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Updated: June 13, 2025
At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne, approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible for many miles.
The girl hesitated a moment, and then followed. I started hastily to go on, but the girl, hearing the noise of my engine, ran back to bid me an unembarrassed farewell. I rode through Coulommiers, a jolly rambling old town, to our billet in a suburban villa on the Rebais road. The Division was marching past in the very best of spirits.
It was clear les Anglais had not carried off all the fruit! At Coulommiers, as elsewhere, you may search in vain for rags, dirt, or a sign of beggary. Every one is rich, independent, and happy. Few travellers in this part of Eastern France turn off the Great Mulhouse line of railway to visit the ancient city of Provins, yet none with a love of the picturesque can afford to pass it by.
These three battles, Ourcq, Coulommiers, and Montmirail, constitute the recoil from Paris, and at the same time they constitute the defeat of what was hereinbefore shown to be one of the four fundamentals of the great German campaign plan.
The Ninth Cavalry Division occupied an advanced position west of Crécy and the Second Cavalry Division occupied an advanced position near the British army, north of Coulommiers. These troops constituted the First German Army, under the command of General von Kluck.
Since the British had butted the Germans back from the Petit Morin at La Trétoire, these three days of fighting in the battles of Coulommiers and Montmirail had won the Allies advanced positions across two rivers, and had so weakened the German right that it was compelled to fall back on the main army and forego its important strategic advantage on the east bank of the Ourcq River.
It was market-day at Coulommiers, and we passed by many farmers and farmeresses jogging to market, the latter with their fruit and vegetables, eggs and butter, in comfortable covered carts. Going to market in France means, indeed, what it did with us a hundred years ago; yet the farmers and farmers' wives looked the picture of prosperity.
The strengthening of that army from the forces at Paris was hourly, and while three or four days before it had been felt that the Sixth French Army was too weak to be placed in so vital a point that it should have been supplemented with the Ninth Army the results justified the French generalissimo's plans and more than justified his confidence in the British Army, or Expeditionary Force, which faced the tip of the German right wing drive and was encamped on a line from Villeneuve le Comte to Jouy le Chatel, the center of the British army being at a point five miles southeast of Coulommiers.
In this battle there was as great a change in morale as in the battle of the Ourcq. There, the French had been stirred to high endeavor by the realization that the word to advance had at last been given. This also operated in part on the British in the battle of Coulommiers, but, in addition, there was another very important factor.
Coulommiers is one of these, and though there is nothing attractive about it, except a most picturesque old church and a very pretty public walk by the winding river, it is worth making the two hours' drive across country for the sake of the scenery.
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