Unshaved, and scarcely washed at all for days … faces covered with a scrubbly beard, they look like prehistoric savages. Their coats were covered with dust and spattered with blood from bandaging the wounded, blackened with powder-smoke, and torn threadbare by thorns and barbed wire.102
All Kluck could offer them were more forced marches. Paris was but sixty kilometers away.
The closer the German “strike” armies approached Fortress Paris, the more critical it became to coordinate their advance. Nothing of the sort happened. In fact, silence descended over the German front. The OHL at Luxembourg did not receive a single communication from either First or Second army on 1 September. Nor did it receive any news from either unit on 2 September. All it knew was that the two armies had generally changed from a southwesterly to a southerly direction of pursuit.
Around suppertime on 1 September, Moltke had dashed off a terse note to Kluck: “What is your situation? Request immediate reply.”103 No reply. During the afternoon of 2 September, the OHL intercepted a message from Second Army to First Army, informing the latter that the enemy was “in full retreat behind the Marne and to the south,” and that Bülow intended to push his advance guards to the Marne the next day. Planning at Luxembourg thus remained based on “suspicions” rather than facts. On the basis of these “suspicions,” Moltke and Tappen on the evening of 2 September reached a basic decision: The war would have to be decided by concentrating the German armies for an envelopment of the “main French forces”104 somewhere in the area between Paris and Verdun—the region of the Marne. At 8:30 PM on 2 September, Moltke sent out his General Directive: “Intention Army Supreme Command to drive the French away from the capital in southeasterly direction. 1 Army is to follow 2 Army in echelon and to continue to protect the army’s flank.”105 Paris was to be bypassed to the east.
Specifically, Sixth and Seventh armies would continue to tie down French First and Second armies in Alsace-Lorraine; Fifth and Fourth armies were to keep the pressure up on French Third and Fourth armies in the middle of Joffre’s line; and Third Army was to advance in concert with Second Army’s left wing against Foch’s Special Army Detachment. The knockout blow now was to be delivered by Bülow’s Second Army, which would race south of Paris, cut off French Fifth Army’s line of retreat, and roll up the enemy armies west of the Argonne. First Army’s new role was to follow Second Army in echelon and guard its right flank against a possible attack out of the west. Satisfied with his labors, Moltke assured members of the kaiser’s entourage that “the steamroller in France is moving ahead unstoppable.”106
Unsurprisingly, Kluck and Kuhl, headquartered at Louis XV’s château at Compiègne, were not thrilled with this turn of events. Quite on their own, the two had crafted a new role for First Army. Fully appreciating that it was no longer sufficiently powerful to attempt the march around Paris, and seeing in Lanrezac’s retreat from Guise/Saint-Quentin a splendid chance at last to strike an enemy army in the flank, they turned First Army toward the Oise River along the line Compiègne-Noyon. Once more, their corps commanders were well ahead of Kuhl’s staff work. By the morning of 3 September, both Ewald von Lochow’s III Corps and Ferdinand von Quast’s IX Corps had reached the Marne; advance guards crossed the river at Nanteuille-Haudouin, Charly, and Château-Thierry. Friedrich Sixt von Arnim’s IV Corps stood on the Aisne at Crouy. Alexander von Linsingen’s II Corps and Hans von Gronau’s IV Reserve Corps had advanced across the Oise between Chantilly and Compiègne.107 Later that afternoon Kuhl, perhaps anticipating Moltke’s directive for First Army to follow Bülow’s Second Army “in echelon,” issued orders formalizing the new advance due southeast. In fact, Bülow after his victory at Saint-Quentin on 30 August had suggested that very move.
While this “deviation” is generally depicted as a spur-of-the-moment “bolt out of the blue,” new documents discovered after the fall of the German Democratic Republic in 1990 prove this not to have been the case. For Kuhl, then in the grade of major, had gamed just such a scenario in Case “Freytag II” as part of Schlieffen’s “General Staff Ride West 1905.”108 In short, the march-by east of Paris had been a major component in the master’s great design.
Kuhl was not worried about a possible French sortie out of the capital as long as the “phantom Paris” did not become “flesh and blood.”109 But just to be on the safe side, he dispatched Gronau’s IV Reserve Corps to Nanteuil-le-Haudouin to guard First Army’s right flank—where, according to the latest intelligence, the only enemy formation was the BEF beating a hasty retreat. Indeed, he was sufficiently unconcerned about the area north and northeast of Paris not to send aerial reconnaissance there.
At this critical point of the campaign, with million-man armies either in panicked retreat or in hot pursuit, intelligence was at a premium. Where was the enemy? In what strength? And, especially, on what route of march? The French, like Bülow during the night of the first day of the Battle of Guise/Saint-Quentin, now received a “dramatic windfall.” An officer with German Guard Cavalry Division, apparently fresh from Kluck’s headquarters, had been ambushed and killed in his car by soldiers of French 310th Infantry Regiment. His haversack contained a blood-smeared map bearing numbers and pencil lines. Commandant Girard, head of the Deuxième Bureau, was ecstatic. He at once deduced that the numbers referred to German First Army’s corps and the pencil lines, their lines of advance. It was the intelligence breakthrough that Joffre needed. For it was now clear to him that Kluck had changed his course toward the southeast.110
Kluck and Kuhl, having made their momentous decision to turn southeast without any input from the OHL, Bülow, or Hausen, in the morning of 4 September finally conveyed their new course of action to Moltke. The rambling message was a strange mix of information, accusation, and self-justification. It began, “First Army requests information about the situation at other armies.” The duumvirate then testily reminded Moltke that they had heard only “news of decisive victories followed on many occasions with pleas for assistance.” That was aimed directly at Bülow. First Army had at all times provided the requested assistance, which had entailed “sustained heavy fighting and [long] marches,” and in the process had “reached the limits of its capabilities.” Quast’s IX Corps alone had allowed Bülow to cross the Marne and to force the enemy to retreat. “Hope now to exploit that success.” Kluck and Kuhl bluntly informed Moltke that they could not heed his General Directive of 2 September to follow Second Army “in echelon” if they were to stove in the left flank of French Fifth Army. They requested immediate reinforcement in the form of Hans von Beseler’s III Reserve Corps (guarding Antwerp) and Hans von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps (besieging Maubeuge). And they demanded at all times to be kept abreast of the action of the other German armies. It took an incredible sixteen hours for the six-part message to be drafted, typed in clear text, enciphered, and transmitted.111 Was it purposeful obfuscation? Moltke chose not to reply to this stinging epistle.
Lost in all the excitement of the “march to the Marne” were several German reconnaissance reports of French troop movements. On 31 August, a flier from First Army reported “strong masses,” which he estimated at one army corps, marching in a southerly direction toward Villers-Cotterêts; “various columns” heading south out of the Forest of Compiègne; and “about a division” leaving the Oise Valley for Senlis.112 Three days later, just after Moltke and Tappen had sent out their General Directive for First Army to march by Paris on its eastern side, fliers from Maximilian von Laffert’s XIX Corps of Saxon Third Army sent in detailed reports of French troop movements. One spied “marching columns of all weapons formations” heading south on the roads near Sainte-Menehould. “Suippes full of troops.” French infantry was being entrained at railroad stations at Suippes, Somme-Suippe, Cuperly, and Saint-Hilaire-au-Temple. “One army corps” and eight troop trains ready to roll were spotted at Châlons-sur-Marne; another four troop trains at Mairy. A second flier reported seeing forty-two and a half kilometers of roads bursting wi
th French troops en route to Châlons, Épernay, and Montmirail.113 The next day, twenty-three kilometers of roads still bristled with poilus heading south toward Épernay. Obviously, these French movements would impact the coming battle in the Reims-Verdun sector of the front.
The reports by Saxon fliers were buttressed by other reports. At 11 AM and again at 8:45 PM on 3 September, Prussian fliers noted enemy movements at Dammartin-en-Goële and Villeron, northeast of Paris—heading in the general direction of Gronau’s IV Reserve Corps of First Army. Kluck and Kuhl ignored them and ordered reconnaissance for 4 September only toward the south. One of the aircraft strayed off course, and at 5:30 PM on 4 September reported hostile formations marching northward from Épiais-lès-Louvres, just north of Paris. There was no way to warn Gronau as IV Reserve Corps was without radio communications.114 At Luxembourg, the OHL dismissed these reports as merely pertaining to French rear guards (Nachhut).
During that same period, Linsingen’s II Corps skirmished with troops of Frédéric Vautier’s VII Corps—previously known to have been in Alsace—and Georg von der Marwitz’s II Cavalry Corps with fresh forces from Céleste Déprez’s 61st RID, François Ganeval’s 62d RID, and d’Amade’s Territorials. Kluck and Kuhl refused to acknowledge that the French were undertaking major troop transfers. Like Moltke, they argued that Linsingen and Marwitz had simply stumbled upon isolated French rear guards.
“The left wing of the main French forces”—read, Fifth Army—remained of “decisive importance” to Kluck and Kuhl. It was to be “pushed away from Paris” and “outflanked.”115 If all went according to plan, First Army would at the eleventh hour again become the hammer that would strike the left flank of the French armies as they were driven south by the other German armies. This grand vision of a right hook against French Third, Fourth, and Fifth armies blinded Kluck and Kuhl to the formation of Maunoury’s Sixth Army on their right flank. Day after day, they drove II, IV, and III corps forward in frontal charges against Franchet d’Espèrey’s Fifth Army, withdrawing behind the Marne, as well as against the three British army corps retreating from Creil and La Ferté-Milon. Day after day, the French and the British refused to accept a decisive battle. On 3 September, an advance guard of Pomeranian Grenadiers of Linsingen’s II Corps had reported—rather optimistically—that they were just eighteen kilometers east of Paris. At dusk the next day, Kluck’s flanking cover, IV Reserve Corps, made contact with French units at the Ourcq River.
* The Reichsarchiv later set the total at 1,620 civilians killed or deported; 17,000 buildings torched; 135,000 horses, 200,000 pigs, and 250,000 cows slaughtered.
† “Order—counter-order—disorder.”
* “He will cover you with His wings; you will be safe in His care. … A thousand may fall dead beside you, ten thousand all around you, but you will not be harmed.”
* French (GMT) time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CLIMAX: THE OURCQ
War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
—GEORGES CLEMENCEAU
IN 1914, ROUGHLY ONE IN TEN FRENCHMEN LIVED IN PARIS. THE CITY proper covered 80 square kilometers; with the surrounding Department of the Seine, it extended to 480. Paris was one of the few major fortified capitals in Europe.1 One ring of fourteen inner forts had withstood the German siege of 1870–71, and it had been augmented with an outer ring of twenty-five forts by 1890. Both were designed to protect Paris in case of an attack—or of a domestic uprising. As the distant roar of Alexander von Kluck’s heavy artillery became ever more audible, the government of Premier René Viviani fell. President Raymond Poincaré was able to secure the newfound “sacred union” by way of a cabinet reshuffle that left Viviani as premier but brought Alexandre Millerand in as the new minister of war, replacing Adolphe Messimy. To Joffre’s great delight, Millerand, the former moderate Socialist who had helped him pass the Three-Year Law in 1913, quickly rallied to defend the generalissimo’s autocratic style of command in the face of the Chamber of Deputies’ attempts to gain insight into military operations.
On 30 August, a German Taube aircraft dropped three bombs and some leaflets on the Quai de Valmy. By next day, a state of panic existed in the capital. The staff of the Ministry of War was instructed to send families to the countryside and then to depart for Tours.2 The mail was already three days late, when it arrived at all. The Central Telegraph Office had been cut off from London. Most newspapers had stopped publishing. Grand hotels were being turned into hospitals. An exodus of perhaps a hundred thousand people was in full swing. Automobiles and cabs could be seen rushing people and their most precious belongings to the southern and western railway stations. There, they jostled for space with incoming French wounded and German prisoners of war. By noon, the Montparnasse Station was packed with ten thousand Parisians seeking to board trains for Rennes, Saint-Malo, and Brest. At the Invalides Station, usually reserved for the military, enough people had booked for Brittany to fill the trains for a week.
On 2 September, the forty-fourth anniversary of the Battle of Sedan (1870), the government left Paris for Bordeaux. In its absence, Parisians turned to a sixty-five-year-old former colonial soldier for succor. As the newly appointed military governor of Paris, General Joseph-Simon Galliéni commanded four territorial divisions and the 185th Territorial Brigade. Over the coming days, he received reinforcements in the form of a marine artillery brigade and 84th Territorial Division as well as 61st and 62d reserve infantry divisions (RID).3 Chief of the General Staff Joseph Joffre, conceding the imminent danger to the capital, dispatched Michel-Joseph Maunoury’s newly formed Sixth Army, soon to be augmented by IV Corps from Third Army, to Paris and placed it at the disposal of the military governor.4
Galliéni did not disappoint. In his first public proclamation, on 3 September, he promised to defend Paris “to the last extremity.”5 That morning, he called out military engineers and civilian laborers armed with axes and saws to cut down the undergrowth of brush and hedges that obscured the line of fire of the capital’s 2,924 guns—ranging from massive 155mm siege guns to rapid-fire 75s.6 They likewise demolished houses and sheds that Galliéni deemed to obstruct his artillery. Munitions depots were stocked with a thousand shells per heavy gun. Hospitals and penitentiaries were evacuated and readied for the anticipated flood of wounded men. Fire departments were put on alert. Grocery stores were filled for the expected siege with bread wheat for forty-three days, salt for twenty, and meat for twelve. Gas to produce electricity for three months was requisitioned from the countryside.7 Pigeons were placed under state control in case telegraph and radio communications broke down. For three days, thousands of tons of concrete were poured and millions of meters of barbed wire strung for new defensive lines. Galliéni, who had fought at Sedan in 1870 and thereafter been interned in Germany, was determined that the enemy, should it take Paris, would find little of value: The bridges over the Seine River were to be blown up, and even the Eiffel Tower was to be reduced to scrap metal. Former Captain (now Lieutenant Colonel) Alfred Dreyfus joined the artillery.
All the while, cavalry scouts and pilots from both the French Armée de l’air and the British Royal Flying Corps kept Galliéni abreast of the German advance on Paris from Creil, Senlis, Clermont-sur-Oise, the Forest of Compiègne, and Soissons. Just after 8 AM on 3 September, British aviators spied “a great column” of German artillery and infantry advancing from Verberie to Senlis.8 Later that afternoon, the news took a dramatic turn: Fliers reported massive columns of gray-clad enemy infantry—four corps in strength—that had suddenly shifted onto a southeasterly course toward Château-Thierry, Mareuil-sur-Ourcq, and Lizy-sur-Ourcq.9 A single German corps stood between Kluck and Paris in echelon formation south of Chantilly. This could mean only one thing: Kluck was advancing into the gap between French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) around Montmirail, screened just by Louis Conneau’s newly created cavalry corps. Joffre, apprised of this by Galliéni as he was moving his headquarters to Bar-s
ur-Aube, remained imperturbable: The French army would continue to follow his General Instruction No. 4 of 1 September, as amended the following day.10
Late in the night of 3 September, Galliéni, as commandant des armées de Paris, made a key decision: If Kluck continued on a southeasterly trajectory, he would rally all available troops in the Paris Entrenched Camp and strike First Army’s exposed right flank.11 The following morning, French aviators confirmed that Kluck continued to head southeast. Without awaiting formal orders from Joffre, Galliéni sent word to Maunoury’s Sixth Army to be ready to march east by afternoon. He placed Antoine Drude’s newly arrived Algerian 45th Infantry Division (ID) at Maunoury’s disposal, raising Sixth Army (reinforced by 7 September with IV Army Corps from Maurice Sarrail’s Third Army) to about 150,000 soldiers. Galliéni planned to assault the western flank of the German army that “seemed to be gliding past Paris behind the front.”12
At Bar-sur-Aube, Joffre had independently arrived at the same operational concept. The Germans, in the words of historian Robert Doughty, occupied a “deep concave line between Paris, the Seine, the Aube, and Verdun.” If Joffre could draw them farther into the salient between Paris and Verdun, perhaps he could cut them off with an attack on the “neck” of that salient in the direction of Meaux by Galliéni’s garrison forces and Maunoury’s Sixth Army.13 Since Meaux lay thirty kilometers east of Paris on the Marne River, Joffre’s concept closely paralleled Galliéni’s. Rivers of ink would later be spilled as to which man first arrived at the operational concept that would unleash the Battle of the Marne. In the end, the decision was Joffre’s to make.14
The Marne, 1914 Page 27
