by the 42nd Division, seem to have been given about 3 p.m. Fère
Champènoise was abandoned in the evening, and Foch’s anxiously prepared
manœuvre could not be carried out. The 6th and 9th Armies were too
much exhausted to attempt a serious pursuit till next morning; and the
German right reached the Aisne without inordinate losses.

Every part of the French line had contributed to this result, every
other army had been cut or kept down to serve the major opportunity.
And, if it stood relatively immobile, no less heroism and resource were
shown on the eastern than on the western wing of the Allied crescent.
Sarrail and de Langle were able to keep a rectangular disposition
like that of Maunoury and the B.E.F., forcing the Crown Prince to
fight on a double front; but they had not even a numerical equality
of force with which to exploit it. The 4th Army, in holding foot by
foot the Ornain-Saulx valley from Vitry to Sermaize, and the 3rd in
its defence of the long salient of the Meuse, were also weighed upon
by this peculiar anxiety: a comparatively small force might pierce
their frail river guard, or the wall of the Lorraine armies might
collapse beside them. They were helped to success by three errors of
omission on the part of the German armies concerned: (1) Verdun was not
directly attacked, the Crown Prince being confident that it would fall
automatically while his cavalry were reaching Dijon; (2) the attempt to
force the Meuse at Troyon was feeble and tardy; (3) the thinly-covered
gap on Langle’s left was not discovered until the 21st Corps had
been brought up. All along the line, the fighting was of a sustained
violence. The 15th Corps arrived from Lorraine on September 8 just in
time to save the junction of the 3rd and 4th Armies. It was, however,
not till noon on the 11th that the Duke of Würtemberg abandoned Vitry;
and only on the night of the 12th did the Prince Imperial order a
retreat which definitely relieved Verdun, and reopened the Châlons road
and railway.

In resting his plan upon a defence of the eastern pivot of the retreat
and the recoil, Joffre was accepting an accomplished fact. The great
attack upon the Couronné of Nancy began on the evening of September
4, thirty-six hours before the Allied offensive. It may be supposed,
therefore, that the German Staff had decided to get the Bavarian Army
into a position in which it could co-operate effectively with the
Imperial Crown Prince when he came up level on the west. Heeringen’s
push from the St. Dié region toward Epinal, and the attack on the
Mortagne, were probably intended to hide this design, and to pin down
Dubail’s forces. The promptitude with which Heeringen was sent off
to the Aisne, on the night of September 6, that is, as soon as the
danger of Kluck’s position was realised, is significant. In itself,
the presence of the Kaiser during the Bavarian attack on the Grand
Couronné proves nothing. His ceremonial entry into Nancy would have
grievously hurt French pride; but the sacrifice of the city had always
been contemplated, Toul being the real redoubt of the Moselle defences.
The prize was to be larger; the prestige of three royal personages was
to be satisfied. The Crown Princes of Prussia and Bavaria, ingeniously
linked, had been so directed that in the crisis they had the whole
Verdun–Toul system between them, and apparently at their mercy. The
assault of the Amezule defile and Mount Amance was reciprocal to the
adventure which Sarrail arrested 50 miles farther west.

For five days and nights the battle raged about the entrenched crescent
of the Nancy hills, with fiery wings outspread to Gerbéviller on the
south-east, and Rozières on the north-west. No more dreadful struggle
can be recorded. The German effort ceased on the night of September 9;
and on the 11th the general withdrawal to the old frontier began. Like
Foch, Langle, and Sarrail, Castlenau had won through by the narrowest
of margins; but his, pre-eminently, was a victory of foresight and
preparation. With all their power of heavy artillery (and here the
resources of Metz and Strasbourg were at hand), it is remarkable that
the German Staff never attempted to repeat in Lorraine the _coup_ of
Liège. As the French respected Metz, they respected Verdun; and the
manœuvre of the double approach to Toul, from east and west, proves
their fears. These were, as we now know, well justified. “It is
certain,” says Freytag-Loringhoven, “that the old-fashioned fortresses
are worthless, and, moreover, that the earlier notion, handed down
from the Middle Ages, that positions have to be secured by means of
fortresses, must be discarded.... But it will not be possible to
dispense with certain previously prepared fortified points at places
where only defensive tactics can be employed. The fortifications of the
French eastern frontier, above all Verdun and the Moselle defences,
have demonstrated how valuable these may be.... It is a question
of constructing not a continuous system of fortifications, but a
succession of central points of defence, and this not in the shape
of fortified towns, but of entrenchment of important areas” (pp.
64–6). And again: “The intention was to effect an envelopment from two
sides. The envelopment by the left wing was, however, brought to a
standstill before the fortifications of the French eastern frontier,
which, in view of the prompt successes in Belgium, it had been hoped
to overcome.... The defensive tactics of the chiefs of the French Army
were rendered very much easier by the support these fortifications
gave to their wing, as well as by the possibility of effecting
rapid transfers of troops afforded by a very convenient network of
railways, and a very large number of motor-wagons upon good roads (pp.
79–80)..... The war has proved that the assertion often made in time of
peace, that the spade digs the grave of the offensive, is not correct”
(p. 97).

One day, toward the end of the battle, I came upon a ring of peasants
digging a pit for the carcasses of two horses that lay near by. They
had already buried fourteen others, but seemed happy at their gruesome
task——just such sententious fellows as the master took for his models
in a famous scene. One of them guided me uphill to a small chalk-pit,
at the bottom of which a mound of fresh earth, surmounted by a couple
of sticks tied crosswise with string, marked the grave of two English
lads unnamed. A thicket shaded the hollow; but all around the sunshine
played over rolling stubble-fields. Ere the grave-diggers had finished,
a threshing-machine was working at the farm across the highway. Some
men were ploughing the upper ridge of the battlefield; and, as I
left, a procession of high-prowed carts, full of women and children
sitting atop their household goods, brought back home a first party
of refugees. The harvest of death seemed already to give way to the
harvest of life.

First of many still-born hopes. The Christmas that was to be the
festival of peace passed, and another, and another. Interminably,
the war prolonged itself through new scenes, more ingenious forms of
slaughter, new abysms of pain, till the armies had fallen into a temper
of iron endurance. But, even in such extremities, the heart will seek
its food. Month after month, by day and night, coming from beleaguered
Verdun or the gateways of Alsace to reach the Oise and Flanders, I
passed down the long sparkling valleys of the Marne; every turn grew
familiar, and their green folds whispered of the gain in loss and
the quiet within the storm. Like all religion, patriotism, for the
many, speaks in symbols; what symbol more eloquent than the strong
stream, endlessly renewed to cleanse, to nourish, and to heal? Through
those stony years, most of the convoys crossed the Marne at some
point——lumbering carts, succeeded by wagons white with a slime of dust
and petrol; fussy Staff cars and hurried ambulances; gun-trains, their
helmeted riders swaying spectrally in the misty air of dawn; columns
of heavy-packed infantry, dreaming of their loves left in trembling
cities far behind. In turn, all the armies of France, and some of those
of Britain, America, and Italy, came this way; and into their minds,
unconsciously, must have fallen something of the spirit of the Marne,
and of those frightened apprentices of the war who first saved France,
and dammed an infamous aggression.

So much the poilus knew; that comfort supported them. Most of the high
company of Joffre’s captains were still with them, winning fresh
laurels——Foch, Petain, and Haig, Castlenau, Humbert, Langle, Sarrail,
Franchet d’Espérey, Mangin, Guillaumat, Pulteney, Nivelle, Maud’huy,
Micheler, and many another. Soon the world at large understood that
this strange overturn of fortune was the base of all subsequent
victories in the same good cause. More than this——that a man had
conceived, designed, organised, and controlled it, and so earned
enduring fame——might be vaguely felt, but could not be certainly known
until the passage of time allowed it to be said that, as surely as
there were warts on Cromwell’s nose, there were shadows to the lights
of the record of victory. At length, a true picture is possible; and
instead of a play of blind forces, or a senseless “miracle,” we see a
supremely dramatic revolt of outraged reason, nobly led, and justly
triumphing.

The German conspiracy failed on the Marne not by any partial
fault or executive error, but by the logic of its most essential
characteristics. It was a masterpiece of diabolical preparation: it
failed, when the quickly-awakened French mind grappled with it, from
dependence upon a rigid mechanism, and the inability of its authors to
adjust it to unexpected circumstances. It was a wager on speed——for the
enveloping movement bore in it the germs of the ultimate disturbance;
that is to say, it presumed the stupidity or pusillanimity of the
Republican Command, and this presumption proved fatal. These faults
were aggravated by disunion among the army leaders and disillusion
among the men, while the Allies were inspired to an almost perfect
co-operation. Already delayed and weakened in Belgium, the invading
armies saw their surplus strength evaporating in the long pursuit,
their dislocated line caught in a sudden recoil, and to be saved from
being rent asunder only by closing the adventure. In the disastrous
moment when Kluck and Bülow turned in opposite directions, the proudest
war school in the world was beaten, and humiliated, by a stout burgess
of Rivesaltes. Long before the war itself became hateful, this thought
worked bitterly. Criminals do not make the best soldiers. Moltke was
cashiered, with him Kluck and Hausen, and we know not how many more. It
was the twilight of the heathen gods.

In the long run, mankind cherishes the reasonable, in faith or action;
and, of the barbarous trial of war, this is all that remains in the
memory of future ages. The Marne was a signal triumph for Right, won,
not by weight of force or by accident, but by superior intelligence
and will. That is its essential title to our attention, and its most
pregnant meaning for posterity. So immense a trial was it, and a
triumph so vitally necessary to civilisation, that all the heroic
episodes of our Western history pale before it, to serve henceforth for
little, faint, but comprehensible analogies; in the French mind even
the _epopée_ of the great Emperor is at last eclipsed. The combatants
themselves could not see it thus. Afterwards, the war and those doomed
to continue it became sophisticated——governments and the press told
them what to expect, and followed them with praise and some care.
In this first phase, there is a strange _naïveté_; it is nearly all
headlong extemporisation; masses of men constantly plunged from one
into another term of the unknown. The “front” was never fixed; there
were few of the features of combat later most characteristic——no
trenches or dugouts, no bombs or helmets, no poison-gas, no mines,
no Stokes guns, no swarm of buzzing ’planes across the sky, no field
railways, few hot meals, and fewer ambulance cars. The armies did not
come up to their tasks through zones devastated by the enemy, and then
reorganised by engineers into so many monstrous war-factories. The
forests they crossed were undisturbed, the orchards blossoming, the
towns intact. They knew nothing of “camouflage”: on the contrary, they
saw and sought the individual foe, and by him were seen individually.
Very often, and quickly, they came to bodily grips; commonly, the
conflict ceased, or slackened, at sunset. What would afterward have
seemed a moderate bombardment terrorised them, for it was worse than
anything they had heard of.

In sum, with less of horror and less of protection, they felt as
much as, and more freshly than, those who followed. War had not yet
become habitual——there was neither the half-sceptical stoicism nor
the profound comradeship of later days. Only a month had passed since
this first million lads had left home. Every hour had brought some new
shock. Resentment was fresh and fierce in them. No romantic illusion
fed it; but deep offence called to the depths of dignity of an aged
nation for answer, and the answer came. There stood the Boche, arrogant
and formidable, polluting the soil of Brie and Champagne, the heart of
France——what argument could there be? They did not think of one spot
as more sacred than another, as, afterwards, thousands fell to hold
Ypres and Arras, Soissons, Rheims, and Verdun. Like the process, the
inspiration was simpler. The fields of the Marne were France, the land
that had nurtured them, its freedom and grace of life and thought, the
long Latin heritage, the virtues that a new Barbarism had dared to
dispute and outrage. For this great all, they gave straightway their
little all.

Rivers of blood, the old, rich Gallic blood that mingled Roman
experience and Mediterranean fire with the peasant vigour of the North,
tempered through centuries of labour and exaltation. The best must
needs suffer most; and France, historic guardian of ancient treasuries,
standard-bearer of European civilisation, must suffer in chief for the
weaknesses of the Western world. To those who knew her, there was ever
something of worship in their love, as in our regard for the fullest
type of womanhood. The earth thrilled with anger to see her so foully
stricken, and breathed freely only when her sons had shown the pure
nobility of their response. No frenzies of meliorism, no Carmagnoles
of murderous ambition, no Danton or Robespierre, no La Vendée and no
Buonaparte have marred the story of the defence of the Third Republic.
Democracy, Reason, slow-growing Law, are justified of their children.

Men raised by such achievement into an immortality of human gratitude,
the young limbs and hearts so swiftly girded up, so soon loosed upon
eternity, should evoke no common mourning.

   “Knows he who tills this lonely field,
    To reap its scanty corn,
    What mystic fruit his acres yield?”

Not their own soil only, they enriched with their blood, but the
universal mind. In saving the best in dream and reality that France
means to the world, they saved the whole future, as short reflection
upon the alternative will show. The victory of the Marne sealed the
brotherhood of France and England, and did much toward bringing America
and the Dominions into the comity of nations. It was the basis of the
completer victory to follow, and of the only possibilities of future
peace and liberal progress. For ever, this example will call to youth
everywhere——“that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion,
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have lived in
vain.” May there not again be need to pass through such a Gehenna; but
it is surer that the world will only be made “safe for democracy,”
or even for elementary order, by the vigilance and chivalry of each
oncoming generation. For these, for ever, ghostly bugles will blow
through the woods and hamlets of the Marne.

   “_Ames des chevaliers, revenez-vous encor?
    Est-ce vous qui parlez avec la voix du cor?
    Roncevaux! Roncevaux! dans ta sombre vallée
    L’ombre du grand Roland, n’est-elle pas consolée?_”

NOTES AND REFERENCES

[1] Many volumes of soldiers’ notes and recollections have been
published, and some of them have high literary merit. One of these is
_Ma Pièce, Souvenirs d’un Canonnier_ (Paris: Plon-Nourrit), by Sergeant
Paul Lintier, of the 44th Artillery, who shared in the defeat of
Ruffey’s Army near Virton, in the south-eastern corner of Belgium, 35
miles north of Verdun. It was almost his first sight of bloodshed, and
with an artist’s truthfulness he records all the confusion of his mind.

“The battle is lost,” he writes on August 23, “I know not how or why. I
have seen nothing. It is a sheer nightmare. We shall be massacred....
Anguish chokes me.... This boiling mass of animality and thought that
is my life is about to cease. My bleeding body will be stretched upon
the field. I see it. Across the sunny perspective of the future a great
curtain falls. I am only twenty-one years old.... What are we waiting
for? Why do not our guns fire? I perspire, I am afraid ... afraid.”

This mood gradually passes away. A few days later he is trying to
explain the change: “One accustoms oneself to danger as to the
cruellest privations, or the uncertainty of the morrow. I used to
wonder, before the war, how the aged could live in quietude before
the immanence of death. Now I understand. For ourselves, the risk of
death has become an element of daily existence. One counts with it; it
no longer astonishes, and frightens us less. And, besides, every day
trains us to courage. The conscious and continuous effort to master
oneself succeeds at length. This is the whole of military bravery. One
is not born brave; one becomes so.” And this stoicism is softened and
spiritualised by a new sense of what the loss of France would mean.

Another notable narrative of this period of the war is _Ce qu’a vu
un Officier de Chasseurs-à-Pied_ (Paris: Plon-Nourrit), by Henri
Libermann, The writer was engaged on the Belgian frontier farther west,
near where the Semoy falls out of the Ardennes into the Meuse, the
region where the Saxons and the IV Army joined hands on the one side,
and, on the other, the 5th French Army, Lanrezac’s, touched all too
lightly the 4th, that of de Langle de Cary. Some French officers have
quartered themselves in an old convent, picturesquely set upon a wooded
hill. They do not know it, but, in fact, the cause is already lost
from Dinant to Neufchâteau. All they know is that a part of the 9th
Corps is in action a few miles to the north. The guns can be heard; the
villagers are flying in panic; the flames of burning buildings redden
the northern sky.

“In the convent parlour, the table is laid with a fine white cloth,
decorated with flowers, bottles covered with venerable dust,
cakes whose golden crust gladdens the eyes. A brilliant Staff,
the Commandant, a few chasseur officers. The Sisters hurry about,
carrying dishes. ‘A little more fowl, my dear Commandant,’ says the
Brigadier; ‘really, it is delicious. And this wine——Pontet-Canet of
’74, if you please!’ All of us are grateful to the good Sisters, who
are such delicate cooks. At dessert, as though embarrassed by an
unhappy impression shared by all the guests, the General speaks: ‘Rest
tranquil, gentlemen. Our attack to-morrow morning will be overwhelming.
Debouching between hills 832 and 725, it will take in flank the German
Corps which is stopping our brave 9th, and will determine the victory.”

Hardly has the toast of the morrow’s triumph been drunk than a heavy
step is heard outside, the click of spurs, and then a knock on the
door. A captain enters, in helmet and breastplate, a bloody bandage
across his forehead, dust thick upon his uniform, perspiration rolling
down his face. He has ridden from Dinant with news of the defeat, and
secret instructions. The Uhlans are near. Nevertheless, the officers
go to bed. During the night they are aroused by an increasing clamour
of flying peasants outside the convent. There are soldiers among
them, wildly crying: “The Prussians are coming, _sauve qui peut_!” An
infantry regiment had camped, the previous evening, in the village
of Willerzie. “They arrived late, tired out. No thought but of rest,
no scouts or outposts. On the verge of the neighbouring forest,
grey-coated horsemen appeared. The sentinels fired a few shots, and
they retired into the wood. The regiment then went to sleep in its
false security. About 11 p.m., however, three searchlights flashed
along the village streets. ‘_Schnell, schnell!_ _Vorwärts, vorwärts!_’
A terrible fusillade broke out around the houses; and, as our
infantrymen, hurriedly wakened, ran to arms, a thick rain of bullets
fell upon them. In a few instants, terror was transformed into panic,
panic into rout. At this moment the regiment was flying, dispersed in
all directions, pursued by the ‘hurrahs’ of the victorious Germans.”

THE GERMAN OBJECTIVE

[2] The question whether the Eastern thrust was integral in the
original plan cannot be absolutely determined on the present
information; but it is significant that at the outset the German forces
on the East were inferior to the French.

M. Gabriel Hanotaux (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, November 15, 1916) thinks
that the German right, centre, and left were aiming at the region of
Troyes, Kluck from the north-west, Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria from the
east, and the Imperial Crown Prince from the north. “The direction of
the Prince of Bavaria appears from an order seized on the enemy giving
as objective Rozelieures, that is to say, the Gap of Charmes; the
direction of the Crown Prince is revealed by an order of September 6
giving Dijon as objective for his cavalry.”

Lt.-General von Freytag-Loringhoven (_Deductions from the World
War_. London: Constable. 1918) says: “The intention was to effect
an envelopment from two sides. Envelopment by the left wing of the
[German] Army was, however, brought to a standstill before the
fortifications of the French eastern frontier.”

A German brochure on the battle of the Marne——_Die Schlachten an der
Marne_ (Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. 1916), by a “German Staff Officer”
who was evidently an eye-witness, and probably a member of the staff
either of General von Kluck, or of General von Moltke, chief of the
Grand Staff from the beginning of the war till after the battle, says
the plan was to rest on the defensive from the Swiss frontier to the
Donon, while the mass of the armies rolled the French up south of the
Seine, and Reserve and Landwehr Corps advanced to the coast to stop the
landing of British troops. “By all human provisions, this plan might
have been carried out by the end of September 1914.”

A French translation of this interesting booklet (_Une Version
Allemande de la Marne_. Brussels et Paris: G. Van Oest et Cie. 1917)
includes also a critical study by M. Joseph Reinach, a part of which
is given to the results of an examination of the maps taken on German
dead, wounded, and prisoners in the beginning of the war. These
Staff maps fall into four categories, of which three date from the
mobilisation or earlier, and so throw light on the original plan of
campaign, while one set was distributed at a later date. The former
are: (1) sets of maps of Belgium——the whole country——in seventy
sheets, reproducing the Belgian “60,000th” Staff map, and dated 1906,
another evidence of premeditation. (2) The north-east of France, from
the French “80,000” map, with names in French, but explanations in
Italian, dated 1910. These had evidently been printed for the use of
Italian troops, but, when Italy declared itself neutral, had been
distributed to German officers from motives of economy. (3) The north
and north-east of France in 87 sheets, _not including Paris_, dated
from 1905 to 1908, and distributed to German officers on the eve of
the mobilisation. These are based upon the French “80,000” map, with
some variations and special markings. They include the whole of the
eastern and northern frontiers from Belfort to Dunkirk; the significant
thing is their limits on the west and south. On the west they include
the regions of Dunkirk, St. Omer, Arras, Amiens, Montdidier and
Beauvais, but not those of Calais, Boulogne, Abbeville, and Rouen.
At 30 or 40 miles north of Paris, they turn eastward, including the
sectors of Soissons and Rheims, but excluding those of Paris and Meaux.
They then turn south again, including the Chalôns, Arcis, and Troyes
sheets; and the southern limit is the regions of Troyes, Chaumont,
and Mirécourt, (4) Finally, there is a set of 41 sheets supplementary
to the last named, printed in 1914, and either distributed at a later
date, or intended for armies other than those of the first invasion.
These included Calais and the Channel coast, Rouen, Paris, Meaux, to
the south thereof the regions of the Orleanais, Berry, the Nivernais,
including the great manufacturing centre of Le Creusot, the north of
Burgundy, Franche Comté, the Jura, and the Swiss frontier from Bâle to
near the Lake of Geneva.

In his _L’Enigme de Charleroi_ (Paris: L’Edition Française Illustrée,
20 Rue de Provence. 1917), M. Hanotaux expresses the belief that, at
the outset, the German Command, regarding England as the chief enemy,
intended its armies to cross northern Belgium, “straight to the west
and the sea, with Dunkirk and Calais as immediate objective,” and
that the French resistance diverted them from the coastal region. The
evidence of the maps appears to the present writer more convincing than
the reasoning of M. Hanotaux.

THE OPPOSED FORCES

[3] It is not necessary here to state the evidence in detail; but these
figures may be accepted as substantially correct. I am indebted to a
British authority for criticism and information. Besides the 4 Landwehr
Divisions in course of formation during the last days of August, there
were a number of Landwehr Brigades, which, however, had no artillery
and were not organised for the field. By the first week of September,
the XI Corps and Guard Reserve Corps had gone to the Russian front;
but the 4 Landwehr Divisions named above had come in as effective. The
“Metz Army Detachment” may be counted as adding a division.

[4] The transport of “covering troops” began at 9 p.m. on July 31, and
ended at noon on August 3. On the Eastern Railway alone, 538 trains
were required. The “transports of concentration,” from August 5 to 18,
engaged 4300 trains, only a score of which were behind time. After
Charleroi, between August 26 and September 3, the removal of three
army corps, five infantry divisions, and three cavalry divisions from
Lorraine to the Central and Western fronts was effected by 740 trains,
while the railways were largely swamped by other military movements and
the civilian exodus.

[5] For fuller explanations on this point, see _Le Revers de 1914 et
ses Causes_, by Lt.-Col. de Thomasson (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1919).
Of the volumes published in France up to this date on the first period
of the war, this moderate and closely-reasoned essay by an accomplished
officer is one of the most valuable.

General Verraux (_L’Oeuvre_, June 1, 1919) refers to this weakness and
confirms my general conclusion: “Despite the inferior organisation
of reserves, with our 25 Active Corps, the 80 corps battalions of
reserves, the Belgians and the British, we had, if not a numerical
superiority, almost an equality with the German forces, deducting those
on the Russian front.”

M. Victor Giraud, a competent historical writer, in his _Histoire de
la Grande Guerre_ (Part I. ch. iii. Paris: Hachette. 1919) gives other
details, leading to the same conclusion.

[6] _Etudes et Impressions de Guerre_, vol. i, (Paris: Tallandier.
1917). General Malleterre, commanding the 46th Regiment, 3rd Army, was
seriously wounded in the battle of the Marne. Taking up the pen on his
recovery, he became one of the ablest French commentators on the war.

[7] “No enterprise, perhaps,” says a French military publication, “is
as purely French as the conquest of the air. The first free balloon,
the first dirigible, the first aeroplane all rose from our soil.”
However, “the war surprised our aviation in an almost complete state
of destitution. Our 200 pilots, almost all sportsmen, possessed
between them a total of two machine-guns. A few squadrillas, without
clearly-defined functions, sought their places on the front.” Aerial
artillery ranging, photography, and observation had been envisaged,
and, more generally, chasing and bombardment; but there was hardly a
beginning of preparation.

France had at the beginning of the war 24 squadrillas, each of five or
six machines, all scouts, of a speed from 50 to 70 miles an hour. M.
Engerand says that “Germany entered the campaign with 1500 aeroplanes;
we had on the front only 129.” Captive balloons had been abandoned
as incapable of following the armies in the war of movement then
almost exclusively contemplated. “Events proved our mistake,” says the
official publication already quoted. “Enemy balloons followed the rapid
advance of the armies of invasion. Ascending immediately behind the
lines, they rendered the adversary indubitable services at the battle
of the Marne. Then we hurriedly constituted balloon companies; and in
1915 we followed the German model of ‘sausage’ balloons.”

_Mons and the Retreat_, by Captain G. S. Gordon, a British Staff
officer (London: Constable. 1918), contains some information of the
Royal Flying Corps in August and September 1914. The Corps was founded
in April 1912. At the beginning of the war, it included six squadrons,
only four of which could be immediately mobilised, with a complement
of 109 officers and 66 aeroplanes. These, however, did excellent work
from the beginning. The writer says: “If we were better scouts and
fighters, the Germans were better observers for the guns. The perfect
understanding between the Taubes and the German gunners was one of the
first surprises of the war.”

DE BLOCH’S PROPHECY AND FRENCH’S CONFESSION

[8] De Bloch, who had been a large railway contractor in the
Russo-Turkish War, and a leading Polish banker, published the results
of his experiences and researches, in six volumes, under the general
title _La Guerre_, during the last years of the nineteenth century,
and afterwards established a “Museum of War and Peace” at Lucerne
to illustrate the subject. His chief thesis was that, owing to the
technical development of military instruments and other factors, an
aggressive war between States of nearly equal resources could not now
give the results aimed at; and there is no longer any doubt that he
foresaw the main track of military development as few soldiers did. The
following sentences from a sketch of the writings and conversations of
de Bloch, published by the present writer in 1902, will serve to show
that he anticipated some of the governing characteristics of the Great
War:

“The resisting power of an army standing on the defensive, equipped
with long-range, quick-firing rifles and guns, from ten to twenty
times more powerful than those of 1870 and 1877, expert in entrenching
and the use of barbed wire and other obstacles, and highly mobile,
is something quite different from that which Napoleon, or even later
aggressors, had to face. Not only is it a much larger force, the
manhood of a nation; it is also a body highly educated, an army
of engineers. Its infantry lines and battery positions will be
invisible. Reconnaissances will be easily prevented by protecting
bands of sharpshooters; and no object of attack will offer itself to
the invader till he has come within a zone of deadly fire. The most
heavy and powerful shells, which are alone of use against entrenched
positions, cannot be used in great number, or brought easily into
action. Artillery shares the advantage of a defensive position. If the
attackers have a local superiority, the defenders can delay them long
enough to allow of an orderly retirement to other entrenched positions.
The attacker will be forced to entrench himself, and so the science
of the spade reduces battle to sieges. Battle in the open would mean
annihilation; yet it is only by assault that entrenched positions can
be carried.

“Warfare will drag on more slowly than ever. While an invading army
is being decimated by sickness and wounds, and demoralised by the
heavy loss of officers and the delay of any glorious victory, the home
population will be sunk in misery by the growth of economic burdens,
the stoppage of trade and industry. The small, elastic, and manageable
army of the past could make quick marches, turning movements,
strategical demonstrations in the widest sense. Massed armies of
millions, like those of to-day, leaning on long-prepared defences, must
renounce all the more delicate manifestations of the military art.
Armies as they now stand cannot manœuvre, and must fight in directions
indicated in advance. The losses of to-day would be proportionately
greater than in past wars, if it were not for the tactical means
adopted to avoid them. But the consequence of distance and dispersion
is that victorious war——the obtaining of results by destroying the
enemy’s principal forces, and thus making him submit to the conqueror’s
will——can exist no more.”

With all its errors of detail, de Bloch’s picture, drawn when
the aeroplane and the petrol motor-wagon, “wireless” and the
field-telephone, poison-gas and barrage fire were unknown, was a true
prophecy, and all the belligerents paid dearly for neglecting it.

For somewhat similar prognostications by a French officer, see _Comment
on pouvait prévoir l’immobilisation des fronts dans la guerre moderne_
(Paris: Berger-Levrault), being a summary of the writings of Captain
Emile Mayer, whose first studies date from 1888.

[9] He adds: “and that if, in September, the Germans had learned their
lesson, the Allies would never have driven them back to the Aisne.”
This is a more disputable proposition. On the Sambre, the French were
immediately driven back; on the Ourcq, the Germans held out for four
days, and retired partly because their supply services had given out.
To a very large extent they had certainly learned their lesson; and for
nearly four years thereafter they bettered it on the Aisne hills.

The quotations are from the volume _1914_, by Field-Marshal Viscount
French of Ypres (London: Constable. 1919), an important body of
evidence, passages of which, however, must be read critically. Lord
French in his narrative repeatedly insists upon the slowness with
which the need of a “transformation of military ideas,” owing to the
factors named, was recognised. “It required the successive attempts of
Maunoury, de Castelnau, Foch, and myself to turn the German flanks in
the North in the old approved style, and the practical failure of these
attempts, to bring home to our minds the true nature of war as it is
to-day.”

Of the end of the battle of the Marne, he writes (ch. vii.): “We had
not even then grasped the true effect and bearing of the many new
elements which had entered into the practice of modern war. We fully
believed we were driving the Germans back to the Meuse, if not to the
Rhine; and all my communications with Joffre and the French generals
most closely associated with me breathed the same spirit.... We were
destined to undergo another terrible disappointment. The lessons of
war, as it is to-day, had to be rubbed in by another dearly-bought
experience, and in a hard and bitter school.”

There is both courage and _naïveté_ in the following tardy profession
of the belief de Bloch had expounded fifteen years before: “Afterwards,
we witnessed the stupendous efforts of de Castelnau and Foch; but
all ended in the same trench! trench! trench! I finished my part in
the battle of the Aisne, however, unconverted, and it required the
further and more bitter lesson of my own failure in the North to pass
the Lys River, during the last days of October, to bring home to my
mind a principle in warfare of to-day which I have held ever since,
namely, that, given forces fairly equally matched, you can ‘bend,’ but
you cannot ‘break,’ your enemy’s trench line.... Everything which has
happened in the war has borne out the truth of this view; and, from
the moment I grasped this great truth, I never failed to proclaim it,
although eventually I suffered heavily for holding such opinions.”

CRITICISMS AND DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH STAFF

[10] M. Victor Giraud, in his _Histoire_, writes: “The French troops
were neither armed nor equipped as they should have been.... Neither
in the liaison of arms, nor in the rôle of the artillery, nor in
the possibilities of aviation or trenches, had the army very clear
ideas; it believed only in the offensive, the war of movement, which
precisely, to-day more than ever, calls for a superiority of armament,
if not also of effectives.... France could and should have remembered
that it was the country of Vauban and de Sère de Rivière.... There
was no longer any faith in permanent fortification, but only in the
offensive, which was confused with the offensive spirit.”

Pierre Dauzet, _Guerre de 1914_. _De Liège à la Marne_, p. 29 (Paris:
Charles Lavauzelle. 1916). “I shall not exaggerate much in saying that
in many regiments the recruits incorporated in October 1913 commenced
the war next August without ever having shifted a spadeful of earth or
dug the most modest trench” (Thomasson, p. 19).

[11] Two commanders of armies, 7 of corps, 20 infantry divisionaires, 4
commanders of cavalry divisions. In some army corps, the commander and
his two divisional generals were removed (Thomasson, p. 12).

[12] _Etudes_, p. 66, note. And again (p. 88): “The offensive idea had
become very clear and very formal in our minds. It had the place, so
to say, of an official war doctrine. The lesson of the Russo-Japanese
war and the Balkan wars seemed to have disturbed the teaching of the
War School and the governing ideas of our Staff. At the moment when
the war opened, there was a sharp discussion between the partisans of
the offensive _à outrance_ and those who, foreseeing the formidable
manœuvre of Germany, leaned to a more prudent, more reasoned method,
which they described _as defensive strategy and offensive tactic_.”

[13] In _“L’Erreur” de 1914_. _Réponse aux Critiques_ (Paris and
Brussels: G. van Oest. 1919), General Berthaut is reduced to the
suggestion that some of these phrases were intended “to stimulate the
ardour of the young officers,” but that “the Command was not at all
bound to take them literally.”

General Berthaut was sub-chief of the French General Staff, and
director of the geographical service, from 1903 to 1912; and his
defence of the ideas prevailing up to the eve of the war deserves
careful reading, unsatisfying as it may be found on many points. It
is mainly intended to justify the Eastward concentration, and to
controvert those who think the business of an army is to defend the
national territory foot by foot. The general appeals to the weight
of military authority (which, as we shall see, is less one-sided
than he suggests): “From 1875 to 1914, we had 40 Ministers of War;
we changed the Chief of Staff sixteen times; changes were still more
numerous among sub-chiefs of Staff, heads of bureaux and services.
Several hundred officers of all arms, returning periodically to their
regiments, contributed to the Staff work of the army. Yet the directive
idea of our defence never varied. Such as it was in 1876, so it was
revealed in 1914.” Throughout this time, concentration was foreseen
and prepared behind the upper courses of the Meuse and Moselle with a
view to positions being held in the upper valleys of the Marne, Aube,
and Seine. The idea that the French eastern frontier was infrangible,
General Berthaut considers “extremely exaggerated.” If it had not been
adequately held, the Germans would have turned thither from the north.
The violation of the neutrality either of Switzerland or Belgium was,
however, beyond doubt. To cover the whole frontier was impossible;
and, “incontestably,” the armies had to be turned in one mass toward
the east. Trenches are “an effect, not a cause, of the stabilisation
of fronts.” The general has a very poor opinion of fortresses, the
only one to which he attributes great importance being Metz! Liège was
“a practically useless sacrifice”; Maubeuge “stopped nothing.” These
opinions seem to the present writer untenable; and General Berthaut
admits that the reaction against fortification “went too far” (p.
182). He may be said to damn the three French offensives with faint
praise. The move into Alsace “could not be of any military interest,”
and was “a political affair.” The Lorraine offensive was “necessarily
limited,” as a distant objective could not be pursued between Metz and
Strasbourg. As to Charleroi, France was bound to make a demonstration
on behalf of Belgium and “to satisfy public opinion.” Much of General
Berthaut’s apologia is vitiated by his assumption that France had
necessarily to face a superiority of force.

One of the critics General Berthaut started out to controvert is M.
Fernand Engerand, deputy for Calvados, whose articles (particularly
in _Le Correspondant_, December 10, 1917, and subsequent numbers)
have been reprinted in a volume of 600 pages: _Le Secret de la
Frontière, 1815–1871–1914_. _Charleroi_ (Paris: Editions Bossard, 43
Rue Madame. 1918). The French plan of campaign, says M. Engerand,
was “humanly impossible. Nothing happened as our High Command had
foreseen; there was surprise all along the line, and, what is gravest,
surprise not only strategic but intellectual, the reversal of a
doctrine of war. After the magnificent recovery of the Marne, we may
without inconvenience avow that never has there been so complete a
self-deception. The error was absolute and, worse, deliberate, for
never was an attack more foreseen, more announced, more prophesied
than that of August 1914. Strategists of the old school had not only
predicted it for forty years, but had given us the means of parrying
it; their ideas were scouted and their work was destroyed.”

M. Engerand quotes, in particular, Lt.-Colonel Grouard on the
impossibility of an immediate French offensive beyond the frontiers
(see Grouard, _La Guerre Eventuelle_, 1913; and _L’Art de la Guerre
et le Colonel Grouard_, by C. de Bourcet, 1915). Grouard foresaw,
among other things, that “the army of the German right, marching by
the left bank of the Meuse, would pass the Sambre in the neighbourhood
of Charleroi, and direct itself toward the sources of the Oise.” M.
Engerand’s chapters contain a summary of the three French offensives.
His general comment is: “No unity of command, separate and dislocated
battles, no notion of information and safeguards before and during the
combat, systematic misconception of the ground and defensive means,
defective liaison between the corps and between artillery and infantry,
no manœuvre, but only the offensive, blind, systematic, frantic. If we
were defeated, is it an exaggeration to say that it was less by the
enemy than by a false doctrine?”

Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, on these points, quotes warning notes from
General Collin’s _Transformation de la Guerre_, written in 1911, and
refers to the case of Lt.-Col. Berrot, who, in 1902, had exposed “the
dangerous theories that had been deduced from the Napoleonic wars,” and
who “was disgraced pitilessly, and died while yet young.”

THE SURPRISE IN THE NORTH

[14] Early French writers on the war found it difficult to make up
their minds whether there had, or had not, been a surprise in the
North. See _Histoire de la Guerre de 1914_ (ch. “Septembre”), by
Gabriel Hanotaux. This work, the most ambitious of the kind yet
attempted, is being published in fortnightly sections and periodical
volumes, of which the first deals with the origins of the war, the
next three with the frontier battles, and the following ones with the
battles of the retreat and preliminaries of the battle of the Marne
(Paris: Gounouilhou, 30 Rue de Provence).

M. Hanotaux says: “The project prepared by the German Staff of an
offensive by Belgium was not a secret. All was public and confessed.
There was no surprise in the absolute sense of the word. But there
remained an unknown quantity: would the probable hypothesis be
realised?” Later, however, he says: “The long-prepared manœuvre
consisted in crushing us by the carefully veiled onslaught not of 12,
but of 25, army corps, so that the surprise was double for us: the
most eccentric movement and the most unexpected numbers.... It was
this combination of circumstances, foreseen and unforeseen, that the
French Command had to parry: political necessity, surprise, numbers,
preparation, munitions.” And, again: “The invasion of Belgium _by the
left bank of the Meuse_ certainly surprised the French High Command”
(“La Manœuvre de la Marne,” _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, March 15, 1919).

M. Reinach, usually so clear and positive, was also ambiguous on this
point (_La Guerre sur le Front Occidental_, vol. i.). It suffices he
says, to glance at the map: “Nature herself traced this path (Flanders
and the Oise). Innumerable armies have followed it, in both directions,
for centuries” (p. 30). Nevertheless, the French Staff, though it had
“followed for many years the German preparations for an offensive by
Belgium” (p. 57), remained in an “anguish of doubt.”

Much evidence with regard to the events of the first phase of the
war is contained in the reports of the French “Commission of Inquiry
on Metallurgy,” 1918–19, the special task of which was to consider
why the Briey coalfield was not defended. On May 14, 1919, General
Maunoury testified to disaccord existing between commanding officers
at the beginning of the campaign, failure to co-ordinate efforts, and
ignorance of some generals of the plan of concentration. On the same
day, General Michel said that, in 1911, when he was Vice-President
of the Superior War Council, that is, Generalissimo designate, he
submitted a plan of concentration based upon a certitude of the whole
German invasion passing by Belgium and of the need of the principal
French action being directed to the North. The plan was rejected, after
being examined by General Brun, M. Berteaux, and M. Messimy.

General Percin, at the same inquiry (May 24, 1919), spoke of
“intrigues” and a “real palace revolution” in 1911 to replace General
Michel, as future Commander-in-Chief, by General Pau, the offence of
the former being to have foretold that the Germans would advance by
the left bank of the Meuse, and that they would at once engage their
reserves. According to General Percin, in the spring of 1914 General de
Castelnau said: “If the Germans extend their fighting front as far as
Lille, they will thin it so much that we can cut it in two. We can wish
for nothing better.” There is other evidence of this idea prevailing
in the General Staff: apparently it arose from underestimates of the
effective strength of the invasion.

Marshal Joffre gave evidence before the Commission on July 5, 1919,
but his reported statements do not greatly help us. He defended the
concentration under “plan 17,” which, he said, was operated much more
to the north than in previous plans, nearly all of these foreseeing
concentration south of Verdun. The French Staff was chiefly concerned
to give battle only when it had its full forces in hand. The 3rd Army
had a quite particular function, that of investing Metz. The plan
made before the war was not absolute, but was a directive modifiable
according to events. Officially, it stopped short at Hirson; but the
Staff had foreseen variants to second the Belgian effort. In March
1914, the Staff had prepared a note in which it had foreseen the
invasion by Belgium——a plan providing for eventualities. It was,
therefore, absurd to pretend that it had never foreseen the invasion
by Belgium. The Briey district was under the cannon of Metz, and could
not be included in the region of concentration. The loss of the “battle
of the Frontiers” was due to the fact that the best units of the
German Army presented themselves on the feeble point of our front. On
the French side there were failings. Generals who had great qualities
in peace time failed under stress of war. He had had to take action
against some who were his best friends, but believed he had done his
duty. Asked by the chairman with how many rifles he commenced the war,
Marshal Joffre replied, “with 2,300,000.” Lille, he said, could not be
defended.

Field-Marshal French (_1914_, ch. i.) says: “Personally, I had always
thought that Germany would violate Belgian neutrality, and in no such
half-hearted measure as by a march through the Ardennes.”

[15] In an article on the second anniversary of the first battle of the
Yser, the _Temps_ (Oct. 30, 1916) said that, before the war, Belgium
was more suspicious of England and France than of Germany. “If our
Staffs had wished to prepare, for the defence of Belgium, a plan of
operations on her territory, these suspicions would have taken body
and open conflict occurred. Nothing was foreseen of what happened, and
nothing was prepared.”

Field-Marshal French says: “Belgium remained a ‘dark horse’ to the
last, and could never be persuaded to decide upon her attitude in
the event of a general war.... We were anxious she should assist and
co-operate in her own defence.” On August 21, he received a note from
the Belgian Government remarking that the Belgian field army had from
the commencement of hostilities “been standing by hoping for the active
co-operation of the Allied Army,” but was now retreating upon Antwerp.

M. Engerand (_Le Drame de Charleroi_) says that on July 29, General
Lanrezac had sent to General Joffre a report on the likelihood of an
enveloping movement by the left bank of the Meuse; that after the
German Chancellor’s defence, on August 4, of the violation of Belgian
neutrality, the Belgian Government asked France for aid; that the
French Minister of War had of his own initiative offered to send
five army corps, “but, on August 5, our Councillor of Embassy at
London, M. de Fleurian, informed the Belgian Minister that ‘the French
Generalissimo did not intend to change his strategic plan, and only the
non-co-operation of the British Army would oblige him to extend the
French left.’ The Sordêt Cavalry Corps, on and after August 6, reported
to the General Staff that 13 German Corps, in two armies, were intended
to operate west of the Meuse, and that ten others were ready to advance
on the east of the river. On August 7, Lanrezac addressed to the Grand
Quartier General another report on the danger to our left; and on the
14th he expressed his conviction that there would be a strong offensive
west of the Meuse directly to General Joffre, who did not credit it.”

Major Collon, French military attaché at Brussels, and afterwards
attached to French Headquarters, has published the following facts
in a letter to the Swiss Colonel Egli (_Temps_, September 19, 1918):
Although the Army of Hanover (Emmich’s Army of the Meuse) was mobilised
from July 21 and concentrated in Westphalia from July 26, it was not
till August 3, after the publication of the German ultimatum, that
France offered Belgium her eventual military aid. This was declined;
but on August 4, when the violation of the frontier occurred the offer
was accepted in principle. On August 5, General Joffre authorised the
Sordêt Cavalry Corps to move to the Semoy. It began its march on the
6th, and on that night Major Collon arrived at Belgian Headquarters
with a view to assuring the co-ordination of the French and Belgian
operations.

[16] “This plan was at once weak and supple. It was feeble because
General Joffre, who established it, ‘saw too many things,’ in the words
of the Napoleonic warning.... He knew as well as any one the feebleness
of his plan. It was imposed upon him. He sought at least to make it
supple” (Reinach, _op. cit._ pp. 58–9).

In an article reviewing this volume (_Petit Parisien_, June 16, 1916),
M. Millerand, who became Minister of War a few days after the events in
question, endorsed this opinion: The French Staff “had to foresee, did
foresee, the two hypotheses——that of Belgium, certainly, but also that
of Lorraine. Hence general dispositions whose suppleness did not escape
weakness, a concentration for two ends.” The word “Belgium” here
is ambiguous: it is clear that an attack by Western Belgium was not
foreseen. The vice of the concentration was not that it faced two ends,
“Belgium” and “Lorraine,” but that it essentially faced the end of a
Lorraine offensive, whereas what was essentially needed was a northern
defensive.

General Bonnal remarks: “The project of offensive operations conceived
by Bernhardi in 1911 in case of a war with France deserved close study
by us, which would probably have led to modifications in our plan of
concentration while there was yet time” (_Les Conditions de la Guerre
Moderne_, p. 115. Paris: De Boccard. 1916).

General Palat writes: “The French concentration was vicious. Better
conceived, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of our compatriots
from the tortures of the invasion and occupation” (_La Revue_, Dec. 1,
1917).

“The unknown quantity on the side of Belgium,” says Lt.-Col. de
Thomasson, “condemned us at the outset to a waiting strategy. The
idea of at once taking the offensive madly overpassed the boldest
conceptions of Napoleon” (p. 54). “A well-advised command would have
understood that it was folly to launch at once all its army to attack
troops of the value of the Germans; that the offensive should have been
made only on certain points of the front, with a sufficient numerical
superiority, and for this purpose the forces must be economised;
that, in brief, the beginning of hostilities could only be favourable
to us on condition of a superior strategy such as was shown in the
preparation for the battle of the Marne, but not in the initial plan or
in the first three weeks of the war” (177–8).

[17] See Hanotaux, _Histoire Generale de la Guerre_; Engerand,
“Lorraine–Ardennes” (_Le Correspondant_, April 25, 1918); Paul H.
Courrière, “La Bataille de Sarre-et-Seille” (_La Revue_, Jan. 1, 1917);
Gerald Campbell, _Verdun to the Vosges_ (London: Arnold)——the author
was correspondent of _The Times_ on the Eastern frontier; Thomasson,
_loc. cit._

[18] See Hanotaux, “La Bataille des Ardennes, Etude Tactique et
Strategique” (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Feb. 15, 1917); Engerand, as
above; Ernest Renauld, “Charleroi–Dinant–Neufchâteau–Virton” (_La
Revue_, Oct. 1916——inaccurate as regards the British Army); Malleterre,
_Un Peu de Lumière sur les Batailles d’Août—Septembre 1914_ (Paris:
Tallandier).

[19] See _L’Illustration_, March 16, 1918: _La Défense de Longwy_, by
P. Nicou.

THE ABANDONMENT OF LILLE

[20] The military history of Lille, is curious. See _Lille_, by
General Percin (Paris: Grasset). M. Engerand, in his chapter on “The
Abandonment of Lille,” says that a third of the cannon had been removed
earlier in the year, but that on August 21, when General Herment took
command, there remained 446 pieces with enough ammunition and 25,000
men, not counting the neighbouring Territorial divisions of General
d’Amade. Though Lille had been virtually declassed on the eve of the
war, General Percin, the Governor (afterwards cruelly traduced on the
subject) and General Herment were anxious, and had begun preparations,
to defend it. The municipal and other local authorities protested to
the Government against any such effort being made; and at the last
moment, on the afternoon of August 24, when the retreat from the Sambre
had begun, the Minister of War ordered the abandonment of the town and
the evacuation of the region. German patrols entered the city two days
later, but it was only occupied at the beginning of October. It has
been argued that, with Lille and Maubeuge held on their flanks, and the
Scarpe, Scheldt, and Rhonelle valleys flooded, the Allied forces might
have delayed the enemy long enough to permit of a definite stand on the
line Amiens——La Fère-–Laon-–Rheims. General Berthaut rejects any such
idea, and says that inundations would have required forty days.

[21] French’s _1914_.

[22] See _La Grande Guerre sur le Front Occidental_, especially vol.
iv., by General Palat (Paris: Chapelot, 1918–19).

M. HANOTAUX AND THE B.E.F.

[23] For details, see Hanotaux, _Histoire General_ and _L’Enigme de
Charleroi_ (Paris, 1917); Maurice, Thomasson, Engerand, _loc. cit._;
Sir John French’s _Dispatches_ and _1914_; Lord Ernest Hamilton,
_The First Seven Divisions_; _La Campagne de l’Armée Belge_, from
official documents (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1915); _L’Action de l’Armée
Belge_, also official; Van der Essen, _L’Invasion Allemande_. For some
information in this chapter and the subsequent note with regard to the
British Army, I am indebted to the military authorities.

[24] Speaking of the attack of the 20th Division (10th Corps) at
Tamines, M. Hanotaux (_Histoire_, vol. v. p. 278) says it advanced with
feverish ardour only to fall upon solidly held defences. “Our officers
had always been told that, on condition of attacking resolutely and
without hesitation, they would surprise the enemy and easily dispose of
them. But the Germans everywhere awaited them firmly on solid positions
flanked with innumerable machine-guns, before which most of our men
fell.” Of the “insensate immolation” of the 3rd Corps at Chatelet, M.
Engerand says: “Without artillery preparation, and knowing that they
were going to a certain death, these picked troops threw themselves on
the enemy infantry, solidly entrenched on the edge of the town; in a
quarter of an hour a half of their effectives had fallen.” He adds that
the upper command of the Corps was relieved the same evening.

[25] “It was expected that the British Army would take its place on
the 20th, but it arrived only on the 22nd. On the 20th, it was still
far behind in the region of Le Nouvion–Wassigny–Le Cateau. If it had
been in place on the 20th, the Allied Army would have found itself
constituted at the very moment when the Germans entered Brussels.”
This last phrase is at least singularly ambiguous: Von Bülow was not
in Brussels, but only a day’s march from the Sambre, on the 20th. But,
if the British had then been at Mons, the Allied Army would not have
been “constituted,” for Lanrezac’s forces were far from being all in
place on that day. “It is true,” said M. Hanotaux a little later,
“that the French Army was not all in place _on the 22nd_, and that the
Territorial divisions were in rather mediocre conditions as to armament
and _encadrement_” (_L’Enigme de Charleroi_, p. 52). It is Bülow’s
appearance on the Sambre a day before Lanrezac was ready that makes the
French historian credit the enemy with “the principal advantage, the
initiative.”

After the reference to Brussels, M. Hanotaux continues: “The rôle
reserved to the British Army was to execute a turning movement of the
left wing, advancing north of the Sambre toward Mons, in the direction
of Soignies–Nivelles; it was thought it would be there before Kluck,”
It was there a day before Kluck. “Unfortunately, as the _Exposé de
Six Mois de Guerre_ recognises, it did not arrive on the 20th, as the
French Command expected.... In fact, it was only in line on the 23rd”
(pp. 49–50). M. Hanotaux repeats himself with variations. The Allied
Armies suffered, he says, not only from lateness and fatigue, but from
lack of co-ordination in the High Command. “It is permissible to-day to
say that the Belgian Command, in deciding to withdraw its army into the
entrenched camp of Antwerp, obeyed a political and military conception
which no longer conformed to the necessities of the moment. Again,
the British Army appeared in the region only on the 23rd, although
the battle had been engaged for two days and was already compromised
between Namur and Charleroi. The rôle of turning wing which the British
Army was to fulfil thus failed at the decisive hour” (pp. 53–4). M.
Hanotaux mentions (p. 77) the receipt by Sir John French, at 5 p.m.
on August 23, of “a telegraphic message qualified as ‘unexpected,’”
announcing the weight of Kluck’s force and the French retirement, but
omits to say that this message came from the French Generalissimo. He
adds that the British commander gave the order to retreat at 5 p.m.,
Lanrezac only at 9 p.m., omitting to explain that the French retreat
was, in fact, in operation at the former hour, while the British
retreat only began at dawn on the 24th, after a night of fighting.
“By 5 p.m., on Sunday the 23rd, when Joffre’s message was received
at British Headquarters”——says Captain Gordon, on the authority of
the British War Office (_Mons and the Retreat_)——“the French had been
retiring for ten or twelve hours. The British Army was isolated.
Standing forward a day’s march from the French on its right, faced by
three German Corps with a fourth on its left, it seemed marked out for
destruction.”

In strong contrast with M. Hanotaux’s comments——repeated, despite
public correction, in his article of March 1919 cited above——are M.
Engerand’s references to the part played by the British Expeditionary
Force. First, to its “calm and tenacious defensive about Mons, a truly
admirable defence that has not been made known among us, and that
has perhaps not been understood as it should be. It was the first
manifestation of the form the war was to take; the English, having
nothing to unlearn, and instructed by their experiences in the South
African war, had from the outset seized its character.... It shows us
Frenchmen, to our grief, how we might have stopped the enemy if we had
practised, instead of the infatuated offensive, this British defensive
‘borrowed from Brother Boer.’” Then as to the retreat: “The retreat
of the British followed ours, and did not precede it. It is a duty of
loyalty to say so, as also to recognise that, in these battles beyond
the frontiers, the British Army, put by its chief on the defensive, was
the only one, with the 1st French Army, which could contain the enemy.”
M. Engerand, who is evidently well informed, and who strongly defends
General Lanrezac, says that Sir John French told this officer on August
17, at Rethel, that he could hardly be ready to take part in the battle
till August 24.

Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, while regretting that the British did not try
to help Lanrezac on the 23rd, admits that an offensive from Mons would
have been fruitless and might have been disastrous (pp. 216–8).

M. Hanotaux’ faulty account of the matter appears to be inspired by
a desire to redistribute responsibilities, and to prove that, if the
British had attacked Bülow’s right flank, the whole battle would have
been won. This idea will not bear serious examination. The French
Command cannot have entertained this design on August 20, for it must
have known that the British force was two days behind the necessary
positions. When it came into line before Mons, on the evening of the
22nd, it was certainly too late for so small a body of troops to make
an offensive movement north-eastward with any prospect of success. Had
it been possible at either date, the manœuvre which M. Hanotaux favours
might conceivably have helped Lanrezac against Bülow; but it would have
left Kluck free to encircle the Allies on the west, and so prejudiced,
at least, the withdrawal and the subsequent successful reaction. It
might well have created a second and greater Sedan.

In dealing with these events, M. Hanotaux, by adding the strength of
Lanrezac’s Army, d’Amade’s Territorial divisions, the British Army, and
the garrisons of Namur (General Michel, 25,000 men), Maubeuge (General
Fournier, 35,000 men), and Lille (General Herment, 18,000 men), arrives
at the remarkable conclusion that “the Allied armies, between August
22 and 25, opposed to the 545,000 men of the German armies a total
figure of 536,000 men.” This figure is deceptive, and useless except
to emphasise the elements of Allied weakness other than numbers. So
far as the later date is intended, it has no relation to the battle of
Charleroi–Mons. At both these dates, and later, when the Allies were
in full retreat, and both sides had suffered heavy losses, the Allied
units named were so widely scattered and so disparate in quality that
it is impossible to regard them as a single force “opposed” to the
three compact masses of Kluck, Bülow, and Hausen. The deduction that
General Joffre had on the Sambre “Allied forces sufficient to keep the
mastery of the operations” is, therefore, most questionable.

The actual opposition of forces on the morning of August 23 was as
follows: Lanrezac’s Army and the Namur garrison, amounting to an
equivalent of five army corps, or about 200,000 men, had upon their
front and flank six corps of Bülow and two corps of Hausen, about
320,000 men. The little British Army, of 2½ corps, had immediately
before it three of Kluck’s corps, with two more behind these.

General Lanrezac published in the _New York Herald_ (Paris edition)
of May 17 and 18, and in _L’Oeuvre_ of May 18 and 22, 1919, dignified
replies to certain statements of Field-Marshal French. To the latter’s
remark that the B.E.F. at Mons found itself in “an advanced position,”
he answers that the battle shifted from east to west, and “on the
evening of the 23rd, the 5th Army had been fighting for forty-eight
hours, while the British were scarcely engaged.” Doubtless owing to
Lord Kitchener’s original instruction that it would not be reinforced,
the B.E.F. kept, during the later part of the retreat, “two days’
march ahead of the 5th Army, and obstinately maintained this distance,
stopping only on the Seine.” “It was rather French who uncovered my
left than I who uncovered his right.” General Lanrezac disowns any
critical intent in saying this: “In my opinion, in the tragic period
from August 22 to September 4, 1914, the British did all they could,
and showed a magnificent heroism. It was not their fault if the
strategic situation forbade our doing more.”

In regard to the original French plan of campaign, General Lanrezac
refused to put himself in the position of being both judge and party,
but added: “The Commander-in-Chief had a plan; he had elaborated it
with the collaboration of officers of his Staff, men incontestibly
intelligent and instructed, General Berthelot among others.
Nevertheless, this plan, as I came to know it in course of events,
appeared to me to present a fundamental error. It counted too much on
the French centre, 3rd and 4th Armies, launched into Belgian Luxembourg
and Ardennes, scoring a prompt and decisive victory which would make
us masters of the situation on the rest of the front.” “So it was that
General Berthelot, on August 19, told M. Messimy that, if the Germans
went in large numbers west of the Meuse, it was so much the better, as
it would be easier to beat them on the east.”

THE FALL OF MAUBEUGE

[26] Four years passed ere a detailed account of the defence and fall
of Maubeuge was published (_La Verité sur le Siège de Maubeuge_, by
Commandant Paul Cassou, of the 4th Zouaves. Paris: Berger-Levrault).
There are, in the case of this fortress, points of likeness to and of
difference from that of Lille. In June 1910 the Ministry of War had
decided that Maubeuge should be regarded as only a position of arrest,
not capable of sustaining a long siege; and in 1913 the Superior War
Council decreed that it should be considered only as a support to
a neighbouring field army. It then consisted of an enceinte dating
from Vauban, dominated by an outer belt of six main forts and six
intermediate works about twenty years old, furnished with 335 cannon,
none of which carried more than 6 miles. The garrison consisted of an
infantry regiment, three reserve and six Territorial regiments. In the
three weeks before the siege began, 30,000 men were engaged in digging
trenches, laying down barbed wire, and making other defences.

The siege was begun by the VII Reserve Corps, a cavalry brigade, and
a division from another corps, about 60,000 men, on August 25. On
that and two following days effective sorties were made. On the 29th
the bombardment began. One by one the forts were smashed by heavy
guns and mortars, including 420 mm. pieces throwing shells of nearly
a ton weight, firing from the safe distance of 9 or 10 miles. On
September 1, all the troops available made a sortie, and a regular
battle was fought. Some detachments reached within 250 yards of the
German batteries, only to be mown down by machine-gun fire. After
this two German attacks were repulsed. On September 5, however, the
enemy got within the French lines, and on the 7th the place had
become indefensible. At 6 p.m. the capitulation was signified, and
on September 8, at noon, the garrison surrendered, General von Zwehl
saying to General Fournier: “You have defended the place with a rare
vigour and much resolution, but the war has turned against you.” The
German Command afterward claimed to have taken at Maubeuge 40,000
prisoners, 400 guns, and a large quantity of war material.

[27] Statement of M. Messimy before the Commission of Inquiry on
Metallurgy, May 30, 1919, reported in the Paris Press the following
day. In his evidence, M. Messimy blamed Joffre for not having been
willing, in August 1914, to recognise the danger on the side of
Belgium. Undoubtedly, he added, it was a fault of the French Command
in 1912 and 1913 not to contemplate the prompt use of reserves, and
to fall back on the Three Years’ Service law, “which no one would
defend to-day.” M. Messimy argued that the doctrine of the offensive _à
outrance_ was common to the French and German Armies, and was at that
time universal in military circles.

_Joffre, Première Crise du Commandement_, by Mermeix (Paris:
Ollendorff. 1919), is a careful and unprejudiced study of the changes,
ideas, and personal antagonisms in the French Army Commands during the
first period of the war. It concludes with a section in which “Attacks
upon Joffre” and “Explanations collected at the G.Q.G.,” are set forth
on opposite pages.

[28] See note at top of p. 249.

[29] G. Blanchon, _Le General Joffre_, Pages Actuelles, 1914–5, No. 11
(Paris: Bloud et Gay).

[30] M. Arthur Huc, editor of the _Dépêche de Toulouse_, in which
journal the interview was printed, March 1915.

[31] Statement by General Messimy at the Commission of Inquiry on
Metallurgy, April 28, 1919.

[32] For details, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,”
_Rev. des Deux Mondes_, November 15, 1916; Engerand, _loc. cit._; a
vindication of General Dubail, by “Cdt. G. V.”: “La 1re Armée et la
Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,” _La Revue_, January 1, 1917; Barrés:
“Comment la Lorraine fut Sauvée,” _Echo de Paris_, September 1917.

[33] See p. 34. The mismanagement of this battle was the subject of
evidence at the Metallurgical Commission of Inquiry on May 15, 1919.

[34] Miles, _Le General Maunoury_, Pages Actuelles, No. 49.

[35] French, _1914_, ch. iv. The Hon. J. W. Fortescue (_Quarterly
Review_, Oct. 1919), defending Smith-Dorrien, charges Lord French with
“clumsy and ludicrous misstatements,” and questions the figures in the
text.

[36] _Meine Bericht zur Marneschlacht_ (Berlin: Scherl), notes, written
in December 1914, on the operations of the II Army to the end of the
battle of the Aisne. Bülow charges Kluck with not having informed
German G.H.Q. of the gathering of Maunoury’s forces and the action of
Proyart.

For the battle of Guise, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de Guise–St.
Quentin,” _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, September 1, 1918.

[37] For his report of a stormy interview with Lord Kitchener at the
Embassy in Paris on September 1, see _1914_, ch. v. This account has,
however, been strongly questioned by Mr. Asquith (speech at Newcastle,
May 16, 1919), who says that Lord Kitchener did but convey the
conclusions of the Cabinet, which had been “seriously disquieted” by
Sir John French’s communications.

[38] See _Foch_, by Réné Puaux, and, above all, Foch’s own works,
_De la Conduite de la Guerre_ (3rd ed., 1915), _Les Principes de la
Guerre_, 4th ed., 1917 (Paris: Berger-Levrault).

[39] “I see no inconvenience,” Joffre replied, “in your turning back
to-morrow, 28th, in order to affirm your success, and to show that
the retreat is purely strategic; but on the 29th every one must be in
retreat.”

[40] For details of the last stages of the retreat and pursuit, see
_La Marche sur Paris de l’Aile Droite Allemande_, by Count de Caix de
Saint Aymour (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle); Gordon and Hamilton, _op.
cit._; and _La Retraite de l’Armée Anglaise du 23 Août 1914_, by Ernest
Renauld, _Renaissance_, November 25, 1916.

On September 3, General Lanrezac was removed from the command of the
French 5th Army——“because his views were contrary to a complete liaison
with the British Army,” says M. Hanotaux (_Rev. des Deux Mondes_, March
1919); but this is a partial and inadequate statement. As we have
seen, Lanrezac had been at issue with G.Q.G. from the beginning of the
campaign.

M. Hanotaux quotes a note sent to the Minister of War, M. Millerand,
on September 3, by General Joffre, who, “finding that the rapid recoil
of the British Army, effected too soon and too quickly, had prevented
Maunoury’s Army from coming into action in good conditions, and had
compromised Lanrezac’s left flank,” described his intention thus:
“To prepare a new offensive in liaison with the British and with
the garrison of Paris, and to choose the battlefield in such a way
that, by utilising on certain parts of the front prepared defensive
organisations, a numerical superiority could be assured in the zone
chosen for the principal effort.”

[41] An anonymous writer, “ZZZ,” in the _Revue de Paris_, September
15, 1917, says that Field-Marshal French’s communication was made on
September 1 to the French Government——probably it was a result of the
Kitchener interview——and was transmitted to Joffre by the Minister
of War, who, subject to the full liberty and responsibility of the
Generalissimo, favoured the idea of resistance on the north and
north-east of Paris.

[42] _Petit Parisien_, June 16, 1916.

[43] _Le Livre du Souvenir_, by Paul Ginisty and Arsène Alexandre, pp.
75–6.

PARIS AND THE GERMAN PLAN

[44] Major-General Sir F. Maurice, in his brilliant study, _Forty
Days in 1914_ (London: Constable. 1919), speaks, however, of the
German Staff assuming “that Paris had only a moral and not a military
value.” General Maurice refers to the city as being “at the mercy of
the enemy,” and emphatically condemns Kluck for failing to occupy
it, and so “sacrificing substantial gains in favour of a grandiose
and ambitious scheme which, as events proved, could not be realised”
(p. 139). Despite General Maurice’s great authority, I see no reason
to change the conclusions in the text with regard to the points here
discussed. There are several important factors which he does not
mention, particularly the influence of the appearance of the new 9th
Army, under Foch, at the French centre, and the equalisation at this
time of the German and Allied forces. Kluck was the victim of necessity
rather than of any grandiose ambition; and as for the Staffs, it was
more Joffre’s strategy than “Prussian conceit and self-sufficiency”
that “marred the execution of a well-laid plan.”

Says Mr. Joseph Reinach (_La Guerre sur le Front Occidental, 1914–15_,
ch. v. sec. 7): “Bernhardi has classed the capitals of Europe in
two categories: those whose capture has a decisive importance from
the military point of view, like Paris and Vienna, and those whose
importance is much smaller. To take Paris, what glory! to enter Paris,
what a gage! But the same Bernhardi, the master of all the German
generals, and before him all the greatest captains, all the oracles
of the military art, Moltke, Jomini, insist that the aim of war must
be fixed as high as possible, and this aim is the complete ruin of
the enemy State by the destruction, the putting out of action, of its
armies. Only an enemy completely disarmed will bow to the will of the
conqueror.... The opinion that prevailed with the German Staff is that
to attack Paris before having finished with the Allied Armies would
be a fault entailing very serious consequences.... The event does not
prove that this opinion was mistaken.”

[45] This message, first published by _Le Matin_, February 27, 1918,
was dispatched by Mr. Gerard, United States Ambassador in Berlin,
on the morning of September 8, to his colleague in Paris, Mr. Myron
Herrick, who received it late on the same evening. It read as follows:
“Extremely urgent. September 8. The German General Staff recommends
that all Americans leave Paris via Rouen and Le Havre. They will have
to leave soon if they wish to go.——GERARD.” It is added that the
message was sent on the pressing wish of the German Staff, and that it
was doubled, one copy going via Switzerland, and the other via Rome.

When this document was penned, the struggle had been proceeding on
the Ourcq for two days and a half; Kluck had withdrawn nearly all
his forces from the Marne; and the British and d’Espérey’s Armies
were advancing rapidly northward. How, in these circumstances, could
the German General Staff imagine that they could arrange “soon” a
triumphant entry into Paris? There is one, and only one, fact in the
military situation that they could build upon. At 5 a.m. on September
8, the right wing of Foch’s Army had broken down, and was in full
retreat toward Fère Champènoise. If they really accepted this as such a
promise of victory as to justify the warning to the Americans of Paris,
the German Staff must have been in an infatuated state of mind.

It is possible, however, that the message was only a reckless piece of
propaganda on their part, intended, at a critical moment, to awe the
neutrals of America, Switzerland, and Italy, and to frighten some good
Americans out of Paris. In no case can a warning conveyed on September
8 countenance the idea that the entry into Paris was originally
intended to occur before a decisive victory had been won.

[46] In the _Gaulois_, “Une Cause de la Defaite Allemande sur la Marne.”

[47] M. Reinach states this, adding: “There was, it seems, an exchange
of messages between the Staff and Kluck. Finally, theory prevailed”
(_La Guerre_, p. 145; _Commentaires de Polybe_, vol. iv. p. 198).

According to an article in the _Renaissance_, September 2, 1916,
Kluck had previously favoured the advance on Paris, quoting a reply
of Blücher to Schwartzenberg in 1814: “It is better to go to Paris;
when one has Paris, one has France.” At a council held at German
Headquarters after the battle of Guise and St. Quentin, says the
writer, Kluck went over to the advice of Moltke.

[48] M. Hanotaux (_Histoire Illustrée_, especially ch. xxxvii., and in
the _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, March 1919) has his own picturesque theory
of these events, supported by rather frail evidence. It is, briefly,
that there was an antagonism between Kluck, who wished to complete
his enveloping movement, and Bülow, who after Guise had persuaded the
Grand Staff to renounce it in favour of a frontal action against the
French centre in which he would be the chief actor. After Charleroi and
after Guise, Bülow had had to call Kluck to his aid. They were natural
antagonists, the junker and the popular soldier. Moltke and the Staff
hesitated between them, and then decided for Bülow. Bülow was to lead
the attack; Kluck was ordered to remain between the Oise and the Marne
to watch the region of Paris. But he refused to be thus thwarted of his
victory, and rode impetuously on toward Provins, overrunning Bülow’s
slower approach. Maunoury’s attack caught him _in flagrante delicto_.
All this is plausible enough except the statement that Kluck was
ordered to remain north of the Marne. Had he done so, the same result
would have been produced two or three days sooner.

M. Hanotaux also states that Marwitz’s three cavalry divisions had
been ordered on September 1 to carry out a raid to the gates of Paris,
destroying railways as they went, but that “Kluck had other views” (_La
Manœuvre de la Marne_).

[49] The author of _Die Schlachten an der Marne_ says: “Kluck knew
there were troops to the left of the British, but did not know their
exact strength.”

In his book _Comment fut sauvé Paris_, M. P. H. Courrière cites the
following order issued by General von Schwerin at dawn on September
5, and afterwards found on the battlefield: “The IV Reserve Corps
continues to-day the forward march, and charges itself, north of the
Marne, with the covering of the north front of Paris; the IV Cavalry
Division will be added to it. The II Corps advances by the Grand Morin
valley below Coulommiers, and directs itself against the east front of
Paris.”

[50] General von Freytag-Loringhoven says: “It was proved on the Marne
that the age of armies numbering millions, with their improved armament
and widely extended fronts, engenders very special conditions.... The
envelopment of the whole host of the enemy is a very difficult matter”
(_Deductions_, pp. 79–80).

[51] M. Maurice Barrés, _Echo de Paris_, June 1, 1916. But General
Maunoury had telegraphed at midnight on August 31 to General Joffre
reporting that Kluck seemed to be leaving the direction of Paris.

[52] General Cherfils describes the extent of Gallieni’s authority
as being in a state; of “nebulous imprecision.” The position appears
to have been this: The entrenched camp of Paris, under the old
regulations, was under the control of the Minister of War, not the
Generalissimo, who could claim the services of a part of the garrison
if he left enough men to assure the safety of the city, subject to a
protest by the Governor, but could not touch its munitions or supplies.
On his appointment as Military Governor of Paris (August 26), Gallieni
had asked that the garrison, then consisting of four divisions of
Territorials, should be reinforced. The 6th Army was accordingly placed
under his orders. On the same day, the entrenched camp was placed,
by the Minister, M. Millerand, under the superior orders of General
Joffre. There was thus a threefold command, Maunoury being under
Gallieni, and Gallieni under Joffre.

General Bonnal (_Les Conditions de la Guerre Moderne_, p. 56) says
that it was “in virtue of his own initiative, based on the powers
of the Governor of a place left to its own forces,” that Gallieni
ordered Maunoury, on the morning of September 4, to prepare to take the
offensive.

For particulars of Gallieni’s communications with General Joffre and
Sir John French, see the work named, the same author’s long article in
the _Renaissance_, September 4, 1915, and an article in that review on
September 2, 1916. According to the last named, it was at 2.50 p.m.
on September 4 that the Commander-in-Chief authorised the advance of
Maunoury’s Army; and Gallieni’s orders were that it was to bring its
front up to Meaux on the next day, and to “attack” on the morning of
the 6th.

Gallieni’s control over Maunoury’s Army ceased when, by the development
of the battle of the Ourcq, it passed out of the region of the
entrenched camp of Paris. In August 1915, the old rules on the
“Service de Place” were altered to give the French Commander-in-Chief
absolute authority over fortresses and their governors, and full power
to dispose of their resources.

[53] “La Bataille de l’Ourcq”; Paul H. Courrière, in the _Renaissance_,
September 1, 1917.

[54] In his dispatch of September 17, 1914, Sir John French does not
mention any visit or message from General Gallieni, and only speaks
of receiving General Joffre’s request to turn about, made during
their interview on Saturday, September 5. In his volume _1914_, he
does mention the visit, but attributes to Gallieni the statement that
Maunoury would move east toward the Ourcq “on Sunday the 6th.” This
suggests that the move actually made on the 5th was not at the time
known at British Headquarters.

[55] _Die Schlachten an der Marne_ (p. 107 of French edition).

SOME BOOKS ON THE BATTLE

Chaps. VI.-X. For further details of the actions traced in these
chapters, see the works of Marshal French, Von Bülow, M. Hanotaux,
Generals Mallaterre, Canonge, and Palat, M, Victor Giraud, Lord Ernest
Hamilton, Mr. G. Campbell, and others named above, and the following:

“Guides Michelin pour la visite des Champs de Bataille” (Paris:
Berger-Levrault. 1917–18).

   Vol.   I. _L’Ourcq_ (_Meaux–Senlis–Chantilly_).

   Vol.  II. _Les Marais de Saint Gond_ (_Coulommiers–Provins–Sézanne_).

   Vol. III. _La Trouée de Revigny_ (_Chalôns–Vitry-Bar-le-Duc_).

    Excellent guides, containing good chronological summaries of the
    fighting on the left, centre, and right, with maps and other
    illustrations.

_La Bataille de la Marne._ By Gustave Babin (Paris: Plon. 1915). With 9
plans. One of the first day by day narratives of the battle, based on
Staff information.

_La Victoire de la Marne._ By Louis Madelin, with 2 plans. A
well-written sketch by a historian who was on the Staff at Verdun
(Paris: Plon. 1916).

_Avant-propos Stratégiques._ By Col. F. Feyler, the well-known Swiss
military writer (Paris: Payot. 1916).

_Les Campagnes de 1914._ By Champaubert (General Malleterre).

Collections of the French official bulletins published by Payot, and
reports of the French Devastation Commission by Hachette.

_Les Champs de l’Ourcq._ By José Roussel-Lepine (Paris: Plon. 1919).
Especially good in its descriptions of the Ourcq countryside.

_La Rôle de la Cavalerie Française_ à l’aile gauche de la première
bataille de la Marne. By J. Hethay (Paris. 1919). Includes an account
of the strange raid of the 5th Division, 1st Cavalry Corps, into
Villers-Cotterets Forest and region of La Fertê-Milon, ordered by
General Bridoux on the morning of September 8. It was driven hither and
thither for several days, at last escaping in fragments to the west;
but it created some little alarm and disturbance on Von Kluck’s lines
of communication.

_Les Marais de Saint Gond._ By Charles le Goffic (Paris: Plon. 1916). A
standard work on this part of the battle.

“Mondemont.” Article by “Asker,” in _L’Illustration_, July 3, 1915.
Many valuable articles will be found in the files of this weekly
journal.

_La Victoire de Lorraine._ By A. Bertrand (Paris: Berger-Levrault.
1917).

_Morhange et les Marsouins de Lorraine._ By R. Christian-Frogé
(Berger-Levrault. 1917).

_Sous Verdun._ By M. Genevois (R. Hachette. 1916).

_Die Schlacht an der Marne._ By Major E. Bircher, of the Swiss General
Staff. Contains a bibliography of 150 works and a number of useful maps
and plans (Berne: Paul Haupt).

[56] _Avec Charles Péguy de la Lorraine à la Marne_, by Victor Boudon
(Paris: Hachette). Péguy, a sort of mystical Tory-Socialist, or, as M.
Lavisse says, “Catholic-Anarchist,” was author-editor of _Les Cahiers
de la Quinzaine_.

[57] M. Hanotaux (p. 126) says that Gallieni’s order of September 4 was
“an order for deployment, not for the offensive,” and he adds that the
Governor intended that the cavalry should feel the way. There is no
evidence of cavalry activity on the 5th; and it is manifest that the
encounter before St. Soupplets was a complete surprise for the 6th Army.

[58] Sir John French, in his dispatch, says: “I should conceive it to
have been about noon on the 6th September, after the British Forces
had changed their front to the right, and occupied the line Jouy le
Chatel–Faremoutiers–Villeneuve le Comte, ... that the enemy realised
the powerful threat that was being made against the flank of his
columns moving south-east, and began the great retreat which opened the
battle.” This is a significant mistake. We now know that Bülow sent
a first warning of an Allied concentration towards the west on the
afternoon of September 5 to Kluck, who by then had his own information
from the IV Reserve Corps. A few hours later Kluck was fully aware of
his danger; and, as he has since stated to an interviewer, decided “in
five minutes” how to meet it.

Field-Marshal French (_1914_, ch. 5), wrongly, I think, considers that
Kluck “manifested considerable hesitation and want of energy.”

GENERAL BONNAL AND THE BRITISH ARMY

[59] Several French volumes hint the first criticism, and it is
expressed very definitely by General Bonnal in the article already
referred to on the battle of the Ourcq in _La Renaissance_ of September
4, 1915. The substance of General Bonnal’s charge is as follows:

“Unfortunately, the British Army, rather hesitant after its checks
at Le Cateau, Landrecies, and Compiègne, lost time in displacements
dictated by prudence, and did not give the 6th Army in time all the
help desirable.” Maunoury had asked for it at noon on Sept. 4; and
the Generalissimo’s directions of that night anticipated the British
being at Coulommiers and Changis on the evening of the 5th. But, on the
afternoon of the 4th, the head of Sir John French’s Staff had announced
to Gallieni for that night “an order of movement the result of which
was to distance the British Army at once from the 6th and the 5th
Armies.” (If this movement was not the further retirement asked for by
General Joffre, we do not know what is meant.) “Marshal French occupied
during the 5th positions north and south of Rozoy, facing east. But
this disposition placed the British Army much to the rear, to the west,
of the line first fixed, and permitted the German II Corps, reported
in the morning at Coulommiers, to repass the Marne and escape to the
north-west. Fearing its appearance on the Ourcq, General Gallieni
wrote on the 6th to Marshal French praying him at once to advance in
accordance with the orders of General Joffre. On his side, the latter
telegraphed to General Maunoury, on the 6th, asking him constantly to
support the British left. In consequence, the chief of the 6th Army
sent to Meaux the same evening the 8th Division (4th Corps), which
had just detrained at Paris.” (This division actually came in on the
morning of the 6th.) “If the presence of the 8th Division on his left
did not determine Marshal French immediately to take the offensive”
(what this means we do not know, for the British offensive had
commenced on the morning of the 6th), “it was because at this moment he
was much concerned as to the pretty considerable interval between his
right and the left of the 5th Army. Yet this interval was watched by
the Cavalry Corps of General Conneau.”

“On the evening of the 6th, the British Army reached the line of the
Grand Morin, in contact on its right with the 5th Army. Unfortunately
this contact was so close that the British Army thought it necessary
to march level with and on the same lines as the 5th, which had great
difficulty in assuring its route, having to drive before it four corps
of Von Bülow’s Army.”

General Bonnal concludes his criticism with a not very amiable
homily on the insufficient training of the old British Army, and the
inadequacy of its Staff work. Generals not trained as in France and
Germany had, he says, a tendency “to practise the linear order,” to
move their troops in deployed formation, supporting their flanks on
neighbouring bodies, and taking a thousand precautions that lead to
delay. That is why “the British Army, composed of officers and men full
of strength, vigour, and energy, took more than two days to cover the
20 kilometres between the Grand Morin and the Marne, when, on the 6th,
they ought to have marched on the nearest enemy.”

For similar comments, see “La Bataille de la Marne, Recit Succinct,”
by General Canonge (_Le Correspondant_, September 25 and October 10,
1917), with details of the battle.

One sentence of M. Hanotaux is more to the point than all these
criticisms and suppositions: “No doubt, if the encounter had not
been produced, a little prematurely perhaps, in the region of St.
Soupplets–Penchard, at noon on the 5th, the whole army of Von Kluck
would have been south of the Marne in the evening; while Maunoury would
have taken it in reverse on the north bank. Kluck would then have been
closed in” (_Histoire_, ch. 38, p. 184).

An interesting attempt to justify Gallieni against Joffre, and to
challenge the latter’s strategy at this time, will be found in _La
Genèse de la Bataille de la Marne_, by General H. Le Gros (Paris:
Payot). He quotes Joffre as complaining to the Government (on Sept. 4)
that Gallieni was seeking to “push him into a premature offensive.”

SCENES AT FARTHEST SOUTH

[60] Four days later, in the village inn at Pezarches, Madame, an
upstanding woman of about thirty, told me of the following incident:

“On Sunday morning my mother had gone to church, and I remained at
home with my father and my little boy. My father left us to get some
tobacco. Going out for a moment with the child, I saw a group of
horsemen in the street, and said to myself: ‘We are saved. It is the
Belgians!’ When I returned, to my surprise, they were in the house,
sitting in my room and in the café. An officer asked me to cook him a
couple of eggs. I noticed that one of the men was wounded, and asked
whether it was painful. He nodded, and I went to the kitchen. There I
saw, on the window-sill, a spiked helmet. I nearly fainted! So they
were Germans! I managed to take in the eggs. Then the officer asked
me, very politely, to show him my left hand, and, pointing to the
wedding-ring, said: ‘You are married?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, trembling.
‘Your husband is a soldier?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You have a child?’ ‘No, I have no
children,’ I said, ‘But I saw him. You are hiding him because you have
heard that the Germans cut off the hands of French children. That is
false. We never hurt women or children. Bring your little boy.’ But,
as I persisted that it was not my child, he said no more. He and the
others paid in German money for what they had, and left. A quarter of
an hour later the firing began.”

[61] _1914_, ch. 4.

[62] _Le Petit Journal_, September 9, 1917.

[63] In Courtacon, I found eighteen of the two dozen small brick houses
completely destroyed by fire, after having been sacked. The pretext
given was that villagers had betrayed the German troops——part of the
Guard Cavalry Division——to the Allies. The single room of the village
school presented an unforgettable exhibition of malice. Dirty straw,
remnants of meals, torn books, and broken cartridge cases littered the
floor. Piles of half-burnt straw showed that a hurried attempt had
been made to destroy the building; there were two such piles under
the bookcase and the tiny school museum, which consisted of a few
bottles of metal and chemical specimens. Amid this filthy chaos, the
low forms, the master’s desk, and wall-charts inculcating “temperance,
kindness, justice, and truth,” stood as they had done on the day before
the summer holidays. As I turned to leave, I saw, written across the
blackboard in bold, fine writing, evidently as the lesson of that day,
the words: “_À chaque jour suffit sa peine_”——“Sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof,” as our English version has it. Under this
motto, all unconscious of it, these brutes had slept and wakened to
their incendiary work——men of a nation that boasted itself the pioneer
in Europe of elementary schooling. Could any recording angel have
conceived a more biting irony?

[64] M. Madelin says that 7000 German corpses were found. The figure
may be doubted.

[65] Le Goffic, _Les Marais de St. Gond_.

[66] _Au Centre de la Bataille de la Marne_, by the Abbé Neret, Curé of
Vertus, who gives the hours named.

[67] I rely upon the article by M. le Goffic, “La Defense du Mont
Août,” in _La Liberte_, September 7, 1918, embodying the narrative of
an eye-witness, who mentions the following curious details: “A black
cow, maddened by the bombardment, charged the trenches, leaped aside
when a shell burst, sniffed the smoke, and stamped in the shell-holes.
Slowly, a shepherd, a big, careless ruffian, climbed the slope with his
five white sheep. For a moment he stopped level with us, 500 yards to
the right. As though by accident, his five sheep were on his left, on
our side; and immediately shells began to arrive in fours, the range
lengthening each time by a hundred yards. But we were not in range.”
This perhaps rather imaginative correspondent thinks that the Germans
mistook dead for living Frenchmen on the slopes of Mont Août, and that
that is why they did not seek to occupy it.

THE MYTH OF THE 42ND DIVISION

[68] General Canonge, in his historical sketch, confirms my own
inquiries. The embryo of the myth is to be found in the “Official
Résumé,” published on June 8, 1915, in the _Bulletin des Armées_,
according to which, on the evening of September 9, Foch’s Army,
“moving from west to east toward Fère Champènoise, took in flank the
Prussian Guard and the Saxon Corps which were attacking south-east of
this locality. This audacious manœuvre decided the success.” This was
presently elaborated, with various romantic decorations.

[69] Canonge, after two inquiries on the spot, and with written
evidence in addition, says that the 42nd Division left Broyes between
2 and 3 pm., reached Linthelles about 5 p.m., stopped there, and then
bivouacked in the zone Linthes–Linthelles–Ognes–Pleurs, passing the
night there “in general reserve,” and moving away only about 5 a.m. on
September 10. Fère Champènoise, he adds, was evacuated by the Germans,
after an orgie of 24 hours, at about 5.30 p.m. on the 9th, but was
traversed during the greater part of the night by German troops coming
from Connantre and Gourgancon. Connage thinks that, “on sight of the
troops of the 42nd Division, those of General Dubois, certain now of
support, advanced, and the Division then stopped and turned back to
night-quarters.” Bülow, he believes, had ordered his retreat at 3.30
p.m. The first French detachment entered Fère Champènoise at 7 a.m.
next day.

[70] Giraud (_Histoire_, p. 166) gives a rather different report of
this dialogue. I rely upon an article in _L’Illustration_ of Jan. 9,
1915, containing a long passage from the diary of “an officer who was
the soul of the defence”——doubtless, Captain Heym himself.

[71] Colonel Feyler’s _Avant-Propos Stratégiques_ (Paris: Payot.
1915) are particularly valuable for a pitiless analysis of the “moral
manœuvre” represented in early German accounts of the first part of the
campaign.

[72] Major-General Maurice says: “I am convinced that history will
decide that it was the crossing of the Marne in the early hours of
the 9th by the British Army which turned the scale against Kluck and
saved Maunoury at a time of crisis.... That an army which on August
23 had been all but surrounded by an enemy who outnumbered it by two
to one should have fought its way out, retreated 170 miles, and then
immediately turned about and taken a decisive part in the battle
which changed the course of the campaign of 1914, is as wonderful an
achievement as is to be found in the history of war” (_Forty Days_, pp.
183–4).

[73] Hanotaux, _Histoire Illustrée_, vol. vii. pp. 132–8.

[74] _Idem_, pp. 172–5.

[75] Foch, _Des Principes de la Guerre_.

[76] M. Hanotaux (p. 76) regards this last part of the plan as “pure
folly,” as “a few thousand resolute men holding the defiles, crests,
and cliffs would break whole armies before Nancy was attained.”
This appears to be an exaggeration; but it is highly probable that
before Nancy, as before Mons and on other occasions at the beginning
of the war, the German Armies lost, through the traditional belief
in envelopment, what they might have gained by concentration on the
central attack.

[77] “Choses Vues à Metz,” _Revue Hebdomadaire_, December 18, 1915.
Colonel Feyler quotes from the _Lokal Anzeiger_ of Berlin the following
commentary on one of the Kaiser’s earlier appearances at the Front:
“The presence of the Emperor demonstrates clearly what a development
events have taken.... The Emperor would never have gone into France
if those responsible had envisaged the possibility of the German Army
being thrown back beyond the frontier. His presence among his troops in
enemy country will not fail to produce a deep impression in Germany as
well as abroad.”

[78] Quoted in _Un Village Lorrain en Août—Septembre 1914.
Réméréville_, by C. Berlet.

[79] Lt.-Col. Thomasson, _Le Revers_, introduction.

[80] Professor Friedrich Meinecke, of Freiburg University, in the
_Frankfürter Zeitung_, December 31, 1916.

INDEX

  Air Forces, German and Allied, 18, 27, 126, 140, 141, 167, 241–2

  Aisne, German stand on the, 187–8, 192–3

  Alsace, French advance and withdrawal in, 2, 29, 56, 212

  Amade, General d’, 28, 35, 65, 66, 72

  Americans urged to leave Paris, 82, 260

  Amiens occupied by Von Kluck, 72, 80

  Antwerp, 40, 44, 88, 105

  Ardennes, Belgian, French offensive into, 24, 31–3, 36

  Armaments, German and Allied compared, 14, 215

  Artillery, German and French, 17, 18, 215;
    at Namur and Maubeuge, 40, 257;
    in the battle of the Marne, 104, 126, 128, 146, 180, 201, 210

  Battlefield described, 106–9, 113–4, 143–4, 170–1, 203–7

  Bavarian Corps, Prince Ruprecht and, 30, 56, 61–3, 87, 197–213

  Belgium, the surprise in, 12–13, 21, 26–7, 34, 36, 38, 41, 45, 49,
          54, 215, 247–51

  Belgium’s contribution, 15, 27, 32, 37–41, 43–4

  Berthaut, General, defends the French Staff, 245–6

  Bloch, Jean de, forecasts of, 19, 242–4

  Briey coalfield, 33, 248, 249

  British Expeditionary Force, 34–44, 65–9, 80–1, 99, 118–26;
    advance to the Marne begun, 123;
    the Marne crossed, 131, 140–1;
    a determining factor, 185, 188–9, 224–5;
    M. Hanotaux’ criticisms, 253–5, 259;
    General Bonnal’s criticism, 265–6

  Bülow, General von, 32, 36–43, 66, 68–9, 81, 85, 100;
    compromised by Von Kluck’s retreat, 129, 134, 135–7;
    attack upon the French centre, 135, 142, 146–64;
    disorder and retreat, 165–8, 190–3

  Castelnau, General de, 27, 29–31, 62–3, 71, 104, 197–213, 248

  Cateau, Le, battle of, 1, 65–6, 68

  Cavalry, rôle of the, 16, 27, 66, 67, 104, 125, 134, 192–3, 264

  Châlons reoccupied, 193

  Charleroi, battle of, 37–43

  Charmes, Gap of, defence of, 31, 56, 61–3

  Château-Thierry reoccupied, 141

  Command, unity of, 25, 40, 216

  Concentration, first French, and re-grouping, 27–8, 251

  Coulommiers occupied by the British, 124

  Couronné, Grand, of Nancy, defence of, 63, 199, 205–12, 228–9, 269

  Crown Prince, the Imperial, 32–3, 63–4, 70–1, 89, 103, 169–72,
          178–82, 195

  Dubail, General, 27, 29, 30–1, 62–3, 104, 197–8, 200, 203

  Eastern defences, French, 12, 31, 44, 56, 61–4, 89–90, 170, 197, 229

  Emperor, the German, 84, 205, 209, 269

  Espérey, General Franchet d’, 37, 40–1, 100, 122;
    advance to the Marne begun, 137;
    Marne crossed, 141–2;
    helps Foch, 139, 142, 156;
    a determining factor in the victory, 189–91;
    on the Aisne, 193

  Fère Champènoise lost, 157;
    reoccupied, 167

  Foch, General, his teaching, 22, 24, 50, 160, 202;
    at head of 20th Corps, 30, 62;
    of 9th Army, 61, 69–70, 101, 138;
    battle of St. Gond, 142–54;
    the centre broken, 155–64;
    projected manœuvre and German retreat, 161–2, 165–8, 190, 193, 268

  Forces, German and Allied, compared, 15–16, 30, 32–3, 41, 65;
    on eve of the battle of the Marne, 97–105, 137, 144–5, 169, 171–2,
          176, 177–8, 198–201, 215–6, 240–1, 255

  Fortifications, modern, function of, 21, 229, 245

  French, Sir John, 18, 32, 35, 36, 39–43, 66–7, 69, 72, 73;
    communications with Gallieni and Joffre, 93–4, 121–3;
    battle order, 111;
    farthest south, 119, 121;
    the pursuit, 188;
    criticisms of, 253–6, 258, 265–6

  Gallieni, General, 47, 49, 77–9, 81, 83, 90, 133;
    order to 6th Army on September 4, 92–3;
    communications with Joffre and French, 93–4;
    battle of the Ourcq;
    his precipitancy, 116–7, 121–3, 134, 224;
    Generals Cherfils and Bonnal on, 262

  Gaps in German and Allied lines, 69, 85, 111, 136–7, 145, 166, 189,
          192–3, 225–6

  Generals removed, French, 20, 49, 52, 245;
    German, 83, 233

  Gond, St., marshes of, 143 _et seq._, 191, 226

  Guise, battle of, 68–9

  Haig, General Sir D., 37, 64, 66, 99, 141, 193

  Hanotaux, M., controverted, 41–3, 252–5

  Hausen, General von, and the Saxon Corps, 32–3, 35, 38–41, 69, 71,
          101, 135, 145, 155–9, 165–6, 171, 172, 175, 191, 193

  Heeringen, General von, 30, 61–3, 192, 197, 199, 200, 203–4

  Humbert, General, at Mondemont, 149, 152–4

  Italian Frontier, 15, 25, 28

  Joffre, General, moves 5th Army and B.E.F. to Sambre (August 16),
          35–6, 42;
    “most unexpected” news, 41;
    career and character, 46–53;
    second new plan of campaign, 54–61;
    tactical lessons, 58;
    watches eastern frontier, 62, 64, 197;
    forms 6th Army, 65;
    helps the B.E.F., 65–8;
    forms 9th Army, 70;
    extends the retreat, 73–5;
    orders for general offensive, 74–5, 93–7, 111, 121;
    M. Millerand on, 77;
    gains and superiority of forces, 104–5;
    and Gallieni’s precipitancy, 116, 119, 121–3;
    and the decisive movement between Kluck and Bülow, 135, 189;
    on the victory, 195–6;
    the author of the victory, 218–29, 233;
    before Commission of Inquiry, 249;
    General Lanrezac on, 256;
    M. Messimy on, 257

  Kitchener, Lord, and Field-Marshal French, 69, 258, 259

  Kluck, General von, 32, 38–44, 66–9, 72–3, 79 _et seq._, 97;
    withdraws Corps across Marne against Maunoury, 118, 122–4;
    his farthest south positions, 119–120;
    results of retreat, 135–7, 141, 185;
    reaches the Aisne, 187;
    his two fatal movements, 220–2;
    Kluck and Bülow, 261

  Landwehr and Ersatz employed on front, 15–16, 128, 199

  Langle de Cary, General de, 28, 32–3, 48, 70, 102, 169–75, 193

  Lanrezac, General, 27, 32, 35–43, 49, 67–8, 250, 255–6, 258

  Launois, battle of, 70

  Lille, fortress of, 34, 249, 252

  Longwy, siege of, 33–4, 44

  Lorraine, first French offensive in, 29–31

  Machine guns, 18, 58, 115, 117, 253

  Maud’huy, General, 30, 100, 138, 140, 193

  Mangin, General, 37, 100, 138

  Maps, German, evidence of the, 240

  Maubeuge, 34, 44, 87, 105, 252, 256–7

  Maunoury, General, 32, 63–5, 72–3, 77, 80–1, 85, 93, 97, 116, 122,
          124, 126–30, 132–4, 184–8, 248

  Michel, General, and the French Staff, 47, 49, 248

  Mondemont, 143–4, 148–54

  Mons, battle of, 37–43, 253–6

  Montmirail reoccupied, 140

  Morhange–Sarrebourg, battle of, 30–1

  Namur, siege and fall of, 27, 38, 40

  Nancy bombarded, 211

  Nivelle, Colonel, 127

  Offences, German, against rules of war, 80, 117, 124, 192, 194–5,
          211, 212–3, 267

  Offensive, French doctrine of the, 21–24, 58, 201–2, 216, 218,
          245–7, 251

  —— from the Somme–Laon–Craonne, proposed, 58–60, 65, 71

  Ourcq, battle of the, 114–8, 126–35, 184–7

  Paris, the defence of, 55, 73, 76–9, 259–60;
    the German dilemma, 82–8, 109, 221

  Pau, General, 29, 47, 48, 198, 248

  Percin, General, 248, 252

  Petain, General, 100, 138

  Plans of campaign:
    the German, 10–14;
    disturbed after Guise, 68–9;
    the dilemma of Paris–Verdun, 84–91, 109–10, 214 _et seq._, 239–40;
    the French, 28–9, 31, 36, 49–50, 54–61, 73–5, 88–9, 105, 110,
          216 _et seq._

  Proyart, action at, 68

  Railways, efficiency of French, 15, 57, 241

  Reserves, German and Allied, 16, 21, 198–9, 245

  Retreat, the long, scenes on, 1–9, 72–3, 78, 237–8;
    necessity of, 54–5;
    advantages of, 57;
    prolonged, 72–4;
    end of, 81, 109, 119;
    general German, ordered September 9, 185

  Revigny lost, 179;
    recovered, 194

  Rheims reoccupied and bombarded, 192

  Russian victories, influence of, 44, 75, 87

  Sambre, German victory on the, 36–43

  Sarrail, General, 48, 89, 103, 169–72, 175–82, 195

  Sermaize, destruction of, 194

  Smith-Dorrien, General, 38, 64, 66, 99, 141

  Taxi-cabs and the battle of the Ourcq, 130–1

  Toul, German advance toward, 208

  Trenches:
    German superiority, 18, 31, 33, 35, 58, 114, 217, 253;
    Field-Marshal French on, 18, 244;
    Castelnau’s defences, 201–2

  Troyon, Fort, defence of, 180–3

  Verdun, 32, 56, 71, 74, 89, 108, 169–71, 176–82, 195, 221

  Vosges, fighting in the, 203–4

  War Council, French Higher, 47–51

  “Wireless,” German, picked up, 134

  Würtemberg, Duke Albrecht of, 32, 70, 102, 169–75, 193

PRINTED BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LTD.
EDINBURGH

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

In this version of this eBook, dashes between multiple locations and
within numeric ranges are shown as en-dashes (–), which are longer than
hyphens (-) but shorter than double-em-dashes (——), which are used
for visual clarity where the original book used single em-dashes as
delimiters.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Page 99: “Ronar’ch’s” is a misprint for “Ronarc’h’s”.

Page 272: The Index reference to General Gallieni and the battle of the
Ourcq did not include a page number.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Battle of the Marne, by George Herbert Perris