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On September 10, after the German withdrawal towards the Aisne had been detected by aerial reconnaissance, Joffre ordered a pursuit. It was relatively slow, however, covering only about a dozen miles a day, and the Germans had time to reach the high ground along the Aisne and establish fortified defensive positions, from which they repulsed French and British attacks from September 14-16. This initiated the so-called "Race to the Sea," as both the Allied and the German armies sought to gain a tactical advantage by turning each other's flank. As a result, both sides' lines extended farther and farther in both directions, until by late October they had each run out of room to maneuver, blocked by the [[North Sea]] to the northwest and the border with neutral [[Switzerland]] to the southeast. By year's end, therefore, with only frontal assaults (and defending against said assaults) still possible, the Western Front had settled into the "trench warfare" that would characterize it until 1918.
On September 10, after the German withdrawal towards the Aisne had been detected by aerial reconnaissance, Joffre ordered a pursuit. It was relatively slow, however, covering only about a dozen miles a day, and the Germans had time to reach the high ground along the Aisne and establish fortified defensive positions, from which they repulsed French and British attacks from September 14-16. This initiated the so-called "Race to the Sea," as both the Allied and the German armies sought to gain a tactical advantage by turning each other's flank. As a result, both sides' lines extended farther and farther in both directions, until by late October they had each run out of room to maneuver, blocked by the [[North Sea]] to the northwest and the border with neutral [[Switzerland]] to the southeast. By year's end, therefore, with only frontal assaults (and defending against said assaults) still possible, the Western Front had settled into the "trench warfare" that would characterize it until 1918.
===Significance===
Most historians agree that the Marne was a significant Allied victory. By frustrating the Schlieffen Plan and forcing the Germans to retreat and go on the defensive, it ruined the hopes of a quick, decisive defeat of France and the conversion of a two-front war to a one-front war (upon which Kaiser Wilhelm and the German high command had pinned their hopes). Fighting a protracted two-front war, in which Britain and its powerful navy were now an active combatant, made it likely that Germany would eventually lose. Richard Brooks therefore dubbed it "the decisive battle of the war, and perhaps of the century."
However, the Marne was also, as Barbara Tuchman called it, an "incomplete victory." The Allies could not deliver a crippling blow to the German army or drive it from its strong defensive positions after the battle, leaving it in possession of a great deal of French and Belgian territory, including vital factories and iron-ore deposits that would enable it to continue the war effort much longer than it might otherwise have done. Likewise, the failure to find an alternative to frontal assaults paved the way for the extremely costly trench warfare of the years to come.
The First Battle of the Marne is also distinguished as a sign of the changing nature of warfare and military technology. The most commonly noted feature of this is the use of the Paris taxicabs to shuttle soldiers to the front at the height of the battle. Though some historians have downplayed their overall significance, as most troops reached the battlefield by other means, the story was very popular with the public as a patriotic act, and they do represent one of the first instances of motorized infantry. The Marne was also the first battle in which aircraft played a significant role (chiefly on the Allied side), not so much through firepower but through reconnaissance, as they were able to gather substantial information on enemy troop movements.
==References==
==References==