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It was like the battle of Maubeuge over again, with the difference that he had here to deal with Asiatics, and not with the Nervii. There was some confusion while the legions were exchanging their digging tools for their arms. When the exchange had been made, there was no longer a battle, but a rout. The Armenians were hurled back down the hill, and slaughtered in masses at the bottom of it.
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.
Opposed to them, on the north, were about 700,000 German troops, General von Kluck farthest to the west, Generals von Bülow and von Hausen around the Belgian fortress of Namur, Grand Duke Albrecht of Württemberg in the neighborhood of Maubeuge, and finally, on the extreme left of the German line, the Army of the Moselle, under Crown Prince Wilhelm.
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.
Their habit is to work in three layers one quite high, one in the middle, and the third quite low. The English who fly lowest show an immense insolence; they came down to 200 metres and shot at our troops with their machine guns, which are specially adapted to this purpose." Armour was first employed as a result of Shephard finding at Maubeuge a bullet lodged in the seat of his leather suit.
It believed without evidence because it wanted to believe. And another fruitful source of rumour is fear. The famous concrete emplacement at Maubeuge will serve as an instance. We had the most elaborate details of how the property was acquired by German agents, how in secret the concrete platform was laid down, and how the great 42-cm. howitzer shelled Maubeuge from it.
As it was, with fortifications unrenewed, and with the ring fortress in any case doomed, Maubeuge was a death-trap. The rôle 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."
These services were the duty of military engineers, naval engineers, or ship-builders, artillerists, both military and naval, engineers of bridges and highways, geographical engineers, and engineers of mines, and to them were added the service of the pupils of the school of aerostation, which GUYTON MORVEAU had caused to be established at Meudon, for the purpose of forming the aerostatic company destined for manoeuvring air-balloons, applied to the art of war, as was seen at Maubeuge, Fleurus, Aix-la-Chapelle, &c.
As we went along next day through the town of Maubeuge we heard singing; and singing was a most rare thing to be hearing in this town. In a country where no one smiles any more who belongs in that country, singing is not a thing which you would naturally expect to hear. So we turned off of our appointed route. There was a small wine shop at the prow of a triangle of narrow streets.
"But when the war came?" she queried. He looked at her in surprise. "What was there left for me then?" he demanded. "Naturally I heard nothing but the voice of those whom I had sworn to obey. I was in that mad rush through Belgium. I was wounded at Maubeuge, or else I should have followed hard on the heels of that wonderful retreat of yours. As it was, I lay for many months in hospital.
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