As Haig’s troops were entering Landrecies, they encountered on the road a body of troops who wore French uniforms and whose officer spoke in French when challenged. Suddenly the newcomers “without the slightest warning lowered their bayonets and charged.” They proved to be part of von Kluck’s IVth Corps who, like the British, were scheduled to billet that night at Landrecies. In the ensuing skirmish about two regiments and a gun battery were involved on each side, but Haig, in the tension and uncertainty of darkness, thought himself under “heavy attack” and telephoned Headquarters to “send help .… Situation very critical.”
Hearing such words from the cool Haig, Sir John French and his staff could not do otherwise than believe the Ist Corps to be in the greatest danger. Murray, who had rejoined GHQ at St. Quentin, suffered a collapse from the shock. He was sitting at a table studying a map when an aide brought him a telegram, and a moment later another officer noticed he had slumped forward in a faint. Sir John was equally affected. His uncertain temperament, wildly responsive to others, had long been influenced by that self-possessed and model officer who commanded the Ist Corps. In 1899 Haig had lent him £2,000 to meet his creditors, without which he would have had to leave the army. Now, when Haig called for help, Sir John French immediately saw envelopment, or worse—penetration by the enemy between the Ist and IInd Corps. Assuming the worst, GHQ sent orders altering Haig’s line of retreat for the following day with the result that Haig’s Corps was set on a line of march on the opposite side of the Oise from Smith-Dorrien’s Corps; direct contact was severed and not regained for the next seven days.
Besides accomplishing the splitting of the BEF, Haig’s excited and exaggerated estimate of the attack at Landrecies had an effect out of all proportion to its cause. It deepened the alarm of his old friend and impressionable Commander so that he became more intent than ever upon extricating the British Army at all hazards, and it made him that much more susceptible to the next blow. For, at this moment, as the harrowing night of August 25 paled toward dawn, he received another shock. Smith-Dorrien sent word that the IInd Corps was too closely beset by the enemy to get away and would have to make a stand and fight at Le Cateau. Appalled, the men at GHQ regarded him as as good as lost.
What had happened was that General Allenby, commander of the Cavalry Division on Smith-Dorrien’s flank, had discovered during the night that the high ground and ridges he would have to occupy to cover the next day’s retreat were held by the enemy. Unable to get in touch with GHQ, he went at 2:00 A.M. to consult Smith-Dorrien. Allenby warned him that the enemy was in a position to attack at the first sign of daylight and that unless the IInd Corps could move “at once and get away in the dark,” it would be forced into battle before it could start the day’s march. Smith-Dorrien called in his divisional commanders, who told him that some men were still coming in, many were milling around looking for their units, all were too weary to move before morning. They reported also that roads were clogged with transport and refugees and in some places washed out by the heavy storm. Silence fell in the little room. To move at once was impossible; to stay where they were and fight was a reversal of orders. As his field headquarters had no telephone communication with GHQ, the corps commander would have to decide for himself. Turning to Allenby, Smith-Dorrien asked if he would accept orders from him. Allenby said he would.
“Very well, gentlemen, we will fight,” Smith-Dorrien announced, adding that he would ask General Snow of the newly arrived 4th Division to act under him as well. His message embodying the decision was sent off by motorcar to GHQ, where it caused consternation at 5:00 A.M.
Henry Wilson, like the equally ebullient Messimy, had gone in one stride from verve and fervor to defeatism. When the offensive plan, of which on the British side he was the chief architect, collapsed, he collapsed with it, at least momentarily, and with significant effect on his Chief over whose slower mind he exerted considerable influence. Although his gift of optimism, wit, and laughter could not be long repressed and was the only thing to keep Staff spirits afloat in the next days, he was now convinced of coming calamity for which he may have felt responsible.
A messenger was sent off by motorcycle to summon Smith-Dorrien to the nearest telephone. “If you stand there and fight,” Wilson said to him, “there will be another Sedan.” He insisted from his position twenty-six miles away that the danger could not be so great as to require a stand because “troops fighting Haig cannot fight you.” Smith-Dorrien patiently explained the circumstances once more and added that in any event it was impossible to break away as the action had already begun and he could hear the guns firing as he spoke. “Good luck to you,” Wilson replied; “yours is the first cheerful voice I have heard in three days.”
For eleven hours on August 26 the IInd Corps and General Snow’s division and a half fought at Le Cateau a rearguard action such as the French Armies were fighting on this and every other day of the retreat. Von Kluck had given orders for that day to continue “pursuit of the beaten enemy.” As the most devoted disciple of Schlieffen’s precept to “brush the channel with his sleeve,” he was still pulling westward and, to complete the envelopment of the British, ordered his two right-wing corps to make forced marches in a southwestward direction. As a result they were never in action against the British at all on that day, but instead came up against “strong French hostile forces.” These were D’Amade’s Territorials and Sordet’s Cavalry whom Smith-Dorrien had informed of his predicament and who by their demonstrations barred the way around the British flank. The delay caused to the Germans, acknowledged Smith-Dorrien later, “and the brave front shown by these Territorials were of vital importance to us as otherwise it is almost certain we should have had another Corps against us on the 26th.”
On von Kluck’s left faulty intelligence or poor maneuvering kept another of his corps out of reach so that, although he disposed of superior numbers, he did not in fact have more than three infantry divisions in battle against Smith-Dorrien’s three at Le Cateau. He had, however, assembled the artillery of five divisions which opened fire at dawn. From shallow trenches hastily and inadequately dug by French civilians, including women, the British repelled German infantry assaults with their rapid and deadly rifle fire. Nevertheless the Germans, flinging wave after wave of men against them, advanced. In one sector they surrounded a company of Argylls who kept up their rifle fire, “bringing down man after man and counting their scores aloud” while the Germans “kept sounding the British ‘Cease Fire’ and gesturing to persuade the men to surrender but in vain,” until finally the group was rushed and overwhelmed. Other terrible holes were torn in the line. To disengage—the most difficult part of the battle—was yet to be done, and at 5:00 P.M. Smith-Dorrien judged the moment had come. It was then or never. Because of gaps and losses and infiltration by the enemy at certain points, the order to break off and retreat could not be got to all units at the same time. Some stayed in position for many hours longer, firing steadily until taken or until they got away in the dark. One unit, the Gordon Highlanders, never received its orders and, except for a few men who made their escape, ceased to exist as a battalion. Losses for that day alone in the three and a half divisions who fought at Le Cateau were over 8,000 men and 38 guns, more than twice as much as at Mons and equal to the 20 per cent casualty rate that the French suffered in August. Among the missing were some who spent the next four years in German prison camps.
Because of darkness, the fatigue of forced marches, their own heavy losses, and the confusing British habit of “slipping away unseen” in the darkness, the Germans did not immediately pursue. Kluck gave orders to halt until next day, when he expected the enveloping maneuver of his right-wing corps to take effect. For that day Smith-Dorrien’s decision to turn and face a superior enemy in a pitched battle had succeeded in preventing the planned envelopment and destruction of the BEF.
On reaching St. Quentin, Smith-Dorrien found GHQ had left there at midday while the battle for the life or annihilat
ion of the BEF was still in progress and had moved to Noyon, twenty miles farther to the rear. Troops in the town were not encouraged to see the army’s chiefs depart in automobiles headed south while the guns were firing in the north. In that inevitable judgment of a countryman, “The truth is that on the 26th Lord French and his staff completely lost their heads.” Sir Douglas Haig, who had by now recovered his, queried, “No news of II Corps except sound of guns from direction of Le Cateau. Can I Corps be of any assistance?” GHQ was too paralyzed to give him any answer. Failing to hear from Headquarters, Haig tried to reach Smith-Dorrien directly, saying he could hear the sound of battle but, as a consequence of the separation of the two corps, “we could form no idea of how we could assist you.” By the time he sent the message the battle was over. Meanwhile GHQ had given up the IInd Corps for lost. Colonel Huguet, still attached as liaison officer, reflected their mood in a telegram he dispatched to Joffre at 8:00 P.M., “Battle lost by the English Army which appears to have lost cohesion.”
At 1:00 A.M. Smith-Dorrien, having been in combat for the last four of the six days he had been in France, reached Noyon and found everyone at GHQ in bed asleep. Routed out, Sir John French appeared in his nightshirt and, seeing Smith-Dorrien turn up alive with a report that the IInd Corps was not lost but saved, rebuked him for taking too cheerful a view of the situation. Having had a bad fright, Sir John now gave way to furious anger, the more easily as he had resented Smith-Dorrien’s appointment, in place of his own choice, from the beginning. The man did not even belong to the cavalry and had taken it upon himself at Le Cateau to override Staff orders. Although Sir John was forced to acknowledge in his official dispatch* that this had resulted in the “saving of the left wing,” he did not soon recover from his fright. The losses of Le Cateau seemed even higher than they were until several thousand of the missing men who had merged with the trudging lines of French refugees and followed the retreat, or had made their way through German lines to Antwerp, thence to England, and back to France, eventually rejoined the army. Total casualties for the BEF’s first five days in action proved to be just short of 15,000. They intensified the Commander in Chief’s anxiety to bring his army out of the fight, out of danger, out of France.
While the Battle of Le Cateau was in progress, Joffre summoned a meeting at St. Quentin of Sir John French, Lanrezac, and their staffs to explain the instructions of General Order No. 2. When he began with a polite inquiry as to the situation of the British Army, he evoked a tirade from Sir John who said that he had been violently attacked by superior numbers, that he was threatened by envelopment on his left, that his right was uncovered by Lanrezac’s headlong retreat, and that his troops were too exhausted to resume the offensive. Joffre, who believed above all in maintaining an appearance of calm before the Staff, was shocked by the Field Marshal’s “excited tone.” Lanrezac, after hearing Henry Wilson’s somewhat softened translation of his chief’s remarks, merely shrugged. Unable to issue an order, Joffre expressed the hope that the British Commander would conform to the plan contained in the new General Order of the day before.
Sir John looked blank and said he knew nothing of any such Order. Murray, suffering from his collapse of the night before, was absent. A variety of astonished and quizzical French gazes were turned on Wilson who explained that the Order had been received during the night but not yet “studied.” Joffre explained its provisions but with obviously failing confidence. Discussion faltered, pauses grew longer, the embarrassment became painful, and the meeting broke up without having achieved any agreement from the British for combined action. With an impression of the “fragility” of his left wing, Joffre returned to GQG where he was met by fresh news of weakness on all fronts, discouragement in every grade of the army, including the Staff, and finally, at the end of the day, by Huguet’s black telegram reporting the English Army as having “lost cohesion.”
Von Kluck was under the same impression. His orders for the 27th were to “cut off the British who were in full flight westwards,” and he reported to OHL that he was about to round up “all six” British divisions (only five were in France) and “if the English stand on the 27th the double envelopment may yet bring a great success.” This brilliant prospect, coming the day after the fall of Namur and coinciding with Bülow’s report that his opponent, the French Fifth Army, was also a “beaten enemy,” confirmed OHL in the impression of imminent victory. “The German Armies have entered France from Cambrai to the Vosges after a series of continually victorious combats,” announced OHL’s official communiqué on August 27. “The enemy, beaten all along the line, is in full retreat … and is not capable of offering serious resistance to the German advance.”
Amid the general enthusiasm von Kluck received his reward. When he rebelled furiously at an order of von Bülow’s to invest Maubeuge, which he claimed was von Bülow’s duty, and demanded to know if he was to remain subordinate, OHL on August 27 restored his independence. The attempt to keep the three armies of the right wing under one command, which had caused so much friction, was abandoned; but as the rest of the way to victory seemed easy, this did not appear important at the moment.
Von Bülow, however, was exceedingly annoyed. In the center of the right wing, he was constantly bedeviled by his neighbors’ refusal to keep in step. Already, he warned OHL, Hausen’s delays had caused a “regrettable gap” between the Third and Second Armies. Hausen himself, whose chief concern, second only to his reverence for titles, was a passionate attention to the amenities offered by each night’s billets, was equally annoyed. On August 27, his first night in France, no château was available for himself and the Crown Prince of Saxony who accompanied him. They had to sleep in the house of a sous-préfet which had been left in complete disorder; “even the beds had not been made!” The following night was worse: he had to endure quarters in the house of a M. Chopin, a peasant! The dinner was meager, the lodgings “not spacious,” and the staff had to accommodate itself in the nearby rectory whose curé had gone to war. His old mother, who looked like a witch, hung around and “wished us all at the devil.” Red streaks in the sky showed that Rocroi, through which his troops had just passed, was in flames. Happily the following night was spent in the beautifully furnished home of a wealthy French industrialist who was “absent.” Here the only discomfort suffered by Hausen was the sight of a wall covered by espaliered pear trees heavy with fruit that was “unfortunately not completely ripe.” However, he enjoyed a delightful reunion with Count Munster, Major Count Kilmansegg, Prince Schoenburg-Waldenburg of the Hussars, and Prince Max, Duke of Saxe, acting as Catholic chaplain, to whom Hausen was able to convey the gratifying news that he had just received by telephone the best wishes for success of the Third Army from his sister, the Princess Mathilda.
Hausen complained that his Saxons had been on the march for ten days through hostile country, in the heat and often in battle. Supplies were not keeping up with the advance, bread and meat were lacking, troops had to live off the local livestock, horses had not had enough fodder, and yet he had managed an average march of 23 kilometers a day. In fact, this was the least required of the German armies. Kluck’s Army on the rim of the wheel covered 30 kilometers or more a day and in some forced marches 40. He managed this by having the men sleep along the roadside instead of spreading out to left and right, and thus saved 6 or 7 kilometers a day. As German lines of communication stretched out and troops advanced farther from the railheads, food supplies often failed. Horses ate grain directly from unharvested fields and men marched a whole day on nothing but raw carrots and cabbages. As hot, as tired, and with feet as sore as their enemies, the Germans were increasingly hungry but on schedule.
Halfway between Brussels and Paris on August 28, von Kluck was gratified to receive a telegram from the Kaiser expressing “my imperial gratitude” for the First Army’s “decisive victories” and his congratulations upon its approach to the “heart of France.” That night by the light of bivouac fires regimental bands played the vic
tory song “Heil dir im Siegeskranz” and, as one of Kluck’s officers wrote in his diary, “the sound was taken up by thousands of voices. Next morning we resumed our march in the hope of celebrating the anniversary of Sedan before Paris.”
On the same day a new and tempting idea presented itself to von Kluck which before the week was over was to leave its mark on history. Reconnaissance showed that the French Fifth Army, retreating in front of Bülow, was moving in a southwesterly direction which would bring it across his line of march. He saw a chance to “find the flank of this army … force it away from Paris and outflank it,” an objective that now seemed to him of more importance than cutting the British off from the coast. He proposed to Bülow that a “wheel inwards” should be made by their two armies. Before anything could be decided, an officer from OHL arrived with a new General Order to all seven armies.
Inspired by a “universal sense of victory,” according to the Crown Prince, OHL nevertheless had become aware of the transfer of French forces from Lorraine and now called for a “rapid advance to prevent assembly of fresh bodies of troops and to take from the country as much as possible of its means of continuing the struggle.” Kluck’s Army was to advance to the Seine southwest of Paris. Bülow’s was to move directly upon Paris. Hausen, the Duke of Württemberg, and the Crown Prince were to bring their armies down to the Marne east of Paris, to Château-Thierry, Epernay, and Vitry-le-François respectively. The breakthrough of the French fortress line by the Sixth and Seventh Armies under Prince Rupprecht was left a little vague but they were expected to cross the Moselle between Toul and Epinal, “if the enemy retires.” Speed was “urgently desirable” to leave France no time to regroup and organize resistance. With memories of 1870, OHL ordered “severe measures against the population to break any resistance of franc-tireurs as quickly as possible” and to prevent a “national rising.” Strong resistance by the enemy was expected on the Aisne and then, falling back, on the Marne. Here OHL, echoing Kluck’s newborn idea, concluded, “This may necessitate a wheel of the armies from a southwesterly to a southerly direction.”