Forty days in 1914

PREFACE

I have found that the accounts pubhshed in Allied and neutral countries, owing to lack of in- formation, do but scant justice to the part played by our original Expeditionary Force. Even such an authority as M. Hanotaux, in his excellent little book, U^nigme de Charleroi, makes the fighting at Mons begin only at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on August 23, and says that such fighting as did take place was done by our First Corps, which was hardly engaged at all. I hope that what I have written here may at least have the effect of making clearer the influence which our operations had on the campaign as a whole.

THE FRENCH PLAN

to do so, they should suffice to bring France the sympathy and support of the civilised world, for this scrupulous respect for the code of national honour gave the unprincipled enemy an advantage from which he profited to the full. Had it been possible to make preparations earlier for obtain- ing information as to what was happening on the German-Belgian frontier, the surprise which the Germans sprang upon the Allies at the time of the battle of Mons would have been unmasked much sooner and the story of the war materially changed. As it was, the Germans had leisure to complete their arrangements for concealing their designs before the French Headquarters could get their means of investigation to work.

CHAPTER III

have had to wait until his army was completely equipped and concentrated before marching south- ward against the left wing of the main Allied forces ; so that, apart from the serious losses that the Germans suffered, the military effect of the resistance of Li^ge may be estimated at a delay to von Kluck's Army of forty-eight hours in reaching the battlefield of Mons.

NAMUR, DINANT, AND THE SAMBRE

With this we may leave von Billow's Second Army and the French Fifth Army opposed to it, and turn to von Kluck and the British Army, but it is important to remember, if the situation of the British Army at Mons is to be appreciated, that by the evening of the 21st, when the British were still on the march northwards, the Germans were already across the Sambre at and east of Charleroi ; that by the morning of the 23rd, when the battle of Mons opened, they were estab- lished some seven miles to the south of Charleroi, and were therefore even then to the south of the British right flank ; and that at dawn on the 24th, before we had begun to withdraw from Mons, the French Fifth Army had been for some twelve hours in retreat.

CHAPTER VI

1 For the operations up to and including the battle of Le Cateau see Map II. ; for the retreat from Le Cateau see Map I.

CHAPTER VI

Von Kluck's Third and Fourth Corps seem to have spent the morning in reorganising after the confused fighting of the day before, and then to have continued their march south-west, the Fourth Corps by Le Quesnoy and Solesmes, the Third Corps moving some time after the Fourth by the road just west of the Mormal Forest. Between the right of the Fourth Corps and the Second Corps, which marched through Valenciennes towards Cambrai, now appears for the first time since the Germans marched south from Brussels an addition to von Kluck's Army in the shape of the Fourth Reserve Corps. Whether this corps had followed by road from Brussels or been brought up by train it is not yet possible to say, but it certainly fought next morning on the battle-field of Le Cateau, and it was marching with the First German Army on August 25.

CHAPTER VI

The battle of Le Cateau was the last import- ant engagement of the retreat from Mons, which was not again seriously molested. The Germans entirely failed to appreciate either the opportuni- ties which it presented or its results, and, as will be seen, this misconception led to vital change in their plans ; but before coming to that change the story of the events on either side of the battle-field must be completed.

CHAPTER VI

First, as to the left flank : the French troops which have been mentioned as holding Cambrai on the 26th August consisted of part of the Sixty-first Reserve Division. This division and another reserve division had been detached from the garrison of Paris, and had just joined General d'Amade. These troops had been attacked during the battle of Le Cateau by the main body of the German Second Corps and had fallen back on Bapaume, whence they had marched to Peronne in touch with General Sordet's cavalry corps. The French cavalry had at length been able to cross the roads congested by the retreating columns of the French Fifth Army and of 116