Part 13 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+ps 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.]