A General Sketch of the European War Part 11

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 38.]

There you have the elements of the position in which the advance corner of the great French square was situated just before it took the shock of the main German armies. The two lines AB and BC are the French and British armies lying behind the Sambre, ?, and the Middle Meuse, d, respectively; but the line of the Sambre ceases to protect eastward along the dotted line a? beyond the point up to which the river forms a natural obstacle, while from K to B the line is protected by the river Sambre itself. The more formidable obstacle, d, represents the great trench or ravine of the Meuse which stretches south from Namur. The town of Namur itself is at B, the junction of the two rivers; and the fortified zone, SSS, is the ring of forts lying far out all round Namur; while the pa.s.sages, PP, over the obstacles contained within that fortified zone, and accessible to the people _inside_ the angle from M, but not to the people _outside_ the angle from NNN, are the bridges across both the Sambre and the Meuse at Namur.

All this is, of course, put merely diagrammatically, and a diagram is something very distant from reality. The "open strategic square" in practice comes to mean little more than two main elements--one the operative corner, the other a number of separate units disposed in all sorts of different places behind, and generally denominated "the manoeuvring ma.s.s." If you had looked down from above at all the French armies towards the end of August, when the first great shock came, you would have seen nothing remotely resembling a square.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 39.]

You would have seen something like Sketch 31 where the bodies enclosed under the t.i.tle A were the operative corner; various garrisons and armies in the field, enclosed under the t.i.tle B, were the manoeuvring ma.s.s. But it is only by putting the matter quite clearly in the abstract diagrammatic form that its principle can be grasped.

With this digression I will return and conclude with the main points of debate in the use of the open strategic square.

We have seen that the operative corner is in this scheme deliberately imperilled at the outset.

The following is a sketch map of the actual position, and it will be seen that the topographical features of this countryside are fairly represented by Sketch 39; while this other sketch shows how these troops that were about to take the shock stood to the general ma.s.s of the armies.

But to return to the diagram (which I repeat and amplify as Sketch 41), let us see how the Allied force in the operative corner before Namur stood with relation to this angle of natural obstacles, the two rivers Sambre and Meuse, and the fortified zone round the point where they met.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 40.]

The situation of that force was as follows:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 41.]

Along and behind ? stretched the 5th Army of the French, prolonged on its left by the British contingent. I have marked the first in the diagram with the figure 5, the second with the letters Br, and the latter portion I have also shaded. At right angles to the French 5th Army stretched the French 4th Army, which I have marked with the figure 4. It depended upon the obstacle of the Meuse d for its defence, just as the French 5th Army depended upon the Sambre, ?. It must, of course, be understood that when one says these forces "lay along" the aforesaid lines, one does not mean that they merely lay behind them. One means that they held the bridges and prepared to dispute the crossing of them.

Now, the French plan was as follows. They said to themselves: "There will come against us an enemy acting along the arrows VWXYZ, and this enemy will certainly be in superior force to our own. He will perhaps be as much as fifty per cent. stronger than we are. But he will suffer under these disadvantages:--

"The one part of his forces, V and W, will find it difficult to act in co-operation with the other part of his forces, Y and Z, because Y and Z (acting as they are on an outside circ.u.mference split by the fortified zone SSS) will be separated, or only able to connect in a long and roundabout way. The two lots, V and W, and Y and Z, could only join hands by stretching round an awkward angle--that is, by stretching round the bulge which SSS makes, SSS being the ring of forts round Namur. Part of their forces (that along the arrow X) will further be used up in trying to break down the resistance of SSS.

That will take a good deal of time. If our horizontal line AB holds its own, naturally defended as it is, against the attack from V and W, while our perpendicular line BC holds its own still more firmly (relying on its much better natural obstacle) against YZ, we shall have ample time to break the first and worst shock of the enemy's attack, and to allow, once we have concentrated that attack upon ourselves, the rest of our forces, the ma.s.ses of manoeuvre, or at any rate a sufficient portion of them, to come up and give us a majority in _this_ part of the field. We shall still be badly outnumbered on the line as a whole; but the resistance of our operative corner, relying on the Sambre and Meuse and the fortress of Namur, will gather much of the enemy unto itself. It will thus make of this part of the field the critical district of the whole campaign. Our ma.s.ses, arriving while we resist, will give us a local superiority here which will hold up the whole German line. We may even by great good luck so break the shock of the attack as ourselves to begin taking the counter-offensive after a little while, and to roll back either Y and Z or V and W by the advance of our forces across the rivers when the enemy has exhausted himself."

It will be clear that this calculation (whether of the expected and probable least favourable issue--a lengthy defence followed by an orderly and slow retreat designed to allow the rest of the armies to come up--or of the improbable and more favourable issue--the taking of the counter-offensive) depended upon two presumptions which the commander of the Allies had taken for granted: (1) that the German shock would not come in more than a certain admitted maximum, say thirty per cent. superiority at the most over the Allied forces at this particular point; (2) that the ring of forts round Namur would be able to hold out for at least three or four days, and thus absorb the efforts of part of the enemy as well as awkwardly divide his forces, while that enemy's attack was being delivered.

Both these presumptions were erroneous. The enemy, as we shall see in a moment, came on in much larger numbers than had been allowed for.

Namur, as we have already seen, fell, not in three or four days, but instantly--the moment it was attacked. And the result was that, instead of an orderly and slow retirement, sufficiently tardy to permit of the swinging up of the rest of the French "square"--that is, of the arrival of the other armies or manoeuvring ma.s.ses--there came as a fact the necessity for very rapid retirement of the operative corner over more than one hundred miles and the immediate peril for days of total disaster to it.

To appreciate how superior the enemy proved to be in number, and how heavy the miscalculation here was, we must first see what the numbers of this Allied operative corner were.

I have in Sketch 42 indicated the approximate positions and relative sizes of the three parts of the Allied forces.

Beginning from the left, we have barely two army corps actually present of the British contingent in the fighting line: for certain contingents of the outermost army corps had not yet arrived. We may perhaps call the numbers actually present at French's command when contact was taken 70,000 men, but that is probably beyond the mark.

To the east lay the 5th French Army, three army corps amounting, say, to 120,000 men, and immediately south of this along the Meuse lay the 4th French Army, another three army corps amounting to at the most another 120,000 men.

We may then call the whole of the operative corner (if we exclude certain cavalry reserves far back, which never came into play) just over 300,000 men. That there were as many as 310,000 is improbable.

The French calculation was that against these 300,000 men there would arrive at the very most 400,000.

That, of course, meant a heavy superiority in number for the enemy; but, as we have seen, the scheme allowed for such an inconvenience at the first contact.

That more than 400,000 could strike in the region of Namur no one believed, for no one believed that the enemy could provision and organize transport for more than that number.

A very eminent English critic had allowed for seven army corps of first-line men as all that could be brought across the Belgian Plain.

The French went so far as to allow for ten, a figure represented by the 400,000 men of the enemy they expected.

We had then the Allied forces expecting an attack in about the superiority indicated upon this diagram, where the British contingent and the two French armies are marked in full, and the supposed enemy in dotted lines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 42.]

Roughly speaking, the Allies were allowing for a thirty per cent.

superiority.

Now, lying as they did behind the rivers, and with the ring of forts around Namur to shield their point of junction and to split the enemy's attack, this superiority, though heavy, was not crushing. The hopes of the defensive that it would stand firm, or at least retire slowly so as to give time for the manoeuvring ma.s.ses to come up was, under this presumption, just. It was even thought possible that, if the enemy attacked too blindly and spent himself too much, the counter-offensive might be taken after the first two or three days.

As for the remainder of the German forces, it was believed that they were stretched out very much in even proportion, without any thin places, from the Meuse to Alsace.

Now, as a matter of fact, the German forces were in no such disposition. 1. The Germans had added to every army corps a reserve division. 2. They had brought through the Belgian plains a very much larger number than seven army corps: they had brought nine. 3. They had further brought against Namur yet another four army corps through the Ardennes, the woods of which helped to hide their progress from air reconnaissance. To all this ma.s.s of thirteen army corps, each army corps half as large again as the active or first line allowed for, add some imperfectly trained but certainly large bodies of independent cavalry. We cannot accurately say what the total numbers of this vast body were, but we can be perfectly certain that more than 700,000 men were ma.s.sed in this region of Namur. The enemy was coming on, not four against three, but certainly seven against three, and perhaps eight or even nine against three.

The real situation was that given in the accompanying diagram (Sketch 43).

Five corps, each with its extra division, were ma.s.sed under von Kluck, and called the 1st German Army. Four more, including the Guards, were present with von Buelow, and stretched up to and against the first defences of Namur. Now, around the corner of that fortress, two Saxon corps, a Wurtemberg corps, a Magdeburg corps, and a corps of reserve under the Duke of Wurtemberg formed the 3rd Army, the right wing of which opposed the forts of Namur, the rest of which stretched along the line of the Meuse.

Even if the forts of Namur had held out, the position of so hopelessly inferior a body as was the Franco-British force, in face of such overwhelming numbers, would have been perilous in the extreme. With the forts of Namur abandoned almost at the first blow, the peril was more than a peril. It had become almost certain disaster.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 43.]

With the fall of Namur, the angle between the rivers--that is, the crossings of the rivers at their most difficult part where they were broadest--was in the hands of the enemy, and the whole French body, the 4th and 5th Armies, was at some time on that Sat.u.r.day falling back.

The exact hour and the details of that movement we do not yet know. We do not know what loss the French sustained, we do not know whether any considerable bodies were cut off. We do not know even at what hour the French General Staff decided that the position was no longer tenable, and ordered the general retreat.

All we know is that, so far from being able to hold out two or three days against a numerical superiority of a third and under the b.u.t.tress of Namur, the operative corner, with Namur fallen and, not 30 per cent., but something more like 130 per cent. superiority against it, began not the slow retreat that had been envisaged, but a retirement of the most rapid sort.

Such a retirement was essential if the cohesion of the Allied forces was to be maintained at all, and if the combined 4th and 5th French Armies and British contingent were to escape being surrounded or pierced.

By the Sat.u.r.day night at latest the French retirement was ordered; by Sunday morning it was in full progress, and it was proceeding throughout the triangle of the Thierarche all that day.

But the rate of that retirement, corresponding to the pressure upon the French front, differed very much with varying sections of the line. It was heaviest, of course, in those advanced bodies which had lain just under Namur. It was least at the two ends of the bow, for the general movement was on to the line Maubeuge-Mezieres. The farther one went east towards Maubeuge, the slower was the necessary movement, and to this cause of delay must be added the fact that von Kluck, coming round by the extreme German line, had farthest to go, and arrived latest against the line of the Allies.

Therefore the British contingent at the western extreme of the Allied line felt the shock latest of all, and all that Sunday morning the British were still occupied in taking up their positions. They had arrived but just in time for what was to follow.

It was not till the early afternoon of the Sunday that contact was first taken seriously between Sir John French and von Kluck. At that moment the British commander believed, both from a general and erroneous judgment which the French command had tendered him and from his own air work, that he had in front of him one and a half or at the most two army corps; and though the force, as we shall see in a moment, was far larger, its magnitude did not appear as the afternoon wore on. Full contact was established perhaps between three and four, by which hour the pressure was beginning to be severely felt, and upon the extreme right of the line it had already been necessary to take up defensive positions a little behind those established in the morning.

But by five o'clock, with more than two good hours of daylight before it, the British command, though perhaps already doubtful whether the advancing ma.s.ses of the enemy did not stand for more men, and especially for more guns than had been expected, was well holding its own, when all its dispositions were abruptly changed by an unexpected piece of news.

It was at this moment in the afternoon--that is, about five o'clock--that the French General Staff communicated to Sir John French information bearing two widely different characteristics: the first that it came late; the second that had it not come when it did, the whole army, French as well as British, would have been turned.

The first piece of information, far too belated, was the news that Namur had fallen, and that the enemy had been in possession of the bridge-heads over the Sambre and the Meuse since the preceding day, Sat.u.r.day. Consequent upon this, the enemy had been able to effect the pa.s.sage of the Sambre, not only in Namur itself, but in its immediate neighbourhood, and, such pa.s.sages once secured, it was but a question of time for the whole line to fall into the enemy's hands. When superior numbers have pa.s.sed one end of an obstacle it is obvious that the rest of the obstacle gradually becomes useless.[3] At what hour the French knew that they had to retire, we have not been told. As we have seen, the enemy was right within Namur on the early afternoon of Sat.u.r.day, the 22nd, and it is to be presumed that the French retirement was in full swing by the Sunday morning, in which case the British contingent, which this retirement left in peril upon the western extreme of the line, ought to have been warned many hours before five o'clock in the afternoon.

To what the delay was due we are again as yet in ignorance, but probably to the confusion into which the unexpected fall of Namur and the equally unexpected strength of the enemy beyond the Sambre and the Meuse had thrown the French General Staff.

At any rate, the news did come thus late, and its lateness was of serious consequence to the British contingent, and might have been disastrous to it.