General d'Esperey's
part was to hold firm, and this he did. Not only by reason of the
British assistance on the left, but also because the strong army
of General Foch to the right was a new army, of greater strength
than was known to General von Moltke and the German General Staff.
The battle of Montmirail was won by the steady resistance of the
Fifth Army to the hammer blows of the German right, and to the quick
advantage seized by General d'Esperey when the British weakened
the flank of the force opposing him. On September 8, 1914, General
d'Esperey had not only held his ground, but had driven General
von Kluck back across the Grand Morin River at La Ferte-Gaucher,
and also across the Petit Morin at Montmirail. Since the British
had butted the Germans back from the Petit Morin at La Tretoire,
these three days of fighting in the battles of Coulommiers and
Montmirail had won the Allies advanced positions across two rivers,
and had so weakened the German right that it was compelled to fall
back on the main army and forego its important strategic advantage
on the east bank of the Ourcq River.
These three battles, Ourcq, Coulommiers, and Montmirail, constitute
the recoil from Paris, and at the same time they constitute the defeat
of what was hereinbefore shown to be one of the four fundamentals of
the great German campaign plan. With the situation thus cleared,
so to speak, one may now pass to the details of the second part
of the German plan, which was to engage the powerful Ninth and
Fourth Armies, under the command of Generals Foch and Langle,
respectively, to break through them, if possible, but at all hazards
to keep them sufficiently menaced to disable General Joffre from
sending reenforcements therefrom to the army of General Sarrail,
on which the whole force of the army of the crown prince was to
be hurled.
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