Ruffey and the Fifth with Franchet d'Esperey instead of Lanrezac. In
the east Castelnau and Sarrail stood almost back to back along the
eastern and western heights of the Meuse above Verdun. On Sarrail's
left was Langle's Fourth army behind Vitry, and the line was continued
westwards by Foch behind Sezanne and the marshes of St. Gond. Next
came D'Esperey's Fifth at La Ferté-Gaucher, and cavalry linked his
left with the British guarded by the Crecy forest. Thence
north-westward stretched across the Paris front the new Sixth army of
Maunoury.

As early as 31 August Von Kluck had turned south-east at a right angle
to his south-western march from Brussels to Amiens; but he had not
thereby replaced his enveloping design by a stroke at Joffre's centre.
For he thought he had disposed of the British at Le Cateau and of
Maunoury on the Somme, and that D'Esperey's Fifth had thus become the
flank of Joffre's forces. He was merely curving his claws to grip, and
by the night of the 5th he had crossed the Marne, the Petit Morin, and
the Grand Morin, and his patrols had reached the Seine. It was a brief
and solitary glimpse of the river on which stood the capital of
France. The battle began, like that of Mons, on a Sunday, the 6th of
September reached its climax on the 9th, and was over by the 12th, The
fighting extended in a curved line from Meaux, which is almost a
suburb of Paris, to Lunéville, which is almost on the German frontier;
and Joffre hoped that this line was too strong to be broken, and could
be gradually drawn tighter until the head of the German invasion was
squeezed out of the cul-de-sac into which, in the German anxiety for a
prompt decision, it had been thrust. The German object, of course,
was, as soon as Von Kluck discovered that Maunoury's new and the
British returning armies forbade the enveloping plan, to break the
line where it bent the most, that is, towards the south-east, and the