that perilous Monday, the first day of
the retreat, may be planned in general as in Sketch 52. At the
beginning, at daybreak, you have the three German army corps lying as
the shaded bodies are given opposite to the unshaded, which represent
the British contingent of not quite two full army corps. By nightfall
the British contingent, including now the 19th Brigade of infantry,
lay in the positions from Maubeuge westward, with the 1st Corps next
to Maubeuge, the 2nd Corps beyond Bavai, the 1st being commanded by
Sir Douglas Haig, the 2nd by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien; while the
Germans lay more or less as the dotted shaded markings are.

The fortress of Maubeuge was, under these circumstances, clearly a
lure. An army in the field in danger of envelopment will always be
tempted to make for the nearest fortified zone in order to save
itself. The British commander was well advised in his judgment to
avoid this opportunity, and that for two reasons. First, that the
locking up of any considerable portion of the Anglo-French force in
its retirement would have jeopardized the chance of that
counter-offensive which the French hoped sooner or later to initiate;
secondly, that, as will be seen later, the works of Maubeuge were
quite insufficient to resist for more than a few days a modern siege
train.

[Illustration: Sketch 52.]

This point of Maubeuge and of its fall must be discussed later; for
the moment all we need note is that the fortress afforded for a few
hours--that is, during the night of Monday to Tuesday, the 24th-25th
August--support to the British line during its first halt upon the
rapid and perilous retirement from Mons.

Meanwhile the whole of the French 5th Army had been falling back with
equal rapidity, and upon its right the 4th Army had followed soon; and
as this French retirement had preceded the retirement of the British,
its general line lay farther south.

On the other hand, from the nature of the topography in this section
of the Franco-Belgian border, the units of the French command had to
fall back farther and more rapidly in proportion as they stretched
eastward. The attack of the enemy in forces of rather more than two to
one had come, as we have seen, not only from across the line of the
Sambre, but, once Namur had fallen, from across the line of the Meuse
at right angles to the line of the Sambre. Therefore the 5th and the
4th Armies, contained within the triangle bounded by the Sambre and
Meus