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Updated: June 9, 2025
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.
General von Kluck's artillery was impregnable to the French. Indeed, the Germans could not be dislodged from the Ourcq until the British Expeditionary Force sent up some heavy field batteries. It was then too late for the withdrawal from the Ourcq to be of any serious consequence in determining the result along the battle front.
But alas! the whole great spectacle, here as on the Ourcq, was sorely muffled and blurred by the snow, which lay thick over the whole length and breadth of France, effacing the landscape in one monotonous whiteness. If I remember rightly, however, it had ceased to fall, and twenty-four hours after we reached Nancy, it had disappeared.
The road rose slowly from the canal of the Ourcq; it was lined with the most beautiful acacia trees, and through the screen of the acacias one had glimpses of the town, diminishing, and of the cathedral, growing larger and larger.
They may, perhaps, show less enthusiasm, but that they are quite as calm is shown by the fact that a number of them spent the last hours before their departure fishing in the Ourcq Canal. A detachment of naval reserves has been brought to Paris to assist the police and the Municipal Guards in assuring order in the capital.
Concealed by the forests of Compiègne and Villers-Cotterets, he had assembled in the angle between the Oise and Marne reserves of which the Germans denied the existence. From the Aisne near Fontenoy southwards to the Ourcq Mangin commanded an army containing the pick of French colonial troops; and thence to the Marne Degoutte had another which included five American divisions.
By the 27th it had reached the Ourcq, whence the 3d and 4th Divisions were already advancing, while the French divisions with which we were cooperating were moving forward at other points. The 3d Division had made its advance into Roncheres Wood on the 29th and was relieved for rest by a brigade of the Thirty-second.
The eastern camp goes from the Ourcq canal and the forest of Bondy to the Seine, and its main strongholds are the forts of Vaujours and Villeneuve-St. Georges, with the smaller forts of Chelles, Villiers, Champigny and Sully. On the left bank of the Seine the southwestern camp is situated, including Versailles, whose main forts are those of St.
This hand-to-hand fighting for the possession of villages on the west bank of the Marne, this heavy loss to the French troops by the German artillery, and this sudden check at the Ourcq itself, until British heavy batteries were sent, marks the character of what may be called the battle of the Ourcq, the westernmost of the battles of the Marne.
All this was very well, and the day began for M. Colas under most favorable auspices; but in the evening the medal of the morning was obliged to show the opposite side. The Emperor went that morning to visit the works on the canal of the Ourcq.
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