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In France, as in England, everybody knew someone who had seen those Russians. One huge camp, I was told, was near Chartres, and in Paris I was shown Cossack caps which had come from there. That was on the day Manoury's soldiers went east in their historic sortie of taxicabs against von Kluck.
It was ten o'clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to be whirled from the Marne to the Somme. At four in the morning he was at Breteuil, where General Castelnau had the headquarters of his new army, created on September 20 and designated to service on Manoury's left. General Castelnau had not yet heard of the generalissimo's new order.
And it was the case, for Joffre had concentrated behind Paris a new army, Manoury's, which was now to attack. On September 5, 1914, the Germans having now fallen into Joffre's trap, the French commander in chief issued his famous order, and the whole Anglo-French army suddenly passed from the defensive to the offensive.
They greeted the advance of Manoury's army coming east out of Paris and striking at Kluck's open flank. Allies. Germans. The next day Manoury rolled up Kluck's flank, drove his troops in on the Ourcq River, and threatened his army with destruction.
After all that march from Belgium, with no break in the programme of success, the thunders broke and lightning flashed out of the sky as Manoury's army rushed upon von Kluck's flank. "It was not the way that they wanted us to get the shells," said a French peasant who was taking one of the shell-baskets for a souvenir. It would make an excellent umbrella stand.
At this moment the Fifth French' Army of the left was ready to meet the German forces in a frontal attack, and it was flanked toward the northwest by the British army and by General Manoury's army to the northeast of the capital.
It was a triumph of mobility, and when in future the Parisian is tempted to curse those red vehicles which dash about the streets to the danger of all pedestrians who forget that death has to be dodged by never-failing vigilance, his righteous wrath will be softened, perhaps, by the remembrance that these were the chariots of General Manoury's army before the battle of Meaux, which turned the tide of war and flung back the enemy in retreat..
The French infantry of General Manoury's army, far less exhausted than the harassed regiments of General von Kluck's forces, found little difficulty in forcing the Germans back from Autreches, but, no sooner were they well established, than the roar of the combined guns of General von Kluck and General von Zwehl would make the position untenable, and under cover of that appalling rain of death, the German infantry would creep back to reoccupy the positions from which they had been ousted by the bayonets only a few hours before.
On the French side it resulted in the posting of the army of Castelnau on the left of Manoury's army, in the deployment of the army of General de Maud'huy to the left of the army of Castelnau, in the transference of the British army to the left of the army of Maud'huy, in the relegation of the army of Urbal to the left of the British army, the army of Urbal being later flanked by the Belgian army which came out of Antwerp.
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