. The plans of General Joffre were complete, but the actual point at which the furious contest should begin was not yet determined. In the northern Ourcq section, however, the realization by the French that they were actually on the offensive at last, that the long period of retreat was over, could not be restrained. The troops were eager to get to work with the bayonet, and greatly aided by their field artillery, in which mobility had been sacrificed to power, they quickly cleared the hills to the westward of the Ourcq. By nightfall of September 5, 1914, the country west of the Ourcq was in French hands. But to cross that river seemed impossible. General von Kluck's heavy artillery had been left behind to hold that position, and every possible crossing was covered with its own blast of death.
Here General von Kluck's generalship was successful. It might have been regarded as risky to leave 100,000 men to guard a river confronted by 250,000 picked and reenforced French troops. But General von Kluck's faith in German guns and German gunnery was not ill-founded. This was the first of the open-air siege conflicts, and the French army had no guns which could be used against the German heavy artillery. Hence it followed that the brilliant work of the Sixth French Army on this first day of the battles of the Marne achieved no important result, for the long-range hidden howitzers, manned by expert German gunners and well supplied with ammunition, defied all attempts at crossing the little stream of the Ourcq.
This first day's fighting on the Marne revealed one of France's chiefest needs—heavy artillery. The French light quick-firing gun was a deadly weapon, but France had neglected the one department of artillery in which the Germans had been most successful—the use of powerful motor traction to move big guns without slackening the march of an army. General von Kluck's artillery was impregnable to the French. Indeed, the Germans could not be dislodged from the Ourcq until the British Expeditionary Force sent up some heavy field batteries. It was then too late for the withdrawal from the Ourcq to be of any serious consequence in determining the result along the battle front.
The afternoon of that day, when the Zouaves were driving the Germans across the Ourcq with the bayonet and were themselves effectually stopped by the German wall of artillery fire, General Joffre and Sir John French met. At last the British commander received the welcome news from the generalissimo that retreat was over and advance was about to be begun.
"I met the French commander in chief at his request," runs the official dispatch, "and he informed me of his intention to take the offensive forthwith by wheeling up the left flank of the Sixth Army, pivoting on the Marne, and directing it to move on the Ourcq; cross and attack the flank of the First German Army, which was then moving in a southeasterly direction east of that river.
"He requested me to effect a change of front to my right—my left resting on the Marne and my right on the Fifth Army—to fill the gap between that army and the Sixth. I was then to advance against the enemy on my front and join in the general offensive movement. German troops, which were observed moving southeast up the left bank of the Ourcq on the Fourth, were now reported to be halted and facing that river. Heads of the enemy's columns were seen crossing at Changis, La Ferté, Nogent, Château-Thierry, and Mezy.
"Considerable German columns of all arms were seen to be converging on Montmirail, while before sunset large bivouacs of the enemy were located in the neighborhood of Coulommiers, south of Rebais, La Ferté-Gaucher, and Dagny.
"These combined movements practically commenced on Sunday, September 6, at sunrise; and on that day it may be said that a great battle opened on a front extending from Ermenonville, which was just in front of the left flank of the Sixth French Army, through Lizy on the Marne, Maupertuis, which was about the British center, Courtaçon, which was the left of the Fifth French Army, to Esternay and Charleville, the left of the Ninth Army under General Foch, and so along the front of the Ninth, Fourth, and Third French Armies to a point north of the fortress of Verdun."
Sunrise on Sunday morning, on a summer day in sunny France, was the setting for the grim and red carnage which should show in the next five consecutive days that the German advance was checked, that the southernmost point had been reached, and that for a long time to come it would tax the resources of the invaders to hold the land that already had been won. General Joffre had so arranged his forces that the most spectacular—and the easiest—part fell to the British, and it was accomplished with perfection of detail. But the honors of the battles of the Marne lay with General Sarrail's army and with the "Iron Division of Toul."
On the same morning, this special army order, issued by Sir John French, was read to the British troops:
"After a most trying series of operations, mostly in retirement,