Read Online The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman - Free Book Online
Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman
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about his proud forefathers, the Dukes of Burgundy, and offered to re-create the old Duchy of Burgundy for him out of Artois, French Flanders, and the French Ardennes. Leopold gazed at him “open-mouthed,” then, attempting to pass it off with a laugh, reminded the Kaiser that much had changed since the fifteenth century. In any event, he said, his Ministers and Parliament would never consider such a suggestion.
That was the wrong thing to say, for the Kaiser flew into one of his rages and scolded the King for putting respect for Parliament and Ministers above respect for the finger of God (with which William sometimes confused himself). “I told him,” William reported to Chancellor von Büllow, “I could not be played with. Whoever in the case of a European war was not with me was against me.” He was a soldier, he proclaimed, in the school of Napoleon and Frederick the Great who began their wars by forestalling their enemies, and “so should I, in the event of Belgium’s not being on my side, be actuated by strategical considerations only.”
This declared intent, the first explicit threat to tear up the treaty, dumfounded King Leopold. He drove off to the station with his helmet on back to front, looking to the aide who accompanied him “as if he had had a shock of some kind.”
Although the Kaiser’s scheme failed, Leopold was still expected to barter Belgium’s neutrality for a purse of two millionpounds sterling. When a French intelligence officer, who was told this figure by a German officer after the war, expressed surprise at its generosity, he was reminded that “the French would have had to pay for it.” Even after Leopold was succeeded in 1909 by his nephew King Albert, a very different quantity, Belgium’s resistance was still expected by Schlieffen’s successors to be a formality. It might, for example, suggested a German diplomat in 1911, take the form of “lining up her army along the road taken by the German forces.”
Schlieffen designated thirty-four divisions to take the roads through Belgium, disposing on their way of Belgium’s six divisions if, as seemed to the Germans unlikely, they chose to resist. The Germans were intensely anxious that they should not, because resistance would mean destruction of railways and bridges and consequent dislocation of the schedule to which the German Staff was passionately attached. Belgian acquiescence, on the other hand, would avoid the necessity of tying up divisions in siege of the Belgian fortresses and would also tend to silence public disapproval of Germany’s act. To persuade Belgium against futile resistance, Schlieffen arranged that she should be confronted, prior to invasion, by an ultimatum requiring her to yield “all fortresses, railways and troops” or face bombardment of her fortified cities. Heavy artillery was ready to transform the threat of bombardment into reality, if necessary. The heavy guns would in any case, Schlieffen wrote in 1912, be needed further on in the campaign. “The great industrial town of Lille, for example, offers an excellent target for bombardment.”
Schlieffen wanted his right wing to reach as far west as Lille in order to make the envelopment of the French complete. “When you march into France,” he said, “let the last man on the right brush the Channel with his sleeve.” Furthermore, counting on British belligerency, he wanted a wide sweep in order to rake in a British Expeditionary Force along with the French. He placed a higher value on the blockade potential of British sea power than on the British Army, and therefore was determined to achieve a quick victory overFrench and British land forces and an early decision of the war before the economic consequences of British hostility could make themselves felt. To that end everything must go to swell the right wing. He had to make it powerful in numbers because the density of soldiers per mile determined the extent of territory that could be
That was the wrong thing to say, for the Kaiser flew into one of his rages and scolded the King for putting respect for Parliament and Ministers above respect for the finger of God (with which William sometimes confused himself). “I told him,” William reported to Chancellor von Büllow, “I could not be played with. Whoever in the case of a European war was not with me was against me.” He was a soldier, he proclaimed, in the school of Napoleon and Frederick the Great who began their wars by forestalling their enemies, and “so should I, in the event of Belgium’s not being on my side, be actuated by strategical considerations only.”
This declared intent, the first explicit threat to tear up the treaty, dumfounded King Leopold. He drove off to the station with his helmet on back to front, looking to the aide who accompanied him “as if he had had a shock of some kind.”
Although the Kaiser’s scheme failed, Leopold was still expected to barter Belgium’s neutrality for a purse of two millionpounds sterling. When a French intelligence officer, who was told this figure by a German officer after the war, expressed surprise at its generosity, he was reminded that “the French would have had to pay for it.” Even after Leopold was succeeded in 1909 by his nephew King Albert, a very different quantity, Belgium’s resistance was still expected by Schlieffen’s successors to be a formality. It might, for example, suggested a German diplomat in 1911, take the form of “lining up her army along the road taken by the German forces.”
Schlieffen designated thirty-four divisions to take the roads through Belgium, disposing on their way of Belgium’s six divisions if, as seemed to the Germans unlikely, they chose to resist. The Germans were intensely anxious that they should not, because resistance would mean destruction of railways and bridges and consequent dislocation of the schedule to which the German Staff was passionately attached. Belgian acquiescence, on the other hand, would avoid the necessity of tying up divisions in siege of the Belgian fortresses and would also tend to silence public disapproval of Germany’s act. To persuade Belgium against futile resistance, Schlieffen arranged that she should be confronted, prior to invasion, by an ultimatum requiring her to yield “all fortresses, railways and troops” or face bombardment of her fortified cities. Heavy artillery was ready to transform the threat of bombardment into reality, if necessary. The heavy guns would in any case, Schlieffen wrote in 1912, be needed further on in the campaign. “The great industrial town of Lille, for example, offers an excellent target for bombardment.”
Schlieffen wanted his right wing to reach as far west as Lille in order to make the envelopment of the French complete. “When you march into France,” he said, “let the last man on the right brush the Channel with his sleeve.” Furthermore, counting on British belligerency, he wanted a wide sweep in order to rake in a British Expeditionary Force along with the French. He placed a higher value on the blockade potential of British sea power than on the British Army, and therefore was determined to achieve a quick victory overFrench and British land forces and an early decision of the war before the economic consequences of British hostility could make themselves felt. To that end everything must go to swell the right wing. He had to make it powerful in numbers because the density of soldiers per mile determined the extent of territory that could be
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