No more retreating - the build up to Battle of the Marne

The ‘Miracle of the Marne’ was the greatest counter-attack in history, and the most decisive battle of WW1.
How did France - with some (initially) reluctant help from the BEF - turn around the desperate defeats of the first month to save Paris and the Allied cause? Sir John French was so disillusioned after the long retreat, and his inability to get on with Joffre, he was keen to withdraw the whole BEF way beyond Paris, perhaps even taking them back to England via western French ports. French's behaviour prompted the famous arrival of Earl Kitchener at the Western Front, and no doubt was a major factor in his replacement as C-in- C of the BEF in 1915.


According to Buchan, “Sir John had plunged into a chasm of despair. French defeats and the seemingly unstoppable German advance had shaken his nerve. The Battle of Le Cateau tipped him over the edge. French was furious that Smith-Dorrien had chosen to fight rather than retreat, and was convinced that II Corps had been virtually destroyed. At the very moment that the fortunes of the BEF were beginning to turn, the commander of the army was mired in a mental defeat”. 
What French failed to understand was that this campaign was a life and death struggle for a nation. The fate of France hung in the balance. By this stage British commitment was not optional – it was essential. Sir John could not simply withdraw the BEF and then return as and when he chose: he might find there was nothing but a victorious German army left to greet his return. He sent a garbled message to London about withdrawing the entire BEF south of Paris to recover, and this was too much for Kitchener, who announced his intention to visit the front in person. Kitchener's presence there infuriated French, who felt undermined, but it served to convince him that he must support Joffre, who had travelled to the British HQ to make an emotional appeal for unity, and support for France’s future.

(Hastings) Joffre had presided over catastrophe in the ‘Battles of the Frontiers’ (in this sector, the French had suffered grievous defeats at Charleroi, Dinant and Virton, and things were worse in the centre and right of the French lines), but at least there was no doubt of his authority over his armies, and close supervision of their operations. Also his move of the additional army of Maunoury to the western flank made a huge difference to the progress of Kluck and Bulow, enabling the French 5^th army and (later) the BEF to exploit the gap created between German 1^st and 2^nd armies. Moltke, by contrast, left his subordinates in the field to execute his plans almost without intervention or coordination, and the lack of good communication between them contributed to the German failure at the Marne.

Von Kluck, the German 1st Army commander, had responded to events by turning his army from a south westerly course to a south easterly one which would bring him closer to Second Army. This meant that the German advance would no longer sweep around Paris, as the original Schlieffen Plan had required, but would instead pass to the north east of the city. This seemingly minor change had major implications, but the German Staff HQ was still in a state of euphoria after the earlier successes, and the overly optimistic reports still reaching them. They felt the BEF was finished, and that Kluck could continue as originally planned to the west of Paris, with Bulow to the east. Kluck either disagreed or did not receive orders, and chose to change the direction of his advance. 

Paris in 1914 was the largest fortress in the world, and despite their rapid successes the Germans (including Kluck) were anxious that they had enough men to take it directly. They remembered the frustrating months siege of Paris in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. As a result, Kluck decided to modify the Schlieffen plan and to pass to the north of Paris. Moltke, although not in direct communication with Kluck, probably felt confident that the Germans could drive the whole French army back towards Switzerland, and destroy it between Nancy and Verdun.

The consequence of the Marne was not a single battle, and nor was it fought on one battlefield. It was a series of engagements, many of them tumultuous, at points along a wide front between Paris to the west and the German borders to the south east, and it turned the eventual outcome of the war. The most critical sector of the front was between Paris and the Marne. There, the full battle would rage for four days. Much of it was fought in a maze of waterways that serve as tributaries of the Marne: the Ourcq, which flowed north and south on both sides of Maunoury’s advance; the Petit Morin and Grand Morin, which ran east and west across the line of advance of the French 5^th Army and the BEF; and finally the Saint-Gond Marshes, from which arose the Petit Morin river, and where Foch’s 9^th Army stood.