Marne

“ On the other side of the Marne the undulating hill, with its wide stretch of fields, is dotted with little villages that peep out of the trees or are silhouetted against the sky-line,—Vignely, Trilbardou, Penchard, Monthyon, Neufmortier, Chauconin, and in the foreground to the north, in the valley, just halfway between me and Meaux, lies Mareuil-on-the-Marne, with its red roofs, gray walls, and church spire. ”

“ Fresh in his mind was a delicious July day at Rheims with his tutor, and the memory of every detail noted on the way, along the green windings of the Marne, by Meaux, Montmirail and Epernay. Now, traversing the same towns, he seemed to be looking into murdered faces, vacant and stony. ”

“ From the lawn, on the north side of the house, I command a panorama which I have rarely seen equaled. To me it is more beautiful than that we have so often looked at together from the terrace at Saint-Germain. In the west the new part of Esbly climbs the hill, and from there to a hill at the northeast I have a wide view of the valley of the Marne, backed by a low line of hills which is the water-shed between the Marne and the Aisne. Low down in the valley, at the northwest, lies lie de Villenoy, like a toy town, where the big bridge spans the Marne to carry the railroad into Meaux. ”

“ Like all religion, patriotism, for the many, speaks in symbols; what symbol more eloquent than the strong stream, endlessly renewed to cleanse, to nourish, and to heal? Through those stony years, most of the convoys crossed the Marne at some point—lumbering carts, succeeded by wagons white with a slime of dust and petrol; fussy Staff cars and hurried ambulances; gun-trains, their helmeted riders swaying spectrally in the misty air of dawn; columns of heavy-packed infantry, dreaming of their loves left in trembling cities far behind. ”

“ The area in which the British Army operated in the Battle of the Marne may be described as the country enclosed between the tributaries of the Marne, the Ourcq on the north and the Grand Morin on the south, between which boundaries it is intersected by the Marne itself, and a third tributary, the Petit Morin.
This area forms the western portion of the Plateau de la Brie, which rises to a height of 400 to 500 feet above the plain of Champagne. The general slope of the ground is from east to west. ”

“ Time and again he resisted tempting opportunities for a general action, till the Marne was reached. Then, when the German General Staff was drunk with victory, when their line was lengthened, their munitionment and rationing tedious and difficult, their troops tired with their hitherto magnificent marching, he launched his blow—faulty in parts, but staggering and effective as a whole. With a crash he killed the Paris dream. With a bound he swept corps after corps of the hardest-trained troops in the world into a tragic rout and irredeemable disaster. The Marne was the defeat of Germany. ”

“ This is a rolling country of grain fields, orchards, masses of black-currant bushes, vegetable plots,—it is a great sugar-beet country,—and asparagus beds; for the Department of the Seine et Marne is one of the most productive in France, and every inch under cultivation. It is what the French call un paysage riant, and I assure you, it does more than smile these lovely June mornings. I am up every morning almost as soon as the sun, and I slip my feet into sabots, wrap myself in a big cloak, and run right on to the lawn to make sure that the panorama has not disappeared in the night. ”

“ Six days' steady, hard fighting results in a French victory all along the line of the Marne. The German retreat is general. It is astonishing to see how quietly and calmly Parisians receive the welcome news. They are naturally delighted, but there are no wild outbursts of enthusiasm. They fully realize that this is merely one of the phases of the long, hard struggle.
Both General-in-Chief Joffre, and the German General Staff, foresaw that the great battle of the Marne must be decisive. ”

“ We were now nearing the battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a team of white oxen under the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing machine was being fed by a knot of old men and young women from an oat-rick. The only hints of the cloud on the horizon were the occasional passage of a convoy and the notable absence of young men. ”

“ At the foot of the edifice the forest stretches away, and behind the screen of trees lies a limitless country, in which cultivated fields extend to the horizon. Everywhere orchards, hamlets, villages meet the eye. The Seine is not far off, and at no great distance, like a band of silver, the Marne meanders capriciously through an immense plain studded with clumps of trees.
On one side a view is obtained of Montreuil, famed for its peaches ”

“ The Huns have a short way and bloody with British stragglers and despatch-riders and patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his weakness with a cruel death.
At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne, approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible for many miles. Here we had lunch at the inn—a dish of perch caught that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for which La Ferté is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and excellent vintage. ”

“ The movement of men was forward. The strange telepathic current that runs through villages long before reports reach them, was all of relief. [Pg 205] It was cheerful soldiers in blue who shoved my car on to the water-logged barge on the Marne; and, after a drift downward during which we scarcely breathed, it was laughing peasants who pulled us up on the far bank.
It is something to have been at least across the Marne and near on such a day, to have had the sound of those guns in one's ears, to have watched for the first time in five weeks' campaigning the forward movement of our armies. ”

“ The Marne
“Within its pages is concentrated much if not the whole of the meaning of the Marne both to France and America. Mrs. Wharton has never written a broader, keener criticism of life than this.”—New York Times. ”

“ Indeed, I was told that the wine vaults of Epernay were as well worth inspection, as the catacombs of Paris.
I should observe to you that the river Marne, one of the second- rate rivers, of France, accompanies you pretty closely all the way from Chateau Thierry to Chalons--designated as Chalons-sur-Marne. From Epernay to Chalons you pass through nothing but corn fields. It is a wide and vast ocean of corn--with hardly a tree, excepting those occasionally along the road, within a boundary of ten miles. Chalons is a large and populous town; but the churches bear sad traces of revolutionary fury. ”

“ If her soul had been capable of enthusiasm, Marne could have made the trip on schedule time, but she was a burro good for nothing except to carry a pack well nigh half her own weight, live on forage that might have starved a goat, and smell water fifteen miles in time of drought. Speed was not in her vocabulary, and accordingly it was late afternoon rather than morning when Gregg, pointing his course between the ears of Marne, steered her through Murphy's Pass and came out over Alder. ”

“ Seine et Marne, if not one of the most picturesque regions in France, abounds in those quiet charms which grow upon the sympathetic traveller. It is not a land of marvels and pictorial attractions like Brittany. There is no costume, no legendary romance, no stone array of Carnac to entice the stranger, but, on the other hand, the lover of nature in her more subdued aspects, and the archæologist also, will find ample to repay them.... ”

“ On the 22nd, the front was quiet between the Aisne and the Ourcq, but between the Ourcq and the Marne violent enemy counter-attacks temporarily drove back the Allies. However, at the end of the day the Allies had progressed beyond the Château-Thierry-Soissons road. On the Marne, French troops, moving eastwards under enemy artillery and machine-gun fire, enlarged their bridgehead on both banks. ”

“ For seven solid hours the battle for the opposite shore of the Marne continued, both sides fighting desperately and heroically. Then, as the Germans continued to retreat, General French called a halt. The British fell to work digging trenches in the recently won ground, and preparing to resist an attack should one be delivered.
This first skirmish on the eastern banks of the Marne, while possibly unimportant, when viewed in the light of later events, became one of the greatest factors in the offensive movements of the Allies. ”

“ The crossing of the Marne by the British had been no easy task. If you look at a map of the Marne, [104] you will see that between Meaux and La Ferté [105] the river winds about a great deal, and makes a big bend [208] very much like that of the Thames between Windsor and Henley. At La Ferté our 3rd Corps found the town held by the Germans, who had posted their guns on the hills behind, and were thus able to sweep the stream with shell fire, while a strong force of infantry on the south bank resisted the passage at closer quarters. All day long the British attacked ”

“ The Germans traversed this road in both directions within six days. They advanced in all the excitement of a victorious pursuit: they returned in the gloomy disappointment of defeat.
The journey to Châlons (106 km.) presents no difficulties, it being merely necessary to follow N. 33, which passes through Chaintrix and Thibie. We enter Châlons by the Avenue de Paris, then take the Rue du Faubourg-de-la-Marne on the left. Cross the railway, then the Marne, and continue straight along the Rue de la Marne. Here cross the canal, leaving the cathedral on the right. ”

“ Most of the Battle of the Marne was fought on so vast a scale, over so wide a stretch of country—about 200 miles long, by 50 broad—that for the civilian spectator of the future it will never be possible to realise it as a whole, and very difficult even to realise any section of it, topographically, owing to the complication of the actions involved. ”

“ The soldiers who lie buried there are those who gallantly defended the passage of the Marne on September 6. The French troops, overwhelmed by the fire of the German artillery at Vitry, were obliged to fall back on Courdemanges and Mont-Moret. The Germans in their turn were violently shelled by the French guns, but succeeded in holding out in Frignicourt until the 11th. ”

“ Châlons-sur-Marne, its capital, has a large permanent garrison, with fixed camps and manœuvre grounds hard by. Vitry-le-François, at the junction of the Saulx and Ornain with the Marne, and of the Paris–Nancy and Châlons–Rheims railways, is the only other considerable town. On the west of this region, Foch held against Bülow and the Saxons; on the east occurred the shock of de Langle’s army with that of the Duke of Würtemberg. ”

“ Our orders are to advance to Saint-Fiacre,—a little east of Meaux,— but before I go I am happy to relieve your mind on two points. The French cavalry has driven the Uhlans out—some of them were captured as far east as Bouleurs. And the English artillery has come down from the hill behind you and is crossing the Marne. We follow them. So you see you can sit here in your pretty library and read all these nice books in security, until the day comes—perhaps sooner than you dare hope—when you can look back to all these days, and perhaps be a little proud to have had a small part in it. ”

“ The battlefield—a rough quadrilateral, extending from the Dammartin road eastward to the deep ditch occupied by the Ourcq and its canal, and bounded on the north by the Nanteuil–Betz highway, on the south by the looping course of the Marne—consists of open, rolling beet- and corn-fields where some part of the crops were still standing. ”

“ From the Ourcq to the Marne the German resistance stiffened and occasionally counter-attacks were made, notwithstanding which the Franco-American troops progressed in the Fère and Ris Woods, and along the narrow passage which separates them. An advance was also made higher up the river near Reuil, but the attack by the 77th Division at this point failed to drive back the enemy. Some progress was made in the Ardre valley, in spite of enemy reinforcements. ”

“ The II Corps advances by the Grand Morin valley below Coulommiers, and directs itself against the east front of Paris.”
50 General von Freytag-Loringhoven says: “It was proved on the Marne that the age of armies numbering millions, with their improved armament and widely extended fronts, engenders very special conditions.... The envelopment of the whole host of the enemy is a very difficult matter” (Deductions, pp. 79–80) . ”

“ I know only one journalist who actually saw the battle of the Marne. I know several who said they saw it, but I did not believe them, and I know better than to believe them now. Of course there are French journalists who took a military part in the battle, but they have not yet had opportu [Pg 59] nity to chronicle their impressions—those of them who live. This one journalist saw the battle as a prisoner with his own army; he was lugged along with them clear to the Aisne. ”

“ Many of the men had bare feet, and some carried arms and some were without. It was the hazard of the colossal battle of the Marne, where several millions of men had been at grips, which had thrown them on this point. ”