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Updated: May 9, 2025
And all this was not to be? He had never even heard that Liège had fallen, let alone Brussels, and here were the Germans apparently right round the Allied flank. It was astounding, irritating. In a vague way he felt deceived and staggered. It was a disillusionment! If the Germans were across the Sambre, the French could scarcely launch their victorious attack on the Rhine.
The German calculation was that the Belgians had been effectively masked by a corps detached north-westwards from Brussels, that the Duke of Württemberg and Von Hausen had troops enough to force the Meuse, drive in the French right, and threaten the centre at Charleroi, and that Von Buelow could cross the Sambre and Von Kluck encircle the British flank.
They were now in possession of the Maese, almost as far as the Sambre; of the Schelde from Tournay; and of the Lys as far as it is navigable. They had reduced Spanish Guelderland, Limburg, Brabant, Flanders, and the greatest part of Hainault; they were masters of the Scarpe; and by the conquest of Bouchain, they had opened to themselves a way into the very bowels of France.
The inhabitants of neighboring villages soon returned to their homes and resumed their ordinary occupations. While the fighting at the Marne was in progress, German troops achieved some successes in other parts of the theater of war. Thus, the fortified French town of Maubeuge, on the Sambre river midway between Namur in Belgium and St. Quentin, France, fell to the Germans on September 7.
After Charleroy had surrendered on the 25th, Jourdan and his army were ordered to act under the direction of General Pichegru, who had drawn the plan of that brilliant campaign. Always envious of this general, Jourdan did everything to retard his progress, and at last intrigued so well that the army of the Sambre and the Meuse was separated from that of the North.
Preferring to engage them separately, he marched from Amiens through Cambray, and sent forward some officers and pioneers to choose a spot for a camp on the Sambre. Certain Gauls, who had observed his habits on march, deserted to the Nervii, and informed them that usually a single legion went in advance, the baggage-wagons followed, and the rest of the army came in the rear.
Meantime the Emperor himself had resolved to attack the most alert of his enemies, the Prussians and the English, beyond the Sambre while the Austrians were thus held in check on the Upper Rhine, and ere the armies of the North could debouche upon Manheim, to co-operate by their right with Wellington and Blucher, and by their left with Schwartzenberg.
There was the hour we spent at Merbes-le-Chateau, where the English had been; and the hour we spent at La Buissière, on the river Sambre, where a fight had been fought two days earlier; but Merbes-le-Chateau is another story and so is La Buissière.
Nearly all are soon defeated, and sue for mercy. The Nervii, true to the German blood in their, veins, swear to die rather than surrender. They, at least, are worthy of their cause. Caesar advances against them at the head of eight legions. Drawn up on the banks of the Sambre, they await the Roman's approach.
That is exactly what happened in the first three weeks of active operations in the West. The operative corner A in the annexed diagram was the Franco-British force upon the Sambre. The retirement of that operative corner and its holding of the enemy was what is called in this country "The Retreat from Mons."
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