Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (47 page)

The formidably powerful Eiffel Tower radio station intercepted the German signals about this movement; within hours, a copy of the critical order was on Joffre’s desk. Whatever the commander-in-chief’s earlier blunders, he immediately understood the significance of the German decision to cross the French front before Paris, and discerned a great opportunity beckoning for the allies. With stunning hubris, Bülow had ordered Kluck to execute a parade march in the face of an undefeated foe. Falkenhayn warned Moltke on 30 August that the French army had not collapsed – instead, it was conducting an orderly withdrawal. If Joffre was indeed beaten, the Prussian war minister demanded, where was the great haul of captured guns and equipment, the vast mass of prisoners that should be falling into the victors’ hands?

Moltke professed to dismiss Falkenhayn’s strictures, but in truth they added to the discomfiture of a commander already prey to feverish secret anxieties of his own. He had earlier felt sufficiently convinced of imminent triumph in the West to propose the dispatch of six corps to East Prussia, and eventually to send two. But on that same 30 August, to Admiral Müller he spoke much as Falkenhayn had done to himself, expressing unease about the absence of the flotsam associated with shattered armies: ‘Contrary to the Kaiser’s fantasies, we have pushed the French back, but they are not yet beaten. That has still to happen. Where are our prisoners?’ On 1 September, the chief of staff’s spirits briefly revived. He became excited by a prospect of achieving a new envelopment between Verdun and Reims. But, as so often in those days, the Germans advanced too slowly and Joffre’s forces withdrew too fast to make this possible. Moltke’s anguish intensified. Were the victories that so thrilled his royal master mere occupations of Belgian and French real estate? To subordinates, he avowed unease. But since he had abdicated operational direction of the armies, his apprehension exercised no influence upon the conduct of Kluck and Bülow in the critical days that followed.

It is mistaken, however, thus to burden the two army commanders with responsibility for the looming collapse of Germany’s fantasy of victory in 1914. Rather, they became prisoners of the fundamental unsoundness of their nation’s war plan. It is unlikely that any grand design could have produced a swift, conclusive outcome unless the allied armies suffered total moral collapse – which they did not. But Moltke had progressively abandoned even his own diluted version of Schlieffen, weakening the
right, and on 24 August agreeing that Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Bavarians should pursue Castelnau’s retreating army towards Nancy. As German complacency grew, Schlieffen’s sophisticated if flawed vision was supplanted by the crude pursuit of objectives of opportunity. The Kaiser’s commanders saw themselves sustaining a headlong advance, while the French and British fled before them. Bülow, Kluck and their counterparts further south were more disturbed by the effects of exhaustion on men and horses than by their battle casualties. They supposed that the hard fighting was already behind them.

Back in Berlin, Bethmann Hollweg’s confidant Kurt Riezler wrote: ‘One is already beginning to make plans for the victory booty … We looked at the map today. I always preach the erection of vassal states. Today the chancellor had me come to him, asked me about peace conditions and my ideas.’ He added a few days later, in lyrical mood: ‘We Germans have … awakened powers in ourselves the magnitude of which we would never have imagined. Above all, we have discovered a spiritual essence through which we can concentrate these powers.’

On the other side in the last days of August, while Joffre grasped a gleam of possibility of redeeming the ghastly defeats that had befallen French arms under his leadership, few of his subordinates shared his kindling hopes, and certainly not the senior officers of the BEF. They experienced only the reality of continuing flight from the enemy, ever further southwards. On the 27th, Joffre signalled Lanrezac at his headquarters at Marle. Fifth Army was continuing its withdrawal, across the river Oise: GQG told its commander that he must now wheel his left-hand corps to the west, and launch an attack on Kluck’s left flank, to relieve pressure on the BEF. After the C-in-C’s departure, Lanrezac exploded in fury, denouncing both Joffre and the British with a fury that shocked his staff. He saw no prospect of such an attack succeeding, and believed that he would merely thrust his army into the jaws of a German vice. Sir John French, meanwhile, showed no interest in anything Lanrezac might or might not do, and continued his retirement.

On the 28th, momentously, Joffre in his long black overcoat appeared in person at Fifth Army’s headquarters. At first, his demeanour was cordial and flattering, identifying several officers for praise. But then followed an explosion of rage, and an explicit threat: if Fifth Army failed to attack next day, Lanrezac would be sacked. A liaison officer was dispatched to Haig and Smith-Dorrien, informing them of what was to happen, and seeking
their cooperation. Near Lucy the Frenchman found the British I Corps commander receiving an excited report from an RFC pilot, who had just landed to confirm that Kluck’s flank was exposed, his columns veering eastward. Haig passed word to Lanrezac that a great opportunity beckoned; he would be happy to support a major counter-attack, and his formations could move at 5 a.m. next day.

During the hours that followed, however, some British units brawled with the Germans, and suffered delays. Haig sent word first that his own move must be delayed until 5.30 a.m., then that he needed a further postponement until midday. Finally, he said he could do nothing without the assent of Sir John French. This was abruptly refused: the C-in-C declared that I Corps needed a rest day. Lanrezac was incandescent, Joffre despondent. Spears, who had to endure both voluble and mute reproaches from Fifth Army’s staff, wrote: ‘the French considered that the British were running away at the critical moment, while the British were persuaded that they had been treated so badly that they could place no further reliance on their Allies’. Fifth Army’s attack proceeded anyway.

Guise nestles in the deep valley of the Oise, where open fields are interspersed with dense woodlands on the hillsides both north and south of the river. There are views for miles, landmarked with farms bearing such sardonic names as ‘
Désolation
’ and ‘
Monchagrin
’. Here, next morning, Lanrezac ordered forward his formations – the left driving at Kluck, the right against Bülow. Initially, the latter of these thrusts met some success, driving back the Germans up to three miles. ‘He manipulated his units with the skill of a master at the great game of war,’ wrote Spears, ‘but he played his hand without zest or faith.’ The second part of this statement was manifestly true; but the claim seems unfounded that, for once in his life, on 29 August Lanrezac played the part of an inspirational commander.

On the left, Fifth Army’s main attack was thrown back with heavy casualties. Before the assault, the Germans captured a corps chief of staff whose papers showed that the principal French objectives lay on Kluck’s front. Bülow, next door, could thus be confident that he had nothing important to fear. When the French advanced towards Saint-Quentin, the Germans were ready: some ground the attackers won at heavy cost was soon lost again. Only further north, around Guise, did Fifth Army make significant progress, pushing forward on both sides of the town to exploit a gap between Kluck’s and Bülow’s armies. German local command broke down, and German artillery caused substantial casualties by firing on one of its own Guards units.

The vanguard French brigade driving towards Le Hérie was led by the corps commander, Louis Franchet d’Espèrey, who would later prove one of the outstanding French generals of the war. He was fortunate that he survived to do so, because on 29 August he rode his horse towards the German line south of Guise, amid his regiments with colours flying and bands playing. Bülow became sufficiently concerned by the vigour of the attack to solicit support from his neighbor Hausen, who responded that he had his hands full on his own front. Bülow also urged Kluck to pivot still more sharply southward, further foreshortening the great German sweep.

Lanrezac sent a new appeal to the British for support, met by a renewed refusal from their C-in-C, conveyed by Henry Wilson. The latter thought Fifth Army’s attack madness because it could lead nowhere, against overwhelmingly superior forces. That night, Wilson drove to Reims to meet Joffre, and begged him to order a withdrawal before Kluck and Bülow closed in upon Lanrezac, perhaps precipitating disaster. Joffre indeed instructed Fifth Army to resume its retreat, though it is unlikely that his decision was influenced by Wilson. Bülow reported to Moltke that he had gained a victory – but added that his men were too tired to march next day. Thus Lanrezac, and the corpses of several thousand men, secured another breathing space. Franchet d’Espèrey was the only general to emerge with credit from the actions at Guise.

Confusion among both armies about their respective positions prompted droll incidents in those days, among soldiers who became victims of misinformation. A smart young German cavalry officer was driven into the village of La Fère in a dusty motor car, which halted outside the post office. Oblivious of French soldiers standing around, whom presumably he supposed to be prisoners, he marched inside, bought and wrote some postcards. On reappearing, he was abruptly seized by the military bystanders, along with his driver, who proved to be a former Berlin taxi-driver. The officer sulked terribly about his ignominious capture and refused to speak, but the driver expressed himself forcefully in condemnation of the war. A French officer gleefully showed Louis Spears the German’s postcards, retrieved from the post office, which described the British as running ‘like sheep’.

Next day, 30 August, the Kaiser and Moltke belatedly shifted their headquarters forward from Coblenz to Luxembourg, where the latter set up shop in a schoolhouse. Radio messages to and from the fronts required passage through several relay stations, with delays sometimes amounting
to an amazing twenty hours. The army commanders were not much troubled by this problem, because it liberated them from unwelcome interference by the chief of staff. But the consequence was that Moltke’s lack of grip upon the campaign became institutionalised. Each of his subordinates acted as seemed to him best.

That same day, Sir John French dispatched one of his most notorious communications, writing to Joffre from a new headquarters in the palace at Compiègne: ‘I feel it very necessary to impress on you that the British Army cannot under any circumstances take its place in the front line for at least ten days. I require men and guns to make good casualties … You will understand that I cannot meet your wishes to fill the gap between the Fifth and Sixth Armies.’ Sir John declared his intention to retire beyond the Seine. This was a devastating telegram. It is extraordinary that an officer capable of sending it should ever have been entrusted with command of an army in the field, and even more remarkable that he retained such a role for more than a year thereafter. Sir John French’s conduct between Mons and the Marne exposed him as a poltroon – not the first nor the last such figure to achieve military eminence, but nonetheless a heavy handicap for the allied cause. Sir James Edmonds characterised French as ‘a vain, ignorant and vindictive old man with an unsavoury society backing’. If this was cruel, it is hard to suggest that it was unjust. Several of French’s key subordinates had also been found wanting, notable among them Murray, Wilson and in some measure Haig, though the last would rehabilitate himself two months later at Ypres.

The best that can be said of the limitations of Britain’s generals is that most of their counterparts of all the rival armies exposed large shortcomings in August 1914. Their conduct was perhaps no worse than that of many peer groups in civilian society, facing wholly unfamiliar challenges and circumstances of unprecedented magnitude, but in war the penalties for bewilderment are paid with lives. Moltke, a sick man from the outset, was now visibly ailing; he declined to impose personal control on the decisive phase of the campaign he had willed, probably because he had no idea how to do so. He and his subordinates proved unable to exploit the institutional superiority of the German army to forge a decisive victory. In part, this is attributable to the fact that they sought to fulfil ambitions beyond the powers of their armies in the pre-motorised age. The technologies of mobility and communication lagged critically behind the enhancement of firepower. But it remains remarkable that Moltke left Kluck and Bülow such immense latitude, and unsurprising that they blundered.

On the French side, Joffre had launched Plan XVII with dreadful consequences for his country and its army. Many of his subordinates had been found wanting in the Battles of the Frontiers. Lanrezac was a soldier of some gifts, who nonetheless proved to lack the moral strength for high command. The merits of Joffre’s insistence on fighting at Guise on 29 August remain as keenly debated as those of Smith-Dorrien’s stand at Le Cateau. It was plain that Lanrezac could only deliver a ‘stopping blow’, at heavy cost in casualties. The balance of evidence suggests that the battle represented an acceptable gamble, for it inflicted a further check and significant losses on the Germans.

But in the days that followed, the allied retreat continued, as did the growth of demoralisation among the troops. Joffre still clung to hopes for a major counter-offensive on his left; throughout those last days of August French men, guns and horses packed scores of trains moving up from the south. But to those marching and always marching, the only meaningful realities were those of the heat, the road, and their torn, bruised, blistered feet. Elsewhere in their weary bodies, almost four hundred years earlier Montaigne wrote: ‘I have seen many soldiers inconvenienced by the irregularity of their bowels.’ By late August, men of every army found constipation or diarrhoea compounding their sufferings as they stumbled across France in shared confusion. Marc Bloch, French conscript and later a historian murdered by the Nazis, wrote in a mood mirroring that of his nation: ‘I stand bad news better than uncertainty … Oh, what bitter days of retreat, of weariness, boredom and anxiety!’