The Battle of the Marne. George Herbert Perris
whole mass mobilised in August 1914, one quarter was sent to the East. The remainder provided, in the last week of August, for employment against Belgium and France, an effective force of about 80 infantry divisions—45 active, 27 reserve, mixed Ersatz brigades presently grouped in 6 divisions, and 4 Landwehr divisions in course of formation,3 with about 8 divisions of cavalry,—about a million and a half of men, for the most part young, highly trained and disciplined, including 115,000 re-engaged non-commissioned officers (double the strength of the French company cadres). Of the prodigious mass of this west-European force, about a half was directed through Belgium, and—essential fact—nearly a third passed to the west of the Meuse.
The French, on the other hand, admirably served by their railways,4 put at once into the field 86 divisions (47 active, 25 reserve, 12 Territorial, and 2 Moroccan), of which 66 were at the front, with 7 divisions of cavalry, on the eve of the critical battles of the Sambre and the Gap of Charmes, in the third week of August. Before the battle of the Marne, all French active troops had been withdrawn from the Italian frontier, only a few Territorials being left there. An exact numerical comparison cannot yet be made. It seems certain, however, that, including five British and six Belgian divisions, in the whole field the Allies were not outnumbered. There was no great difference in cavalry.
But there was a vital difference in the infantry organisation, as to which the French Command had been completely deceived. Not only had it failed to foresee the creation of brigades of Ersatz troops (to say nothing of the Landwehr divisions which appeared in September): it had never contemplated the use of reserve formations as troops of shock. In the French Army, the reserve battalions, regiments, and divisions were so many poor relations—inadequate in younger officers and non-coms, insufficiently armed (especially in artillery), insufficiently trained and disciplined, and, accordingly, destined only for lesser tasks. When, as occurred almost at once under pressure of the successful example of the enemy, reserve divisions and groups of divisions had to be thrown into the front line, the homogeneity of the armies and the confidence of their chiefs suffered. Meanwhile, realising a plan initiated in 1913, the German Staff had created 16 army corps of reserves, of which 13 were used on the Western front, where they proved as solid as the regulars, and were given tasks as responsible in all parts of the field. The main mass of attack, therefore, consisted not of 22, but 34, army corps—a difference larger than the strength of the two armies of Kluck and Bülow to which the great enveloping movement was entrusted.5 Without this supplementary force—the result not of numbers available, but of superior training and organisation—the invasion could hardly have been attempted, or would assuredly have failed. On the other hand, as we shall see, had it been anticipated, the French plan of campaign must have been profoundly modified.
The balance in armament was not less uneven. The French 3-inch field-gun from the first justified the highest expectations of its rapidity and accuracy of fire. But in pieces of heavier weight and longer range the inferiority was flagrant. While Frenchmen had been counting their “75” against heavier but less handy German guns, while they were throwing all the gravamen of the problem of national defence on three-years’ service, the enemy was developing a set of instruments which immensely reinforced his man-power. Instead of resting content with light guns, he set himself to make heavier types more mobile. The peace establishment of a German active corps included 160, a French only 120, guns. It was, however, in weight, rather than numbers, that the difference lay. Every German corps had 16 heavy 5·9-inch mortars. The French had no heavy artillery save a few batteries of Rimailho 6·1-inch rapid-fire pieces, and a few fortress cannon. In addition to 642 six-piece batteries of horse and field artillery (3·1-inch field-gun and 4·1-inch light howitzer), the German armies had, in all, before the mobilisation, 400 four-piece batteries of 5·9-inch howitzers and 8·2-inch mortars. The German artillery alone at the outset had aviators to correct their fire. “Thus,” says General Malleterre, speaking from experience in the long retreat6 —“thus is explained the terrible surprise that our troops suffered when they found themselves overwhelmed at the first contact by avalanches of projectiles, fired from invisible positions that our artillery could not reach. For there was this of unexpected in the German attack, that, before the infantry assault, the deployment of units was preceded by showers of shells of all calibres, storms of iron and fire arresting and upsetting our shaken lines.”
In air services, in petrol transport, and in the art of field defences, also, the French were outmatched. Aviation was essentially their sport and science; but the army had shown little interest in it, and had made only a beginning in its two main functions—general reconnaissance and the ranging of artillery fire.7 Thus ill-prepared for a modern large-scale offensive, France had not acquired the material or the tactic of a strategical defence. The light and rapid “75” had been thought of almost exclusively as an arm of attack, in which weight and range were now become the master properties. Its remarkable qualities for defence began to appear in the unfortunate actions presently to be traced, and were only fully understood many months later, when “barrage” fire had been elaborated. The mitrailleuse was essentially a French invention; but its greatest value—in defence—was not yet appreciated. The numerical provision of machine-guns was the same as that of the German Army (though differently organised). It was owing to a more considerable difference of tactical ideas that a legend grew up of an actual German superiority in this arm. In the French Army, all defensive methods were prejudiced; in the German, they were not. The deep trenches that might have saved much of Belgium and northern France were scouted, until it was too late, as incompatible with the energy and pride of a great army. The lessons from recent wars drawn, among others, by the Russian State Councillor, Jean de Bloch, fifteen years before,8 went for nothing. “It is easy to be ‘wise after the event,’” writes Field-Marshal French; “but I cannot help wondering why none of us realised what the most modern rifle, the machine-gun, motor traction, the aeroplane, and wireless telegraphy would bring about. It seems so simple when judged by actual results.... I feel sure that, had we realised the true effect of modern appliances of war in August 1914, there would have been no retreat from Mons.”9
While the German armies were born and bred in the old offensive spirit, their masters had seen the difficulties created by the development of modern gunfire. With a tireless and pitiless concentration of will, the men had been organised, trained, and in every essential way provided, to carry out an aggressive plan of campaign. Yet their generals did not despise scientific field-works, even in the days of their first intoxication, as witness any French story of the battle of Morhange, or this characteristic note on the fighting in the region of Neufchateau and Palliseul: “The enemy, whom our aeroplanes and cavalry had not been able to discover, had a powerful defensive organisation: fields of wire entanglement on the ground; wide, deep holes concealing pikes and sword blades; lines of wire 2 yards high, barbed with nails and hooks. There were also, unfortunately, in certain of our corps, insufficiencies of instruction and execution, imprudences committed under fire, over-bold deployments leading to precipitate retreats, a lack of co-ordination between the infantry and the artillery. The enemy profited by our inexperience of the sort of defence he had organised.”10 For the German soldiers at the outset of the war, this was only a passing necessity. The principle of the instant strategical offensive well expressed the spirit of an authoritarian Government bent on aggression, of its constituency, at once jealous and servile, and its war-machine, sustained by a feverishly developed industrialism. None of these conditions obtained under the Third Republic. Of the weaknesses of the French Army in tactical science, one result is sufficiently tragic proof; in the first month of the war, 33 army corps and divisional generals were removed from their commands.11
It was not the fault, but the glory, of France that she lived upon a higher level, to worthier ends, than her old enemy. But if we find reason to suspect that, the nation having accepted the burden of taxation and armed service, its arms and preparation were not the best of their kind, that a superstitious fidelity to conservative sentiments
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.
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.
For fuller explanations on this point, see
General Verraux (
M. Victor Giraud, a competent historical writer, in his
“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.”
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
“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
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
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
M. Victor Giraud, in his
Pierre Dauzet,
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).