Battle of Guise ends

On 30 August 1914 the Battle of Guise, called by the Germans the Battle of Saint-Quentin, came to an end. The French Fifth Army of General Charles Lanrezac, which the day before had thrown the Germans back in the valley of the Oise, broke off the fight and resumed its retreat to the south.

A success without a future

On the evening of 29 August the French had a successful day behind them. A counter-attack by the I Corps of General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey had forced the German Guard Corps to fall back near Guise. On the left wing, however, the attack on Saint-Quentin had stalled, and further German units were approaching from the north and west. The army, alone and without the support of the British, who were continuing their retreat, was threatened with envelopment. Late in the evening the Commander-in-Chief, Joseph Joffre, allowed Lanrezac to retreat and blow up the bridges over the Oise.

On 30 August the Germans renewed their attacks, but they were scattered and the French repulsed them. From the late morning the corps of the Fifth Army one after another began to disengage from the enemy and march south, behind the Serre, towards Laon and the Aisne. By the morning of 31 August the whole army had withdrawn in good order. The exhausted troops of the German Second Army did not undertake a vigorous pursuit.

Who won?

Both sides claimed success. General Karl von Bülow reported a victory because it was the French who had left the battlefield. The French stressed that for the first time in weeks they had halted the Germans and inflicted heavy losses on them. According to various estimates each side lost from several thousand to more than 10,000 soldiers in the two days of fighting.

Kluck’s turn

The most important consequences of the battle appeared away from the battlefield. Bülow asked the commander of the neighbouring First Army, General Alexander von Kluck, for help in finishing off the Fifth Army. On the evening of 30 August Kluck decided to turn south-east, towards Noyon and Compiègne, instead of passing round Paris to the west. The next day the German Supreme Army Command approved this manoeuvre.

In doing so the Germans abandoned the assumptions of the Schlieffen Plan. Kluck’s army was to pass east of Paris, exposing its right flank to a blow from the French Sixth Army, which was being assembled around the capital. A few days later Joffre seized this opportunity in the Battle of the Marne. The start of the fighting is described in the article Battle of Guise begins.