The Great War
The Battle of the Marne
The opening days of august 1914 seemed to promise a fluid war of movement. While the Germans drove through Belgium, the French launched their own attack - a headlong offensive in Alsace-Lorraine where German machine-guns mowed down thousands of men advancing in open order. However, as the German armies began to swing round and into France, the German 'Schlieffen Plan' began to unravel. General Von Kluck's First Army, on the extreme right, turned south-eastwards exposing its flank as it marched obliquely across the face of the main defences of Paris. Kluck was now passing east, rather than west of the French capital, this movement was reported by British aviators on the 3rd of September. The info, however, made little impact on the slow-thinking French C-in-C, General Joffre, who was shuffling his forces to the left to protect Paris and to meet the Germans head-on. But the significance of the information was not lost on General Gallieni the military governor of Paris. On the morning of September 4th Gallieni ordered General Manourys Sixth Army to prepare to strike at the German flank and rear. Engaged by Sixth Army on the 6th, Kluck turned west to meet the threat, simultaneously opening up a dangerous thirty-mile gap between First Army and General Von Bulows Second Army, which was by now taking the brunt of the French and General Joffre's counter-offensive.
The BEF, (British Expeditionary Force ), which had halted its retreat, now advanced cautiously into the gap with the French Fifth Army on its right. The nerve of the German C-in-C, Von Moltke, far away in his HQ in Koblenz, cracked as he cast an anxious eye towards the Channel Ports and the threat to his rear posed by the unrealised intervention of fresh British armies. On the 9th of September he ordered Bulow and Kluck to retreat to the Noyon-Verdun line. The Allies tracked them for five days before being halted in the Aisne region by a hastily improvised line of German trenches.