First Battle of the Marne (1914): The Miracle That Saved Paris

The First Battle of the Marne, fought from 5 to 12 September 1914 across the countryside east of Paris, stopped the German invasion of France at the very moment it seemed about to succeed. A French and British counter-attack forced the German armies to retreat to the river Aisne, wrecking Germany’s plan for a quick victory in the west. Because no side could then win a decisive breakthrough, the battle opened four years of trench warfare on the Western Front.

Background: the Schlieffen Plan

Germany entered the war expecting to fight France and Russia at the same time. Its war plan, based on a memorandum by the former Chief of the General Staff Alfred von Schlieffen and modified by his successor Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, called for most of the German army to sweep through Belgium, wheel south-west and defeat France within about six weeks, before Russia could fully mobilise.

At first the plan seemed to work. After the German invasion of Belgium in early August, five German armies pushed into northern France. The French offensive into Lorraine and the Ardennes, known as the Battle of the Frontiers, ended in disaster, and on 22 August 1914 alone the French army lost about 27,000 men killed. The small British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fought at Mons and Le Cateau before joining the long retreat south.

By the end of August the German First Army under General Alexander von Kluck was approaching Paris. The French government left for Bordeaux on 2 September, and the capital was placed under its military governor, General Joseph Gallieni.

The German turn and the French chance

On 30 and 31 August Kluck changed direction. Instead of passing west of Paris, he turned south-east to chase the retreating French Fifth Army, leaving the capital to his right. This exposed his right flank to the forces gathering around Paris, including the newly formed French Sixth Army under General Michel-Joseph Maunoury.

French and British airmen and cavalry reported the German turn. Gallieni urged an immediate attack on Kluck’s flank, and the French commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, decided to halt the retreat and strike along the whole line. On 4 September he ordered a general offensive to begin on 6 September, and persuaded the reluctant British commander, Field Marshal Sir John French, to take part.

Meanwhile Moltke, at his distant headquarters in Luxembourg, had lost close control of his armies. He had also sent two army corps from the west to East Prussia, where Russia had invaded earlier than expected, weakening the German right wing.

The German soldiers were also exhausted. Many infantry units had marched 25 to 40 km a day for weeks in summer heat, outrunning their supply columns, which depended on railways that the Belgians and French had wrecked as they retreated. The French, by contrast, were falling back on their own intact railway network, which allowed Joffre to move whole divisions from Lorraine to the area around Paris.

Joffre had also used the weeks of retreat to remove commanders he judged to have failed, including General Charles Lanrezac of the Fifth Army, who was replaced on 3 September. By the end of 1914 dozens of French generals had been dismissed.

What happened

The fighting began on 5 September, a day early, when Maunoury’s troops ran into the German IV Reserve Corps north-east of Meaux. This clash along the river Ourcq grew into a major battle. Kluck reacted by marching corps north from his left to meet the threat, and by 8 September he had pressed Maunoury hard.

Kluck’s move, however, opened a gap of roughly 40 to 50 km between his First Army and General Karl von Bülow’s Second Army to the east. Into this gap advanced the BEF and the French Fifth Army, now commanded by the aggressive General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey. The British moved slowly and cautiously, but by 9 September they had crossed the Marne.

Further east, General Ferdinand Foch’s new Ninth Army held on desperately around the marshes of Saint-Gond against heavy attacks by Bülow and the German Third Army. Other French armies fought hard battles from Vitry-le-François to the fortress of Verdun, preventing the Germans from breaking through in the centre.

Further east still, German armies attacked the fortified French line in Lorraine, where General Édouard de Castelnau’s Second Army held the heights of the Grand Couronné near Nancy. These battles, fought at the same time as the Marne, kept the French right wing intact and allowed Joffre to keep moving troops westwards.

On 8 September Moltke sent a staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hentsch, to visit his army commanders with authority to coordinate a withdrawal if necessary. After meeting Hentsch, Bülow ordered the Second Army to retreat on 9 September, and Kluck, now in danger of being cut off, followed. By 12 September the German armies had fallen back to strong positions on the heights north of the Aisne, where they dug in.

The taxis of the Marne

The best-known episode of the battle took place on 7 and 8 September. To rush reinforcements from Paris to Maunoury’s hard-pressed army, Gallieni’s staff requisitioned around 600 Paris taxis. Driving in convoys, they carried roughly 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division towards Nanteuil-le-Haudouin, with the meters reportedly running.

Historians agree that the taxis made little difference to the outcome; far more troops travelled by rail or on foot. The episode nevertheless became a lasting symbol of a nation mobilising every resource to defend its capital, and one of the original Renault taxis is preserved at the Musée de l’Armée in Paris.

Key people

• Joseph Joffre (1852–1931): French commander-in-chief whose calm and decision to counter-attack made him a national hero; he was made a Marshal of France in 1916.
• Joseph Gallieni (1849–1916): military governor of Paris who saw the opportunity on Kluck’s flank and organised the taxis.
• Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1848–1916): German Chief of the General Staff, replaced by Erich von Falkenhayn on 14 September 1914 after the failure.
• Alexander von Kluck (1846–1934): commander of the German First Army, whose turn east of Paris exposed his flank.
• Karl von Bülow (1846–1921): commander of the German Second Army, whose decision to retreat on 9 September effectively ended the battle.
• Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929): commander of the French Ninth Army, later Allied supreme commander in 1918.

By the numbers

Casualty figures for the Marne are uncertain because records for early September 1914 are incomplete and often combined with the preceding retreat.

Consequences and legacy

The Marne ended German hopes of knocking France out of the war within weeks. Germany now faced the long two-front war its planners had feared. The First Battle of the Aisne (from 13 September) showed that well-dug-in troops with machine guns and artillery could not easily be dislodged. The failure also destroyed the widespread pre-war belief that a great European war would be short; both sides now had to mobilise their economies and societies for a long struggle, amid growing shortages of shells and men.

Both sides then tried to outflank each other to the north, in a series of battles known as the Race to the Sea, which ended in the First Battle of Ypres. By late November 1914 a continuous line of trenches stretched about 700 km from the Belgian coast to Switzerland. It would barely move for more than three years.

In France the Marne became a symbol of national salvation and is still commemorated at memorials such as the Mondement monument near the marshes of Saint-Gond and the Dormans memorial. The name returned to the news in 1918, when the Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of the war’s final year.

For military historians, the battle marks the point where the war of movement imagined by pre-war planners gave way to the static trench warfare that defined the Western Front.

Myths and facts

Myth: the taxis saved Paris. The taxis carried only a small fraction of the troops involved; the battle was decided by the movement of whole armies and by German command errors.

Myth: Moltke told the Kaiser that the war was lost. A famous story claims Moltke reported that Germany had lost the war after the Marne. The remark is not reliably documented, though Moltke was clearly shaken and was soon replaced.

Fact: it was not one battle but many. The “Battle of the Marne” was a series of linked engagements fought along a front of more than 200 km, from the Ourcq near Paris to Verdun.

Timeline

• 1914, 30–31 August: Kluck turns his First Army south-east, passing east of Paris.
• 1914, 2 September: the French government leaves Paris for Bordeaux.
• 1914, 4 September: Joffre orders a general counter-offensive.
• 1914, 5 September: fighting begins on the Ourcq, north-east of Meaux.
• 1914, 7–8 September: Paris taxis carry reinforcements towards the front.
• 1914, 8 September: Hentsch visits German army headquarters.
• 1914, 9 September: Bülow and Kluck order a general retreat.
• 1914, 12–13 September: the Germans halt and dig in on the Aisne.
• 1914, 14 September: Falkenhayn replaces Moltke as Chief of the General Staff.

Why it matters

The First Battle of the Marne saved Paris and probably saved France from defeat in 1914. By ending the hope of a short war, it also condemned Europe to the long, industrialised struggle that would cost millions of lives and transform the twentieth century.