The Marne, 1914

by Holger H. Herwig

  The tide had turned. The German day of decision in the west, 6 September, was gone. With the German retreat from the Marne and the Ourcq in full swing, the initiative was now completely with the British and the French. The ninth of September would turn out to be the decisive day of the Battle of the Marne for the Allies. Franchet d’Espèrey was aware of the importance of the moment. Once more, he drove Fifth Army forward. Once more, he urged his soldiers on with a clarion call. In a forced appeal to history, he called on them to rid “the Motherland” of the “barbarians,” just as they had done a century before with “the Prussians of Blücher.”* Still, he warned against over-confidence. “The enemy is shaken but not completely beaten. Great tests of your endurance lie ahead of you, you will have to carry out many long marches, to take part in many bitter fights.”76 In fact, with four German army corps having first moved north to the Ourcq, and now retreating northeast in the direction of the Valley of the Aisne, the going was unsurprisingly easy. French Fifth Army, having waded across the narrow Petit Morin the day before, at 2:30 PM on 9 September crossed the Marne southwest of Château-Thierry. Concurrently, British cavalry seized several Marne bridges between La Ferté-sous-Jouarre and Château-Thierry.

  Joffre immediately spied the opportunity awaiting the Allies. The magnitude of his new design became apparent late in the night of 9 September. Until then he had concentrated his efforts on trying to push the BEF and the left wing of Fifth Army to exploit the gap between German First and Second armies, but the slow pace of their advance and the enemy’s withdrawal had cost him that opportunity. Joffre returned to his former offensive optimism. He shifted focus from breakthrough to envelopment. His Instruction particulière No. 20 “suggested” that Sir John and the BEF, with their flanks covered by Raoul de Lartigue’s 8th ID and Maud’huy’s XVIII Corps, seize the heights of the south bank of the Clignon River between Bouresches and Hervilliers and attack Bülow’s Second Army with all due energy and speed.77 The Particular Instruction ordered Fifth Army to drive the enemy “back toward the north;” all the while, Gilbert Defforges’s X Corps was to maintain contact with Foch’s Ninth Army. This would free Maunoury’s Sixth Army, “resting its right on the Ourcq,” to attack northward “to seek to envelop the enemy.” Eugène Bridoux’s V Cavalry Corps was to harass “the flank and the rear” of Kluck’s “fleeing” First Army. Remembering the nervous state of the government at Bordeaux, Joffre dashed off a reassuring cable: “General situation is satisfactory. … Battle is engaged in good condition and should lead to a decisive result.”78 By the night of 9 September, the Allies were on the offensive along a broad front stretching from Meaux to Châlons-sur-Marne.

  THE FRENCH CENTER ALONE caused Joffre concern. Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army, fronting Duke Albrecht’s Fourth Army, was stretched out in a wide arc between Humbauville, southwest of Vitry-le-François, and Revigny-sur-Ornain. On its left wing, the Mailly Gap, some twenty kilometers wide, separated it from the right flank of Foch’s Ninth Army southeast of the Saint-Gond Marshes; on its right, the smaller Revigny Gap had opened between Fourth Army and Sarrail’s Third Army. Joffre rushed reinforcements up from Lorraine—Louis Espinasse’s XV Corps and Émile-Edmond Legrand-Girarde’s XXI Corps—to plug the gaps. His one worry was that an enemy breakthrough there could jeopardize his left wing behind the Seine River.

  Indeed, on 6 September, Duke Albrecht planned to attack southeast from Vitry-le-François along the Marne-Rhine Canal with VI, VIII, and XVIII corps as well as VIII and XVIII reserve corps to relieve the pressure on German Sixth Army before Nancy. At dawn, a violent French artillery attack preempted his plan. Although Albrecht at first believed that this was simply one last, desperate French attempt to secure their line by way of a brazen offensive, aviators’ reports of the arrival of fresh formations (Joseph Masnou’s 23d ID from XII Corps in the south) quickly brought the realization that the French had gone to the attack in the east as well. Erich Tülff von Tschepe und Weidenbach’s exposed VIII Corps stood in danger of being enveloped; hence, as mentioned earlier, Duke Albrecht appealed to Third Army for aid. Hausen, as ever, responded positively. He divided his army, sending Maximilian von Laffert’s XIX Corps and 23d ID from Karl d’Elsa’s XII Corps to buttress Fourth Army’s right wing. For three days, Langle de Cary’s soldiers fought a vicious battle in the land between the Ornain and Marne rivers. Neither side gained an advantage.

  On 8 September, Duke Albrecht had declined to take part in Hausen’s nighttime bayonet attack on French artillery positions; by the time he attempted it the next morning after a lengthy artillery barrage, he had lost the critical element of surprise. At ten-thirty that night, Langle de Cary confidently informed Joffre that “all together, the general situation at the close of day is good.” The enemy had thrown everything it had at Fourth Army, Langle de Cary reported, and French fliers reported no German reserves moving up to the front. “Physical state of troops: good. Moral state: much improved, is now actually excellent.” The arrival of Legrand-Girarde’s XXI Corps from Épinal augured well for the next day, when Langle de Cary planned to attack Albrecht’s right flank, with “a good chance of bringing about a decision.”79 The German retreat in the afternoon of 9 September made that “chance” more than reasonable.

  In fact, a sharp dispute had broken out between the German center armies. While Duke Albrecht called on Fifth Army to support his left wing in an attempt to envelop the left flank of Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army, Crown Prince Wilhelm instead wanted Fourth Army to tie down Langle de Cary’s right wing while he forced his way through the Revigny Gap. Appeals for resolution to Luxembourg brought no relief. Studiously careful not to get ground up in a spat between two royals, Moltke managed a Solomon-like decision: “Mutual support between 4. and 5. Armies desirable.”80 Albrecht eventually yielded, after Wilhelm appealed the matter directly to his father, the kaiser.

  While the German royals squabbled, Joffre struck. On the morning of 6 September, Sarrail’s Third Army, with its pivot on Verdun and its main body about twenty kilometers southwest of the fortress, had advanced against German Fifth Army as part of the great Allied offensive.81 Expecting the enemy to continue its advance southward from Clermont-en-Argonne and Sainte-Menehould, Joffre had ordered Sarrail to “attack the flank of the enemy forces … west of the Argonne Forest.”82 But the German crown prince had shifted his advance onto a southeasterly course toward Bar-le-Duc, with the result that the two armies clashed head-on. Frédéric Micheler’s V Corps, entrusted with guarding the Revigny Gap, took the brunt of the German attack by Kurt von Pritzelwitz’s VI Corps—the same unit that had so badly mauled the French colonials at Rossigny. And just as at Rossigny, Pritzelwitz’s corps again stove in a French division—this time the 10th of Micheler’s V Corps—shot its commander, General Charles Roques, and captured most of its staff.83 Espinasse’s XV Corps had arrived just in time to take part in Third Army’s debacle.

  Joffre, true to fashion, blamed the setback on Third Army’s commander. He struck out furiously. He railed against “the mediocre military value” of some of Sarrail’s units. He accused them of having committed “grave errors such as abandoning rifles, ammunition and rucksacks along the roads or in bivouacs.” He charged that especially 173d Infantry Regiment (IR) had purposefully “broken war material.” All too many infantry officers “have no authority over their men;” staff officers failed to show “sufficient activity.” Joffre closed his blistering epistle with the dire admonition that “General Command of Third Army reestablish order, taking whatever measures necessary.”84

  By 8 September, the Germans had stormed the Meuse heights and thrown the French line back from Revigny, Laheycourt, and Laimont. Joffre, concerned that the enemy would now break through the Revigny Gap, late on the night of 8 September ordered a chastened Sarrail to withdraw his right wing and break off contact with la région fortifée de Verdun.85 Sarrail churlishly refused. He would later claim that he had heroically refused the “order to abandon Verdun” and assume the
title of “Savior of Verdun.” In fact, Verdun with its mighty ring of forts, 350 heavy and 442 light guns, and 65,774 soldiers had little to fear from the German crown prince.86 With his stubborn refusal to obey Joffre’s order, Sarrail had momentarily imperiled the entire French attack by failing to maintain contact with the right wing of Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army.87

  Crown Prince Wilhelm on 10 September made a final bid for breakthrough. His Fifth Army had taken a frightful battering from the soixante-quinzes—5,263 dead and missing and 9,556 wounded in the last ten days.88 General Frédéric-Georges Herr, in charge of VI Corps’ artillery brigade, expertly directed French fire from aircraft and balloons.89 In a single day, the 75s of Martial Verraux’s VI Corps destroyed eleven batteries (sixty-six guns) of Bruno von Mudra’s XVI Corps. To silence the “black butchers,” Wilhelm, like Hausen two days before, decided on a nighttime bayonet attack by VI, XIII, and XVI army corps. Using his telephone line from Varennes to Luxembourg, he obtained Moltke’s sanction.90 But as Bavarian casualties before Nancy mounted dramatically, the chief of the General Staff rescinded his approval. Wilhelm and his chief of staff, Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, took the matter to Chief of Operations Tappen and again threatened to seek an imperial ruling.

  Moltke relented. At 2 AM on a cold and rainy 10 September, almost one hundred thousand Landser, with rifles unloaded and bayonets fixed, stormed French positions around Vaux-Marie, north of Sainte-Menehould.91 The charge, like that of George Pickett at Gettysburg in July 1863, was shattered by enemy artillery. Well into daybreak, the 75s of Micheler’s V Corps and Verraux’s VI Corps poured their deadly fire into the packed gray ranks of German infantry. At 7:45 AM, the French counterattacked a demoralized and decimated enemy. Some German units panicked; others ran about in the darkness leaderless and in utter confusion; few dared return the enemy’s fire for fear of shooting their own men.92 A large proportion of Fifth Army’s fifteen thousand casualties over the first ten days of September occurred that night. At the company and battalion levels, officer losses were as high as 40 percent.

  The war diary of Max von Fabeck’s Württemberg XIII Corps reveals the full terror of that dreadful night.93 Hinko von Lüttwitz’s 12th RID “failed completely to reach its assigned line,” in the process blocking the advance of 38th Reserve Infantry Regiment (RIR). In the confusion, the two units fired on each other almost at point-blank range. The aforementioned French counterattack “totally demolished” 38th RIR. Elsewhere, Bernhard von Pfeil und Klein-Ellguth’s 27th ID also failed to reach its assigned target line. Mudra’s XVI Corps blindly shot at German units advancing on its flanks. By morning, Fabeck’s units were in total disarray, hopelessly intertwined with those of XVI Corps and 52d Infantry Brigade. Most were down to one-third of full strength. “Nowhere,” the war diary of XIII Corps concluded, had the original goal of silencing the French batteries “been achieved.”

  Near the end of that savage butchery, at around 9 AM, Lieutenant Colonel Hentsch arrived at Varennes on the return leg of his tour of the front. Arguing that Second Army had been reduced to “cinders,” that the enemy had driven a wedge between German First and Second armies, and that a full withdrawal was under way, he ordered Fifth Army to fall back to the line Sainte-Menehould–Clermont. Crown Prince Wilhelm and Schmidt von Kobelsdorff vehemently refused to obey the order and demanded such written instruction from Wilhelm II or Moltke.94 On the French side, Sarrail tersely assured Joffre at the end of the day, “Situation satisfactory.”95 At 2 PM on 11 September, Joffre was sufficiently confident of victory to inform War Minister Alexandre Millerand, “La bataille de la Marne s’achève en victoire incontestable.”96 The clarity of the statement requires no translation.

  AT 4 AM (GMT) on a cold and damp 11 September, Moltke left Luxembourg with Colonels Tappen and von Dommes to visit his field armies. Heavy northerly winds prohibited travel by air, and even the horses had trouble finding their footing in the “bottomless” mud. At Varennes, Moltke and Crown Prince Wilhelm conducted what eyewitnesses termed “an agitated and embarrassing” interview. The crown prince was in no mood for the chief of staff’s pessimistic assessment of the situation. He cheerily informed the gloomy Moltke that the attaque brutal with the bayonet on the morning of 10 September had been a “great success” and that Fifth Army was ready to “exploit” this triumph.97

  The trio motored on to Suippes and at 11 AM briefly conferred with Hausen. The mood at Suippes was “depressing.” Hausen’s 32d ID had recently been shattered by Foch’s violent counterattacks, and his 24th RID had been battered by Ninth Army’s advance guards the night before near Connantray-Vaurefroy. If the word cinders (Schlacke) applied to anyone, it was to Third Army, which had lost 14,987 men in the first ten days of September.98 There was nothing to fall back on, as Dresden had already sent out all available reserves—111 officers, 351 noncommissioned officers, 4,050 ranks, and 330 horses.99 Incredibly, Hausen stated that Third Army, stretched across a forty-kilometer front, could hold its position until the new offensive with Seventh Army commenced. Moltke, although convinced that the French were about to mount a major assault to “pierce the right and center of Third Army” and afraid that Hausen’s forces “were no longer combat effective,” concurred.100

  Sometime before 1 PM, Moltke arrived at Fourth Army headquarters at Courtisols. The mood there was “confident.” Duke Albrecht assured Moltke that although he had lost 9,433 men in the last ten days, he could spare forces to shore up Hausen’s battered Third Army. His chief of staff, General Walther von Lüwitz, lectured Moltke that a major withdrawal would have a decimating “moral effect” on the troops.101 Then the proverbial bolt from the blue: Just as Tappen was drafting orders for Fifth, Fourth, and Third armies to maintain their positions, his staff overheard a relayed radio message from Bülow at Second Army headquarters to the OHL. “Enemy appears to want to direct his main offensive against the right flank and center of Third Army” in an obvious attempt to break through at Vitry-le-François.102 A “deeply shaken” Moltke saw no reason to doubt Bülow. The only countermeasure was to withdraw the entire German center to the line Suippes–Sainte-Menehould until the new offensive (with Seventh Army) could be launched on the right wing. Moltke and Tappen, appreciating that Second Army had sustained 10,607 casualties between 1 and 10 September, agreed. It was only fitting that Bülow, who had set the retreat in motion on 8 September, likewise initiated the final decision to undertake a general retreat all along the front.

  Moltke was fearful that not only his right wing but now also his center stood on the point of collapse. He rushed back to Suippes. Hausen was incapacitated due to illness, now correctly diagnosed as typhus. Hoeppner, his chief of staff, was at the front. Thus, a Major Hasse on Third Army’s staff confirmed Bülow’s dire prognosis: Foch’s Ninth Army was threatening the entire front of Third Army. No sooner had Hasse completed his briefing than Third Army’s radio operators intercepted a call from Duke Albrecht’s Fourth Army to the OHL: “Strong enemy forces marching against Vitry-le-François and Maisons-en-Champagne.”103 There was not a moment to lose. At 1:30 PM, Moltke made what he later called “the hardest decision of my life, [one] which made my heart bleed,”104 the general order to retreat in echelon. He instructed Second Army to fall back to Thuizy (southeast of Reims), Third Army to the line Thuizy-Suippes, Fourth Army to Suippes–Sainte-Menehould, and Fifth Army to east of Sainte-Menehould. This would essentially become the stationary trench line of the Western Front.

  Moltke dispatched Dommes to bring the unwelcome news to Fourth and Fifth armies, where Dommes in horror discovered that their army corps were down to but ten thousand infantrymen each. Moltke, for his part, motored on to Bülow’s headquarters. Lieutenant Colonel Matthes, who basically had taken over operational decisions from the “sick, almost pathetic” Lauenstein, never forgot the chief of staff’s shaken state. “Constant nervous facial twitching betrayed his extremely strained condition to all those present.”105 Moltke declined to motor on to First Army. Pe
rhaps finally acknowledging the lack of leadership on the German right wing, he placed Heeringen’s new Seventh Army at Saint-Quentin under his most senior army commander—Karl von Bülow.106

  Moltke returned to his headquarters in the Hôtel de Cologne at Luxembourg in a driving downpour around 2 AM on 12 September. His first order was to relieve the severely ill Max von Hausen of command of Third Army. He next briefed Wilhelm II on his tour of the front. According to Hans von Plessen, chief of Imperial Headquarters, the kaiser became enraged, “slammed his fist on the table and forbade any further retreat.”107 Moltke then went to bed, where he was comforted by several of his staff officers—and by his wife, Eliza.