Battle of Mons

Background

Germany's plan for 1914 was to defeat France quickly with a great wheel of its right-wing armies through Belgium. Germany entered Luxembourg on 2 August and crossed into Belgium near Liège the next day. On the outer edge of the wheel marched Alexander von Kluck's First Army, the largest of the German armies, which by 22 August was swinging past Brussels towards Ath and Mons.

Under pre-war Anglo-French plans the British Expeditionary Force had landed in France and concentrated around Maubeuge, on the far left of the Allied line. On its right was Lanrezac's French Fifth Army, already fighting on the Sambre around Charleroi. On 22 August the BEF moved up from Maubeuge into Belgium and took up positions around Mons.

That morning a squadron of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards met German cavalry near Casteau, north-east of Mons. Corporal E. Thomas fired what is remembered as the first British shot of the war, and Captain Hornby's troop charged the German horsemen, killing several.

The ground the BEF took was chosen by circumstance, not design. Edmonds, the British official historian, calls the canal position imposed 'fortuitously'. The canal ran straight west from Mons to Condé, but east of the town it looped north round Nimy and Obourg, making a salient overlooked by high ground north of the canal. Kluck's army, wheeling from east to south, would strike that loop first.

The armies

The BEF had about 80,000 men and some 300 guns in two corps: Haig's I Corps (1st and 2nd Divisions), Smith-Dorrien's II Corps (3rd and 5th Divisions), Allenby's Cavalry Division, the independent 5th Cavalry Brigade, and the 19th Infantry Brigade, which came up on the left during the battle. It was a small force of long-service regulars and recalled reservists. Its pre-war training stressed the combination of fire and movement and, above all, musketry. The annual 'mad minute' test asked a rifleman to fire fifteen aimed rounds in a minute at a target 300 yards away with the bolt-action Lee–Enfield; the best shots did far better.

Kluck's First Army had four active corps (II, III, IV and IX), three reserve corps and cavalry, with about 600 guns, but not all of it reached the canal. On 23 August three corps fought: IX Corps against the salient, III Corps at Jemappes and St Ghislain, and IV Corps further west towards Condé, while II Corps was still marching south some fifteen miles away. Edmonds counts eight German divisions against four British, and six against two in the infantry fight, along a front of 13 miles.

The ground suited neither side. West of Mons it was a mining district of slag heaps, ditches, wire fences and straggling buildings, where gunners on both sides struggled to find positions and observation.

The battle

First contact (dawn to 10 a.m.). Sunday 23 August broke in mist and rain, which cleared about 10 a.m.; church bells rang and villagers in their best clothes went to church. At 6 a.m. German cavalry exchanged shots with the 4th Middlesex at Obourg,. Before 9 a.m. German guns on the high ground north of the canal were shelling the Middlesex and the 4th Royal Fusiliers, and by 9 a.m. IX Corps infantry was pressing on Obourg.

The salient (9 a.m. to 2 p.m.). The first Germans came at the Nimy bridges in heavy masses and were caught by the Fusiliers' rapid fire in front and the machine guns of the Middlesex and 2nd Royal Irish in flank. They switched to small parties working forward under cover of the woods. At Nimy the Fusiliers' machine-gun section was knocked out repeatedly; Lieutenant Maurice Dease kept a gun firing until he was mortally wounded, and Private Sidney Godley covered the withdrawal, then disabled the last gun and was taken prisoner. Both received the Victoria Cross, Dease's the first of the war. English Wikipedia credits a German private, Oskar Niemeyer, with swimming the canal at Nimy under fire to work a swing bridge for his comrades. After noon the Germans crossed west of Obourg in extended order. The Royal Irish moved up to help the Middlesex but by 1.30 p.m. could only hold their own. At 2 p.m. the Royal Fusiliers withdrew from Nimy, by order, having lost a little over a hundred men.

The straight canal west of Mons (11 a.m. to dusk). III Corps entered the fight about 11 a.m. at Jemappes, advancing in heavy lines against the 1st Royal Scots Fusiliers, and came within 200 yards of the bridge at Lock 2 before being driven back. At Mariette a column marching in fours was stopped by a corporal's party in a house. About 11.10 a.m. a battalion of the Brandenburg Grenadiers came out of Tertre largely in massed formation and was met by a shattering fire and suffered heavily. The Royal West Kent, the King's Own Scottish Borderers and the KOYLI machine guns stopped the attack on St Ghislain 300 yards short of the canal. Edmonds writes here that the Germans 'imagined that they were everywhere opposed by machine guns only', a claim taken up below. Further west, the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry drove back German cavalry at Pommeroeul at 4.45 p.m., and the 19th Brigade, which had relieved the cavalry on the left in the early afternoon, held on at Lock 5 after blowing its bridge.

Withdrawal from the salient (3 p.m. to midnight). About 3 p.m. the Scots Fusiliers fell back through Jemappes to Frameries. Two of their three bridges were left standing for want of an exploder. Captain Theodore Wright, Royal Engineers, tried twice to fire the charges under Mariette bridge, the second time with a head wound, and Lance-Corporal C. A. Jarvis spent an hour and a half firing the charges at Jemappes; both won the VC. At 3.15 p.m. the Royal Irish withdrew to Bois la Haut, and about 5 p.m. the Middlesex rearguard was overrun, its machine guns firing to the last. Germans pushed through Mons almost unopposed. Between 7 and 8 p.m. a general attack on the Gordons and Royal Scots along the Harmignies road was stopped by rapid fire; the German 75th Regiment lost 5 officers and 376 men.

At dusk German bugles sounded 'Cease Fire' along the line. II Corps stood on a second position from Frameries through Wasmes to the Haine, while the 8th Brigade slipped away from Bois la Haut after dark and was safe at Nouvelles before 3 a.m. Late that night Sir John French learned that Lanrezac would retire from 3 a.m. and that Tournai had fallen, and ordered a general retreat for 24 August.

Aftermath

The BEF lost just over 1,600 men, almost all in II Corps, and nearly half of them in the 4th Middlesex and 2nd Royal Irish. German losses are far less certain: British accounts once claimed more than 5,000; Zuber, working from German regimental histories, argues for no more than 2,000. The German advance was delayed a day: Kluck's objectives for the 23rd were reached only on the 24th.

The British, who believed they had held, were baffled by the order to retreat. Rearguard fighting at Élouges and Audregnies on 24 August began a two-week Retreat from Mons, through Le Cateau, to the Marne.

Mons is remembered for the first VCs of the war, the 'Old Contemptibles' (no trace of the Kaiser's supposed order has been found in German archives) and the Angels of Mons, which are a fiction. Arthur Machen's story 'The Bowmen', about phantom archers of Agincourt, appeared in the Evening News on 29 September 1914 without being labelled as fiction. Machen insisted it was imaginary, but in 1915 the occult and spiritualist press and sermons turned his bowmen into angels seen by real soldiers.

The live argument is about the rifles. Zuber's The Mons Myth (2010) contends that the odds were roughly even where the fighting happened, that German infantry attacked in skirmish lines, not masses, and that the story of Germans mistaking rifle fire for machine guns, which goes back to Edmonds, is not supported by German sources. His critics say he takes German accounts on trust.

Wargaming it

Mons is a defensive battle on a line, a day long, with a clock. The II Corps front, about 13 miles from Obourg to Condé, suits a game with battalions or companies as units and hourly turns from 9 a.m. to dusk. The salient alone, from Obourg round to Nimy and Jemappes, is a tight two-player game at company or platoon level over half a day.

The British player has a thin line on a canal with bridges, some of which he can blow; demolition should be uncertain, as missing exploders showed. Slag heaps, wire and buildings west of Mons should cut fields of fire and make artillery positions scarce for both sides. The salient is the weak point, overlooked from the heights north of the canal: hold it too long and the Middlesex and Royal Irish are lost; give it up too early and the Germans are into Mons.

The German player has the numbers but must cross water by the bridges or swim, and decide how long to attack in dense formations before shaking out. The big design question is British rifle fire. Rules that make every British battalion count as machine guns are taking a side in a live argument, and Zuber's case suggests testing one where German artillery and fire-and-movement matter more.

What-ifs: Kluck's II Corps reaching Condé on the 23rd to turn the open British left; Haig's idle I Corps being used; Lanrezac holding on, so that the BEF stays to fight on the 24th.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.