o believed that the violation
of Belgian territory would take place, as affording a sufficient
barrier against the immediate invasion of France from the north-east.
Those who made this calculation did not forget that fortresses are
nothing without their full complement of men, guns, and stores; but
they could neither control, nor had they the elements properly to
appreciate, the deficiency of organization in a foreign and not
military country.

For all these causes Maubeuge, in common with other points along the
Belgian frontier less important than itself, was left imperfect. Even
if the ring fortress had remained after 1905 what it had been before
that date, and even if modern howitzer fire and modern high explosives
had not rendered its tenure one of days rather than months, Maubeuge
was not a first-class fortress. As it was, with fortifications
unrenewed, and with the ring fortress in any case doomed, Maubeuge was
a death-trap.

The role assigned to the fortress in the original French plan was no
more than the support of the retiring operative corner, as it
"retreated, manoeuvred, and held the enemy." Maubeuge was considered
as part of a line beyond which the operative corner would not have to
fall before the rest of the square, the "manoeuvring mass," had swung
up. Hence it was that the French General Staff and its Chief had put
within the ring of its insufficient forts nothing more than a garrison
of Territorials--that is, of the older classes of the reserve.

Had the British General accepted the lure of Maubeuge as Bazaine did
the lure of Metz in 1870, the Expeditionary Force would have been
destroyed. But it would have been destroyed, not after a long delay,
as was the army at Metz, but immediately; for Maubeuge was not Metz,
and the fortress power of resistance of to-day is not that of a
generation ago. Maubeuge, as a fact, fell within a fortnight of the
date when this temptation was offered to the sorely pressed British
army, and had that temptation been yielded to, the whole force would
have been, in a military sense, annihilated before the middle of
September.

What preserved it was the immediate decision undertaken upon that
Monday night to proceed, in spite of the fatigues that were already
felt after the first day's retreat, with a retirement upon the
south-west, and to proceed with it as vigorously as possible.

It was not yet daylight upon the morning of Tuesday, August 25th, when
the move began.