The Guns of August (74 page)

At Bar-sur-Aube, Joffre rose from under his shade tree. Without waiting for the replies of Franchet d’Esperey and Foch, he had made up his mind. He walked into the Operations Bureau and ordered an Instruction drafted “to extend the local action envisaged by the Paris garrison to all the forces of the Allied left.” Action was to begin on September 7. Instantly a great calm succeeded feverish discussion. The retreat was over. The moment to turn had come. Everyone fell to work preparing the detailed orders. To reduce the risk of leaks to the enemy it was decided not to issue the orders until the last possible moment.

It was then six o’clock, and at six-thirty Joffre went in to dinner to which he had invited two Japanese officers. While at table word was quietly whispered to him that Franchet
d’Esperey had persuaded the British to join an offensive; important papers had arrived from the Fifth Army. Meals were sacred and international courtesy no less, especially as the Allies were engaged at the time in optimistic negotiations for Japanese military assistance in Europe. Joffre could not interrupt dinner but he committed the impropriety of “hurrying through” it. When he read Franchet d’Esperey’s crisp answer it was like being pushed into water and forced to swim. In a tone hardly less abrupt than his “march or drop dead,” d’Esperey laid down the precise times, places, and conditions of battle by the three armies, Fifth, Sixth, and British. It could open on September 6; the British Army would “execute a change of direction” on condition that its left was supported by the Sixth Army; the Sixth must reach a certain line along the Ourcq at a certain time, “if not the British will not march”; the Fifth would continue its retreat next day until south of the Grand Morin and be in position on the day after for frontal attack upon Kluck’s Army while the British and Maunoury attacked his flank. “Vigorous participation” by Foch’s Army against the German Second Army was a necessary condition.

“My army can fight on September 6,” Franchet d’Esperey concluded, “but is not in brilliant condition.” This was a bare statement of the truth. When later Franchet d’Esperey told General Hache of the IIIrd Corps that attack was set for next morning, Hache “looked as if he had been hit on the head with a club.”

“It’s mad!” he protested. “The troops are exhausted. They don’t sleep or eat—they’ve been marching and fighting for two weeks! We need arms, ammunition, equipment. Everything is in terrible shape. Morale is bad. I’ve had to replace two generals of division. The Staff is worth nothing and good for nothing. If we had time to refit behind the Seine .…”

Like Gallieni, d’Esperey believed there was no choice. His immediate and bold response, like Gallieni’s, proved a deciding factor and one that probably would not have been forthcoming from his predecessor. Other unreliable commanders were also weeded out. General Mas de Latrie was removed that day to be replaced by the dashing General de Maud’huy, taken from Castelnau’s Army. By now the Fifth Army had undergone the replacement of its commander, 3 out of 5 corps commanders, 7 out of 13 divisional generals, and a proportionate number of generals of brigade.

Encouraged by the “intelligent audacity” of d’Esperey’s reply, Joffre told the Operations Staff to make the battle orders conform to his conditions of place, although retaining September 7 as the date. He received an equally affirmative reply from Foch who announced himself simply as “ready to attack.”

Henry Wilson on reaching British Headquarters found a dismaying answer. Murray, without even waiting for the return of Sir John French, had issued orders for a further retreat of ten to fifteen miles in a southwesterly direction to begin that night—“It is simply heartbreaking.” Wilson also found Murray’s memorandum of Gallieni’s plan. He immediately sent off a wire to Paris saying, “Marshal not yet returned” and reporting the proposed retreat. He seems not to have reported it to d’Esperey, perhaps in the hope of persuading Sir John French to cancel it.

When Sir John returned, he walked into an unnerving confusion of plans and proposals. There was a letter from Joffre written prior to the day’s events, proposing British action on the Seine; there was Gallieni’s proposal to Murray; there was Wilson’s agreement with Franchet d’Esperey; and there was Murray himself earnestly whispering retreat. Bewildered by so many calls for action, and unable to decide which took precedence over what, Sir John took refuge in no action at all. He let Murray’s orders stand and informed Huguet for the benefit of all French petitioners that, “owing to the continual changes,” he preferred to “restudy the situation before deciding on action.”

At about the same hour Gallieni returned to Paris from Melun. He found Wilson’s telegram and also one from Joffre sent at 12:20
P.M.
confirming the preference expressed over the phone at noon that Maunoury’s attack should take place south of the Marne on September 7. This was not new, but together
with Wilson’s message it seems to have had decisive effect on Gallieni. Time was escaping and Kluck advancing. He saw his moment slipping away, and determined to force the issue. This time he called GQG himself. Joffre tried to evade him by putting Belin on the telephone, but Gallieni insisted on speaking personally to the Generalissimo. According to a record of the conversation made by Joffre’s aide-de-camp, Gallieni said, “The Sixth Army had made arrangements to attack north of the Marne and it appeared to him impossible to modify the general direction to which the army was already committed, and he insisted that the attack should be launched without any change in the conditions of time and place already laid down.”

Confronted voice to voice by his former superior, Joffre may have felt again the moral authority that a man of Gallieni’s commanding temperament exerted. Or, as he afterward claimed, he may have felt forced, though “unwillingly,” to advance the general offensive to an earlier day for fear that Maunoury’s movements, precipitated by Gallieni, would disclose the whole French maneuver to the enemy. He had assurances of readiness to fight from both Foch and Franchet d’Esperey and he thought the latter, by the spell of his magic energy, had secured a similar commitment from the British. He did not know it had become unpinned. In any event he authorized or acquiesced in attack by the Sixth Army north of the Marne and agreed to begin general action on September 6, “as Gallieni desired.” Gallieni instantly, at 8:30
P.M.
, confirmed his marching orders to Maunoury, who was already moving. At GQG the staff revised the positions of attack to suit the advanced date. At 10:00
P.M.
, two hours after Moltke signed the Order halting the German right wing, Joffre signed General Order No. 6.

“The time has come,” it began in full consciousness of a historic moment, “to profit by the adventurous position of the German First Army and concentrate against that army all efforts of the Allied Armies of the extreme left.” Movements prescribed for the Sixth, Fifth, and British Armies were those
of Franchet d’Esperey’s reply. Separate orders to join the offensive were issued to the Third and Fourth Armies.

The night was not over. Hardly was the Order signed when word came from Huguet of Sir John French’s refusal to ratify any plan for joint action and of his desire to “restudy” the situation. Joffre was stunned. The momentous decision had been taken; orders were on their way; in thirty-six hours the battle to save France would begin. The ally whose participation had been planned for the sake, as Foch once said, of a single dead British soldier, but who had been left by a trick of fate holding a vital place in the line, was backing out once again. Because of the time required for encoding and dispatching, the orders were not intended to reach the armies until next morning. As the only means of persuasion he could think of, Joffre sent a special copy of Order No. 6 by personal messenger to British Headquarters. When the officer reached Melun at 3:00
A.M.
, the three corps of the BEF had already begun the night march of retreat ordered by Murray that afternoon.

The enemy, too, at dawn of September 5 was on the march too soon. Thrusting forward in his effort to roll up the French flank, Kluck already had his army on the roads before Moltke’s orders to turn and face the danger on his flank arrived by wireless at 7:00
A.M.
Four corps, spread out over thirty miles of country, were headed for the Grand Morin. Kluck did not stop them. He either did not believe or did not heed the warning about a French concentration of troops on his flank. Assuming that the German Armies “were everywhere advancing victoriously along the whole front”—it was the Germans’ habit to believe their own communiqués—he did not think the enemy could have forces available to threaten his flank. He, too, had begun to notice signs that the French retreat was perhaps not altogether disorganized and so felt it all the more urgent that no letup of pressure should give the enemy time to halt and “regain freedom of maneuver as well as offensive spirit.” Disdaining Moltke’s directive, Kluck advanced with his army, moving his own headquarters twenty-five miles forward to Rebais between the two Morins.
By evening troops of the German First Army reached a line within ten to fifteen miles of the BEF and Franchet d’Esperey’s Army, with outposts less than five miles apart. It was to be their last day of advance.

A representative from OHL with plenary powers came to Kluck’s headquarters that evening. With unhappy experience both of wireless and Kluck’s temperament, Moltke sent his Chief of Intelligence, Colonel Hentsch, on a 175-mile drive from Luxembourg to explain in person the reasons for the new Order and to see that it was carried out. To their “amazement,” Kluck and his staff learned that Rupprecht’s Armies were held up in a deadlocked battle before the French fortress line, as was the Crown Prince’s Army before Verdun. Colonel Hentsch described the evidence of French troop movements which had led OHL to calculate that “very strong enemy forces” were being shifted westward in a threat to the German flank. It was under these circumstances that OHL dictated the horrid necessity of retirement. The First Army must return north of the Marne. Though it was little consolation, Colonel Hentsch said “the movement could be made at leisure; no special haste was necessary.”

Disturbing confirmation came from the IVth Reserve Corps which had been left as flank guard north of the Marne. It reported encountering and engaging in combat an enemy force of at least two and a half divisions supported by heavy artillery. This was, of course, part of Maunoury’s Army moving forward toward the Ourcq. Although the French attack was “successfully repulsed,” the Commander of the IVth Reserve had ordered a retreat as soon as it was dark.

Kluck gave in. The extra distance he had dragged his army forward in the last two days since crossing the Marne had now to be retraced. Orders were drafted to begin the retirement of two corps next morning, September 6, with the others following later. After the march he had made from Liège to a level with Paris, it was a bitter moment. If he had stayed in echelon behind Bülow as ordered, if he had even halted his army that morning at seven o’clock, he would have been in position to face the threat to his flank with his whole army together.
According to General Kuhl, his Chief of Staff, “Neither OHL nor the First Army Staff had the remotest idea that an immediate offensive by the whole French Army was imminent .… Not a sign, not a word from prisoners, not a newspaper paragraph gave warning.” If Kluck did not know what lay ahead, there was one thing he could not help but know: to break off pursuit and pull back now, with four days left of the German schedule, was not a prelude to victory.

September 5 seemed a darker day to the Allies. With nothing but defeats so far, their representatives met in London that morning to sign the Pact binding each other “not to conclude any separate peace in the course of the present war.”

In Paris, Maunoury asked Gallieni, “In case we should be overwhelmed, our line of retreat will be …?” His eyes clouding over, Gallieni answered, “Nowhere.” Preparing for possible disaster, he issued secret orders to each regional commander of the Paris camp to report all resources in his district which must be destroyed rather than fall into the hands of the enemy. Even bridges in the heart of the city like the Pont Neuf and the Pont Alexandre were to be blown up. “A void” must be left in front of the enemy in case he should break through, he told General Hirschauer.