The operations of Gen. Foch's army in the centre of the battle
of the Marne have been garnished with an embroidery of legend
by which the real happenings in that portion of the field have
been considerably obscured. He has been represented as being
obsessed by an optimism so pronounced as to have led him to the
issue of orders which, had they really been so framed, would have
been unsoldierly bombast. The counter-attack which he con-
ceived during the forenoon of the pth has been written up as
the decisive factor of the whole battle, " a wedge driven into the
German centre " being the description of an operation which,
when carried out eventually on Sept. 10, encountered nothing
but the resistance of rearguards. And, for long, there persisted a
thrilling narrative of the engulfment of thousands of Prussian
Guards in the marshes of St. Gond. The operations of the
Allies' left, though free from such distortions of truth, have by
their dramatic decisiveness focussed upon themselves an im-
mense amount of attention, particularly in England where the
advance of the British over the Marne on Sept. 9 will rightly live
in history as one of the most decisive achievements by British
arms. Unfortunately, however, these results of the centre and
left have tended to obscure the lesser known events upon the
Allied right. The battle from Fere Champenoise to the Ourcq
has somewhat diminished the lustre of the operations of the
French armies from Vitry-le-Frangois to Verdun. And yet in
no quarter of the field was the fighting more severe. In no
sector of the battle did the position of the Allied line present
greater danger. Nowhere on the whole long front was the
tenacity of the French III. and IV. Armies surpassed.
After the shipwreck of the high hopes on which they had entered France the German General Staff had yet one spar to cling to. While the IV. and V. Armies were to press southeast- wards the VI. and VII. were to take the offensive against the line of the Moselle between Toul and Epinal, and these coordi- nated movements might yet bring off a great, if restricted, Sedan. The German idea was, therefore, to cut off Verdun on either side; the Crown Prince with his V. Army was to proceed round the entrenched camp by the W. ; the IV. Army with its right passing through Vitry-le-Francois was to bear down across the flatlands of Champagne; on the other side the VI. and VII. Armies were to advance eastwards over the Moselle. Inside this great converging movement the I., II., III., and IV. Armies of the French might be herded together and destroyed. Had these four French armies been able to unite their efforts to a common end their position would have been less full of risk. Such, however, was not the case. The action of Gen. Sarrail's III. Army was to be coordinated rather with that of Gen. Maunoury on the Ourcq than with that of the French II. Army in front of Nancy. In the original orders for the battle of the Marne Gen. Sarrail was to strike westward against the Crown Prince's flank in a movement reciprocal to that by which Gen. Maunoury struck against von Kluck; and this movement, although it would assist in a double flanking movement against the whole German mass between Paris and Verdun, had the disadvantage that it ignored the danger to the III. Army's rear. Behind Gen. Sarrail was the Meuse, held only by a chain of semi-obsolete forts d'arret, and but a few miles farther E. was the great fortress of Metz, within which very large forces might be accumulating from all parts of Germany. The concealment afforded by a large fortress is apt to have a disconcerting effect upon an enemy operating in the vicinity. Paris had surprised the Germans by emitting a strong field army at the critical moment, and it was not impossible that Gen. Sarrail might find himself exposed to a similar danger.
Fortunately for the French the German Crown Prince based his advance upon a misconception. He considered that Verdun would be left to its fate, and in his orders of the sth prescribed the advance of his army on the following day to the line Revigny- Bar le Due. Gen. Sarrail, however, all through the battle kept hold of the fortress with his right; and, further, he arranged with the fortress commander for the cooperation of the mobile gar- rison with his army, with the result that the Crown Prince, far from being in a position to plunge due S., found himself com-
pelled to face generally to the E., while his communications now ran roughly parallel to his front, a disadvantage which needs no comment.
When we come to the details of the struggle in this eastern sector of the battle it must be remembered that the French IV. Army had opposite to it the left of the enemy's III. and the whole of the IV. Army under the Duke of Wiirttemberg. Each side had been ordered to attack, and fighting of a particularly severe nature ensued. On the eve of the battle the line of the French IV. Army had run generally from the vicinity of Som- puis on the left, S. of Vitry-le-Francois, to Sermaize upon the right, and when retreat set in on the German side the French IV. Army was practically on the same line as that from which it had started the battle. That it was able to maintain its posi- tion against the heavy attacks launched upon it was due to the tenacity of its units, and also to the fact that, on the pth, it was reinforced and its left strengthened by the XXI. Corps from the I. Army on the extreme French right. When the battle opened the IV. Army was not very favourably placed for assuming the offensive, for, although it was in touch with the III. Army to the right, there was a wide gap between its left and the right of Gen. Foch's IX. Army at Lenharee, which was only imperfectly filled by the gth Cavalry Div. This fact enabled the Germans to reinforce their own left, with the result that Sermaize was taken on the yth, and for a time there was a serious risk that the right flank of the IV. Army might be rolled up. Gen. Langle de Gary was compelled to call upon the III. Army for assistance. Through- out the Sth the IV. Army was overlapped on either flank, but eventually the arrival of the XXI. Corps from the Vosges restored the situation, and upon the pth Gen, Langle de Gary was able to reinforce his left centre by two more divisions. The fighting had been hard and bitter, and even as late as nightfall on Sept. 9 there was no indication of the Allied victory now clearly revealed in the centre and west.
In Gen. Joffre's instructions of Sept. i the limit of the mouve- ment de recul behind the Seine implied the march of the French
III. Army to the country N. of Bar-le-Duc, and on the following day it was thought that the III. Army might possibly have to fall back as far as Joinville. Gen. Sarrail was strongly opposed to the isolation of the fortress of Verdun, which would result from a complete obedience to the orders of the generalissimo, and took it upon himself to maintain his right in touch with the fortress while refusing his left, and thus bringing his front on'to an alignment generally facing west. This attitude on the part of Gen. Sarrail fitted in admirably with the resolution of Gen. Joffre to suspend his retreat and to pass to the offensive. The commander of the III. Army, having refused to separate his right from Verdun, now resolved to issue a positive order to the fortress commander (Gen. Coutanceau) to cooperate with his garrison. The latter, although he might have stood upon his rights as regards the troops allotted for the defence of the place for which he was responsible, felt that his clear duty was to comply. He moved out the yand Reserve Div. S.W. of the fort- ress, and on Sept. 6 these troops attacked enemy trains and parks and threw them into considerable confusion.
The orders to Gen. Sarrail of Sept. 5 directed him to attack westwards, but reconnaissance having established the advance of strong enemy forces E. of the Argonne the sense of the order had to be reversed; for, to avoid exposing his own communica- tions, Gen. Sarrail considered it advisable to attack in a northerly direction with the bulk of his army while maintaining the remainder on the defensive facing W. This led to some friction with French General Headquarters, whose appreciation of the situation led to what was tantamount to an order to assist the
IV. Army even at the expense of leaving Verdun to its resources. Gen. Sarrail was thus in a position of having either to act against his better judgment or to disobey formal orders; luckily the arrival of the XV. Corps from the II. Army enabled him to give satisfaction to Headquarters without having to quit his hold upon Verdun.
In the midst of the difficulties caused by severe fighting with the enemy and by the fettering orders of Headquarters Gen.
