The race to the sea develops

The next few instalments will take us to the end of 1914 on the Western Front. 
Although from the Aisne eastwards and south to the Swiss border the stalemate had set in, there was still considerable flanking activity taking place in the north and west as the Allies and Germans tried to outflank each other to gain strategic advantage for the next stage. The map shows the four main actions of this phase, in amongst the constant fighting that went on throughout the region. They were: 

• the Antwerp siege and resistance; 
• the Battle of La Bassee; 
• the Battle of the Yser; and 
• the 1st Battle of Ypres - second only to the Marne in its scale and significance following the great retreat. Each of these is covered in turn

In the previous post we saw how Joffre decided to push northward to get behind Kluck's right flank, thereby disrupting his lines, so a more general German retreat would have to take place.
Sir John French, for the BEF, realised what was happening, and was anxious to find his forces now sandwiched in the centre of the allied front, rather than on the French left. He wanted greater proximity to the Channel ports should things go badly wrong, rather than having his supply lines running across France from the Atlantic coast. He also knew that Antwerp, the last great remaining fortress was under great pressure, and its loss would open the Belgian coast to the Germans. He approached Joffre formally to discuss this, and on 1^st October Joffre approved a plan to move the BEF north, and arranged for the creation of a new reservist army, the 8^th, under d’Urbal, to replace them across the Aisne sector.

For their part, the Germans responded to Joffre's initiative by their own outflanking movement around Maunoury’s left. As the the implications of stalemate at the Aisne became clearer, the new German strategy to control the north of Belgium, even as far as Boulogne on the north France coast, drove Falkenhayn's planning. Falkenhayn had replaced Moltke on 14^th September, and embarked immediately on a new war strategy to supplant the failed plan of Schlieffen. He moved his GHQ from Luxembourg to Mezieres on the Meuse, and pushed for control of all of Belgium and its coast. Without this, he realised the German U boat campaign would be seriously weakened. He resolved that a definitive victory in the war could only be reached in the West rather than the East. The new C-in-C of Germany's forces could see the benefits of naval control of the Channel and North Sea in a way that the Prussian militarist in Moltke could not or would not.