By the night of that Monday, the 24th of August, however, the whole of the British Army was again in line, and stretched from Maubeuge, which protected its right, through Bavai, on to the fields between the villages of Jenlain and Bry, where the fresh 19th Infantry Brigade had newly arrived before the evening, while beyond this extreme left again was the cavalry.

The whole operation, then, of that perilous Monday, the first day of the retreat, may be planned in general as in Sketch 52.  At the beginning, at daybreak, you have the three German army corps lying as the shaded bodies are given opposite to the unshaded, which represent the British contingent of not quite two full army corps.  By nightfall the British contingent, including now the 19th Brigade of infantry, lay in the positions from Maubeuge westward, with the 1st Corps next to Maubeuge, the 2nd Corps beyond Bavai, the 1st being commanded by Sir Douglas Haig, the 2nd by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien; while the Germans lay more or less as the dotted shaded markings are.

The fortress of Maubeuge was, under these circumstances, clearly a lure.  An army in the field in danger of envelopment will always be tempted to make for the nearest fortified zone in order to save itself.  The British commander was well advised in his judgment to avoid this opportunity, and that for two reasons.  First, that the locking up of any considerable portion of the Anglo-French force in its retirement would have jeopardized the chance of that counter-offensive which the French hoped sooner or later to initiate; secondly, that, as will be seen later, the works of Maubeuge were quite insufficient to resist for more than a few days a modern siege train.

[Illustration:  Sketch 52.]

This point of Maubeuge and of its fall must be discussed later; for the moment all we need note is that the fortress afforded for a few hours—­that is, during the night of Monday to Tuesday, the 24th-25th August—­support to the British line during its first halt upon the rapid and perilous retirement from Mons.

Meanwhile the whole of the French 5th Army had been falling back with equal rapidity, and upon its right the 4th Army had followed soon; and as this French retirement had preceded the retirement of the British, its general line lay farther south.

On the other hand, from the nature of the topography in this section of the Franco-Belgian border, the units of the French command had to fall back farther and more rapidly in proportion as they stretched eastward.  The attack of the enemy in forces of rather more than two to one had come, as we have seen, not only from across the line of the Sambre, but, once Namur had fallen, from across the line of the Meuse at right angles to the line of the Sambre.  Therefore the 5th and the 4th Armies, contained within the triangle bounded by the Sambre and Meuse, retiring from blows struck from the direction of the arrows 1-5 over all