MARNE, SECOND BATTLE OF THE. This marked the turning of the tide in the final year of the World War (q.v.). On July 15, 1918, the Rheims district was the scene of the last German offensive on the Western Front, and three days later, when this was stemmed, the ebb began under pressure of the great Allied counterstroke. It was thus composed of two acts, which require separate analysis.
This opened on July 15, 1918, and the German plan was to attack on either side of Rheims, the principal effort being made by the German I. and III. Armies towards Chalons, while the VII, Army sought to cross the Marne near Dormans and to converge with the main advance in the region of Epernay. But although this day marked the last German bid for victory, the actual at tack was by no means the Germans' supreme effort, nor had it the decisive aims popularly ascribed to it at the time. For Luden dorff still adhered to his guiding idea that the British, severely shaken in the great battles of March and April, should be the target for his decisive blow and that their front in Flanders should be the stage on which he would produce his final drama of victory.
The attack on May 27 (see CHEMIN-DES-DAMES, BATTLE OF THE) across the Aisne had been conceived merely as a diversion to draw the Allied reserves away from Flanders. So also with the June 9 attack, less bountiful in its fruits, that had been launched near Compiegne to break down the buttress of Allied territory that lay between the huge salients created by the German attacks of March and May. When, instead, this German attack was broken off by Ludendorff, with little gained but his own reserves still further drained, he considered "the enemy in Flanders still so strong that the German army could not attack" there yet. So he planned a further diversion—to be made by forty-seven divisions attacking on either side of Rheims.
But the sands of time were slipping out for the Germans, and American reinforcements, like the sands of the shore in potential number, were slipping in to become a cement for the Allied line of battle. Appreciating this, Ludendorff intended his Flanders attack, once more towards the nodal point of Hazebrouck, to follow on the 2oth, only five days after the Rheims diversion. On July 16 actually, as soon as the Rheims attack was under way, artillery and aircraft were sent off by train to the Flanders front, and Ludendorff himself moved to Tournai to supervise the preparations.
But preparation was never to be completed by execution. For
the Rheims diversion had not even the opening success of its predecessors, and on July 18 the Allied counterstroke so jeapor dised the Germans' situation that Ludendorff felt compelled to postpone, if not yet to abandon, the fulfilment of his dream. One reason of the failure of the July 15 attack was that east of Rheims it was met by an "elastic defence" in face of which the German onslaught lost its momentum before it reached the real position of the French resistance. Much misplaced praise has been lavished on this "Gouraud manoeuvre." For this ascription of its origin is yet another of the many war legends. The manoeuvre was actually due to Petain, that cool, unemotional military economist who, called to be commander-in-chief af tee the Nivelle fiasco of 1917, had systematically worked to rebuild the French army and to restore the stability of its man-power and moral, previously under mined by the extravagant offensives of 1914-1917. One illumi nating illustration of the damage done is that cases of desertion alone had risen from 509 in 1914 to 21,174 in 1917.
Not content merely to reorganise, Petain had set himself to insure against a recurrence of the trouble by tactics that should be an economy both of force and of the nervous force of the combatant. To this end, one method was an elastic defence in depth, to allow the initial shock and impetus of the enemy's attack to be absorbed by a thinly held forward position, and then to await him on a strong position in rear, when the enemy's troops would be the range of the bulk of their supporting artillery. This method Pet= had sought to apply against the attack of June 9, but, although it was partially successful, its full effect was lost through the reluctance of the local commanders, still clinging to their old offensive dogmas, to reconcile themselves to a voluntary yielding up of a few square miles of worthless ground. And before July 15, when the coming German attack was defi nitely expected, a week's argument was required before Petain could persuade the lion-hearted Gouraud, in command of the French IV. Army east of Rheims, to adopt this elastic manoeuvre. It was finally decided to leave nothing along the line of outposts (constituted by the Monts de Champagne) but "islands" of re sistance, which would be required to sacrifice themselves for the purpose of dissipating the enemy attack and keeping it under the well-controlled fire of the main position established in the rear.