Note 40 — Chapter III · JOFFRE STARTS AFRESH
Reading edition
For details of the last stages of the retreat and pursuit, see La Marche sur Paris de l’Aile Droite Allemande, by Count de Caix de Saint Aymour (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle); Gordon and Hamilton, op. cit.; and La Retraite de l’Armée Anglaise du 23 Août 1914, by Ernest Renauld, Renaissance, November 25, 1916.
On September 3, General Lanrezac was removed from the command of the French 5th Army—“because his views were contrary to a complete liaison with the British Army,” says M. Hanotaux (Rev. des Deux Mondes, March 1919); but this is a partial and inadequate statement. As we have seen, Lanrezac had been at issue with G.Q.G. from the beginning of the campaign.
M. Hanotaux quotes a note sent to the Minister of War, M. Millerand, on September 3, by General Joffre, who, “finding that the rapid recoil of the British Army, effected too soon and too quickly, had prevented Maunoury’s Army from coming into action in good conditions, and had compromised Lanrezac’s left flank,” described his intention thus: “To prepare a new offensive in liaison with the British and with the garrison of Paris, and to choose the battlefield in such a way that, by utilising on certain parts of the front prepared defensive organisations, a numerical superiority could be assured in the zone chosen for the principal effort.”