The plans of the German campaign at this time, so far as they can be determined from the official orders and from the manner in which the respective movements were carried out, were three-fold.  The first of these movements was the order given to General von Kluck to swirl his forces to the southeast of Paris, swerving away from the capital in an attempt to cut the communications between it and the Fifth French Army under General d’Esperey.  This plan evidently involved a feint attack upon the Sixth French Army under General Manoury (though General Pare took charge of the larger issues of this western campaign), coupled with a swift southerly stroke and an attack upon what was supposed to be the exposed western flank of General d’Esperey’s army.  The cause of the failure of this attempt was the presence of the British army, as has been shown in the alignment of the armies given above, and as will be shown in detail later, in the recital of the actual progress of the fighting.  Important as was this movement, however, it was the least of the three elements in General von Moltke’s plan for the shattering of the great defense line of the Allies.

The second element in this plan was, contrary to Germany’s usual tactics, the determination to attack the center of the French line and break through.  Almost three-quarters of a million men were concentrated on this point.  The armies of General von Buelow, General Hausen and the Duke of Wuerttemberg were massed in the center of the line.  There, however, General Foch’s new Ninth Army was prepared to meet the attack.  It will be remembered that, in the disposition of the troops, these respective armies were facing each other across the great desolate plain, the ancient battle ground.  If the German center could break through the French center, and if at the same time General von Kluck, commanding the German right, could execute a swift movement to the southeast, the Fifth French Army would be between two fires, together with such part of the Ninth Army as lay to the westward of the point to be pierced.  This strategic plan held high promise, and it would have menaced the whole interior of France southward from the plain of Champagne, but even this second part of the plan, important as it was, does not appear to have been the crucial point in the campaign.

The glory of the victory, if indeed victory it should prove, as the successes of the previous two weeks had led the Germans to believe, was to be given to the crown prince.  With a great deal of trouble and with far more delay than had been anticipated, the crown prince’s army had at last managed to get within striking distance of the forefront of the great battle line.  His forces occupied the territory north of Verdun to a southern point not far from Bar-le-Duc.  Here the German secret service seems to have been as efficient, as it failed to be with regard to conditions only fifty miles away.  General Sarrail’s army, which confronted the