A General Sketch of the European War Part 13

So far the operations of the British Army had not differed greatly from the expected or at least one of the expected developments of the campaign.

The operative corner, if it should not have the luck, through losses or blunders on the part of the enemy, to take the counter-offensive after receiving the third shock, is intended to retire, and to draw upon itself a maximum of the enemy's efforts.

But between what had been intended as the most probable, and in any case perilous, task of this body (which comprised, it will be remembered, six French and ultimately two British army corps) turned out, within twenty-four hours of the retreat, and within forty-eight of the fall of Namur, to be an operation of a difficulty so extreme as to imperil the whole campaign, and in this operation it was the British force upon the outer left edge of the line--the unsupported extremity round which the enemy made every effort to get--which was bound to receive the severest treatment. This peculiar burden laid upon the Expeditionary Force from this country was, of course, gravely increased by the delay in beginning its retreat, which we have seen to be due to the delay in the communication to it by the French of the news of the fall of Namur. On account of this delay not only was the extreme of the line which the British held immediately threatened with outflanking, but it still lay somewhat forward of the rest of the force. It was in danger of being turned round its exposed edge C, not only because it lay on the extreme of the line, but also because, instead of occupying its normal position, AB, which it would have occupied had the retreat begun with all the rest, it actually occupied the position CD, which made it far more likely to be surrounded than if it had been a day's march farther back, as it would have been if the French Staff work had suffered no delays.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 54.]

There lay in the gap formed by this untoward tardiness in the British retirement, at the point M, the fortress of Maubeuge. It was garrisoned by French reserves, or Territorial troops, not of the same quality as the active army, and its defensive power was, even if the old ring of fortress theory had proved sound, of very doubtful order.

The French 5th Army being no longer present to support the British right, but having fallen back behind the alignment of that right, General Sir John French had no support for what should have been his secure flank save this fortress of Maubeuge, and it will be evident from the above diagram that the enemy, should he succeed in outflanking the British line, would compel it to fall back within the ring of forts surrounding Maubeuge. To avoid destruction it would have no alternative but to do that. For, counting the forces in front of it and the forces trying to get round its back, it was fighting odds of two to one.

Maubeuge was a stronghold that had played a great part in the revolutionary war. Its resistance in the month of October 1793 had made possible the French victory of Wattigines, just outside its walls, and had, perhaps, done more than any other feat of arms in that year to save the French Revolution from the allied governments of Europe. It was, indeed, full of historic memories, from the moment when Caesar had defeated the Nervii upon the Sambre just to the west of the town (his camp can still be traced in an open field above the river bank) to the invasion of 1815.

But this role which it had played throughout French history had not led to any illusion with regard to the role it might play in any modern war; and at the best Maubeuge, in common with the other ill-fortified points of the Belgian frontier, suffered from the only error--and that a grave one--which their thorough unnational political system had imposed upon the military plan of the French. This error was the capital error of indecision. No consistent plan had been adopted with regard to the fortification of the Belgian frontier.

The French had begun, after the recuperation following upon the war of 1870, an elaborate and very perfect system of fortification along their German frontier--that is, along the new frontier which divided the annexed territory of Alsace-Lorraine from the rest of the country.

They had taken it for granted that the next German attempt would be made somewhere between Longwy and Belfort. And they had spent in this scheme of fortification, first and last, the cost of a great campaign.

They had spent some three hundred million pounds; and it will be possible for the reader to gauge the magnitude of this effort if he will consider that it was a military operation more costly than was the whole of the South African War to Great Britain, or of the Manchurian War to Russia. The French were wise to have undertaken this expense, because it had hitherto been an unheard-of offence against European morals that one nation in Christendom should violate the declared neutrality of another. And the attack upon Belgium as a means of invading France by Germany had not then crossed the mind of any but a few theorists who had, so to speak, "marched ahead" of the rapid decline in our common religion which had marked now three generations.

But when the French had completed this scheme of fortification, Europe heard it proposed by certain authorities in Prussia that, as the cost of invading France through the now fortified zone would be considerable, the German forces should not hesitate to originate yet another step in the breakdown of European morality, and to sacrifice in their attack upon France the neutrality of Belgium, of which Prussia was herself a guarantor.

Men have often talked during this war, especially in England, as though the crime accompanying Prussian activities in the field were normal to warfare; and this error is probably due to the fact that war upon a large scale has never come home to the imagination of the country, and that it is without experience of invasion.

Yet it is of the very first importance to appreciate the truth that Prussia in this campaign has postulated in one point after another new doctrines which repudiate everything her neighbours have held sacred from the time when a common Christianity first began to influence the states of Europe. The violation of the Belgian territory is on a par with the murder of civilians in cold blood, and after admission of their innocence, with the ma.s.sacre of priests, and the sinking without warning of unarmed ships with their pa.s.sengers and crews. To regard these things as something normal to warfare in the past is as monstrous an historical error as it would be to regard the reign of terror during the French Revolution as normal to civil disputes within the State. And to appreciate such a truth is, I repeat, of especial moment to the understanding of the mere military character of the campaign. For if the violation of Belgium in particular had not been the unheard of thing it was, the fortification of the Franco-Belgian frontier with which we are here concerned would have had a very different fortune.

As it was, the French could never quite make up their minds--or rather the French parliamentarians could never make up their minds--upon the amount of money that might wisely be expended in the defence of this neutral border. There were moments when the opinion that Prussia would be restrained by no fear of Europe prevailed among the professional politicians of Paris. The fortification of the Belgian frontier was undertaken in such moments; a full plan of it was drawn up. But again doubt would succeed, the very large sums involved would appal some new ministry, and the effort would be interrupted. To such uncertainty of aim characteristic of parliamentary government in a military nation was added, unfortunately, the consideration of the line of the Meuse. Liege and Namur were fortresses of peculiar strength, Antwerp was thought the strongest thing in Europe; and that triangle was conceived, even by many who believed that the violation of Belgian territory would take place, as affording a sufficient barrier against the immediate invasion of France from the north-east.

Those who made this calculation did not forget that fortresses are nothing without their full complement of men, guns, and stores; but they could neither control, nor had they the elements properly to appreciate, the deficiency of organization in a foreign and not military country.

For all these causes Maubeuge, in common with other points along the Belgian frontier less important than itself, was left imperfect. Even if the ring fortress had remained after 1905 what it had been before that date, and even if modern howitzer fire and modern high explosives had not rendered its tenure one of days rather than months, Maubeuge was not a first-cla.s.s fortress. As it was, with fortifications unrenewed, and with the ring fortress in any case doomed, Maubeuge was a death-trap.

The role a.s.signed to the fortress in the original French plan was no more than the support of the retiring operative corner, as it "retreated, manoeuvred, and held the enemy." Maubeuge was considered as part of a line beyond which the operative corner would not have to fall before the rest of the square, the "manoeuvring ma.s.s," had swung up. Hence it was that the French General Staff and its Chief had put within the ring of its insufficient forts nothing more than a garrison of Territorials--that is, of the older cla.s.ses of the reserve.

Had the British General accepted the lure of Maubeuge as Bazaine did the lure of Metz in 1870, the Expeditionary Force would have been destroyed. But it would have been destroyed, not after a long delay, as was the army at Metz, but immediately; for Maubeuge was not Metz, and the fortress power of resistance of to-day is not that of a generation ago. Maubeuge, as a fact, fell within a fortnight of the date when this temptation was offered to the sorely pressed British army, and had that temptation been yielded to, the whole force would have been, in a military sense, annihilated before the middle of September.

What preserved it was the immediate decision undertaken upon that Monday night to proceed, in spite of the fatigues that were already felt after the first day's retreat, with a retirement upon the south-west, and to proceed with it as vigorously as possible.

It was not yet daylight upon the morning of Tuesday, August 25th, when the move began. The Field-Marshal counted justly upon some exhaustion in his immensely superior enemy, especially in those troops of his upon the west (the 2nd German Corps) which had to perform the heavy marching task of getting round the end of the British line. This element, combined with the considerable distance which the British marched that morning, saved the army; though not until another week of almost intolerable suffering had pa.s.sed, and not until very heavy losses indeed had been sustained. The great Maubeuge-Bavai road, which is prolonged to Eth, and which was, roughly, the British front of that night, was cleared shortly after sunrise. A couple of brigades of cavalry and the divisional cavalry of the 2nd Corps covered the operation on the centre of the right, in front of the main body of the 2nd Corps, while the rest of the cavalry similarly covered the exposed western edge and corner of the line.

Delays, with the criticism of which this short summary has no concern, had forbidden the whole force which should have been present with the British Army in Flanders at the outset of the campaign to arrive in time, and the contingents that had already come up had taken the shock, as we have already described, in the absence of the 4th Division. This 4th Division had only begun to detrain from the junction at Le Cateau at the same hour that General Sir John French was reading that Sunday message which prompted his immediate retirement from before Mons. When the full official history of the war comes to be written, few things will prove of more credit to the Expeditionary Force and its command than the way in which this belated division--belated through no fault of the soldiers--was incorporated with the already existing organization, in the very midst of its retreat, and helped to support the army. There are few parallels in history to the successful accomplishment of so delicate and perilous an operation.

At any rate, in less than forty-eight hours after its arrival, the 4th Division--eleven battalions and a brigade of artillery--were incorporated with the British line just as the whole force was falling back upon this Tuesday morning, the 25th; and the newly arrived division of fresh men did singular service in the further covering of the retirement. General Snow, who was in command of this division, was deployed upon a line running from just south of Solesmes, on the right, to a point just south of La Chatrie, upon the road from Cambrai to Le Cateau, upon his left; and, as will be seen by the accompanying sketch map, such a line effectually protected the falling back of the rest of the force. Behind it the 1st and the 2nd British Corps fell back upon the line Cambrai to Landrecies. The small inset map shows how the various points in this two days' retreat stood to one another.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 55.]

This line from Landrecies towards Cambrai had already been in part prepared in the course of that day--Tuesday--and entrenched, and it may be imagined what inclination affected commanders and men towards a halt upon that position. The pressure had been continuous and heavy, the work of detraining and setting in line the newly arrived division had added to the anxieties of the day, and an occupation of the prepared line seemed to impose itself. Luckily, the unwisdom of such a stand in the retirement was perceived in time, and the British Commander decided not to give his forces rest until some considerable natural object superior to imperfect and hurriedly constructed trenches could be depended upon to check the enemy's advance. The threat of being outflanked was still very grave, and the few hours'

halt which would have been involved in the alternative decision might, or rather would, have been fatal.

The consequences, however, to the men of this decision in favour of continual retirement were severe. The 1st Corps did not reach Landrecies till ten o'clock at night. They had been upon the move for eighteen hours; but even so, the enemy, in that avalanche of advance (which was possible to him, as we now know, by the organization of mechanical transport), was well in touch. The Guards in Landrecies itself (the 4th Brigade) were attacked by the advance body of the 9th German Army Corps, which came on in overwhelming numbers right into the buildings of the town, debouching from the wood to the north under cover of the darkness. Their effort was unsuccessful. They did not succeed in piercing or even in decisively confusing the British line at this point; and, packed in the rather narrow street of Landrecies, the enemy suffered losses equivalent to a battalion in that desperate night fighting. But though the enemy here failed to achieve his purpose, his action compelled the continued retreat of men who were almost at the limit of exhaustion, and who had now been marching and fighting for the better part of twenty-four hours.

In that same darkness the 1st Division, under Sir Douglas Haig, was heavily engaged south-east of Maroilles. They obtained ultimately the aid of two French reserve divisions which lay upon the right of the British line, and extricated themselves from the peril they were in before dawn. By daylight this 1st Corps was still continuing its retirement in the direction of Wa.s.signy, with Guise as its objective.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 56.]

Meanwhile the 2nd Corps, which had not been so heavily attacked, and which lay to the west--that is, still upon the extreme of the line--had come, before the sunset of that Tuesday, the 25th, into a line stretching from Le Cateau to near Caudry, and thence prolonged by the 4th Division towards Seranvillers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 57.]

It will be seen that this line was bent--its left refused. This disposition was, of course, designed to meet the ceaseless German attempt to outflank on the west; and with the dawn of Wednesday, the 26th, it was already apparent how serious would be the task before this 2nd Corps, which covered all the rest of the army, and, in a sense, the whole of the Anglo-French retirement. General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, who was here in command, was threatened with a disaster that might carry in its train disaster to the whole British contingent, and ultimately, perhaps, to the whole Franco-British line.

Although the German bodies which were attempting the outflanking had not yet all come up, the field artillery of no less than four German corps was already at work against this one body, and a general action was developing upon which might very well depend the fate of the campaign. Indeed, the reader will do well to fix his attention upon this day, Wednesday, the 26th August, as the key to all that followed.

There are always to be found, in the history of war, places and times which are of this character--nuclei, as it were, round which the business of all that comes before and after seems to congregate. Of such, for instance, was the Friday before Waterloo, when Erlon's counter-orders ultimately decided the fate of Napoleon; and of such was Carnot's night march on October 15, 1793, which largely decided the fate of the revolutionary army.

The obvious action to take in such a position as that in which the 2nd Corps found themselves was to break contact with the enemy, to call for support from the 1st Corps, and to maintain the retreat as indefatigably as it had already been maintained in the preceding twenty-four hours.

But men have limits to their physical powers, which limits commonly appear sharply, not gradually, at the end of a great movement. The 1st Corps had been marching and fighting a day and a night, and that after a preceding whole day of retirement from before Mons. It was unable to execute a further effort. Further, the general in command of the 2nd Corps reported that the German pressure had advanced too far to permit of breaking contact in the face of such an attack.

It would have been of the utmost use if at this moment a large body of French cavalry--no less than three divisions--under General Sordet, could have intervened upon that critical moment, the morning of Wednesday, the 26th, to have covered the retirement of the 1st Corps.

They were in the neighbourhood; the British commander had seen their commander in the course of the 25th, and had represented his need.

Through some error or misfortune in the previous movement of this corps--such that its horses were incapable of further action through fatigue--it failed to appear upon the field in this all-important juncture, and General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was left facing overwhelming odds, which in artillery--the arm that was doing all the heavy work of that morning--were not less than four to one.

The fact that the retirement was at last made possible was due more than anything else to the handling of the British guns upon this day, and to the devotion with which the batteries sacrificed themselves to the covering of that movement; while the cavalry, as in the preceding two days, co-operated in forming a screen for the retreat.

It was about half-past three in the afternoon when the general in command of this exposed left flank judged it possible to break contact, and to give the order for falling back. The experiment--for it seems to have been no more secure than such a word suggests--was perilous in the extreme. It was not known whether the consequences of this fierce artillery duel against an enemy of four-fold superiority had been sufficient to forbid that enemy to make good the pursuit.

Luckily, as the operation developed, it was apparent that the check inflicted upon such enormous odds by the British guns was sufficient for its purpose. The enemy had received losses that forbade him to move with the rapidity necessary to him if he was to decide the matter. He failed to press the retiring 2nd British Corps in any conclusive fashion: this 2nd Corps, the left wing, was saved; and with it the whole army, and perhaps the whole line.

The retreat of this body, which had thus covered all its comrades, continued under terrible conditions of strain (and after so heavy an action) right through the afternoon, and on hour after hour through the darkness; but though such an effort meant the loss of stragglers and of wounded, of guns whose teams had been destroyed, of material, and of all that accompanies a perilous retreat, one may justly say that well before midnight of that Wednesday, the 26th, the operation had proved successful and its purpose was accomplished.

Two more days of almost equal strain were, as we shall see, to be suffered by the whole army before it had reached a natural obstacle behind which it could draw breath (the river Oise), and might fairly be regarded as no longer in peril of destruction; but the breaking point that had come on that Wednesday, the 26th, had been successfully pa.s.sed without disaster, and had been so pa.s.sed, in the main, by virtue of the guns.

This critical day, upon which depended the fortunes certainly of the British contingent, and in some degree of all the "operative corner"

of the French plan, turned in favour of the Allies, not only through the military excellence of the action which was broken off by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien during the afternoon, but also through the vigour and tenacity of the retreat.

I must here beg the reader's leave for a short digression in connection with those two phrases--"in favour of," and "vigour."

History in general treats a retirement, particularly a rapid retirement accompanied by heavy losses, as a disaster; and the conception that such a movement may seem to the military historian a success, and that the energy of its conduct is just as important as the energy of an a.s.sault, is unfamiliar to most students of civilian record. But I am writing here, though an elementary, yet a military history; and to the military historian a retreat may be just as much a factor in victory as an advance; while the energy and tenacity required for its carriage are, if anything, more important than the corresponding qualities required for an advance. And in the case of this critical day and a half, the Wednesday, August 26th, and the Wednesday and Thursday night, August 26th-27th, the preservation of the British forces, and to some extent of all that lay east of them, was made possible by the very fact that the retirement was prosecuted with the utmost rapidity and without a halt. Had the retreat been interrupted in the hope of making a stand, or in the hope of repose, the whole army would have gone.

Throughout the night, then, with heavy losses from stragglers, and in one case with the surrounding and annihilation by wounds and capture of nearly a whole battalion (the Gordons), the retreat of the 2nd Corps proceeded, and, in line with it, the retreat of the 1st Corps to the east.

But this 1st Corps, though set an easier task than the 2nd (which, at the extreme of the line, was under the perpetual menace of development), did not retire without losses of a serious character. It was marching on Guise, just as the 2nd Corps to the west of it was marching across the watershed to St. Quentin. The Munster Fusiliers, who were on its extreme right, had halted for the night on that same evening of the 26th; for the 1st Corps, being less hard pressed, had more leisure for such repose. During the night a messenger was sent to this body with orders for the resumption of the march next morning. He was taken prisoner, and never reached his goal. The Munsters were attacked at dawn by the German pursuit in greatly superior numbers, surrounded and destroyed, as the Gordons of the 2nd Corps had been; the unwounded remnant was compelled to surrender.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 58.]

The whole of Thursday, the 27th, and Friday, the 28th of August, the British retreat continued, the 1st Corps following on at the valley of the Oise towards La Fere, while the 2nd Corps to the west pa.s.sed St.

Quentin, and made for Noyon, in the neighbourhood of the same river farther down; and on the night of that Friday the Expeditionary Force was at last in line, and in some kind of order, organized for the first breathing s.p.a.ce possible after so terrible an ordeal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 59.]

It is clear from the accompanying sketch map that the position the British had now reached gave to the whole Allied force a bent contour.

The French armies to the east lay along line AB, which, had it been directly prolonged, would have stretched towards C; but the British contingent, which, on account of its extreme position, had suffered most heavily, was turned right back on the scheme AD, and even so, was still in some peril of being outflanked by the German forces along the arrow (1) to the west of it. At this moment the French, whose fortunes we shall next describe, found it possible to check the fury of the pursuit. The drive of the German ma.s.ses, which had so nearly annihilated the British end of the line, was blocked, and the remainder of the great retreat followed a more orderly fashion, proceeded at a much slower rate, and approached that term at which a counter-offensive might be attempted.