The Marne - Part 5. The Allies advance

The tide was turning, but the fighting remained ferocious. Foch’s comment, possibly apocryphal, “Hard pressed on my right, my centre is falling back, impossible to move, situation excellent. I attack” is yet another legend of the Battle of the Marne that reflects French courage and heroism in many parts of the front, as they fought to save their country. The inexorable advance of the German military machine had been stopped, and with the gap created between German 1st and 2nd armies, there was a real opportunity for a decisive allied breakthrough, However, by now all parties were exhausted and low on supplies, and the imminent victory of the Marne would not, sadly, prove decisive.


Responding to the changing circumstances, and abandoning his plan to envelop the German right wing via the north west, Joffre now ordered the French armies and the BEF to pursue the retreating Germans in echelon on a northeasterly course, exploiting the gap between Kluck and Bulow's armies. Specifically, Maunoury's Sixth Army was to advance on Soissons, French's BEF on Fismes, Franchet d'Esperey's Fifth Army on Reims, and Foch's Ninth Army on Sommesous and Châlons, making an approximate 50 mile dent in the German's previous line

French Infantry attack

On the morning of 10th September, one of Foch’s divisions spearheaded an attack across the Saint-Gond marshes at La Fère-Champenoise, and encountered no resistance. The Germans had gone. Mondement was reoccupied after gunners manhandled forward two artillery pieces which blasted breaches in the park walls from a range of three hundred yards. When sufficient masonry crumbled to allow the attackers to swarm in, they were amazed to find only dead Germans; there too, the living ones had decamped.  

BEF Cavalry advancing to the Marne

Further to the south east Castelnau counter-attacked, pushing back the Germans several miles and capturing huge supply dumps in Lunéville. The line of the Meurthe was secured, and the city of Nancy saved.
The final desperate German foray was a night bayonet assault on the 10th by almost 100,000 reservists of the Crown Prince Wilhelm’s Fifth Army north of Sainte-Menehould (about 50k to the east of Rheims). Moltke initially approved the operation, then – becoming alarmed about casualties among the besiegers of Nancy – withdrew approval. Wilhelm threatened Moltke with an appeal to his father the Kaiser, and Moltke grudgingly agreed to continue.       
The consequence was a disaster. The attackers failed to achieve a breakthrough, and French artillery, the ‘black butchers’, punished the packed ranks of infantry mercilessly. At 7.45 a.m. the French counter-attacked, driving back the Germans to the north towards the next major topographical barrier, the River Aisne..

Many of Germany’s soldiers were as bewildered and angered by their retreat from the Marne as had been their British counterparts retiring from Mons, less than three weeks earlier. However, the Germans quickly selected the positions at which they would halt and fight again – on high ground behind the Aisne, and troops were dispatched to start digging. By the evening of 13th September, the crisis threatening the armies of Kluck and Bülow had passed: they were safely back across the river, occupying the ridge of the Chemin des Dames.

The pursuit by the allies, and especially by the BEF, was painfully slow. French ammunition stocks were almost exhausted. The troops were too tired, and had suffered too much, to move with the speed that would have been necessary to seize any chance of transforming a French triumph into a German catastrophe. But the high-water-mark of Moltke’s assault in the west had passed. ‘La bataille de la Marne s’achève une victoire incontestable,’ declared Joffre.

As we now know. the 'victoire', miraculous and uncontestable as it was, merely created the circumstances for the following four years of stalemate, attrition and human tragedy.