compelled to await the onset, or had they been forced
to depend on cavalry patrols, there would have been no opportunity to
resist that revengeful onslaught. But no sooner had the Germans begun to
re-form than Sir Douglas Haig moved his machine guns to the front and
fell back a few hundred yards to a better position. This happened on
September 8, 1914, and may be regarded as the last offensive move made
by General von Kluck's army in the west. On that same day Coulommiers
was invested and Prince Eitel compelled to flee, and the battle of
Coulommiers was won.

CHAPTER XVII

CONTINUATION OF THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE

The third part of the battle of the Marne, called by some the Battle of
Montmirail, was not marked by special incident. 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 sendi