The same general instructions of August 25, 1914, marks out the zones of march, and says: 

“The movement will be covered by the rear guards spread out at favorable points of vantage so as to utilize every obstacle for the purpose of checking, by brief and violent counterattacks in which the artillery will play the chief part, the march of the enemy or at least to retard it.”

  (Signed) J. Joffre.

The object of this maneuver is thus already on August 25, 1914, clearly indicated; it looked not to a defensive, but to an offensive movement, which was to be resumed as soon as circumstances appeared favorable.  Much is made clear in these orders of General Joffre, which are characterized by perspicuity, foresight, and precision.

The retreat was effected; but it was only a provisional retreat.  Whenever an occasion presented itself to counterattack the enemy for the purpose of delaying his advance, that occasion was to be taken advantage of.  And that is, in fact, what took place.

Two days later, on August 27, 1914, General Joffre brought together, using army corps and divisions recruited elsewhere, a supplementary army, the Ninth Army, which was detailed to take its place between the Fourth and Fifth Armies.  He intrusted its command to a general, who, while commanding the Twentieth Corps, had distinguished himself by his brilliant conduct in Lorraine, General Foch.

The establishment of the army of Manoury on the left of the French armies so as to fall on the right flank of the Germans when they marched on Paris; the establishment of a strong army under one of the best French generals at the center for the purpose of encountering the main weight of the German army; such were the two decisions of the French commander in chief, taken on August 25 and 27, 1914, which contained in germ the victory of the Marne, waged and won two weeks later.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XI

FIGHTING AT BAY

The forces of France also had been fighting to protect their retreat southward in these August days of 1914.  After the passages of the Sambre were forced, during the great Mons-Charleroi battle, the Fifth French Army was placed in very perilous straits by the failure of the Fourth Army, under General Langle, to hold the Belgian river town of Givet.  Hard pressed in the rear by General von Buelow’s army, and on their right by General von Hausen commanding the Saxon Army and the Prussian Guard, the Fifth Army of France had to retire with all possible speed, for their path of retreat was threatened by a large body of Teutons advancing on Rocroi.

On August 23, 1914, holding their indomitable pursuers in check by desperate rear-guard action, with their two cavalry divisions under General Sordet galloping furiously along the lines of the western flank to protect the retiring infantry and guns, the Fifth Army unexpectedly turned at Guise.  At that point considerable reenforcements in troops and material arrived, making the Fifth Army the strongest in France.  It now defeated and drove over the Oise the German Guard and Tenth Corps, and then continued its retirement.  But the left wing of the French army was unsuccessful, and Amiens and the passages of the Somme had to be abandoned to the invaders.