Then there was the Eleventh corps of Bretons and Vendeans, which had been through the same terrible retreat.

And—­not to enumerate too far—­there was that Forty-second division of infantry which was destined to play one of the most dramatic, thrilling, forever-memorable parts in all warfare.  It had been in the Ardennes, and had fallen back, fighting fiercely as it came.

To help him command these weary men whose hearts were heavy with forebodings for France, Foch had, as he himself has said, “a general staff of five or six officers, gathered in haste to start with, little or no working material, our note books and a few maps.”

“Those who lived through these tragic hours near him,” says Rene Puaux, “recall the chief questioning the liaison officers who did not know exactly where the different units were, punctuating his questions with:  ‘You don’t know?  Very well, then go and find out!’; putting together in his head the mosaic of which there were still so many pieces missing; gradually visioning a plan for bringing them together; calculating his effectives; estimating approximately his reserves of ammunition; discovering his bases of food supply.”

And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable to get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law, Captain Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.

“It was not, however,” M. Puaux says, “the time for personal emotions.  The father effaced himself before the soldier.  There was nothing to be thought of save the country.”

Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.

XIV

THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE

It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.

On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south of Chalons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would permit the retreat of his armies.

If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than the Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal go beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.

He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he deemed they would be most effective:  the First army, under General Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of “elbow,” joining the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army, under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet d’Esperey; then the little British army of three corps, under General Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.