So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received orders—­at once terrible and immensely flattering—­that he was to occupy the center of Joffre’s battle line and to sustain the onslaught of Von Buelow and the famous Prussian Guards.

In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from Joffre the now historic message: 

“The moment has come for the army to advance at all costs and allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than give way.”

The men to whom this order was relayed by their commanders had, five-sixths of them, been ceaselessly engaged, without one single day’s rest of any kind and much of the time without night rest either, for fourteen days, fighting as they fell back, and falling back as they fought; the skin was all worn from the soles of their feet, and what shoes they had left were stuck to their feet with blood.

“They had marched under a torrid sky,” says Louis Madelin, “on scorching roads, parched and suffocated with dust.  In reality they moved with their hearts rather than with their legs.  According to Pierre Lasserre’s happy expression, ’Our bodies had beaten a retreat, but not our hearts,’ . . .  But when, worn out with fatigue, faces black with powder, blinded by the chalk of Champagne, almost dying, they learned Joffre’s order announcing the offensive, then the faces of our troops from Paris to Verdun beamed with joy.  They fought with tired limbs, and yet no army ever showed such strength, for their hearts were filled with faith and hope.”

At daybreak on Sunday, the 6th, Foch pitched his headquarters in a modern chateau near the little village of Pleurs, which you probably will not find on any map except a military one, but it is some six miles southeast of Sezanne.  And the front assigned to Foch ran from Sezanne to the Camp de Mailly, twenty-five miles east by a little south.  The Marne was twenty-five miles to north of him.  Between him and its south bank were many towns and villages; the clay pocket (ten miles long) called the Marshes of St. Gond, but far from marshy in that parching heat; and north of that the forest of Epernay.  His vanguards were north of the marshes.  But as that Sunday wore on, the Prussian Guards drove Foch’s Angevins and Vendeans of the Ninth Corps back and occupied the marshes.  The Bretons on the east of Foch’s line were obliged to dislodge, and the Moroccans and Forty-second Division had to yield on Foch’s left.

Thus, at nightfall of the first day’s fighting, Foch’s new army had given ground practically everywhere.

The next day the German attack became fiercer, and it seemed that more ground must be yielded.

That was the day when Foch made his memorable deduction:  “They are trying to throw us back with such fury I am sure that means things are going badly for them elsewhere and they are seeking compensation.”

He was right!  Von Kluck was retiring in a northeasterly direction under Manoury’s blows; and even Von Buelow (whom Foch faced) was withdrawing parts of his troops from the line at Foch’s left.