On the evening of September 4, Gallierni lowered his old face and called his former subordinate Xia Fei almost in a pleading tone: "My scouts have intercepted the telegrams of the German ** team, and these telegrams are not even encrypted. Kluk's 1st Army was moving in a southeasterly direction. ”

Xia Fei still didn't want to send troops, and replied with a sneer: "No encrypted telegram? Are you old and confused? Will the German ** team use an unencrypted telegram? Maybe it's a ploy to lure the enemy? ”

Galieni shook his head and said, "Not like that. There was a German officer who went the wrong way and was spotted and shot by my patrol in Paris. We found some pieces of paper from him, on which were the location of the German First Army, as well as the location of the target. ”

Xia Fei said: "Then tell me, how did the German army march?" ”

"According to the intelligence we have, Crook's forces are divided into six routes, each thin, and are moving in a southeasterly direction," Gallieni said. Their right flank was already exposed to the attack of our Sixth Army. We can launch a counteroffensive north of the Marne. ”

Seeing that Gallieni was so specific, Xia Fei knew that this old guy had indeed received accurate information from the German army, and it was difficult to stop it, so he had to approve Gallieni's attack on the German army at Kluke on the Marne River on the 5th.

The veteran Galieni was overjoyed and immediately returned to the city to prepare. His Sixth Army was a half-finished product at this time, and most of its soldiers had little combat experience, but Gallieni was still confident and ordered them to be ready for battle. The French army had limited transport vehicles, and no rail transport to the front line was available. It was too late to get there even at the speed of a rapid march. Gallieni had his own way, issuing an order to requisition "all motor vehicles." Taxis included". In various districts of Paris, the police stopped the taxis and ordered passengers to get off; They requisitioned about seven hundred cars. Throughout the night. The two-cylinder taxi wheeled to the front, and after only two round-trips, the entire division was transported. These taxi fleets carried a steady stream of French troops to the Marne front.

However, in order to show his cleverness, the conceited Xia Fei sent a telegram to Gallieni in a non-negotiable tone: "I approve the Sixth Army to fight against the Germans, but. I think the attack should be on the south of the Marne, not on the north of the Marne, as you suggested. ”

Attack from the south of the Marne. Firing artillery across the river will greatly weaken the attack force of the French army, and the veteran Gallieni was anxious and hurriedly called Xia Fei to explain. Insist that the French Sixth Army attack the Germans from the north.

Gallieni based on the information obtained. He explained to his old subordinate Xia Fei why he wanted to attack from the north of the Marne River, and explained his strategic intentions to Xia Fei, and even the follow-up attack plans.

When Xia Fei heard this, he thought to himself, this offensive strategy is really good, he realized that this was a great opportunity to make meritorious contributions, so he replied to Gallieni: "That's good. I know how the battle is fought! Go back to Paris and rest. I'm here to command the Sixth Army myself! ”

Although Xia Fei accepted Gallieni's suggestion, he took command of the Sixth Army from Gallieni. Let Gallieri return to Paris alone!

When the telegram of Gallieni's dismissal of command was sent to the French Sixth Army, Gallieni's adjutant and student, Lieutenant General Audren, was furious and shouted at Xia Fei "Son of a bitch!" ”

Gallieni also wants to cry without tears, if it were someone else, he would have flown his mother tens of thousands of times. But Galieni, who was worthy of being a good soldier loyal to the country, swallowed his anger and patted Lieutenant General Audrand on the shoulder and said, "I'm fine, Audrang." I also convinced Franche yesterday. The Fifth Army of General Despere, who was also ready to take part in the assault on the Germans. You stay and serve your country well! I went back to Paris to continue to sort out the defenses, and if I needed anything, just call me. ”

But on 5 September, Xia Fei still did not give the order to attack the Germans, he felt that the time was not yet ripe, and he neither made a decision nor issued an order that day except for a long, leisurely dinner. This day was wasted by Xia Fei, and later the French army had to pay the price of 200,000 casualties!

On the German side, Cluck's First Army had reached the Marne on the evening of 3 September, and the French 5th Army and the British Expeditionary Force outside it had crossed the Marne earlier in the day.

The two forces of the Anglo-French army, which had retreated in a hurry, were exhausted and confused, and although they had repeatedly received telegrams to blow up the bridge, they did not have time to do so. The conceited Kluke, carried away by the great form of victory after capturing these bridgeheads, went so far as to defy the order of the Chief of the General Staff, Schlieffen, to keep him in step with Bülow's 2nd Army, and prepared to cross the river immediately in the early morning of the next day to continue his pursuit of the French 5th Army.

On this day, the officers and men of the Kluk Army Group marched almost 30 miles. However, by this time the Germans were already exhausted. After the invasion of France, the German soldiers were exhausted and walked 40 kilometers a day, for four or five days in a row. The roads were difficult to walk, and the pavements were all destroyed by the French. Trees were cut down, and fields were blown up like filters by cannonballs. Every step of the German army was difficult, the faces of the young soldiers were covered with dust, their uniforms were rotten like rags, and some soldiers even walked with their eyes closed. To drive away the drowsiness, the Germans sang loudly, and the only belief that supported them was to achieve victory, to storm Paris. There were many soldiers who had to drink a lot of alcohol to numb their tired bodies.

When the German soldiers reached the vicinity of the north bank of the Marne, many of them fell to the ground, so exhausted that they could not say anything. Cluke overwhelmed his soldiers and outpaced his supply convoy and heavy artillery, but Cluke pursued the defeated French army. It seemed to him that the French army, in the midst of its successive defeats, would never be able to turn its head against his morale and ability with a single trumpet. His First Army pursued him with all his might.

On 4 September, while advancing forward, Kluke bluntly sent a telegram to the German General Staff in Luxembourg that he was unable to carry out the order to keep him behind as a flanker of the German 2nd Army. Waiting for Bülo's German 2nd Army to catch up, his 1st Army would have to halt its march for at least two days. This would weaken the entire German offensive and give the French time to regain their strength and move freely. In fact, Bülo's 2nd Army was just as exhausted. Thereupon. Kluke set aside the orders of the High Command and continued to advance to the southeast, in other words, farther and farther away from Paris. This gave Gallieri the opportunity to attack the German First Army.

Schlieffen was born into a Prussian Junker family, and his father was a major general in Prussia. He was diligent and studious since childhood, and joined the army after the age of 20. In 1853 he joined the 1st Praetorian Lancer Regiment as a volunteer with a one-year service. In December 1854 he was transferred to the regular army and was appointed second lieutenant. After graduating in 1865, he joined the General Staff. Schlieffen took part in the Franco-Prussian War as a staff officer of the Army General Command. In general, his whole life. He is a disciplined soldier! After becoming the chief of the general staff of the German army, he even required his generals to regard obedience to orders as the duty of soldiers. During Schlieffen's military career, the strategic and tactical principle of concentrating superior forces and carrying out a quick decisive battle could not be challenged. Kluk turned out to be blindly conceited and carried away by victory. Do not listen to the orders of the Chief of the General Staff. Advancing without authorization, disrupting the deployment of Schlieffer's plan, Schlieffen immediately ordered Moltke Jr. to personally rush to the First Army to take over Kluk's troops, and warned Kluk that there was a new French Army Group that might attack from the west.

On September 5th, Moltke Jr. took his staff with Lieutenant Colonel Richard Jr. Hanqu came to the headquarters of the First Army in Kluk. Demote the disobedient Kluk to the rank of commander and let him lead the forces of an army. That is, two infantry divisions and an artillery brigade to occupy the Urke River to the west of the First Army, and establish a defensive position there facing Paris, which is the direction in which the French Sixth Army will come to attack. In order to prevent Kluke from acting arbitrarily, he also sent him a very capable general Gronau as a partner. At the same time, the German First Army stopped its advance and turned to Paris, organizing a defense-in-depth system.

As soon as Moltke Jr. finished deploying these, the French ** team and the British ** team began a major counterattack. Because on September 5, the indecisive Xia Fei finally decided to let the French 6th Army attack from the north bank of the Marne, and at 10 o'clock that night ordered the rest of the French army to stop retreating, and asked the British Expeditionary Force to start a full-scale counteroffensive on September 6.

At first, the British Expeditionary Force was still frightened by the powerful German army. Sir French refused to carry out this so-called counteroffensive plan.

In his youth, French was a capable, conscientious and energetic commander who made a name for himself during the Anglo-Boer War, serving as cavalry brigade commander, division commander, corps commander, and fighting well in South Africa. But this time, after serving as commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, he became hesitant and stubborn. On August 18th, John. French concentrated the British army in southern Belgium, on the left flank of General Langrezak's French Fifth Army. He commanded 40,000 British troops to try to hold off Kluk's German First Army, but at Mons and Lecato, they were repulsed by the excellent German army, and the British suffered 8,000 casualties in three or four days. Moreover, French was very unhappy with the retreat of the French army of Langrezak to the southeast of Paris under the attack of Kluke. French was very inactive in cooperating with the French army and, wanting to preserve his troops, tried to retreat the British south of the Seine, or even back to the British.

Therefore, at this time, Xia Fei wanted to persuade the British army and the French army to counterattack Germany together, which was tantamount to seeking skin with the tiger. Seeing the refusal of the British army, Xia Fei was anxious, because the French Sixth Army was newly formed and the combat strength was very weak, so he had to personally ride to the British headquarters in a car to try to convince the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, John. Sir French.

French was a thin general, and Xia Fei happened to be stocky and fat, and the atmosphere of the conversation between the two was very tense, and French even said: "When I returned to the barracks, I heard from my staff officers that General Gallieni had come to me and told me a counteroffensive plan. Is his counteroffensive plan the same as yours? ”

French was obviously satirizing Xia Fei for stealing General Gallieni's counteroffensive plan, and Xia Fei blushed and said, "Anyway, this is a golden opportunity." ”

Xia Fei ordered someone to show the German battle plan and marching route found on the German ** officer who was shot dead by the French patrol for taking the wrong road, and said: "As long as you seize this opportunity, the German army will definitely be defeated." We will be able to get rid of the shame of defeat in Belgium! We can tell the world that our retreat at that time was a strategic operation to encircle and suppress the German army. ”

French was a man who valued honor very seriously, and he consulted with the officers of the British General Staff that it was a bit humiliating to return home with so many dead and wounded soldiers, and in the end, the British agreed to Xiafei's request, and French said that the British Expeditionary Force would "do its best" to participate in the counter-attack on the Germans.

Xia Fei immediately rushed back to his headquarters and issued a brief mobilization order to the French army: "We are about to participate in a battle, and this is a battle that will affect the fate of our country. Now that the retreat phase is over, we should now go all out to attack the enemy and drive them out of French soil, and if the troops cannot advance any further, hold their positions at all costs, preferring to die rather than retreat. From now on, any show of weakness will not be tolerated! ”

In the early morning of September 6, the French army launched a counteroffensive on all fronts. From Verdun to Paris, a million French troops turned back in unison, pointing a million bayonets and a thousand cannons at the invading Germans, with the 300,000 troops of the German First Army bearing the brunt. The French 6th Army fought fiercely with the German 1st Army on the Ork River; The French 5th Army also turned around, turned its retreat into an offensive, fought with the German 1st Army, and exchanged fire with the right flank of the German 2nd Army.

The military situation of the war at that time was more conducive to defense than to offense. At that time, tank warfare had not yet appeared, but rapid-fire weapons had become close to perfection, rifles and machine guns with magazines, which could effectively withstand infantry charges. As long as a defense-in-depth system is organized, it will be difficult for the enemy to break through. The German Kluke and General Gronau worked together seamlessly, they arranged the German army on the high ground, ordered the soldiers to dig trenches, and used artillery fire to break up the counterattacking French army!

The soldiers of the French Sixth Army were all new recruits, relatively unfamiliar with combat, and poorly organized, unable to confront Cluke's veterans. The French attacked again on 6 September, but once again collided with the German artillery that was waiting for them. The result of the battle was a disaster, not only did not drive one of Kluk's troops out of the hastily built fortifications, but he collapsed, the Urke River was full of French corpses, blood-red water, slowly flowing in the land of France, the nightmare of the French ** team about the German ** team, and added a blood debt, 200,000 French troops were killed and wounded in this battle.

Kluke even hoped to wipe out the French Sixth Army in one fell swoop, making it more likely that this wish would be realized. The war was cruel to the French soldiers, some of whom stood in the trenches and maintained the various postures they had performed their missions, but they all died. The dead had any details of a living person, and the illusion was so real that the soldiers around them would talk to the dead - before realizing they were lifeless. This is a large high-energy artillery shell that has just appeared in Germany, causing soldiers to suffocate instantly, forming the above phenomenon. For the first time, many large-caliber, deafening artillery pieces of the German army appeared. An artillery battery can sweep 10 acres in 50 seconds. The cannon, a huge new tool of killing, gave the French soldiers a great sense of fear, generating a dark, invisible force that pierced and destroyed their brains. Sixty percent of the 200,000 French troops died from mortars, grenades, artillery shots, or shrapnel. And then there's the moment of the explosion, when an invisible force passes through the air, causing new and unique damage to the human brain.

Of course, the Germans also suffered a large number of casualties, but relatively smaller. Judging from the situation of the war that began on September 6, Verdun, an important stronghold on the French front, was in danger, and the front south of Verdun of the French army was in danger of collapsing. Schlieffen devised a new plan to achieve a breakthrough on both the Western and Southern Fronts and to achieve a great encirclement of Paris, which could well become a reality. (To be continued......)

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