Map 31: Paris Saved! Champagne all 'round!

[Hauksbee]

       Paris is saved in the Battle of the Marne

In a sense, this September 1914 conflict was the decisive battle of the war. Germany's advance into France was halted by a combined Franco-British army on the outskirts of Paris near the Marne River and the German army was forced to fall back. In these early phases, the war was moving too quickly for the opposing armies to have much in the way of fixed positions, and the hasty defense of the Paris suburbs included reinforcements being sent to the front from the city via a rapidly assembled fleet of urban taxis. The battle was followed by the so-called "race to the sea" in which German and Allied forces tried and failed to outflank each other until the lines reached all the way to the North Sea and no more battles of manouever were possible. The stalemated Western Front with its trench warfare came next. Germany's strategic war plan — knock France out quickly so troops could be sent back east to fight Russia — had essentially failed

.

(When Robert E. Lee was first given command to defend Richmond, his propensity for urging his troops to dig in led to his being called "the King of Spades...a term of derision. A few years later, with the Army of Northern Virginia on the ropes, Lee administers a crushing defeat to Grant at Cold Harbor...by having his troops dig trenches and "King of Spades" becomes a term of endearment from the troops. One author marked Cold Harbor as "the end of the Napoleonic way of war". Lee's innovation would find its finest flowering in the four year slog on the Western Front. 

.

Another writer declared that the Marne was one of the most decisive battles in history simply because it ensured that the war would go on.  [Hauksbee] )

.

 

Edited October 9, 2014 by Hauksbee