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For a fortnight the British were on the road and out of the fight, which was left for the most part to Castelnau's 7th and Maud'huy's 10th Armies; and strenuous fighting it was for all-important objects.
German Lorraine seemed equally insecure, for on the 18th Castelnau's troops were in Saarburg cutting the rail and roads between Strassburg and Metz. The Germans, however, were not unprepared: their Fifth Army, under the Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, came down from Metz and fell upon the exposed French left, which was routed with great losses in guns and prisoners on the 21st.
If the sublime unselfishness of such men could have communicated itself to some of the minor figures of this war, how much more inspiring might be the stories of these civilian commanders! At six o'clock Foch was under way again to Amiens, Doullens, St. Pol, and then, at nine, to Aubigny, where General Maud'huy had the headquarters of his army, holding the line north of Castelnau's.
The King made a sign that he should be spared; but the Cardinal of Lorraine chose to misunderstand, gave the fatal signal, and Castelnau's head fell with the rest.
Whatever vicissitudes of politics, whatever campaigns ensue, whatever changes come in the world after the war, Joffre's victory at the Marne and Castelnau's victory in Lorraine, which was its complement in masterly tactics, make their niches in the national Pantheon secure.
In this letter, since published by M. de Keratry, M. Eloin warned Maximilian against affording the French an easy way out of their difficulties by yielding to General Castelnau's wiles.
Imagine a portly woman of sixty, with a shrewd humorous face, talking with French vivacity, and with many homely turns of phrase drawn straight from that life of the soil and the peasants amid which she worked; a woman named in one of General Castelnau's Orders of the Day and entitled to wear the Legion of Honour; a woman, too, who has seen horror face to face as few women, even in war, have seen it, yet still simple, racy, full of irony, and full of heart, talking as a mother might talk of her "grands blessés"! but always with humorous asides, and an utter absence of pose or pretence; flashing now into scorn and now into tenderness, as she described the conduct of the German officers who searched her hospital for arms, or the helplessness of the wounded men whom she protected.
But unfortunately, it occupied one of the central points of the fighting in the campaign of Lorraine, after the defeat of General Castelnau's Army at Morhange on August 20th, 1914. The exultant and victorious Germans pushed on rapidly after that action. Lunéville was occupied, and the fighting spread to the districts south and west of that town.
It signifies, for the moment, the decay of hopes, a mould of rust obscuring ambition. But in a little while the steel of your courage will shine bright once more. I am Madame Gilbert; my husband was of the Territorial Army a Captain also." She had thought to have made him a Colonel on General Castelnau's staff, but refrained from so risky a flight of imagination.
But it seemed to me that in the feeling of France, Champagne came next Champagne, associated first of all with Castelnau's victory in the autumn of 1915, then with General Nivelle's tragic check in 1917, with the serious crisis in the French Army in May and June of that year; and finally with General Gouraud's brilliant successes in the summer and autumn of 1918.
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