very form of attack which, officially, it was not expected to meet investment and regular siege. Owing to its control of rail communications, however, it was important to hold Maubeuge for as long as possible, and the Government gave no instructions relieving the fortress commander of his legal liabilities.
On their side, the Germans, as they pressed on in pursuit of the French and British field forces, at first gave little attention to Maubeuge. A slender cordon of investment was put round it by the first troops which came up, but responsibility for this investment was passed from hand to hand for several days till finally Gen. von Zwehl, with half his VII. Res. Corps (i4th Res. Div.) and a brigade of the VII. Active Corps, was left in charge of the operation. It was estimated that the French garrison numbered 7,000; in reality its strength was 40,000 to 45,000. For their part the French seemed to have been equally ignorant of the strength of the investing force, which at first was not more than 10,000.
The plan of attack, proposed by the artillery general who had reduced Liege and Namur, and adopted by von Zwehl, was a main attack on the north-east point (Salemagne Work-Fort Boussois) and a succeeding attack south of the Sambre on Rocq Work and Fort Cerfontaine. The method was that of pure bombardment accompanied by a careful advance of the infantry as close to the objective as possible and followed by assault after the ruin of the defences. But its application was in this instance limited by two factors, the numerical weakness of the besiegers and the shortage of ammunition for the siege artillery, and during the progress of the siege there were several differences of opinion as to procedure between the commander, the artillery general and the engineer general concerned. Thus the record of this siege, as compared with those of Liege and Namur where ammunition could be poured out, is one of slow, careful and somewhat hesitating advance, and it was this princi- pally which enabled the place, in spite of its technical weaknesses, to hold out longer than either of the Belgian fortresses.
The loose investment which had begun on Aug. 25 was first regularized, but the forces available only allowed of the west front being watched by a few squadrons of cavalry in the Autnois region, and the line of defence in front of the siege artillery emplacements scarcely extended far enough north to give adequate protection to the most important of the batteries, viz. the 42-cm., placed near Givry. But, as it turned out, no coup was attempted by the garrison, and the siege artillery was gradually put in position east of the fortress during Aug. 28-31, batter- ies opening fire successively. It formed two main groups north of the Sambre and a scattered group south of it. The 42-cm. battery and two German 3o-5-cm. batteries and one battery of medium guns were S.E. of Givry; two Austrian 3O-5-cm. batter- ies, one (afterwards two) of 2i-cm. howitzers, and three of medi- um guns and howitzers, between Erquelinnes, Peissant, Merbes- en-Chateau; and two 2i-cm. batteries (afterwards one) and one of medium guns in the wooded valleys south of the Sambre.
Owing to shortage of ammunition, these siege batteries fired only slowly during Aug. 30, while the French from other forts and interval-batteries fired now heavily, now not at all, with the purpose of confusing the ideas of the attack and perhaps entic- ing the Germans into a premature assault; in this object they very nearly succeeded on Aug. 31 when the German artillery general urged von Zwehl to storm at once. In the end however, von Zwehl declined the proposal. The second division of his VII. Res. Corps (the I3th Res.), hitherto detained at Liege against the contingency of insurrections, only began to arrive piecemeal on Aug. 31 and it had to be used chiefly to complete the investment on the west side. Moreover, he was continually being pressed to give up the brigade borrowed from the II. Army, notably at the time of the battle of Guise when that army was in difficulties. Including this brigade, and all forces of the 1 3th Res. Div. which had arrived before the end of the siege, the final infantry strength of the siege force was no more than 27 battalions, which were distributed (unequally, of course) over A perimeter of some 60 kilometres.
The bold policy of Namur was obviously impossible here,
and the guns were allowed to continue their slow bombardment till the works should be reported as beyond question " storm- ripe." Till the arrival of two aeroplanes on Sept. 2, no definite idea was obtained either of the damage caused by the bombard- ment or of the internal dispositions of the enemy whose sorties, on Sept. i, though repulsed, were an additional incentive to caution in the attack procedure. Even on Sept. 3, when it had become known from air observation that Fort Boussois and Salemagne Work were badly damaged, no drastic action was taken.
On Sept. 4, however, the siege entered on a new phase. Calls from the II. Army on the Marne for the return of the borrowed brigade and, even more, reports of the landing of a great army of Russians at Ostend the latter so convincing that at one time it was under consideration to give up the siege altogether showed von Zwehl that he must force the issue. Accordingly, on Sept. 5 the German infantry was launched to the assault of Bersillies and Salemagne works, which were carried, and pushed close up to Fort Boussois, in front of which heavy trench mortars were emplaced during the night of Sept. 5-6. A secondary attack on Rocq Work, south of the Sambre, was repulsed. Next day, Sept. 6, Fort Boussois and Rocq Work were stormed, and a general advance was begun from the front Bersillies-Rocq toward Maubeuge while the siege artillery changed positions forward. The resistance of the re- tiring French infantry however was stubborn, and von Zwehl suspended further penetration till the forts on either side of the breach should have been reduced, viz. Les Sarts, Heronfontaine and Leveau on the N. and N.E. fronts and Cerfontaine on the south-west. Thanks to the arrival of a second battery of 42-cm. guns (on railway mountings) from Mons, and to the expenditure of almost the last rounds of the 42-cm. and 3o-s-cm. at Givry (the 2i-cm. ammunition was already exhausted), all these works were in the hands of the Germans in the early afternoon of Sept. 7. Thereupon Fournier, the moral of whose troops had been completely broken down by a week's bombardment, surrendered with some 40,000 men, plus 377 guns, just as von Zwehl received a peremptory order from von Biilow to send the 2pth Infantry Brigade south at once.
The resistance of Maubeuge had lasted for 9 days (counting from the opening of the bombardment), longer than that of Liege or Namur and nearly as long as that of Antwerp, and had kept five brigades of active and reserve infantry occupied during the critical days of the battle of the Marne. If the duration of the defence was due largely to the weakness of the attack, and notably to the shortage of siege ammunition, it must not be forgotten on the other hand that the majority of the forts were completely antiquated, and that the troops of the mobile de- fence consisted in the main of men of the older and oldest classes, unsuited to field service. General Fournier, after being sub- jected to bitter persecution, was brought to trial by a court- martial early in 1920 and cormletely exonerated.
After the surrender, the Germans decided not to retain Maubeuge as a point d'appui, and blew up all the works.
(C. F. A.)
MAUDE, CYRIL (1862- ), English actor (see 17.904*), produced Rip Van Winkle at the Playhouse, London, in 1911, and The Headmaster in 1913. "Between 1911 and 1919 he acted, largely in America, where he played in 'Rip Van Winkle, Grumpy, The Headmaster, Lord Richard in the Pantry and other modern comedies. He returned to London in 1919 and established himself at the Criterion theatre.
MAUDE, SIR (FREDERICK) STANLEY (1864-1917), British general, son of Gen. Sir Frederick Maude, V.C., was born at Gibraltar June 24 1864. Educated at Eton, he entered the Coldstream Guards in 1884, and early in the following year proceeded with his battalion to Suakin and took part in the operations undertaken in connexion with the contemplated Suakin-Berber railway. He was battalion adjutant from 1888 to 1892, married Cecil, daughter of The Rt. Hon. Col. T. E. Taylor in 1893, and joined the Staff College in 1895. On completion of the course he became brigade-major in the Home District, which post he held till the end of 1899, when he was sent out to South
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