The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World (41 page)

GERMAN SECOND ARMY
on the Marne was a battered force. It had marched 440 kilometers under a broiling sun along dusty roads. Food and fodder had been irregular, and the half-ripe fruit and oats it found along the way only added to the misery of man and beast alike. It had fought most of the major engagements on the right wing—Liège, Namur, Charleroi, and Guise/Saint-Quentin. From around 260,000 soldiers at the start of August, it was down to 154,000 by the end of the month. About 9,000 men had succumbed to heat sores, exhaustion, and hunger; 12,151 were listed as wounded; and 5,061 had been killed.
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After three days on the Petit Morin, Bülow informed the OHL, his army had shrunk from its initial seven to less than four corps, many at least 20 percent understrength.
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In the only change in a major command undertaken by the German army during the “march to the Marne,” Bülow replaced Guenther von Kirchbach with Johannes von Eben as commander of X Reserve Corps.

On 6 September, Eben’s corps ran hard up against Gilbert Defforges’s X Corps between Montmirail and Le Thoult as it came to the aid of Otto von Emmich’s X Corps on his left. A violent battle ensued. Franchet d’Espèrey had admonished his troops not to surrender an inch of sacred soil. Fifth Army managed to advance five kilometers along its entire front, but at Le Thoult French X Corps was thrown five kilometers back across the Petit Morin. Both sides were at the limit of their physical capabilities. Richard von Süsskind, commanding 2d Reserve Guard Division with Eben’s X Reserve Corps, reported, “The division is very exhausted. Though still able to attack, it is no longer in condition to continue the offense.”
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He spoke as well for many other division commanders.

When Bülow ordered First Army’s III and IX corps as well as his own X Reserve Corps fifteen kilometers behind the Petit Morin early in the morning of 7 September, one of Eben’s battalions of 74th Reserve Infantry Regiment (RIR) did not receive the order to withdraw. Quickly surrounded on all sides and with its back against the Petit Morin, it was mercilessly gunned down in what is called “the massacre of Guebarré Farm”: 93 men surrendered and 450 lay dead. The French had ignored the white handkerchiefs that German soldiers had tied to their rifles and raised above the trenches as a sign of surrender.
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The situation on Bülow’s left flank became critical. After an intensive night bombardment—unusual at this stage in the war—a brigade of Théophile Jouannic’s 36th ID from Louis de Maud’huy’s XVIII Corps around noon on 8 September surprised and threw terror into several companies of German VII Corps at Marchais-en-Brie, just northwest of Montmirail.
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Although minor in itself, the brilliant French tactical action at Marchais-en-Brie constituted what historian Sewell Tyng has labeled one of those “there the battle was won” defining moments of the large Battle of the Marne.
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For the French assault had tremendous operational and even strategic ramifications. With German X Reserve Corps completely flanked from the west, Montmirail was indefensible. Moreover, Eben’s IX Reserve Corps was outflanked on both sides. Of much greater concern to Bülow and his chief of staff, Otto von Lauenstein, was that Second Army’s right wing, recently denuded of two corps bound for the Ourcq, was further jeopardized. They ordered VII Corps and X Reserve Corps to fall back ten kilometers east to the line Margny–Le Thoult. It was a major mistake. The two corps on Second Army’s right flank now stood from north to south, facing west, and were thus utterly unable to shift right and close the gap with Kluck’s First Army. In fact, that gap as a result had widened by fifteen kilometers.
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Bülow’s right wing “was no longer threatened, it was turned.” The “path to the Marne” lay open for the left-wing corps of French Fifth Army—and the BEF.

Ever so slowly, Sir John French’s forces, enhanced by William Pulteney’s III Corps, on the morning of 6 September had begun its march to the front. It was headed for the open spaces of the Brie Plateau, a rich agricultural area best known for its cheeses. The plateau was cut east to west by the ravines of the Grand Morin, Petit Morin, Marne, Upper Ourcq, Vesle, Aisne, and Ailette rivers, passable only on bridges. To the north lay the three great forests of Crécy, d’Armainvilliers, and Malvoisine.
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The BEF deployed in an easterly direction from Tournan-en-Brie, Fontenay-Trésigny, and Rozay-en-Brie (which the British called Rozoy), almost twenty kilometers behind the line where Joffre had wanted it to start. “Desperate Frankie,” as the British jokingly called Franchet d’Espèrey, was furious and repeatedly demanded a more rapid advance. But at Rozoy, Sir Douglas Haig, feeling “uneasy about his left,” where he suspected units of Marwitz’s cavalry corps, halted the advance of I Corps, allowing Sixt von Arnim’s IV Corps to make good its escape to the Ourcq.
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Six pilots of the Royal Flying Corps found only open roads ahead of Haig. Thus, when Sir John French ordered Haig to resume his advance at 3:30
PM
, I Corps unsurprisingly encountered only abandoned positions. This notwithstanding, by nightfall Haig was roughly twelve kilometers behind the day’s objective. He had lost a mere seven men killed and forty-four wounded.

The next day, 7 September, aerial reconnaissance, in the stilted language of the British official history, again “confirmed the general impression that the enemy was withdrawing northward.”
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The day brought little action, just a continued hesitant advance by the BEF into the gap between German First and Second armies. Sir John had long ceased to be the dashing cavalry officer who had ridden to glory fourteen years earlier during the relief of Kimberley in the Boer War. “Old Archie” Murray, his chief of staff, continued to urge caution. The men tramped happily north singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and certain of their guardian, the “Angel of Mons.” Marwitz’s thin cavalry screen could undertake only brief sorties to block the BEF crossing the Grand Morin.

Not only the French had become exasperated at the slow pace of the British advance. Lord Ernest Hamilton of Eleventh Hussars noted, “In the strict sense there was no battle during the British advance. The fighting … was desultory. … The advance at first was slow and cautious.”
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John Charteris, Haig’s chief of intelligence, observed that although “keen,” the men “moved absurdly slowly.” The cavalry, Haig’s true love, “were the worst of all, for they were right behind [!] the infantry.”
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Exasperated, Galliéni at Paris dispatched Lartigue’s 8th ID south of Meaux to establish contact between the BEF and Franchet d’Espèrey’s Fifth Army.
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It was a murderous advance. The Germans held the seventy-to one-hundred-meter-high ridges above Meaux, their machine guns well concealed on the wooded crests of the Marne, and poured lethal fire into the French ranks crossing the valley floor below them.

On the diplomatic front, Joffre moved quickly to intervene when it seemed to him that Galliéni was driving the British too hard and thereby arousing “the touchiness of Field Marshal French.” On 7 September, he cabled Horatio Herbert Lord Kitchener in London to extend his “warmest thanks” for Sir John’s “constant,” “precious,” and “energetic” support of the Allied attack.
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Alliance cohesion was secured.

At 10:10
AM
on 8 September, German Aircraft B75 reported that the BEF was advancing “more rapidly” from La Ferté-Gaucher and Rebais in the general direction of Saint-Cyr-sur-Morin. Horace Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps was in the center of the line, flanked by Haig’s I Corps on its right and “Putty” Pulteney’s III Corps on its left.
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It was another sunny day. By noon, the BEF had reached the Petit Morin, a shallow stream barely six meters wide. The Royal Flying Corps reported only small enemy columns ahead. Marwitz’s cavalry corps fought a brief but gallant rear action—and headed north. Then a “violent thunderstorm” with “torrents of rain”
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slowed the BEF’s further advance. An impatient Joffre at 8
PM
dashed off a communiqué to Sir John French confirming the gap between the two enemy armies and deeming it “essential” that the BEF exploit this by marching northeast before the Germans reinforced their cavalry with infantry and artillery. The BEF, in his opinion, should cross the Marne between Nogent-l’Artaud and La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where the winding river was roughly sixty meters wide.
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In three days and while outnumbering the enemy at least ten to one, “Johnnie” French’s army had advanced just forty kilometers. The BEF’s importance lay in its role as an “army in being,” to borrow a naval term.

Joffre’s problems were not, however, confined to the Germans. On 8 September, the generalissimo discovered to his chagrin that Galliéni, in his capacity as military governor of Paris, the previous day had cabled the government at Bordeaux for instructions on how to “evacuate the civilian population” of the capital’s outlying suburbs and instructed prefects and the police to find “emergency locations” for the evacuees.
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The usually aggressive governor, having pulled all units out of Paris to assist Maunoury on the Ourcq, for a brief moment was overcome by pessimism. If Maunoury were defeated, how could he hold the capital against Kluck’s expected assault? Joffre, barely able to control his anger, cabled War Minister Millerand to “rescind” Galliéni’s “dangerous” communication. “I remain the only judge of what is worth saying about the operations. … The Military Governor of Paris is under my orders, and therefore does not have the right to correspond directly with the Government.”
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It was vintage Joffre.

The Allied advance into the fifty-kilometer-wide space between First and Second armies drove Moltke ever deeper into despair. He issued no orders to either Bülow or Kluck on 6 or 7 September. Instead, he withdrew into a world of self-pity and grief. The “burden of responsibility of the last several days,” he wrote his wife, was impossible even to name. “For the great battle of our army along its entire front has not yet been decided.” The “horrible tension” of the last few days, the “absence of news from the far distant armies,” and “knowing all that was at stake” was “almost beyond human power” to comprehend. “The terrible difficulty of our situation stands like an almost impenetrable black wall in front of me.”
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The only bright spot on the horizon was that on 6 September Hans von Zwehl had forced Fortress Maubeuge to surrender: 412 officers and 32,280 ranks were taken prisoner and 450 guns added to the German arsenal.
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Zwehl’s three brigades of VII Corps were now freed up, perhaps to plug the gap between the Marne and the Ourcq. Wilhelm II, returning from a tour of the front near Châlons-sur-Marne, was delighted by the news but alarmed by Moltke’s pessimism. “Attack, as long as we can—not a single step backwards under any circumstances. … We will defend ourselves to the last breath of man and horse.”
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THROUGHOUT HIS STAND AT
the Petit Morin, Bülow had urged Hausen’s Third Army to advance against Foch’s Ninth Army around the Marais de Saint-Gond, the pivot of Joffre’s line. Sixteen kilometers long and on average three kilometers wide, the marshes were an east-west barrier that was practically impassable. Only four narrow and low causeways running north to south traversed the marshes. Their broad expanse of reeds and grass was crisscrossed by drainage dikes cut into the clay basin. To the east was the dry, chalky plain of Champagne, broken only by scattered stands of pine.
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Since the eighteenth century, it had been commonly called
la Champagne pouilleuse
, literally, the “louse-ridden and flea-bitten region of Champagne.” Somewhere in the vicinity of the marshes, Salian Franks and Visigoths under the Roman general Flavius Aëtius and King Theodoric I had halted the advance of the Hunnic king Attila in ad 451.

Joffre ordered Foch to defend the Saint-Gond Marshes and thereby cover Fifth Army’s right flank at all cost with Pierre Dubois’s IX Corps (three divisions) and Joseph Eydoux’s XI Corps (four divisions). Joffre’s major concern was the gap between Foch’s Ninth Army and Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army. It was held only by Jean-François de L’Espée’s 9th Cavalry Division, pending the arrival of Émile-Edmond Legrand-Girarde’s XXI Corps, which on 2 September had embarked at Épinal in seventy-four trains.
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Bülow’s X Corps had pounded Dubois’s IX Corps at Saint-Prix and his Guard Corps had violently assaulted IX Corps at Bannes on 6 and 7 September; he now urged Third Army to exploit the gap. It would require a major effort by an army down to 2,105 officers and 81,199 ranks.
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Yet again, Hausen prevaricated. It was the dilemma of Dinant all over again. On his right, Plettenberg’s 2d Guard Division had stalled at Normée. Bülow again called for relief. “Strongest possible support 3 Army urgently desired. The day’s decision depends [on this].”
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On Hausen’s left, Heinrich von Schenck’s XVIII Corps of Fourth Army likewise had been stopped in its tracks around Vitry-le-François, and Duke Albrecht called for assistance.
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Whom to obey? A royal prince? Prussia’s senior army commander? Or Moltke, who had ordered Third Army to march on Troyes-Vendeuvre? As at Dinant, Hausen decided to please all suitors: He divided his army. He ordered Maximilian von Laffert’s XIX Corps to support Schenck’s VIII Corps at Glannes; he approved Karl d’Elsa’s prior decision to rush 32d ID as well as the artillery of 23d ID to aid the Guard Corps at Clamanges-Lenharré; and he instructed his remaining forces (mainly 23d ID and 24th RID released by the fall of Fortress Givet) to continue on to Troyes-Vendeuvre. He declined to use Fourth Army’s direct telephone to Luxembourg to seek Moltke’s input.