The Turning Movement Against the German Right
a French infantry attack near Nancy
- continued from part 2 - The Battle of the Aisne
It was on September 18th that General Joffre realised that the entrenched positions held by the Germans along the Aisne heights were too strong to be carried by a mere frontal attack, and informed Sir John French that " he had found it necessary to make a new plan, and to attack and envelope the German right flank."
The movement had already begun. The 6th French Army under General Manoury had extended its left beyond the Oise, and was pushing up the right bank of the river towards Noyon. General Castelnau, after successfully defending the heights of Nancy against the Bavarians, was called westward to take command of a new army, the 7th, which was being railed up from Paris to come into action on Manoury's left. Yet a third force, the 10th Army under General Maud'huy, was concentrating at Amiens. It was to march eastward on St. Quentin on the way to Rheims, striking in upon the German rear. This was a revival of an old plan of the Franco-Prussian war, attempted with inferior forces by Faidherbe and the Army of the North in January 1871. His handful of half- trained mobiles had come to grief in the fight at St. Quentin, in their effort to save Paris by a stroke at the German line of communications. But now the effort would be made with huge armies of French regulars. In this second half of September 1914, some 300,000 men were either actually in line or preparing to move forward for the great stroke against the enemy's flank that was to force the Germans out of their entrenched positions from the Aisne to the Argonne. But the invader foresaw the stroke. Indeed it was too obvious a method of attack for even the veriest tyro in war to fail to anticipate that it would be attempted. Von Kluck extended his line beyond the Oise, to meet Manoury's onset.
The German general had men to spare for this parrying move. Along the Aisne heights he had dug himself in so well that a part of his army could hold the entrenched lines. Manoury pressed on and occupied Lassigny. De Castelnau, prolonging his line to the left, seized the high ground about Roye. For some weeks to come the names of these places recurred continually in the French and German official war news. For at Roye and Lassigny the long curve on which the opposing lines that had so long faced north and south, turned northwards and they began to face east and west as the French line lengthened out to envelope the invader's flank, and the Germans, day by day, extended their line to counter the attack. If either could have broken through at Roye and Lassigny, he would be able to choose which of the hostile armies to right or left, to eastward or northwards, he would outflank, envelope and roll up.
So the two towns were shattered into wreck and ruin by the opposing gunners, and the few miles of undulating ground between them saw slaughter only to be rivalled by the deadlier work of later weeks round Ypres and along the banks of the Yser Canal.
On September 20th the French held Roye and Lassigny, and De Castelnau was flinging out his battle line northwards towards Peronne. The Amiens Army was nearly ready to move—so nearly ready that imprudent journalists spoke mysteriously of the great surprise that was coming for the Germans. Across the Channel those who still believed in the ghostly Russian Army that was said to have been passing secretly through England interpreted the prophecies of the Paris Press as a foreboding of a new Muscovite avalanche about to roll in upon the enemy's rear. But whatever was coming, the German Staff was providing for all eventualities, and there was a swift shuffling hither and thither of the armies, and the army commanders, and hurrying up of new levies from Germany itself to meet the French march from the westward. Von Bulow was sent to new headquarters at St. Quentin, to bar the way of the Amiens Army, and prolong the line of Von Kluck's right. He moved forward by Peronne towards the long swell of ground, the centre of which fronts the town of Albert, a meeting point of half a score of poplar-shaded roads. Von Heeringen took his place in the old battle line, bringing some of his troops from Alsace, where the defence was now entiusted to a single corps under Von Deimling, based on Strasburg.
Along the old front on the Aisne the fighting had dwindled to a desultory cannonade, with here and there a sharp struggle in the advanced trenches. Every one realised that the centre of interest had shifted from the centre to the flanks. On the western flank the battle lines were extending daily further north from the bend near Roye, where the fighting was the closest. Von Kluck's men retook Lassigny, but held it only at the cost of day after day of obstinate fighting. Here too the opposing forces were digging themselves into the ground, and the battle was becoming a siege. On September 30th, Roye was taken by the Germans. Then they tried, again and again, to breakthrough at the point where Manoury's line joined on to Castelnau's. But the French stood firm. Neither side could gain another yard of ground at this "death angle" of the flank fight.
Further north beyond the Somme, in the last week of September, the Amiens Army under Maud'huy surged forward against the long slopes of the Albert position. For three days there was fierce conflict. In early wars this conflict of 200,000 men over miles of front would have been reckoned a great battle. Here it was an incident in the long-drawn collision of opposing armies that now stretched almost from the Swiss to the Belgian frontier. When on September 30th, the storm of cannon thunder that had been roaring for days died away into an intermittent cannonade, Von Bulow claimed one more victory for the German arms. He had held his ground. But Maud'huy also claimed a success. He had at least established himself in an entrenched position along the Albert uplands, and Von Bulow could not force him back on Amiens. Viewed by itself this Albert affair was at best a drawn battle. But in connection with the general course of the campaign it must be confessed that it was a German success. It was Maud'huy's business to drive Von Bulow back on Peronne and St. Quentin and break in upon the rear of the long curved line of the invaders. But Von Bulow was still holding the ground he had chosen, and the long line was neither broken nor turned.
Turned it must be, said Joffre, and more French troops were hurried up to Maud'huy to prolong his battle line still further north. But the invaders seemed to have an inexhaustible reserve behind them, for as the French front extended the German front grew with it.
And now there came, in these closing days of September, reports from the extreme north, from the level lands of French Flanders and Artois, between Lille and Calais, that told of a new move of the invaders. There was little work for horsemen to do in the trench warfare along the Aisne and Suippe, in the Argonne forests or the woods round Verdun, and on the slopes of the Vosges. Cavalry had indeed been seen in action on both sides at Albert, but this flank fighting had been nearly all the work of the gunners and the infantry. But now masses of German cavalry were flooding the north, pouring across the western margin of Belgium into France. Uhlans and dragoons were at Cassel perched on its hillock, from which one can see the Channel shining in the distance ; they were at the crossing of the Lys at Aire and among the colliery villages about Lens. There was even an alarm in the old Spanish gabled houses of Arras. French Territorials skirmished with the raiders. Long trains of cattle trucks, laden with men and horses, rumbled north, taking French lancers and chasseurs to meet them with their own weapons. If it were a mere cavalry raid it would not count for much, but there were Jàgers with the adventurous horsemen, conveyed on motor-cars as in the earlier cavalry dash into Flanders and Picardy in August. And there were rumours of troop trains moving by Liège and Namur and Brussels, piling up a huge army in Belgium, of which this wave of cavalry might be but the vanguard. It seemed that the German staff meant to counter the French flanking movement, not merely by holding it along the line from Roye to Albert and further north, but by flinging this new army in behind it into northern France.
There was a further anxiety for the Allies. In this critical last week of September the Germans had begun the siege of Antwerp. Its fall would set free the large force that had been kept north of Brussels watching the Belgian field army which had taken refuge in the vast entrenched camp that surrounded the city. But at first it was hoped Antwerp might make a prolonged defence. Yet the hope was mingled with fear, for Liège and Namur, defended by works of precisely the same type as the new forts of Antwerp, had fallen in a few days before the attack of the giant guns with which Krupp had armed the invaders. There was this difference, however—Antwerp was held not by a garrison but by an army. Nevertheless, it was only a question of whether the great fortress would fall swiftly or make itself famous by an obstinate resistance for weeks to come, for no fortress is impregnable. It was therefore necessary to move new armies to the extreme left of the Allied line, not merely to check the threatened German counter-attack, but also to hold out a hand, if possible, to the heroic defenders of Antwerp.
Once more General J offre looked to the British Army to take the post of honour and danger, and at the end of September it was decided that French troops should man the trenches held till now by the British along the Aisne, and that Sir John French's three Army Corps should be moved to the menaced flank of the long line. Apart from the motives suggested by the new emergency of a German dash into northern France, there were reasons for the change of position which had already suggested it as advisable. The British Expeditionary Force had originally been posted on the left of the Allies, where its line of communications ran directly to the Channel ports without having to cross the lines of supply of the French Armies. But the British were now in the centre of the Allied positions, and supplies came chiefly by a long route from ports in the extreme west of France, crossing on the way the lines of supply of the armies to the British left. It was clear that the situation could be improved by a move of our men to their old station on the left of the line.
How the move was carried out, and with what results, will be told later. But before following further the course of the French flanking movement and the German counter- stroke, and telling how this was successfully parried, we must glance, however briefly, at what was happening on the right of the Allied line in the days that followed the deadlock that closed the first series of battles on the Aisne.
in the east - capturing a German battle flag
In the third week of September, the position on the right centre and right of the Allied line was this. The Germans held the heights to the north and east of Rheims, and were bombarding the city with their long-ranging siege guns. It was during this bombardment that the roof of the cathedral and the scaffolding outside of it were fired by the German shells, and such lamentable damage was done to the wonderful building. Despite the bombardment the French not only held on to Rheims, but foiled the attempts of the Germans to break through to the east of it. From Rheims across the undulating plain of Champagne there was something of a deadlock. Both sides were entrenched, and there was nowhere any important change in the situation.
The critical points in the long line were further east. To understand what was happening, one must know something of the nature of the country. The French and the Germans were fighting for two ranges of wooded hills—the forest plateau of the Argonne and the flat-topped ridges east of the upper Meuse between the fortresses of Verdun and Toul, which are known as the Heights of the Meuse.
The forest of the Argonne divides the upper course of the Aisne from the upper valley of the Meuse. The Argonne is famous in French history as the natural barrier behind which French Armies have resisted invasion from the eastward. The range of hills has a clayey soil that in rainy weather makes the level summit of the plateau in many places a quagmire. The ridge runs north and south, and through its southern end there is a depression known as the pass of Les Islettes, through which runs the main road from Paris and the upper Marne by Verdun to Metz and Germany. There is another road branching from Verdun by Varennes, which crosses the ridge further north at Grand Pré. The Argonne is thus a natural rampart against an invasion from the eastward. Its two roads are barred where they meet at the crossing of the Meuse by the fortress of Verdun.
Verdun, at the point where the great road from Germany crosses the Meuse, has been a fortress for centuries. It was a Roman military station, and in the Middle Ages a walled town. In the days of Louis XIV., Vauban demolished the old walls and surrounded it with bastioned ramparts. In the wars of the Revolution its surrender to the Prussians produced the panic in Paris which was made the pretext of the September Massacres. In the war of 1870, it made a brave defence against the invaders, and after the war it was chosen to be the northern stronghold of the line of new fortresses for the defence of the eastern frontier. It is a great entrenched camp surrounded by a triple circle of forts and batteries, erected in the wooded hills at the northern end of the Heights of the Meuse.
This line of heights extends along the eastern bank of the Meuse from Verdun to the fortress of Toul. The hills are what we in England would describe as downs. Their eastern front falls by bold slopes to the undulating country that extends to Metz—"the plain of the Woevre." The range is a wooded plateau cut up by narrow valleys, and here and there running up into round-topped summits. The few roads that cross it enter it from the plain by ravine-like valleys, and there is a good deal of forest land, both on the slopes and the crest of the heights. Between Toul and Verdun a chain of forts on these hills commands the passes from the lower land, and the crossings of the Meuse on the west side of the plateau.
In this campaign of the autumn of 1914, the extreme right of the French line running along the Aisne by Rheims and across the plain of Champagne, rested on these fortified heights. Thence the line was prolonged by the line of forts ; and beyond Toul another French Army covered Nancy and protected the gap between Toul and Epinal. Still further to the right, the Frency Army of Alsace was holding the line of the Vosges supported by the fortresses of Epinal and Belfort.
On this long line, Verdun was the most important point. If the enemy could get possession of it he would break through the main French battle front at a point where he could outflank the armies holding the level lands of Champagne. He would open a new line of communication by the main road and railway to Metz, and the way would be clear into the valley of the Marne, the traditional highway of armies marching from the eastward on Paris.
Two German Armies were combining their operations in order to break through on this flank of the French line. The army of the Crown Prince was astride of the Argonne plateau, endeavouring to drive the French out of its southern end in order thus to isolate Verdun on the western side. At the same time another army under the Crown Prince of Bavaria was operating from the other side of the Heights of the Meuse.
The Bavarians were attacking the northern outworks of Verdun, and at the same time endeavouring to break through the line of forts to the south of it. The Bavarian Army had thus a double objective, First, to co-operate with the Crown Prince in isolating Verdun, and secondly, to make a breach in the eastern barrier of forts, and cross the Meuse in the rear of the French troops who were facing the Crown Prince.
The whole of the defence against this double attack had been entrusted to General Sarrail, and the Third French Army. It was Sarrail who, during the battle of the Marne and the first days of the fighting on the Aisne, had driven the Crown Prince's Army northwards into the Argonne. Securing his ground by entrenching himself in the woods on a line running through Varennes, Sarrail had established his headquarters at Verdun. He had sent away some thousands of the civil population in order to economise the resources of the fortress, and he had strongly organised an outer line of defence beyond its advanced forts.
So far, fortresses had fared badly in the war. Some of them had not even attempted a defence, because their forts had been neglected for years, or even dismantled. Others had fallen in a few days or even hours before the attack of the German siege artillery. Verdun was the first French fortress which justified its claim to be considered a "strong place." This was largely due to the fact that the character of the surrounding country lent itself to defence, and Sarrail met the German attack not on the line of the permanent forts, but on a new entrenched line in the wooded hills bristling with well-concealed batteries of heavy artillery. The position of a permanent fort is usually accurately known by the attack ; indeed, on the French Staff maps, which could be bought by any one before the war, the position of every fort was accurately marked. But the Germans had to find out the position of the new batteries concealed in the woods on the advanced line of defence, and if they discovered it the guns could be shifted to a new position in a few hours. Thus, during the operations against Verdun in September, the permanent defences of Verdun had never to fire a single shot. All the fighting was on the advanced line, and the efforts of the German gunners to silence its fire proved ineffectual.
In the third week of September, the Crown Prince of Bavaria made a determined attempt to break through the line of forts on the Heights of the Meuse, south of Verdun. The actual command of the operation was entrusted to General von Strantz, with two Bavarian Army Corps. In the earlier attack on the Heights during the fighting on the Marne, Fort Troyon, about ten miles south of the Verdun defences, had been reduced to a heap of ruins. This left the way open for an attack on the group of forts south of Troyon, which guard the crossing of the Meuse at the little town of St. Mihiel. One of the roads across the Heights enters the hills by a narrow pass below the bold spur of Hattonchâtel, crosses the ridge by a wooded region, and then descends to the Meuse by a little valley which opens on the town of St. Mihiel. The place is at a point where the Meuse bends sharply eastward, and the Heights overlook the bend in a bold amphitheatre completely dominating the western bank. Two forts defend the crossing, the fort of Paroches on a hill on the western side, and a fort built on a bold summit south of St. Mihiel close beside a prehistoric entrenchment locally known as the Roman camp, but more likely to have been the earthwork rampart of an old Gaulish village. The fort is known as the "Camp des Romains." Its long-ranging guns cross their fire with that of the artillery mounted in the next fort to the southwards—the Fort of Liouville—that looks out from a knoll over the woods of Apremont.
covers from French penny novelettes
To secure the crossing of the river at St. Mihiel the Bavarians had to capture or destroy the fort of the " Camp des Romains," and silence the guns of the forts of Liouville and Paroches. On September 20th they drove in a French detachment and captured the Heights at Hattonchâtel. They then brought their heavy artillery up to the plateau and opened fire at long range on the forts of Liouville and Camp des Romains, the heaviest fire being directed upon the latter. Attempts made by the garrisons of Verdun and Toul to drive them off were repulsed by the flank guards of the attack. Meanwhile the Bavarian infantry had cleared the woods in front and pushed close up to Camp des Romains. By the evening of the 22nd the fire of both forts had been silenced, and Camp des Romains was a mass of ruins. That evening the Bavarians assaulted this fort and stormed its outworks. The handful of men that remained unwounded in the garrison were holding out in the wrecked central work. The German artillery had been brought up to close range, and the position of the French was hopeless. In admiration of the gallant defence they had made of the advanced works, where they had fought hand-to-hand and only been driven out with heavy loss by superior numbers, Von Strantz offered to allow them to retire with their arms, and the offer was accepted. They marched out of the fort through St. Mihiel, the German troops cheering them as they went, presenting arms and dipping the flag which they had hoisted amongst the ruins of Camp des Romains.
The German guns were now brought up to the western margin of the Heights and in a few hours silenced the fort of Paroches on the other side of the river. The Germans had meanwhile occupied St. Mihiel, and this gave them possession of two bridges over the Meuse. They pushed forward to the village of Chauvoncourt, but they got no further. Sarrail held in force the low hills on the opposite side of the Meuse. He rapidly accumulated a powerful artillery there, and then attacked Chauvoncourt. For a while the French held one end of the village, and the Germans the other. But the invaders remained in possession of St. Mihiel and its bridges, and strongly entrenched the circle of heights commanding it on the eastern bank. They had thus an open door through the eastern fortress barrier, but the strength of the French defences on the west bank prevented them from advancing through it.
The French endeavoured to drive the enemy from the Meuse Heights by an advance in the plain on the eastern side of them from the line of Toul and Nancy. For some weeks there was continual fighting at various points from the forest of Apremont to the German frontier of Lorraine. Here and there a little progress was made, but both sides entrenched themselves and the struggle ended in a deadlock like that which prevailed all along the line from the Meuse to the Oise.
Further south in Alsace, the Germans were standing on the defensive. The French gradually won some ground on the eastern slopes of the Vosges in the direction of Mulhouse. But the operations here had no effect on the general situation. In fact nothing of real importance could be attempted in Alsace unless the French were strong enough to attack Strasburg and the line of the Rhine.
To sum up the situation. In the beginning of October for hundreds of miles from the extreme right in Alsace to the left of the Allied line, which was now nearing the Belgian frontier, neither side could make any serious progress. Everything depended for a moment on whether the new effort of the| Germans to break through round the Allied left from Belgium could be stopped. Hence the movement of troops to the northward, of which something has been already said. It was in these first days of October that the British movement from the trenches of the Aisne to the extreme left of the Allied line began. Efforts were made to conceal the move from the Germans. As they were relieved by French troops, night after night, the British detachments began their march westward. The first stages of the movement were by road. The weather was fine, and there were clear moonlit nights, so that apart from the desire to conceal the operation, it was a gain to the men to march in the cool night hours and rest during the day. The change from the arduous work of the trenches on the Aisne Heights was also a welcome relief to them.
The cavalry were sent off first on October 3rd, and the whole movement took about a fortnight. Two or three night marches brought the troops to various points north of Paris and on the lower Oise, where they entrained for unknown destinations. Except to the officers of higher rank, it was a surprise to find that the trains were steaming northwards and at last stopped for the men to detrain at Abbeville, or St. Omer, or at Boulogne, where some of them had begun their campaigning weeks ago. In the march north of Paris and in the subsequent movement into French Flanders they passed through places which had either been untouched by the war or had been little affected by it, and everywhere they were welcomed by the French people with the most friendly hospitality. Gradually the British force came in touch with the German vanguards in the extreme north of France. But to make these operations clear we must go back to the story of what had been happening in Belgium after the retirement of the Allied Armies from the frontier at the end of August.
French cavalry marching towards Alsace
Back to part 2 - the Battle of the Aisne
