The Battle of the Marne - George Herbert Perris

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warfare, the fact that certain critics have plunged rashly into the intricacies of a most difficult problem, or the risk of being corrected when more abundant information appears, must not prevent us from facing a conclusion that is important for our subject. We do not espouse any partisan thesis, or question any individual reputation; we can do no more here than open a line of inquiry, and no less than recall that the men whose responsibility is in cause had suddenly to challenge fate on evidence at many points slighter than now lies before any studious layman.

      In every detail, Germany had the benefit of the initiative. The French Staff could not be sure in advance of British and Belgian aid or of Italian neutrality, and it was bound to envisage the possibility of attack by the Jura, as well as by Belgium. It could not be sure that any smaller strength would secure the Lorraine frontier; and it was possibly right in regarding a defeat on the east as more dangerous than a defeat in the north. The distrust of fortification, whether of masonry and steel, or of field-works, may have become exaggerated by a too lively sense of the power of the newer artillery; but it had a certain basis in the fear of immobilising and paralysing the armies. To discover a happy mean between a dangerous obstinacy in defending a frontier, and a dangerous readiness to abandon precious territory and its people in order to preserve freedom of movement, was perhaps beyond any brain of that time. Nevertheless, when all allowances have been made, it must be said (1) that the importance of gaining time by defensive action was never realised, and this chiefly because of dogmatic prepossessions; (2) that the actual concentration expressed a complete misjudgment of the line of greatest danger; and (3) that these two faults were aggravated by the kind of offensive upon which all hopes were placed. The misapprehension of the German system of reserves, referred to above, and therefore of the total effective strength of the enemy, had led the French Staff to conclude that there was nothing to fear west of the Meuse, and at the same time had confirmed a temperamental belief in the possibility of crippling the attack by a rapid and unrestrained offensive. The whole conception was erroneous.

      For Belgium, there was no other hope than a provisional defensive. In any war with Germany, the principal object for France, it now seems evident, must be to stave off the coup brusqué till Russia was fully ready, and England could bring more aid. But the traditional dogma was in possession; any doubt was damned as a dangerous heresy. The chief lesson of 1870 was now thought to be the folly of passivity. Looking back upon events, many French soldiers recognise, with General Malleterre, that the French strategy should have been “a waiting disposition behind a powerfully-organised Meuse front, with a mass of manœuvre ready to be directed against the principal attack.” “But,” adds this writer, “our minds had been trained in these latter years to the offensive à outrance.”12 They had been trained in part upon German discussions, the deceptive character of which, and the very different facts behind, were not realised. At its best, for instance in Foch’s lectures at the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre (1895–1901), there was in this teaching somewhat too much of emotion, too little of cold analysis. The faith in sheer energy and will is placed too high, the calculation of means to ends too slightly insisted upon. It is true, it is, indeed, a truism, that “the battle must not be purely defensive,” that “every defensive battle must be terminated by an offensive action, or it will lead to no result.” Foch himself, before he had risen to the supreme direction of the Allied armies, had learned to recognise that, with millions of men in play, no effort of will can suddenly give a decision, that the defensive may have to continue for months, even for years, a new war-machine may have to be built up, ere a victorious reaction becomes possible.

      In the General Staff instructions of October 28, 1913, the doctrine had received its extremest expression. The milder instructions of 1895 were condemned as based upon the “most dangerous” idea that a commander might prefer defence on a favourable, to attack on an unfavourable, ground. “In order to avoid all misunderstanding on so important a point of doctrine, the new instructions admit only a single justification for the defensive in combat, that is, the necessity of economising troops on certain points in order to devote more forces to attacks; so understood, the defensive is, properly speaking, no more than an auxiliary of the offensive.” “The offensive alone leads to positive results”; this is the sole permissible rule governing the conduct of operations. Attacks must be pressed to the extremity without arrière-pensée or fear of heavy losses: “every other conception must be rejected as contrary to the very nature of war” (art. 5). “A Commander-in-Chief will never leave to his adversary the priority of action on the pretext of waiting for more precise information; he will, from the beginning of the war, stamp it with such a character of violence and determination that the enemy, struck in his morale and paralysed in action, will perhaps find himself compelled to remain on the defensive” (art. 6). “All the decisions of the command must be inspired by the will to seize and keep the initiative”; and they must be pursued “even if the information collected up to then on the forces and dispositions of the enemy be obscure and incomplete.” The plan should, indeed, be supple, so that changes can be made according to new information; but “success in war depends more on perseverance and tenacity than on ability in the conception of the manœuvre” (art. 15). “The French Army,” added the Commission which elaborated these rules, “returning to its traditions, now admits in the conduct of operations no law other than that of the offensive.”

      Fortunately, no code can do more than hamper the natural elasticity of the French mind. But the direction of the armies from top to bottom, and even the traditional aim of keeping in hand a mass of manœuvre, which had figured strongly in the teaching of Foch and other military writers of ten or fifteen years before, were affected by the current prescriptions of the Staff. We cannot here attempt to trace the growth of the perversion. The spirit of the French command on the eve of the war is, however, sufficiently evidenced in its actual dispositions; and we know that it threw its only mass of manœuvre (the 4th Army) into the Belgian Ardennes in the third week of August, and had to fight the battle of the Marne without any general reserve. In brief, along with every arm and method of defence, the service of information, the preparation of battle, and the art of manœuvre—which is irreconcilable with a dogma of universal and unconditional attack—were depreciated and prejudiced.13 In the strength and weakness of this creed, France entered the war.

      The results in the lesser commands were serious enough. Speaking of the advance into the Ardennes, M. Hanotaux, in general an apologist of the old school, says that it was conducted “in an extremely optimistic mood,” that “mad bayonet charges were launched at a mile distance from the enemy without artillery preparation,” and that, “doubtless, the spirit of the offensive, ill-regulated and ill-restrained, among officers as well as men, was one of the causes of our reverse.” Officers and men took only too literally the rules on which they had been trained. Strengthened by the general belief in a short war, and by an exaggerated idea of the importance of first results, a like infatuation governed the strategy and the tactics of the French armies. A succession of surprises marks the light regard for information of the enemy’s means and movements, as a series of instant reverses measures the scorn for well-pondered manœuvre. Was France required by her Eastern ally to attack at once? The attack need not have surpassed the proportions of holding actions punctuating a stout defence. Was Belgium closed to the French armies by the old treaty of neutrality? That did not justify a plan of campaign which left the north uncovered to a German aggression. For all that followed from disunity of the Allied commands, England and Belgium share the responsibility. Had they, as well as Russia, been long in alliance, and Italy’s neutrality assured in advance, all might have gone otherwise; probably, indeed, there would have been no war. These circumstances do not afford excuse for a radically unsound conception of the danger and the reply.

      A German attack through Belgium had been much and long discussed. If few would have said before the event, as the German Chancellor and Foreign Secretary pleaded immediately afterward, that it was “a question of life and death for the Empire,” “a step absolutely required,” it was at least more than probable; and we have Marshal Joffre’s word for it that the contingency was contemplated by the French Staff.14 But two doubts remained, even in vigilant minds. Would the invasion by the north be large or small, and would it be more or less extensive, proceeding only by Belgian Luxembourg and the Meuse valley,

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<p>12</p>

Etudes, p. 66, note. And again (p. 88): “The offensive idea had become very clear and very formal in our minds. It had the place, so to say, of an official war doctrine. The lesson of the Russo-Japanese war and the Balkan wars seemed to have disturbed the teaching of the War School and the governing ideas of our Staff. At the moment when the war opened, there was a sharp discussion between the partisans of the offensive à outrance and those who, foreseeing the formidable manœuvre of Germany, leaned to a more prudent, more reasoned method, which they described as defensive strategy and offensive tactic.”

<p>13</p>

In “L’Erreur” de 1914. Réponse aux Critiques (Paris and Brussels: G. van Oest. 1919), General Berthaut is reduced to the suggestion that some of these phrases were intended “to stimulate the ardour of the young officers,” but that “the Command was not at all bound to take them literally.”

General Berthaut was sub-chief of the French General Staff, and director of the geographical service, from 1903 to 1912; and his defence of the ideas prevailing up to the eve of the war deserves careful reading, unsatisfying as it may be found on many points. It is mainly intended to justify the Eastward concentration, and to controvert those who think the business of an army is to defend the national territory foot by foot. The general appeals to the weight of military authority (which, as we shall see, is less one-sided than he suggests): “From 1875 to 1914, we had 40 Ministers of War; we changed the Chief of Staff sixteen times; changes were still more numerous among sub-chiefs of Staff, heads of bureaux and services. Several hundred officers of all arms, returning periodically to their regiments, contributed to the Staff work of the army. Yet the directive idea of our defence never varied. Such as it was in 1876, so it was revealed in 1914.” Throughout this time, concentration was foreseen and prepared behind the upper courses of the Meuse and Moselle with a view to positions being held in the upper valleys of the Marne, Aube, and Seine. The idea that the French eastern frontier was infrangible, General Berthaut considers “extremely exaggerated.” If it had not been adequately held, the Germans would have turned thither from the north. The violation of the neutrality either of Switzerland or Belgium was, however, beyond doubt. To cover the whole frontier was impossible; and, “incontestably,” the armies had to be turned in one mass toward the east. Trenches are “an effect, not a cause, of the stabilisation of fronts.” The general has a very poor opinion of fortresses, the only one to which he attributes great importance being Metz! Liège was “a practically useless sacrifice”; Maubeuge “stopped nothing.” These opinions seem to the present writer untenable; and General Berthaut admits that the reaction against fortification “went too far” (p. 182). He may be said to damn the three French offensives with faint praise. The move into Alsace “could not be of any military interest,” and was “a political affair.” The Lorraine offensive was “necessarily limited,” as a distant objective could not be pursued between Metz and Strasbourg. As to Charleroi, France was bound to make a demonstration on behalf of Belgium and “to satisfy public opinion.” Much of General Berthaut’s apologia is vitiated by his assumption that France had necessarily to face a superiority of force.

One of the critics General Berthaut started out to controvert is M. Fernand Engerand, deputy for Calvados, whose articles (particularly in Le Correspondant, December 10, 1917, and subsequent numbers) have been reprinted in a volume of 600 pages: Le Secret de la Frontière, 1815–1871–1914. Charleroi (Paris: Editions Bossard, 43 Rue Madame. 1918). The French plan of campaign, says M. Engerand, was “humanly impossible. Nothing happened as our High Command had foreseen; there was surprise all along the line, and, what is gravest, surprise not only strategic but intellectual, the reversal of a doctrine of war. After the magnificent recovery of the Marne, we may without inconvenience avow that never has there been so complete a self-deception. The error was absolute and, worse, deliberate, for never was an attack more foreseen, more announced, more prophesied than that of August 1914. Strategists of the old school had not only predicted it for forty years, but had given us the means of parrying it; their ideas were scouted and their work was destroyed.”

M. Engerand quotes, in particular, Lt.-Colonel Grouard on the impossibility of an immediate French offensive beyond the frontiers (see Grouard, La Guerre Eventuelle, 1913; and L’Art de la Guerre et le Colonel Grouard, by C. de Bourcet, 1915). Grouard foresaw, among other things, that “the army of the German right, marching by the left bank of the Meuse, would pass the Sambre in the neighbourhood of Charleroi, and direct itself toward the sources of the Oise.” M. Engerand’s chapters contain a summary of the three French offensives. His general comment is: “No unity of command, separate and dislocated battles, no notion of information and safeguards before and during the combat, systematic misconception of the ground and defensive means, defective liaison between the corps and between artillery and infantry, no manœuvre, but only the offensive, blind, systematic, frantic. If we were defeated, is it an exaggeration to say that it was less by the enemy than by a false doctrine?”

Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, on these points, quotes warning notes from General Collin’s Transformation de la Guerre, written in 1911, and refers to the case of Lt.-Col. Berrot, who, in 1902, had exposed “the dangerous theories that had been deduced from the Napoleonic wars,” and who “was disgraced pitilessly, and died while yet young.”

<p>14</p>

Early French writers on the war found it difficult to make up their minds whether there had, or had not, been a surprise in the North. See Histoire de la Guerre de 1914 (ch. “Septembre”), by Gabriel Hanotaux. This work, the most ambitious of the kind yet attempted, is being published in fortnightly sections and periodical volumes, of which the first deals with the origins of the war, the next three with the frontier battles, and the following ones with the battles of the retreat and preliminaries of the battle of the Marne (Paris: Gounouilhou, 30 Rue de Provence).

M. Hanotaux says: “The project prepared by the German Staff of an offensive by Belgium was not a secret. All was public and confessed. There was no surprise in the absolute sense of the word. But there remained an unknown quantity: would the probable hypothesis be realised?” Later, however, he says: “The long-prepared manœuvre consisted in crushing us by the carefully veiled onslaught not of 12, but of 25, army corps, so that the surprise was double for us: the most eccentric movement and the most unexpected numbers.... It was this combination of circumstances, foreseen and unforeseen, that the French Command had to parry: political necessity, surprise, numbers, preparation, munitions.” And, again: “The invasion of Belgium by the left bank of the Meuse certainly surprised the French High Command” (“La Manœuvre de la Marne,” Rev. des Deux Mondes, March 15, 1919).

M. Reinach, usually so clear and positive, was also ambiguous on this point (La Guerre sur le Front Occidental, vol. i.). It suffices he says, to glance at the map: “Nature herself traced this path (Flanders and the Oise). Innumerable armies have followed it, in both directions, for centuries” (p. 30). Nevertheless, the French Staff, though it had “followed for many years the German preparations for an offensive by Belgium” (p. 57), remained in an “anguish of doubt.”

Much evidence with regard to the events of the first phase of the war is contained in the reports of the French “Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy,” 1918–19, the special task of which was to consider why the Briey coalfield was not defended. On May 14, 1919, General Maunoury testified to disaccord existing between commanding officers at the beginning of the campaign, failure to co-ordinate efforts, and ignorance of some generals of the plan of concentration. On the same day, General Michel said that, in 1911, when he was Vice-President of the Superior War Council, that is, Generalissimo designate, he submitted a plan of concentration based upon a certitude of the whole German invasion passing by Belgium and of the need of the principal French action being directed to the North. The plan was rejected, after being examined by General Brun, M. Berteaux, and M. Messimy.

General Percin, at the same inquiry (May 24, 1919), spoke of “intrigues” and a “real palace revolution” in 1911 to replace General Michel, as future Commander-in-Chief, by General Pau, the offence of the former being to have foretold that the Germans would advance by the left bank of the Meuse, and that they would at once engage their reserves. According to General Percin, in the spring of 1914 General de Castelnau said: “If the Germans extend their fighting front as far as Lille, they will thin it so much that we can cut it in two. We can wish for nothing better.” There is other evidence of this idea prevailing in the General Staff: apparently it arose from underestimates of the effective strength of the invasion.

Marshal Joffre gave evidence before the Commission on July 5, 1919, but his reported statements do not greatly help us. He defended the concentration under “plan 17,” which, he said, was operated much more to the north than in previous plans, nearly all of these foreseeing concentration south of Verdun. The French Staff was chiefly concerned to give battle only when it had its full forces in hand. The 3rd Army had a quite particular function, that of investing Metz. The plan made before the war was not absolute, but was a directive modifiable according to events. Officially, it stopped short at Hirson; but the Staff had foreseen variants to second the Belgian effort. In March 1914, the Staff had prepared a note in which it had foreseen the invasion by Belgium—a plan providing for eventualities. It was, therefore, absurd to pretend that it had never foreseen the invasion by Belgium. The Briey district was under the cannon of Metz, and could not be included in the region of concentration. The loss of the “battle of the Frontiers” was due to the fact that the best units of the German Army presented themselves on the feeble point of our front. On the French side there were failings. Generals who had great qualities in peace time failed under stress of war. He had had to take action against some who were his best friends, but believed he had done his duty. Asked by the chairman with how many rifles he commenced the war, Marshal Joffre replied, “with 2,300,000.” Lille, he said, could not be defended.

Field-Marshal French (1914, ch. i.) says: “Personally, I had always thought that Germany would violate Belgian neutrality, and in no such half-hearted measure as by a march through the Ardennes.”