The Marne, 1914

by Holger H. Herwig

  THE DECISION IN THE campaign in the west still lay ahead, but it would be fought by a much-reduced German field army. For Moltke and his deputy chief of staff, Hermann von Stein, panicked by the unexpectedly rapid Russian advance in the east, stripped Bülow’s Second Army of Max von Gallwitz’s Guard Reserve Corps and Hausen’s Third Army of Plüskow’s XI Corps to derail the Russian steamroller. As the two corps marched east from Namur, Moltke, in what he pathetically called a “counter-movement,” ordered Max von Boehn’s IX Reserve Corps to depart Schleswig-Holstein and join Kluck’s First Army.64 Stein had vetoed a suggestion by Wilhelm Groener, chief of the Field Railway Section of the General Staff, to send Bavarian I Corps and Prussian XXI Corps from Lorraine to East Prussia instead, with the revealing comment, “One cannot expect Bavarians to defend East Prussia.”65 As well, Moltke and Stein ordered Kluck to leave Hans von Beseler’s III Corps to cover Fortress Antwerp and one brigade of Hans von Gronau’s IV Reserve Corps to garrison Brussels. Finally, Bülow had detached Hans von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps as well as one brigade of Einem’s VII Corps to lay siege to the French garrison of fifty thousand men at Maubeuge.66

  Heat and exhaustion as well as almost uninterrupted combat had further weakened the two “strike armies.” During the entire month of August, Kluck’s First Army of 217,384 soldiers had lost 7,869 men wounded as well as 2,863 killed or missing. Slightly less than eight thousand men had reported sick—mostly from heatstroke and dehydration, but also from foot sores due to the extended march of some four hundred kilometers in thirty days.67 Bülow’s Second Army of 199,486 soldiers listed 12,151 wounded and 5,061 killed or missing for August. Almost nine thousand soldiers had reported sick for much the same reasons as those in First Army. There had been three suicides in each army.68 But if one takes into account the figures for just the last ten days of August—that is, the period of the heaviest fighting in the Battle of the Frontiers—the totals for First Army were 4,932 wounded, 2,145 killed or missing, and 2,567 reported sick; and for Second Army, 8,052 wounded, 3,516 killed or missing, and 4,125 reported sick.69 Paris was still more than 130 kilometers away.

  Joffre was by far the principal loser. On 23 August, he flippantly notified War Minister Messimy that he had “terminated” his strategic plan.70 In fact, that plan lay in tatters—at the cost of 260,000 casualties (including 75,000 killed) and the loss of 83 percent of France’s iron ore, 62 percent of its cast iron, and 60 percent of its steel production. French First and Second armies had attacked in Lorraine on 14 August; six days later, a German counterattack had driven them back. Third and Fourth armies had attacked in the Ardennes on 21 August; two days later, they had staggered back to their jump-off positions. Fifth Army had advanced to the Sambre on 20 August; three days later, it had begun its retreat to Givet. Joffre had been decisively beaten in the Battle of the Frontiers and had lost the initiative to the Germans.

  He took no responsibility.71 Both at the time and subsequently in his memoirs, Joffre insisted that he had placed “the main body of his army against the most sensitive point of the enemy,” and that he had secured “numerical superiority at this point.” But the troops, despite this “numerical superiority,” had not displayed the “offensive qualities” he had expected of them. Worse, there had been “many individual failures” and “grave shortcomings” among his commanders. All too many had not “understood” his Field Regulation; all too many had failed to display the Napoleonic feu sacré; and all too many had shown themselves to be cautious instead of bold. Messimy for a second time in two weeks went so far as to demand that ineffectual commanders (“old fossils”) be summarily executed.72 A shocked President Poincaré recalled his liaison officer to GQG for a dose of reality. “Is it defeat?” he bluntly asked Colonel Marie-Jean Pénelon. The reply was surprisingly* straightforward, “Yes, Mister President.”73 That Sunday, 23 August 1914, childhood memories of 1870–71 could not have been far from the mind of the statesman born in Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine, in 1860.

  The greatest losers by far, of course, were the people and the land of Belgium. The country lay in ruins. Villages had been reduced to rubble and ashes. Hundreds of civilians had been summarily executed for reportedly firing on German troops, and tens of thousands had been forcefully deported to Germany. An endless sea of refugees, pulling their few remaining possessions in ancient small carts, flowed aimlessly away from the fighting fronts. Giant shell craters pockmarked the landscape. Bridges, canals, railroad tracks, and telegraph wires had been destroyed. Crops were rotting in the fields. The bloated or blasted corpses of horses and cows were left in the sun. Will Irwin, an American reporter for Collier’s Weekly, was struck by the grayness of “earth and land and sky”: “gray transport wagons,” “gray motorcycles,” “gray biplanes,” and “gray machines of men.” Ever onward the German “gray machine of death” rolled. Irwin’s most lasting memory was a prosaic one: “And over it all lay a smell of which I have never heard mentioned in any book on war—the smell of a half-million un-bathed men, the stench of a menagerie raised to the nth power. That smell lay for days over every town through which the Germans passed.”74

  * Le borinage refers to the coal-mining district of Hainaut Province in southwest Belgium extending to the French border. The term came from borin or borain, pejorative French names for “buddy.”

  * When Apollo, the Greek god of sunlight and son of Zeus, granted Cassandra the gift of prophecy and she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions.

  * All actions on French soil are given in French (GMT) time.

  * “Why have they come here? But, to fish in the river!”

  * The extent to which the troops adhered to Kitchener’s instruction to keep on guard against “excesses” and “temptations, both in wine and women,” cannot be accurately determined.

  * “Forward!”

  * No record of this order was ever found in the German archives, and Wilhelm II after the war vehemently denied having issued such a command. The British press made a meal of the quote—apparently “invented” by Frederick Maurice in the British War Office. The soldiers of the BEF proudly adopted the moniker Old Contemptibles.

  * Not to be confused with the future air ace (“Red Baron”) of the same name, then serving with German cavalry in East Prussia.

  * The colonel had earned the nickname April Smiles for his ability to put a positive spin on any news, no matter how bad.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SQUANDERED CLIMACTERICS

  One must never fail to recognize that it is difficult to free oneself from a concept once it is conceived and to throw over board an entire operations plan once it appears that the presuppositions on which it is based are no longer valid.

  —GERMAN GENERAL STAFF RIDE 1905/06

  THE BATTLE OF THE FRONTIERS WAS OVER BY 24 AUGUST. FOR nearly two weeks, two million-man armies had been locked in murderous combat along a front roughly three hundred kilometers wide. There had been planned offensives that quickly degenerated into wild melees in Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, the Ardennes, and the triangle of the Sambre-Meuse rivers. There had been unexpected skirmishes and unwanted surprises as the opposing forces ran into one another headlong in rugged terrain. There had been severe “wastage” due to senseless massed infantry assaults. Artillery and machine guns had proved utterly lethal. France and Germany had each suffered roughly 260,000 casualties.

  In boxing terms, the two contenders had sparred for four rounds—at Nancy, Liège, Namur-Charleroi, and Mons. They had landed, and absorbed, jabs and light blows. They had inflicted black eyes, cut lips, and swollen cheeks on each other. But there had been no massive combination punches to the body or the head, no knockout blow. The Germans stuck to their game plan—to remain on the offensive everywhere and to knock out their opponent by either a left hook in Lorraine or a right hook at Paris, or both. They circled their prey waiting for an opening. The French had come out looking to land a knockout punch in the first two
rounds—in Alsace-Lorraine and then in the Ardennes. When that approach failed, they adopted a “rope-a-dope”* strategy, constantly retreating, conserving energy, allowing the opponent to strike them repeatedly in hopes of tiring him out, and waiting for an opportunity to counterattack.

  Round Five had the potential to be deadly—to the French. Alexander von Kluck’s First Army was chasing the retreating British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the right flank. Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth and Seventh armies were resting and recuperating from a week of constant combat on the left flank, and preparing to drive past Nancy and across the Meurthe River. Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia’s Fifth Army and Duke Albrecht of Württemberg’s Fourth Army had given the French center a terrible pounding in the Battle of the Ardennes. The war’s center of gravity now shifted once more to Charles Lanrezac’s French Fifth Army. Pointing northeast into the apex (Namur) of the right angle formed by the Sambre and Meuse rivers, Lanrezac was the anchor of the French position. If he failed to hold the line, it would spell doom not only for Sir John French and the BEF on his left, but especially for Pierre Ruffey’s Third Army and Fernand de Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army on his right, which had been bludgeoned and was now pinned down in the Ardennes by German Fifth and Fourth armies. And, of course, for Paris.

  LANREZAC HAD ALREADY CROSSED swords with Karl von Bülow at Charleroi and had come out the loser. German Second Army had chased French Fifth Army south across the Sambre and by 25–26 August was making a major effort to encircle it from the northwest. But Lanrezac’s problems did not end with Bülow. For on his right flank, another German army was driving west, and it posed the greatest potential threat: Max von Hausen’s Third Army. It was a force to be reckoned with: Saxon XII and XIX corps as well as XII Reserve Corps and Prussian XI Corps, a total of 113,000 infantry, 71,000 cavalry, 602 guns, and 198 machine guns.1 For much of August, Third Army had advanced through the Belgian province of Namur on the left flank of Bülow’s Second Army—both forming the spokes that connected the hub of Fourth and Fifth armies in the Ardennes to the outer rim of First Army in Flemish Brabant. After ordering Hausen to surrender Otto von Plüskow’s XI Corps to Second Army to besiege Namur, Army Supreme Command (OHL) on 20 August ordered him to head for the line Namur-Givet with his three remaining corps. His instructions were to support Second Army’s advance west of Namur and to coordinate his actions with Prussia’s senior field commander. Ahead lay the right flank of French Fifth Army.

  Hausen’s advance was fraught with both promise and danger. If he and Bülow drove home their attacks on Fifth Army, the Prussian from the north and the Saxon from the east, Lanrezac’s forces could be taken between two pincers and crushed.2 But if either Bülow or Hausen failed to press the enemy hard at all times and allowed Lanrezac freedom of action, there was a danger that especially Hausen’s Third Army could be driven by French Fifth Army against Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army in the Ardennes. Expert coordination between Bülow and Hausen and their respective staffs was essential to success. The man whose job it was to provide this, Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke, was still at Koblenz, 280 kilometers from the front.

  Hausen took his time. It was stiflingly hot. The roads were narrow and dusty. The local population was hostile. In town after town, from Somme-Leuze to Erezée, and from Champlon to Hargimont, his commanders reported finding vast caches of revolvers, ammunition, and dynamite, as well as destroyed railroad tracks, telegraph wires, and bridges. They notified Hausen of “cowardly attacks” on the men of Third Army by the local militia, the Garde civique. In response, Hausen took estate owners, priests, and mayors hostage, burned manor houses and urban dwellings, and summarily executed those caught obstructing his advance.3

  Beginning on 17 August, Bülow almost daily badgered Hausen and his chief of staff, Ernst von Hoeppner, to drive their right wing across the Meuse River and thus secure Second Army’s left flank. On 20 August, Bülow frantically cabled: “Where 3. Army today?” Coordinated action by Second and Third armies was “urgently desired.” But the next day, he sent a mixed signal: “2. Army will not attack today.”4 What was it to be, Hausen must have wondered, a combined-armies attack or individual operations? And where was the controlling hand of Moltke?5

  As Third Army approached Achêne on the road to Dinant on the afternoon of 21 August, Hausen and Hoeppner called a meeting of their corps and division commanders. All agreed that Dinant was a formidable obstacle. There, the Meuse flowed deep and broad and swift in a gorge that ran from south to north across their path of advance. Its eastern shore consisted of a ridge of high, heavily wooded hills; its western bank, of a precipitous hundred-meter-high rock cliff topped by a massive stone citadel.* The city of seven thousand inhabitants was strung out along the west bank of the river and dominated by the onion-domed Cathedral of Notre Dame. French forces—Hausen suspected two army corps—occupied both banks of the river. Three major roads fed into Dinant from the east. The French could be counted on to blow up the Meuse bridges as soon as Third Army hoved into view.

  It was further agreed at the meeting that Dinant could be taken only by way of a frontal assault. Moltke, having received news that five French corps had begun a concentrated attack in the Ardennes, instructed Hausen to coordinate his assault with Bülow for 4 AM† on 23 August. Accordingly, Hausen moved his headquarters up to Castle Leignon, fifteen kilometers east of Dinant, and pushed Karl d’Elsa’s XII Corps and Maximilian von Laffert’s XIX Corps straight toward the city. Hans von Kirchbach’s XII Reserve Corps was to continue its advance on Third Army’s right flank in place of XI Corps, recently dispatched to Namur.6 Saxon field artillery began to “soften” Dinant for the infantry assault. Engineers gathered barges and brought up pontoon bridges to span the Meuse when the French, as expected, blew up its bridges. The weather continued hot and dry.

  At 10:30 AM on 22 August, Bülow was back with another request: “Rapid advance 3. Army with right wing against Mettet urgently desired.”7 In plain language, Bülow demanded that Hausen shift the direction of his attack to the north of Dinant against Louis Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps at Mettet. Hausen and Hoeppner spent the rest of the day drafting new attack orders. Then, at 10 PM, they received startling news from Fourth Army. Erich Tülff von Tschepe und Weidenbach, commanding VIII Corps on Duke Albrecht’s right flank, reported to his northern neighbor, Laffert of Hausen’s XIX Corps, that the French seemed to have only three cavalry divisions in the area west of Dinant.8 Albrecht’s Fourth Army had turned southward to ward off the attack by Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army and hence could not take advantage of the opening. Tülff strongly suggested that Hausen’s Third Army bypass Dinant to the south, cross the Meuse, and drive a wedge between the joint of French Fifth and Fourth armies. Lanrezac’s Fifth Army of 193 battalions and 692 guns might thus be crushed between the pincers of Bülow’s Second Army and Hausen’s Third Army.

  GERMAN THIRD ARMY’S ASSAULT ON DINANT

  What to do? Obey the wishes of Prussia’s senior field commander? Heed the advice of a royal prince’s corps commander? Seize the moment? Hausen prevaricated for much of the night. Then, at 4:50 AM on 23 August, fifty-seven Saxon artillery batteries opened fire on Dinant. It was a dreary, foggy morning. Hausen’s spirits were raised immensely at 7:35 AM when he finally received instructions from Moltke: “Available units to be taken across Maas south of Givet.” The news from Koblenz, Hausen recorded in the war diary, “produced great joy at Army Supreme Command 3.”9 It was one of those rare moments of opportunity that make history’s great captains. At hand lay a golden opportunity to cut off Lanrezac’s retreat from the Sambre and envelop French Fifth Army. Within the hour, Hausen ordered Laffert’s XIX Corps to dispatch ten infantry battalions, nine artillery batteries, and three cavalry squadrons under Götz von Olenhusen south to Givet and on to Fumay, there to cross the Meuse and advance against Lanrezac’s right flank.10

  Hausen’s bold action, of course, split his army into three groups. While Olenhusen’s force�
�mainly 40th Infantry Division (ID)—marched off toward Givet, Kirchbach’s XII Reserve Corps continued its advance north of Dinant toward Houx. That left a third group, d’Elsa’s XII Corps, to storm the narrow medieval streets of Dinant and to seize the heights between Haut-le-Wastia, Sommière, and Onhaye.11

  In daylong bitter fighting, Horst von der Planitz’s 32d ID, followed by Alexander von Larisch’s 23d Reserve Infantry Division (RID), crossed the Meuse on barges and pontoon bridges north of Dinant at Leffe. Karl von Lindemann’s 23d ID advanced south of Dinant via Les Rivages. The French defense had been severely gutted as Lanrezac, hard-pressed by Bülow south of the Sambre, had ordered Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps to turn northwest to come to the aid of Gilbert Defforges’s X Corps, heavily battered by the German Guard Corps at Arsimont. René Boutegourd’s 51st RID and two brigades of Henri Deligny’s 2d ID were all that stood between the Saxons and victory.

  Fighting quickly degenerated into hand-to-hand combat. At Leffe, an industrial suburb north of Dinant, Planitz’s 32d ID was met by a withering hail of bullets from Boutegourd’s 51st RID and—according to both Hausen and the German official history—from the “fanatical” Belgian population, including women and children.12 Lindemann’s 46th Infantry Brigade (IB) managed to penetrate Dinant, where it, too, was greeted with heavy fire from French reserves and Belgian irregulars. When attempts to smoke out the francs-tireurs failed, Lindemann abandoned the city for an hour—and unleashed his artillery on the inhabitants.

  Boutegourd frantically appealed to Franchet d’Espèrey for relief, informing I Corps’ commander that one of his brigades had been “crushed by artillery fire, with heavy losses.”13 Franchet d’Espèrey at once realized the mortal danger to Fifth Army’s right flank. Without consulting Lanrezac, he ordered I Corps to retrace its steps of the night before. Along the way, he ran across a colleague from the colonial wars, Charles Mangin, whose 8th Brigade stood in reserve. “General, the enemy has crossed the Meuse behind our right. The [51st] Reserve Division is giving ground. … Go immediately and take your two battalions.” Franchet d’Espèrey promised to follow “as fast as I can with the main body of the corps.”14 It was Mangin’s first appearance as a major actor on the Western Front.