SkipCaptcha, Automoderated users, edit
1,631
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 37:
Line 37: + + + + + + +
Added to page
While Allied progress was less than hoped (for which d'Esperey blamed the British high command), Bülow had taken alarm at the sharp action on his front, and on September 7th began to withdraw behind the Petit Morin, thus widening the gap with Kluck and clearing the way for a mass Allied advance to and across the Marne. For his part, Kluck and the French 6th Army under Michel-Joseph Maunoury had been trading attacks and counterattacks over the past two days, and as more of the German troops were in battle-ready condition, they more generally held the initiative. For a time on the 7th, Kluck's army in fact threatened a breakthrough, but the French lines held, thanks in part to the arrival of reinforcements from the Paris garrison who were transported to the battlefield by the city's taxis: an event memorialized as the ''taxis de la Marne''. Despite these and other reinforcements, as late as the evening of September 8th Kluck believed he could envelop Maunoury's flank and retrieve the broader situation; however, that same day, d'Esperey's 5th Army had resumed its assaults on Bülow's front, leaving the German formations still at risk of being isolated and destroyed piecemeal.
While Allied progress was less than hoped (for which d'Esperey blamed the British high command), Bülow had taken alarm at the sharp action on his front, and on September 7th began to withdraw behind the Petit Morin, thus widening the gap with Kluck and clearing the way for a mass Allied advance to and across the Marne. For his part, Kluck and the French 6th Army under Michel-Joseph Maunoury had been trading attacks and counterattacks over the past two days, and as more of the German troops were in battle-ready condition, they more generally held the initiative. For a time on the 7th, Kluck's army in fact threatened a breakthrough, but the French lines held, thanks in part to the arrival of reinforcements from the Paris garrison who were transported to the battlefield by the city's taxis: an event memorialized as the ''taxis de la Marne''. Despite these and other reinforcements, as late as the evening of September 8th Kluck believed he could envelop Maunoury's flank and retrieve the broader situation; however, that same day, d'Esperey's 5th Army had resumed its assaults on Bülow's front, leaving the German formations still at risk of being isolated and destroyed piecemeal.
'''Battle of the Marshes'''
Simultaneous with the fighting along the Ourcq and Morin fronts, the French 4th Army (under General Fernand de Langle) and new 9th Army (under General Ferdinand Foch) attacked the German Third Army (along with the left flank of Bülow's Second Army) further east, around the Marshes of the St. Gond, which were also the headwaters of the Petit Morin, near Châlons-sur-Marne. Though the operation was originally somewhat limited in intention, with the purpose of guarding d'Esperey's right flank against a counterattack, the offensive-minded Foch expanded it significantly, sending several divisions around the western end of the mostly impassable marshes to flank the Third Army out of its position.
Foch's attack made only slow progress during September 6-7, as his troops' advance was hotly contested by the German defenders, while action elsewhere along the line was limited to long-range artillery duels across the marshes. By the night of the 7th, though, General Max von Hausen, commanding the Third Army, had decided upon a night attack, which he believed the French would not be expecting. In the predawn hours of September 8, he sent four divisions forward along the few accessible routes through the marshes, taking Foch's troops by surprise and pushing them back as much as three miles in places.
Despite the shock and the near-breaking of his lines, though, Foch refused to panic or to yield the initiative to Hausen. With the German advance still in progress, he drafted a message to send to Joffre's headquarters, reading "My center is giving way, my right is in retreat, situation excellent. I attack." Though it was probably never sent, the words added to Foch's reputation as a fighter, and during the following day, with reinforcements sent from d'Esperey, he was able to stabilize his front and indeed even launch a small counterattack. By the afternoon of September 9, then, the Battle of the Marshes had ended in at worst a stalemate for the French, though the issue further west was still in doubt.
[[Category:World War I]]
[[Category:World War I]]