Part 9

Fortunately the First Army under Haig had already been ordered in the direction best calculated to meet the new situation, though there was no longer any hope of its original orders--to turn the enemy's flank and drive him back to Ghent--being carried out. In this first phase of the battle of Ypres, which lasted until the night of 26th Oct., the northern portion of the British line, notwithstanding the enemy's immense reinforcements, progressed slowly but surely, and took heavy toll in killed, wounded, and prisoners. A certain amount of ground was lost to the south, between Zonnebeke and La Bassee--the commanders of both the 2nd and 3rd Corps being anxious about their positions on more than one occasion--but at no point was any serious break made in the line. Maud'huy at the same time was gallantly keeping the enemy in check in the Arras region, though he could not drive him from Lens and the Vimy Ridge; while on the left the French and Belgians were withstanding repeated assaults on the swaying front between Dixmude and the sea. The line held, and was now more or less firmly established.

The second phase of the battle of Ypres consisted in the repeated attempts of the Germans to break through this line at all costs. It began on 27th Oct., and lasted through five of the most momentous days in the history of the British army. On this day the French 9th Corps, which had been sent by Joffre to the assistance of the sorely tried British troops, took over the trenches in the northern part of the British salient. Capper's 7th Division, exhausted by incessant fighting and fearful losses, was temporarily attached to Haig's 1st Corps in the centre, and took over the ground south of the Ypres-Menin road. Byng's 3rd Cavalry Division was at the same time placed under Allenby. The 4th Corps was thus temporarily broken up, Rawlinson being sent home to supervise the preparation of the 8th Division for France.

The British line was further reduced in numbers during the opening days of this new phase of the battle by the repeated but unavailing attempt of the enemy to advance, the Germans meantime mounting up reserves of reinforcements for a decisive blow until, by the 30th, they outnumbered the battle-worn British by two to one. Then came the onslaught in full, almost overpowering strength. "October 31st and November 1st", afterwards wrote the British Commander-in-Chief in his story of _1914_, "will remain for ever memorable in the history of our country, for during those two days, no more than one thin and straggling line of tired-out British soldiers stood between the Empire and its practical ruin as an independent first-class Power." The storm centre of the British battle-line was the Wytschaete-Messines ridge, where Allenby's Cavalry Corps and Shaw's 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division withstood for forty-eight hours the supreme efforts of two and a half German army corps to dislodge them. The honours of those heroic days were shared by the French 9th Corps and the British 1st Corps (with the 7th Division attached) in their continued defence of the Ypres salient; and the British 2nd Corps, which held a long line on the right in difficult country, and, though forced to give up Neuve Chapelle on the 28th, withstood repeated attacks by superior numbers until the Indian Corps took over their positions.

[Illustration: Map showing lines of the Allied Armies in Northern France at the end of October and beginning of November, 1914

1, Yser line, defended by Franco-Belgian forces.

2, Ypres to La Bassee line, guarded chiefly by British troops.

3, French lines to a point above Verdun.

4, French lines adjacent to the Alsace-Lorraine frontier.]

The culminating phase of the battle began on the 29th, when overwhelming masses of the enemy stormed the centre of the Ypres salient, held by Haig's 1st Corps and the 7th Division, and forced our troops back on Gheluvelt. The ground was recovered before nightfall, but fighting of the fiercest character continued all round and beyond the salient, the critical sector of the 31st extending from Gheluvelt to Messines, on the south, where the 1st Cavalry Division was heavily pressed, and the London Scottish received their costly baptism of fire. The Germans got into Messines that day, but were hurled out again, and the line in this sector was completely restored by nightfall. The climax of the crisis had been reached shortly after midday in the Gheluvelt area, when the 1st Corps, after doing more than could be expected of any men in their prolonged stand against the heaviest odds, was at last broken, part of the 1st Division falling back rapidly along the Ypres-Menin road, with the Germans at their heels. "I felt", afterwards wrote General French, who was not more than a mile or so away at the time, "as if the last barrier between the Germans and the Channel seaboard was broken down", and he spent the worst half-hour his life had ever known. The situation was saved by Brigadier-General FitzClarence, V.C., commanding the 1st Guards Brigade of the 1st Division, who, on his own initiative, and in the nick of time, ordered the 2nd Worcesters to counter-attack. The Worcesters, who were in reserve to the 2nd Division, rushed up to fill the gap, and, saving the South Wales Borderers, drove the Germans out of Gheluvelt and re-established the line, which was completely restored before dark. FitzClarence was killed only a week or two later in the same part of the field.

The third phase of the battle of Ypres lasted from 1st Nov. to the 10th. Its most dangerous hours were at the very beginning, when both Messines and Wytschaete were lost, and only the timely arrival of the French 16th Corps, which partially restored the situation, and the devoted bravery of Allenby's Cavalry Corps, staved off this new threat of disaster. It is impossible here to follow all the confused operations in the remainder of this phase, in which fighting continued with varying intensity, and mingled success, all along the line from La Bassee to the sea.

The outstanding feature of the fourth and final phase, which extended from 11th Nov. to the 21st, was the succession of heavy assaults by the pick of the Prussian Guard, ordered by the Kaiser personally to carry the Ypres salient at all hazards. It failed, but not before the Germans had pierced the front along the Menin road in the first clash of arms on the morning of the 11th, a battalion of Royal Fusiliers being practically wiped out in gallantly disputing their passage. Haig met the situation "with the same grim determination, steadfast courage, and skilful forethought"--the words are those of Lord French--"which had characterized his handling of the operations throughout". The line was re-established, but only after fearful losses on both sides. The 1st (Guards) Brigade mustered at night only 4 officers and 300 men.

The French and Belgians were also attacked all along their line between Ypres and the sea--where British monitors swept the coast with shells for 6 miles inland--but the enemy was held off, save at Dixmude, which he captured and held. Between Dixmude, which had been stubbornly defended by Admiral Ronarc'h and his French marines, and Nieuport the sluices of the Yser had been opened by the Belgians, and the low-lying country across which the Germans were striving to force a way so flooded as to render all their efforts futile.

It was during this final effort of the Germans to reach the Channel ports in 1914 that Lord Roberts arrived at the front to visit the Indian Corps, who had withstood some heavy assaults on the old line of the Second Army, between Armentieres and La Bassee. Lord Roberts had scarcely fulfilled his mission, inspiring the troops with his presence at a critical time, when he was taken suddenly ill on 13th Oct. and died on the following day.

North of Armentieres the British 3rd Corps under Pulteney, which held the line thence towards Messines, had its share of fighting on the left bank of the Lys, and though its deeds in maintaining its positions were overshadowed by the epic struggles in the salient, its minor battles played their part in the victory of First Ypres. The great battle died down with the failure of the supreme effort of the Prussian Guard. Rains and floods and mud combined to call a halt in the struggle for the Channel ports, and the Western front was now established for the winter. There were occasionally attacks by the Germans at Ypres and Festubert, and more than one attempt on their part to cross the flooded Yser on rafts; but all to no purpose; and before the end of the year (20th Dec.) a five days' battle between the Indian troops and the Germans round Givenchy left matters much as they were before, the British positions, with the aid of British troops, being held. The French also broke the monotony of trench warfare with encouraging advances in Alsace, towards Noyon, in the Argonne, and elsewhere, but no vital changes took place in the general situation.

_Eastern Front, 1914_

Foiled in their grandiose plans in the West, the Germans were forced to rest content with their valuable territorial gains in France and Belgium, and remain on the defensive there while they turned to the more threatening situation on the Eastern front. As already noted, the Germans had under-estimated the rapidity of the Russian mobilization. They had not anticipated an offensive on that front until they could spare as many reserves as necessary from the West, and the forces left to guard their vulnerable frontier of East Prussia were as inadequate to stay the unexpected advance which the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was in supreme command of the Russian armies, ordered under Generals Rennenkampf and Samsonoff, as were the Belgians to prevent the march of the Germans across their territory. By 25th Aug. the Russian armies, whose advance had begun as early as the 7th, had pushed so far ahead that all East Prussia seemed in danger of falling into their hands. General von Francois, commanding the German troops, had been driven into Koenigsberg, the cradle of the Prussian monarchy; Gumbinnen, Justerberg, Allenstein, Soldau, had all been captured; and the hopes of a flight to Berlin before the Russian 'steam-roller'--too often raised in the early stages of the war--seemed not unlikely to be realized.

Germany's hour of danger, however, produced the man who was destined to play a ruling part in the remaining phases of the struggle--Paul von Hindenburg, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, then on the retired list. Hindenburg knew the topography of East Prussia by heart, and had commanded army corps in manoeuvres along that frontier for many years. Appointed at this critical moment to supersede General von Francois, he collected 160,000 men from every available source, and by means of Germany's unequalled strategic railway system had concentrated them in a favourable position between Allenstein and Soldau for delivering the blow which would cut the communications of the southern army under Samsonoff, and smash it piecemeal in the treacherous marshes of the Masurian Lakes, the tracks through which, though well known to Hindenburg, were a veritable tangle to the Russians.

Tempted by their initial triumphs, the Russians had themselves courted disaster by placing themselves in precarious positions. Samsonoff's southern army had not only lost touch with the northern force under Rennenkampf, which had occupied Insterberg on the 23rd on its march on Koenigsberg, but had also failed to secure either Allenstein or Soldau. Hindenburg was quick to seize every advantage, and his lethal thrust on the 26th, when he retook Soldau and outflanked the Russian left, was followed by a similar enveloping movement on their right before they realized what had happened. Masses of German guns came up and completed the move. Too late the Russians fled along the only road left open to them--by way of Ortelsberg and Johannisberg, across a narrow slip of land between the marshes. Save for little more than one corps, which succeeded in escaping along this route before it was closed, practically the whole of Samsonoff's army was wiped out in this decisive battle of Tannenberg, as the victors named it. Samsonoff himself was killed by a shell on 31st Aug. Altogether the Russians lost in killed and wounded some 30,000; no fewer than 90,000 were taken prisoners.

Hindenburg, whose Chief of Staff was General von Ludendorff--already distinguished in the war as the leader in the assault on Liege--at once became a national hero throughout Germany. The Central Powers, however, had little further cause for rejoicing on the Eastern front in 1914, once Hindenburg had been enticed to the Niemen by the rapid retreat of Rennenkampf after the Tannenberg _debacle_. The Grand Duke Nicholas had sent General Ruzsky from Galicia to retrieve the situation, and the new leader made as good use of the Niemen River--a formidable obstacle to cross with its width of some 200 yards--as Hindenburg had done of the Masurian Lakes. The operations, which ended in the failure of the Germans to cross the river, and their heavy defeat at Augustovo after a sanguinary nineteen days' battle beginning on 1st Oct., restored confidence to the Russian army.

General Ruzsky had already made his mark in the opening campaign in Galicia, where the Austro-Hungarian armies, after invading Russian Poland at the opening of the war, were driven back in a series of mighty battles which left the Russians in possession of Lemberg and all Eastern Galicia. Brussiloff was meantime sweeping on towards the Carpathian passes, while Ivanoff, commanding the Russians in Poland, forced back the invading armies under Dankl and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand beyond the Vistula and Cracow. Przemysl alone held out in Galicia, and this was invested by the Russians towards the end of September, when the Germans, far to the north on the Niemen, were rapidly losing the advantage and prestige they had won at Tannenberg. Hence Germany's increasing need for help from the Western front.

In order to check the Russian advance on the key position of Cracow, Hindenburg was now called from the East Prussian front to take over the supreme command of the unified German and Austro-Hungarian armies in a crushing blow at the Russian centre in Poland. Hindenburg's advance on Warsaw was planned by his Chief of Staff, Ludendorff, to keep pace with a parallel advance of the Austro-German armies in the south, intended to raise the siege of Przemysl and turn the Russians out of Lemberg. The combined forces of the Central Powers amounted to some two million men, outnumbering the Russians by at least half a million, and outgunning them completely. It speaks volumes not only for the fighting spirit of the Russian armies at this period of the war, but also for the strategy inspired by the Grand Duke Nicholas, that in both the first and second battles of Warsaw the combined Austro-German armies were both outfought and outmanoeuvred. "The Grand Duke Nicholas", to quote from Lord French's tribute to his leadership some years later, "proved that he possessed that highest of military gifts--the power of renunciation, of 'cutting down', of sacrificing the less essential for the more."

Foreseeing the danger of Hindenburg's march on Warsaw, the Grand Duke promptly recalled the first great Russian advance on Cracow, and the armies concerned were safely withdrawn behind the Vistula and the San before the enemy could cut the main line from Warsaw to Kiev. Ivanoff's army in Galicia conformed to the general movement. While thus suggesting the abandonment of Poland and a general retirement on Brest-Litovsk, the Grand Duke placed a field army in defence of Warsaw, assisted by Japanese heavy artillery, and prepared a great counter-offensive from the north-west, under cover of the guns of Novo Georgievsk.

Hindenburg's main blow was delivered at Josefov, higher up the Vistula, with the intention of taking Warsaw in the rear. Ruzsky had been brought down to take command at Josefov, and here repeated the disaster which he had recently inflicted on the Germans at Augustovo. This time he lured the enemy across the river before falling on him in difficult country, and cut him to pieces. Rennenkampf was equally successful with the counter-attack from Novo Georgievsk, striking so hard that the German left centre was forced back from the Vistula with heavy losses. With both flanks turned--for Ruzsky had followed up his victory by himself crossing the river at Novo Alexandriev, and driving the Germans back first to Radowa (15th Oct.) and then to Kielce (3rd Nov.)--Hindenburg had no alternative but to seek safety within the German frontier, and prepare another counter-stroke. The only success of the first advance on Warsaw was achieved by the Austrians under the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand and Generals Woyrsch and Dankl, who succeeded in temporarily relieving Przemysl and recovering Jaroslav. Hindenburg's retreat, however, compelled them to withdraw in conformity to that movement. Przemysl was again invested, the Austrians again fell back in Galicia, and the Russian advance on Cracow was renewed, the Grand Duke Nicholas having set his heart on reaching that convenient gateway both to Berlin and Vienna before the end of the year.

The second Russian advance on Cracow commenced with the second German advance on Warsaw, and both operations naturally reacted on each other. The Russians were at the very gates of Cracow by 5th Dec., but were then checked by an Austro-Hungarian counter-offensive which threatened both their flanks. The loss of the Dukla Pass (12th Dec.) forced a general retreat on this front, and was followed by the loss in turn of the Lupkow and Uszok Passes. By 20th Dec., however, the Russians, who had fallen back behind the River Nida, turned on their pursuers and drove them north again until they were once more in possession of the Carpathian passes.

The Germans were no more successful in their second advance on Warsaw than the Russians had been in their march on Cracow. Hindenburg's urgent call for reinforcements, which had helped to relieve the pressure on the Western front in those critical days round Ypres, enabled him to attack all along the line on 18th Nov. The main assault was delivered by von Mackensen on the line held by Ruzsky from Gombin, on the Vistula, to Uniejov, on the Warta. Ruzsky's retreat to the Bzura in face of Mackensen's terrific onrush was one of the brilliant episodes of the war. It continued, with an increasing bulge, until Mackensen, on 23rd Nov., burst right through this and split it in halves. The halves held, and began to close up, with two German army corps all but bottled up within. But for some blunder in timing, for which Rennenkampf was held responsible, their only way of escape would have been cut off. As it was, after three days of desperate fighting, the German corps fought their way out--but only in remnants.

The Russians themselves had suffered heavy losses and were running short of ammunition, and when Hindenburg retaliated by blow upon blow in every sector, the Grand Duke Nicholas shortened his front, evacuated Lodz, and defended Warsaw from behind the Rawka and the Bzura. Here he sustained repeated onslaughts for nearly three weeks, the fiercest fighting taking place between the 19th Dec. and Christmas Eve against Bolimov and Sochaczew. In the end the Germans failed to hack a way through to Warsaw, just as they had failed a few weeks previously in their efforts to break through to Ypres and the Channel ports on the Western front. They were still 35 miles from the Polish capital at the close of 1914.

_Opening Campaign in Serbia_

In the meantime the Austro-Hungarian armies, which had somewhat atoned for their earlier failures by their successes in the recent advance which had temporarily relieved Przemysl, were making little headway in their campaign against Serbia. That heroic little nation, though sadly depleted in her manhood by two years of Balkan warfare, was more than a match for her mightier neighbours in the opening stages of the European War. Austria's first punitive expedition, heralded by the bombardment of Belgrade on 29th July, was easily checked, the main invading forces being withdrawn to meet the new situation on the Russian front. Serbia and Montenegro thereupon invaded Bosnia, and an unproductive campaign of withdrawals and advances led, towards the end of October, when Turkey threw in her lot with the Central Powers, to an Austrian invasion of Serbia in earnest. At first the Austrians, an army corps strong, and advancing in three columns, carried all before them. Valjevo fell on 29th Nov., and Belgrade ten days later. In withdrawing, however, the Serbians, ably led by the Crown Prince, Marshal Putnik, and General Mishitch, were falling back towards their bases and new supplies of ammunition; and in the battle of Rudnik, or 'Battle of the Ridges', which followed, turned on their pursuers and practically destroyed them. The battle lasted three days, at the end of which the remnants of the Austrian army corps, with the victorious Serbians hard on their heels, were in full flight to the frontier, leaving behind them 15,000 prisoners and 19 guns. All told their casualties amounted to some 80,000 and the bulk of their guns before the survivors were back in their own country, across the Danube, the Drina, and the Save.

_First Months of the War at Sea_

At sea the first months of the war had seen the Germans very discreetly sheltering in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, leaving it to submarines, mine-layers, raiders, and a few commerce-destroyers to do as much damage as possible and reduce the disparity between its own force and that of the Allied fleets.

The first naval action of any importance took place in the Bight of Heligoland, on 23rd Aug., when a force of destroyers, led by Commander Tyrwhitt in the new light cruiser _Arethusa_, with another light cruiser, the _Fearless_, and a flotilla of submarines under Commodore Keyes, served as a lure to draw out the Germans. They drew first a German force of destroyers and two cruisers (_Ariadne_ and _Strasburg_) from Heligoland. The _Arethusa_ greatly distinguished herself in the general engagement which followed, but, though she played the main part in driving the Germans back, she was so badly cut up that she had to be taken in tow at the end of the action. This was not until the Germans, deceived into the belief that the British ships were unsupported, sent out their heavier cruisers, the _Mainz_, _Koeln_, and _Aurora_, just in time for Beatty's battle-cruisers, which arrived at the critical moment, led by the _Lion_, to settle the issue by sinking the three enemy cruisers above mentioned, besides a number of their destroyers. No British units were lost. Apart from this engagement the war in home waters for the next few months resolved itself into such isolated incidents as the sinking of the three old sister cruisers _Aboukir_, _Hogue_, and _Cressy_ by the German submarine commanded by Otto Weddigen (22nd Sept.); the destruction of four German destroyers by the British light cruiser _Undaunted_, supported by destroyers, on 17th Oct.; and raids by fast German cruisers on Yarmouth (3rd Nov.), on Scarborough, Whitby, and the Hartlepools (16th Dec.), the first of which led to the loss of the German cruiser _Yorck_ while crossing the minefield at Wilhelmshaven.