touch with the situation of Billow's army (apparently through the neglect of the latter to keep Hausen posted as to events on the Sambre), and the IV. Army in the heart of the Ardennes had already begun to wheel forward and southward in order to protect Hausen's left when it received the full weight of the French IV. Army's offensive from the Chiers. Lastly, the V. Army, on which a defensive attitude was at first imposed by the Supreme Command, managed to convert its defensive, flushed by success in the battle of Longwy, into a flank offensive which threatened to create a gap between the five armies and the Thionville-Metz pivot, on which they were to wheel. (See FRONTIERS, BATTLES OF THE: section Ardennes.)
Thus, at almost every point, local situations and the initiative of army commanders and troops turned the smooth and regular tide into a series of eddies. On the German side, as on that of the Allies, the northern half of the battle of the Frontiers was a chain of fierce local battles which only a very strong Higher Command could take in hand, either to straighten the links or to reforge them in a different pattern.
From that point to the battle of the Marne, the contest is less between schemes, less even between armies, than between the capacities of the two Supreme Commands.
At the head of the German armies was a man in indifferent health, by nature kindly rather than insistent, one for whom responsibility was rather a burden than a source of strength. He carried, moreover, the strain of watching and attempting to direct affairs on the eastern front. His opponent was a different man and differently placed. Essentially authoritative in temperament, sound in health, and concerned with one task only, Joffre was a commander in the full sense where Mpltke was a responsible adviser only. Leaving the details of planning to his staff, and in particular to General Berthelot, Joffre devoted himself entirely to the r&le of commanding. His personal activity in the days after the battle of the Frontiers is astonishing, but it is essentially of the moral and not the operative kind deciding, encouraging, punishing the r61e of King William I. in the war of 1870-;!, and one which the Emperor William II. was unable to sustain in 1914. Add to the factors weighing against Moltke, the prestige and confidence of his army commanders, most of whom had won victories, none sustained defeat, whereas no French subordinate general had obtained an important tactical success, and it is evident that the higher control was necessarily firmer on the side of the French than on that of the Germans.
The prevailing impression on the German side after the battles along the frontiers was that a decisive victory had been won, and that the next phase was to be one of exploitation. The consequences of this impression, which soon penetrated to General Headquarters, were: (a) the decision to send six corps (two from each portion of the line) to the East Prussian front ; (b) freedom of action granted to the V. Army to cut loose from contact with Thionville and join in the general pursuit by a movement round the N. of Verdun; (c) non- interference with Prince Rupprecht's pursuit in Lorraine; and (d) a new orientation of the I., II., III., IV. and V. Armies, which, abandoning the " wheel," were to advance in line in a general S.W. direction, with the I. Army heading for the lower Seine, the II. for Paris, the III. for Chateau-Thierry, the IV. for Epernay, and the V. for Vitry-le-Francois, the last-named flankguarding against Verdun and the first preserving a defensive echelon on its right.
The new orders were issued on Aug. 27, after the battle of Lan- drecies-Le Cateau had accounted for all undisclosed British forces and established the feebleness of the French cordon to the left of them, while the III. Army was well S. of Rocroi and the IV. bordered the Meuse from Sedan to Stenay. They were not executed with the certainty and confidence of an exploitation. The V. Army, in the act of letting go its connexion with Thionville-Metz, had on Aug. 25 exposed its left flank to a very sharp offensive of the defensive portion of the French III. Army now styled " Army of Lorraine," under General Maunoury, whose progress had been stopped only by orders from Paris. The French III. and IV. Armies, quickly rallied from their Ardennes-Longwy defeats, gave ground only slowly and with frequent counter-strokes (see FRONTIERS, BATTLES OF THE: section Ardennes), and the German III. Army was con- tinually drawn southward, off its line of advance, to assist the IV. in real or supposed crises. Thus a great gap opened up between the III. Army and the II.; and the latter, uneasy as to its left flank, gradually drew away into a southerly direction, while Kluck's I. Army continued S.W. on Amiens. Almost immediately thereafter, the I. Army began to come into contact with French forces, dis- tinctly superior in number and in quality from those hitherto met on this outer flank. While driving these back in various minor actions, and expanding ever westward in so doing, it was suddenly checked and caused to swerve southward by demands for assistance from the II. Army, which, unsupported on its left by the III., found itself counter-attacked, with a vigour that had not been observed since Charleroi, by Lanrezac (see GUISE, BATTLE OF). This crisis, like similar crises on a smaller scale in the area affecting the IV. and
III. Armies, passed away after a time, but the disintegration of the German mass-movement had now reached a climax. Apart from regulating special questions between armies as they arose, the German Higher Command had not intervened in the conduct of operations since its instruction of Aug. 27. On the night of Aug. 31, the I. Army, in the vain hope of seizing the left flank of the British or of Lanrezac, had pushed its left far to the S. to the Aisne below Soissons, while its right was in the Lassigny hills and W. of Mont- didier and even farther north. The II. Army had not progressed be- yond the Guise-St. Quentin battlefield, its front facing due S. between Essigny-le-Grand and Vervins; the III. Army on the contrary was on the upper Aisne on both sides of Rethel, the IV. astride the northern Argonne between Semuyand Buzancy, theV. wrapping itself round the N. side of Verdun while still maintaining considerable forces in the Woevre facing the E. front of that fortress, and the C6te de Meuse. Two corps had left for the eastern front, belonging not to the subsidiary armies in Lorraine but to the striking wing. One corps had been left to face the Belgians in Antwerp, one and a quarter corps to besiege Maubeuge, other detachments here and there to guard lines of communication or to invest small French forts such as Givet. The only new forces on their way to the West were the two divisions of the IX. Res. Corps and certain Ersatz brigades, all of which were needed to support the. dangerously weak cordon of the III. Res. Corps facing Antwerp and to be on the spot in case of a Russian and British landing at Ostend, rumours of which at this time filled western Europe.
In Lorraine, the pursuit from the battlefields of Morhange and Saarburg had led the German VI. and VII. Armies in a southerly direction, substantially on Rambervillers and Charmes. Forced to > condense into two mam groups by the fort of Manonviller a work condemned as useless by peace-time critics and by the forest of Parroy, they had exposed their right flank to counter-attack by the | restored army of Castelnau, which held the fortifications N. and E. of Nancy and the north flank of the so-called Trouce de Charmes. This French counter-stroke not only gravely imperilled Prince Rupprecht's army for Manonviller resisted long enough to act as an anvil to Castelnau's hammer but deprived the German Com- mand in Lorraine of its initiative. With that loss, it forfeited all real power of holding larger French forces in its front; and though j the German Supreme Command, in the same confident general instructions of Aug. 27 which initiated the southwestward pursuit ; of the I.-V. Armies, ordered the Bavarian Prince to break through | the French line in the direction of Neufchateau on the upper Meuse, I it soon appeared that Joffre had the " inner line." He could take troops from Lorraine for other service, while his opponent could only continue costly holding attacks that did not hold.
On Sept. I the German Supreme Command gave up the con- ception of a general southwesterly pursuit, which, by its incidents, had not only lost its direction but brought the armies into a very irregular array and resumed the original conception of the wheel ; pivoting on Thionville, or rather, in the new situation, on the troops ; of the V. Army facing the N. side of Verdun. By now, however, I with losses and detachments, the frontage of such a sweep was i reduced by the front of a whole army, if not two armies. The appearance of French active and reserve forces N. of Paris made it clear that a protective echelon such as had always been prescribed and rarely formed by the I. Army would have to follow the rear of ' the army on the outer flank, and, moreover, the gap between the j II. and III. Armies must be closed. The new general instructions, | therefore, prescribed that the II. Army should steadily drive the French in a southeasterly direction, followed in echelon by the I., which was to watch Paris and break up the communications leading thither. But almost immediately after the I. Army, still well in I advance of the II., received this order, one of its corps, exploiting 3 local advantage, crossed the Marne at Chezy and Chateau-Thierry, j and Kluck determined to support it rather than withdraw it. The Supreme Command made no protest, all the more so as he reported evidences of real dissolution in the ranks of the retreating enemy. Kluck pushed on. The echelon facing Paris was maintained, but it was growing thinner and thinner. On Sept. 4 the Supreme Com- mand, in increasing uneasiness, limited the offensive front still more. Not only was the I. Army to stand fast between the Oise and the i Marne, but the II. Army was to wheel outwards and fill the space between the Marne and the upper Seine. The III. Army, now i become the operating wing, was to march on Troyes and to the E. I thereof, continuing in close liaison with the IV. and V. while the ' Lorraine armies were to renew their attempt to break through the ' upper Moselle front.
The final phases of the battle in Lorraine represent the endeavour of exhausted forces to carry out their part in this scheme. The central and western portion came to nothing, for although Kluck began at 23:00 hours (n P.M.) on Sept. 5 to counter-march his army so as to fill the space between the Oise and the Marne, now j guarded only by the last relic of his echelon, and Billow gained ground between the Marne and the Seine as far as Montmirail and the marshes of St. Goud, General Joffre had, on the afternoon of Sept. 4, issued the command to his armies to face about and attack.
The Preparation of the Counter-Offensive. While on the Ger- man side we see the battles of the frontiers followed by a high-
