The Marne, 1914

by Holger H. Herwig

  There are times when senior military leaders have the right and the duty not to obey orders that make no sense, but to act in the best interests of their army and country. General Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg was one such commander, who in December 1812 had signed a neutrality pact with Russia at Tauroggen rather than to continue to have the Prussian army serve as a hoplite force for Napoleon I. On 9 September 1914, Kluck and Kuhl owed it to their soldiers and their country to see the battle with French Sixth Army through to conclusion. For the last chance to win the campaign in the west rested with their decision. A simple demand for formal written orders from the kaiser or the chief of the General Staff would have done the trick since, given the deplorable state of German communications, it would have taken two days to send the message and to receive a reply from Moltke. Instead, we are left with the great “what if?” on the Ourcq.

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL HENTSCH RETURNED to LUXEMBOURG at 12:40 PM on 10 September. The atmosphere at the OHL was highly charged. The day before, while Hentsch was making his rounds, Moltke, hearing of the BEF’s advance into the infamous gap by way of an intercepted wireless, had lost his nerve and recommended a withdrawal all along the line. The senior generals in the kaiser’s entourage counseled continuation of the offensive. Wilhelm II agreed. He adamantly rejected Moltke’s advice and demanded precise information on the status of the German right wing. But the discussions were “all superfluous,” Chief of the Military Cabinet Moriz von Lyncker noted, since there existed no means of communication with Kluck.48 Moltke, according to Deputy Chief of Staff von Stein, thereupon cracked. It was 1 August all over again, when the kaiser, upon receiving the (false) news that London would hold Paris out of the war if Germany did not attack France, had brusquely demanded that Moltke alter his entire operations plan and deploy against Russia alone. And as on that day, Moltke on 9 September became “extremely agitated.” He reminded Wilhelm II that Bülow had already come out in favor of a withdrawal, and that Bülow “is one of the most experienced generals in the army.”49 The discussion raged furiously. The kaiser refused to cave in. “Despite [what I have heard], I will lead the army into [sic] France.”50 Unsurprisingly, Colonel Tappen sided with his Supreme War Lord. “Whoever now perseveres,” he concluded, “is the victor.”51

  Hentsch’s report on 10 September decided the issue. First Army, he informed Moltke, “was responsible for the entire retreat” because by removing III and IX corps from Bülow’s right wing, it had allowed the distance between the two armies to widen by fifteen kilometers, and the enemy was now exploiting it. Disingenuously, he reported that First Army had already “issued orders to withdraw,” and that he, Hentsch, had merely tried to steer that withdrawal into the direction desired by the OHL! Specifically, First Army was falling back on Soissons-Fismes and Second Army behind the Marne. Third Army could regroup south of Châlons-sur-Marne, while Fourth and Fifth armies could remain in their present positions.52 Although we have no documentary evidence concerning Hentsch’s claim that Kuhl had already “issued orders to withdraw,” it is clear that he was putting the best possible spin on a decision that he had forced on First Army’s chief of staff. Hentsch had left Luxembourg on 8 September convinced of the need for a general retreat and realignment of the armies in the west. His talks with Bülow and Lauenstein at Montmort had only reinforced that conviction. At Mareuil, Hentsch—with his talk of Second Army being little more than “cinders,” of its already ongoing withdrawal, and of his “full power of authority” to issue orders to retreat “in the name of the Oberste Heeres-Leitung”—had left Kuhl no choice but to withdraw from the Ourcq. For that action, Hentsch was fully responsible.

  Moltke was “pleasantly surprised” by Hentsch’s report. The danger of Kluck’s left wing being crushed by the BEF and the French cavalry corps had been removed; First Army’s withdrawal to Fismes would allow it to link up with Second Army again and thus eliminate the fifty-kilometer gap; and Fourth and Fifth armies could hold their lines. “Thank God,” Moltke cried out, “then the situation seems much better than I thought.”53 The offensive could be resumed just as soon as the new Seventh Army had been formed at Saint-Quentin. And when news arrived around 9 PM on 10 September that Paul von Hindenburg’s Eighth Army had defeated P. K. Rennenkampf ’s Russian First Army at the Masurian Lakes, the mood swing at the OHL was complete. Still, the savvy Hentsch asked Moltke to visit Third, Fourth, and Fifth armies “to make sure that I did the right thing.”54 The chief of the General Staff agreed to set off early next morning. Württemberg’s war minister, Otto von Marchtaler, caustically noted, “He should have done that earlier; too late!” on his envoy’s report of Moltke’s decision.55 Perhaps to “punish” Kluck for his bold initiative (against express orders) in crossing the Marne ahead of Second Army, Moltke once again placed First Army under Bülow’s command. He simply refused to accept that his most senior commander in the field had set in motion the entire chain of action that would lead to a general retreat from the Marne.

  Moltke’s temporary recovery of spirits belied his true state of mind. For there is no question that by 8–10 September, Helmuth von Moltke was a broken man, mentally and physically. The heart problems for which he had been treated in 1911, 1912, and 1913 and that had led to arteriosclerosis had returned, aggravated by the onset of a gallbladder infection.56 His closest associates at the OHL noted his loss of energy, declining willpower, and inability to make decisions. To them, he looked tired and lethargic. They were not alone. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, concerned that “the OHL has lost its nerves,” had traveled to German headquarters on 8 September to discuss the assault on Nancy. He was shocked. Moltke gave the impression of being “a sick, broken man. His tall frame was stooped and he looked incredibly debilitated.” He ruminated about “many mistakes having been committed,” from the foolish rush of Josias von Heeringen’s XIV and XV corps into Mulhouse in Alsace early in August, to Rupprecht’s “failure” to shift parts of his Seventh Army to the German pivot wing (Schwenkungsflügel) near Paris.57 Rupprecht left Luxembourg convinced that the German operations plan had failed.

  The next day, War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn again wielded his acid-dripping pen. “Our General Staff has totally lost their heads,” he noted in his diary. “Schlieffen’s notes have come to an end and therewith also Moltke’s wit.”58 Karl von Wenninger, Bavaria’s military plenipotentiary to the OHL, also took up the theme of a squandered “Schlieffen Plan.” Twice he sarcastically noted in his diary that Moltke and his “minions” had merely known how “to roll the camera” and let “Schlieffen’s film play through.” The “beaming faces” that he had encountered at Berlin on 31 July had turned to “down-cast eyes” at Luxembourg. “It is as quiet as a mortuary,” he recorded on 10 September. “One tip-toes around … best not to address [General Staff officers], not to ask.”59

  Hans von Plessen, the kaiser’s adjutant general and commander of Imperial Headquarters, also noted the charged atmosphere at Luxembourg. Moltke (and his wife) seemed “agitated, nervous and very depressed.” The lack of contact with First and Second armies was vexing. Above all, “No one understands how the French, who have been beaten so many times, seem to muster the strength to [mount] such [new] advances.”60 General von Lyncker, who as chief of the Military Cabinet was responsible for all military appointments, ruminated about the “extremely serious” situation in France. “The armies have been pulled apart in a thin line [forming] a great arc from the Vosges [Mountains] to Paris.” On 10 September, he concluded that the Schlieffen-Moltke Plan had unraveled. “In sum, one must appreciate that the entire operation—that is, the encirclement [of French forces] from the north and northwest—has been utterly unsuccessful.” The campaign had instead degenerated into what he termed simple “frontal engagements.” Ominously, Lyncker laid the blame squarely on the chief of the General Staff. “Moltke is totally crushed by events; his nerves are not up to the situation.”61

  IN CONTRAST WITH MOLTKE, Papa Joffre was firmly in control of
operations. After his stirring appeal to the troops from a converted monk’s cell at his headquarters at Châtillon-sur-Seine on 6 September, Joffre with an iron hand directed the great assault that he had waited two weeks to launch. He had used his interior lines to great advantage to re-supply and to expand his armies, with the result that he enjoyed a superiority of forty-one to twenty-three infantry divisions over the three German armies of the pivot wing.62 The French official history speaks of a neat division of les armées françaises during the Battle of the Marne into two distinct combat phases: the “offensive maneuver” of Fifth and Sixth armies and the BEF on the left wing; and the “stationary battle” of Third, Fourth, and Ninth armies in the center of the line.63 The light, mobile forces that had proved to be inadequate for the brutal front assaults of the past were ideal for the redeployment that Joffre now undertook.

  Specifically, Joffre admonished Yvon Dubail’s First Army and Édouard de Castelnau’s Second Army to continue to “fix” Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth and Seventh armies along the Meurthe and Moselle rivers in Lorraine; Maurice Sarrail’s Third Army to keep Crown Prince Wilhelm’s Fifth Army pinned down around Verdun; and Fernand de Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army likewise to occupy Duke Albrecht’s Fourth Army between the Marne and Vesle rivers north of Vitry-le-François.64 A major breakthrough by any of these enemy forces would have disastrous consequences. Joffre most feared a pincer move by German Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth armies that could trap his Third and Fourth armies along the western banks of the Upper Meuse. Finally, he remained anxious about Sir John French and the BEF joining in the attack north from Melun across the Grand and Petit Morin rivers between French Fifth and Sixth armies.

  In the center of the French front, Joffre ordered Foch’s Ninth Army to hold the Saint-Gond Marshes while Franchet d’Espèrey’s vastly reinforced Fifth Army mounted constant pressure on Bülow’s exhausted Second Army across the two Morins. This would allow Maunoury’s Sixth Army, the so-called army of maneuver, to sweep around the right flank of Kluck’s First Army and crush it along the Marne near Château-Thierry. Gronau’s sighting of, and brilliant decision to attack, French Sixth Army with IV Reserve Corps on 5 September, as previously noted, had tipped Joffre’s hand and deprived him of the element of surprise. But there could be no turning back; the advance of more than one million men and three thousand guns could not suddenly be halted or even altered. Moreover, news was beginning to filter in of a great Russian victory over the Austro-Hungarians at Lemberg (Lwów).* This could only cause the Germans concern and perhaps force them to transfer some of their forces from the Western to the Eastern Front.

  FOCH AND FRENCH NINTH ARMY IN THE SAINT-GOND MARSHES

  Early on the morning of 6 September, the confident attitude at Ewald von Lochow’s III Corps encampment at La Ferté-Gaucher and that of Quast’s IX Corps at Esternay was rudely interrupted by violent artillery bombardments. At first, they believed this to be only another French rear guard action, but reports from aviators of columns of infantry in the strength of at least an army corps marching against Esternay quickly convinced them that French Fifth Army had gone over to the attack. From noon until nightfall, Franchet d’Espèrey’s left wing (XVIII, III, and I corps) engaged the two German corps in bloody fighting between Sancy and Châtillon-sur-Marne. Completely surprised by the enemy, and vastly outnumbered due to Kluck’s decision to transfer II and IV corps a hundred kilometers north to the Ourcq, Quast and Lochow in the best tradition of the Prussian army ordered a smart counterattack, thereby limiting Fifth Army’s advance to five kilometers. In fact, the French commander had deemed it crucial that Fifth Army begin the offensive with a success. Hence, he had not set it unrealistic goals and had ordered it to entrench once visible progress had been made.

  The next day, 7 September, Franchet d’Espèrey renewed the attack, this time in the direction of Montmirail. On his left, Louis Conneau’s II Cavalry Corps and the BEF marched against German rear guards near Rozay-en-Brie (Rozoy). The advance for the Allies was suspiciously easy. Were the Germans laying a trap for them? Were they withdrawing forces in order to undertake a flanking movement elsewhere? The British, as always, advanced most cautiously. Joffre twice called Sir John French’s headquarters to make it clear that it was “important,” indeed “indispensable,” that the BEF drive forward without delay and debouch north of the Marne that night.

  Content to let his advance guards halt at the Grand Morin, Franchet d’Espèrey took stock of the situation. What his reconnaissance brought back was simply astounding: Bülow had ordered his entire right wing—III and IX corps as well as X Reserve Corps—to withdraw as far as twenty kilometers behind the Petit Morin, thereby further widening the gap between his Second Army and Kluck’s First Army. When Maud’huy’s XVIII Corps later that afternoon seized Marchais-en-Brie, thereby threatening Montmirail and Johannes von Eben’s X Reserve Corps with envelopment, Bülow undertook yet another fateful repositioning, moving VII Corps and X Reserve Corps to a north-south line between Margny and Le Thoult-Trosnay. The right wing of German Second Army had been turned.65

  But Franchet d’Espèrey, who had distinguished himself as a corps commander at Guise/Saint-Quentin with his bold infantry charge, now seemed bedeviled by Carl von Clausewitz’s “fog of uncertainty.” Joffre’s General Instruction No. 7 of 7 September had been clear: “The Fifth Army will accelerate the movement of its left wing and will employ its right wing to support the Ninth Army.”66 And Joffre’s Special Order No. 19 the following day had again shown Franchet d’Espèrey the way: “The main body of the Fifth Army, marching due north, will drive the forces opposed to it beyond the Marne.”67 But instead of using his numerical superiority as a “breakthrough force” (armée de rupture) to destroy a retreating foe—either by envelopment or breakthrough—“Desperate Frankie” advanced only “methodically”68 and with Fifth Army in echelon, its right (!) wing in advance. Fortunately for Franchet d’Espèrey, Bülow strangely chose not to destroy the Marne bridges after his units retreated over them.

  During the early hours of 8 September, Kluck ordered III and IX corps (as II and IV corps before them) up to the Ourcq. The Allies had reached their first “climacteric” of the war: The BEF, Conneau’s cavalry corps, and the left wing of French Fifth Army were poised to charge through the wide gap in the German line between Meaux and Château-Thierry. All that stood between them and annihilating either (or both) German First or Second army were four divisions of Georg von der Marwitz’s and Manfred von Richthofen’s thin and weary cavalry screen—augmented by Richard von Kraewel’s mixed brigade (34th Infantry Brigade and two batteries of field artillery).69

  The Allied breakthrough remained a mirage. Despite Joffre’s constant exhortations, the BEF moved north at a snail’s pace, still some thirty kilometers behind Joffre’s desired jump-off line. Douglas Haig (I Corps) and Horace Smith-Dorrien (II Corps) consistently spied phantom German formations in front of them. On 9 September, Haig halted I Corps until nightfall at the mere sighting of Karl von Ilsemann’s 5th Cavalry Division (CD) and IX Corps’ baggage train. Smith-Dorrien, not to be outdone, likewise stopped his advance after British 5th Infantry Division (ID) had encountered Kraewel’s mixed brigade at Montreuil-aux-Lions. Smith-Dorrien engaged only two brigades of 5th ID and two companies of 3d ID against a vastly inferior force. Farther to the west, “Putty” Pulteney’s III Corps failed to cross the Marne near La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. The German screen held the right bank of the Marne and destroyed most of the bridges in this sector. As at Meaux, the Germans expertly deployed their light guns on reverse slopes and their machine guns in the wooded ravines and trenches of the north bank of the Marne Valley. The four service pontoons with British III Corps were insufficiently equipped to span the seventy to ninety meters of the Marne. As darkness fell, only about half of 4th Division’s battalions had crossed the river on a makeshift floating bridge made of trestles, pontoons, barrel piers, and boats.70

  British cavalry, in the words of historian Hew Strach
an, “was entirely out of the equation.”71 Edmund Allenby’s 1st CD was content just to maintain contact with Franchet d’Espèrey’s left flank, and Hubert Gough’s 2d CD likewise with Maunoury’s right wing. The dense woods, rivers, and ravines in the area seemed to dictate caution rather than bold pursuit. By nightfall, the BEF was still ten kilometers behind Joffre’s original departure line. In historian Sewell Tyng’s stinging words, Sir John French’s army had “exercised no effective intervention” at the “point of greatest strategic significance and at the crucial moment of the battle.” In strategic terms, its advance into the German gap “remained no more than a threat which was never translated into decisive action.”72 Except, of course, by Hentsch, Bülow, and Kuhl.

  Nor did the French cavalry corps distinguish itself in the effort to break through the German corridor. Following on the heels of British cavalry, Conneau’s riders crossed the Marne at Château-Thierry in the afternoon of 9 September. They encountered no opposition. But when he received the news that only a single German cavalry division (the 5th) was to the north, Conneau halted his advance. General de Maud’huy, coming across Camille Grellet de la Deyte’s 10th CD resting by the roadside south of the Marne, asked for the latest reconnaissance reports. Upon being told that there were none, he exploded. “It’s a disgrace to the French cavalry. My divisional cavalry has already told me there is no one at Château-Thierry and you tell me you know nothing! You’re good for nothing!” He informed Grellet that he was going to storm Château-Thierry with a regiment of African Zouaves. “You can follow behind if you like, but at least don’t get in my way!”73

  In all fairness to the soldiers and cavalrymen of the BEF, French Fifth Army, and the French cavalry corps, much had already been asked, and was still being asked, of them. After days of marching to the front in mid-August, they had charged the enemy—only to have had to endure weeks of miserable retreat under a broiling sun and along dusty roads. Then they had about-faced and held off an enemy victorious and confident. Since 6 September, they had attacked yet again. They had suffered horrendous casualties. Tens of thousands were dead or wounded as well as ill from foot sores, heat exhaustion, sunstroke, thirst, and dysentery. Especially Jean-François Sordet’s cavalry corps; having covered a thousand kilometers since the war began, it simply was too exhausted to push on ahead. Christian Mallet, a trooper with Colonel Félix Robillot’s 22d Dragoons, later recalled the suffocating heat, gnawing hunger, intolerable thirst, and utter fatigue of those days. “The exhausted men, covered with a layer of black dust adherent to their sweat, looked like devils. The tired horses, no longer off-saddled, had large open sores on their back.”74 In fact, French riders, unlike their British counterparts, stayed in the saddle rather than save their horses by occasionally dismounting. In Foch’s caustic words, they seemed to have “their brains in their legs.”75 Finally, German rear guards and cavalry fought a tenacious retreat throughout 7–8 September, further hampering the Allied advance.