In order to profit by the coolness of the night the troops of Foch, d'Esperey and Sir J. French had marched off before the orders arrived. Gallieni received his copy at 2 :35 A.M., but, know ing Joffre's intentions after his telephone conversation, which closed before to P.M., had already passed the information on to Maunoury. Foch, whose headquarters were nearest to the Grand Quartier-General, then at Chatillon, received his at i :3o A.M. and between 5 and 6 A.M, he was able to stop the retirement of his corps. D'Esperey was not so fortunate; what time he received the telegram is not recorded, but his orders founded on it are timed 6 A.M. His corps, having moved off at midnight to continue their retirement, he could not do more than modify the halting places of some of them; his centre and left passed the line defined by Joffre, and the right detained by rear-guard fighting with the enemy did not reach it. The B.E.F. was in worse case. The orders carried by motor reached G.H.Q. before the telegram, at 3 A.M., and the corps had already started southwards, one of them five hours earlier. Thus the British made a march farther to the south than Joffre counted on, and had two marches to the front to reach the place assigned, instead of one. It was in all prob ability a fortunate circumstance that the B.E.F. was not in a position to obey and try to reach the line Coulommiers–Changis on the 5th. For if it had done so its five divisions and one cavalry division cut off from all help would have come isolated into collision with the greater part of eight divisions of the German I Army and four cavalry divisions. Early on Sept. 5, Joffre issued orders to his centre : to de Langle to stay his retreat and attack northwards; to Sarrail to attack westwards against the German flank presented to the troops near Verdun.
Sept. 5: The First Contact.—The Germans, the exponents of envelopment, by thrusting forward between Verdun and Paris, had placed themselves in a position exposed to envelopment on both flanks. They had completely misunderstood the situation, over-estimated their initial successes and under-estimated the fighting powers of the Allies. Gen. von Kuhl, Kluck's chief of the staff, has written :— "Neither the supreme command nor I. Army headquarters had the remotest idea of an immediately imminent offensive of the whole French Army. The continuation of the French retreat was accepted as settled. There was only a question of our flank being threatened from Paris. . . . The great offensive on the whole front of the forces came as a complete surprise. No sign, no prisoner's statement, no newspaper tattle had given warning of it," But this was not the end of their mistakes. By Moltke's orders of the evening of Sept. 4, the I. and II. Armies were to face towards Paris. This might guard the flank of the German army as a whole, but would expose their own particular left flank in the new position to the oncoming French, and would leave an enor mous gap in the original front towards the south. Yet this ex
traordinary order Billow was proceeding to carry out, although Kluck was in no hurry to do so, seeing no necessity to be fright ened at the "Paris bogey." Events of the 5th, however, were to scare the latter commander out of his optimism. Pressing on south-eastwards with four corps and taking no precautions to investigate the situation on his flank either by cavalry or aero plane, his flank guard came in contact about 1:3o P.M. with an ad vanced guard of Maunoury's army, north-west of Meaux, and was forced back. This began the battle of the Ourcq. Owing to bad staffwork, or an attempt to conceal a defeat, news of this disaster—which meant that his right, now 6m. south of Meaux was completely uncovered—did not reach Kluck until "shortly after midnight." At last he set hurriedly about obeying the su preme command's orders to take position between the Marne and the Oise. But even now only partially. Early on the 6th he sent first the II. Corps (his right) and then the IV. back across the Marne to the assistance of his flank guard, leaving his other two corps with Billow. Before dealing with the fighting on the Ourcq and in the British sector of the battle, where the decision fell, the events on the eastern flank and centre, where practically deadlock set in, will be summarized.
The Battle on the Eastern Flank and in the Centre.— The German VII. and VI. Armies, under Crown Prince Rupprecht, were "to attack against the Moselle between Toul and Epinal." That is, they were required to force the fortress line of the French eastern frontier. Yet it was to avoid the uncertainties and diffi culties of this very task that the German Government had taken the momentous decision to allow their Armies to enter Luxem bourg and violate Belgian neutrality. Until Moltke had "watered down" the plan of his predecessor, Field-Marshal Graf Schlieffen, it had been intended to enter Netherlands territory also. The en terprise proved beyond the powers of the Germans. Met by the stout defence of Dubail's and de Castelnau's armies, Rupprecht's armies were unable to make any progress and lost heavily, so that on Sept. 8 he stopped the offensive in order to spare the troops, and was ordered "to prepare to occupy a rear defensive position at once." The German V. and IV. Armies did no better. Pushing on past the west side of Verdun, the V. (crown prince of Prussia) had to face eastwards towards the fortress. It prevented Sarrail from making any attempt to roll up the German line, but suffered most severely from French artillery fire and for three days was pinned to the ground. A diversion by small forces east of Verdun had no effect. At 2 P.M. on the 9th the Crown Prince, in desperation, ordered a night attack in the hope of capturing the French guns that were killing his men. This operation, owing to short notice, was a complete fiasco, the Germans firing on each other.