Extending
from Arras through the colliery towns of Mons and Charleroi, the
extreme western front of the armies was held by General D'Amade
at Arras, with about 40,000 reserve territorial troops; by General
French, with 80,000 British regulars, at Mons; by the Fifth French
Army of 200,000 first-line troops, under General Lanrezac, near
Charleroi; and by a force of 25,000 Belgian troops at Namur. The
total Allied troops in this field of battle were thus about 345,000
men.
Opposed to them, on the north, were about 700,000 German troops,
General von Kluck farthest to the west, Generals von Buelow and von
Hausen around the Belgian fortress of Namur, Grand Duke Albrecht
of Wuerttemberg in the neighborhood of Maubeuge, and finally, on the
extreme left of the German line, the Army of the Moselle, under
Crown Prince Wilhelm.
The position of the Allied armies was based on the resisting power
of Namur. It was expected that Namur would delay the German advance
as long as Liege had done. Then the French line of frontier
fortresses--Lille, with its half-finished defenses; Maubeuge, with
strong forts and a large garrison; and other strongholds--would
form a still more useful system of fortified points for the Allies.
The German staff, however, had other plans. At Liege they had rashly
endeavored to storm a strong fortress by a massed infantry attack,
which had failed disastrously until their new Krupp siege guns
had been brought up.
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