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.”
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
