Battle of the Ourcq begins

On 5 September 1914, north-east of Paris, the French Sixth Army of General Michel Maunoury collided with the German corps covering the right wing of the 1st Army of General Alexander von Kluck. The fighting on the hills at Monthyon and Penchard, a few kilometres from Meaux, began the battle on the river Ourcq. It was the first act of the Battle of the Marne, which halted the German march on Paris and dashed Germany’s hopes of a quick victory in the west.

Kluck’s turn

Under the German war plan, known as the Schlieffen Plan, Kluck’s army, the furthest out on the right wing, was to pass west of Paris and encircle the French armies. At the end of August, however, Kluck changed his direction of march. Wanting to catch the retreating French Fifth Army and support the neighbouring 2nd Army of General Karl von Bülow, he turned south-east, and his columns began to pass east of the French capital. On 3 September his leading units crossed the Marne.

This manoeuvre exposed the right wing of the German army. French airmen and cavalrymen quickly noticed it. The military governor of Paris, General Joseph Gallieni, to whom the Sixth Army, being formed since the end of August, was subordinate, judged that an opportunity had arisen to strike the Germans in the flank. On the evening of 4 September the commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, issued orders for a general counter-offensive by all the armies of the left wing, set for 6 September. By then the Sixth Army was to move east and prepare to cross the Ourcq.

The clash at Monthyon

The Germans expected a threat from the direction of Paris, but did not know how serious it was. Kluck entrusted the cover of his right wing to a single corps, the IV Reserve Corps of General Hans von Gronau, deployed north of Meaux. The rest of the army was already south of the Marne, in pursuit of the Allies.

On the afternoon of 5 September, as Maunoury’s units were marching to their starting positions, they ran into the Germans. Gronau, alarmed by reports of enemy movements, decided to attack himself to find out what he had in front of him. The German artillery, placed on the hills at Monthyon, opened fire on the French columns on the open plain. The French reserve divisions suffered heavy losses. On the right wing a Moroccan brigade drove the Germans out of some positions, but was unable to take the hills at Penchard. There was also fighting for the village of Saint-Soupplets. By evening the French stood on the line Saint-Soupplets – Monthyon – Penchard.

Gronau realised that he faced a whole army, not merely weak detachments of the Paris garrison. During the night he withdrew his corps a few kilometres east, to better positions, and informed army headquarters. Kluck received the news on the night of 5 to 6 September and began to turn his corps back north from the Marne, against Maunoury. Gronau’s effort cost him dearly, but it saved the 1st Army from being taken by surprise.

The death of Charles Péguy

Among those killed on 5 September was Charles Péguy, one of the most outstanding French poets and essayists of the time. The 41-year-old lieutenant of the 276th Infantry Regiment of the 55th Reserve Division was leading his men in an attack across the fields near the village of Villeroy, towards the hills at Monthyon. He was killed by a bullet to the forehead. Near the place of his death there is today a monument, and in the area there are graves and cemeteries of the soldiers killed in this fighting. Péguy’s death became in France a symbol of the sacrifice of a whole generation.

Further course

The next day, 6 September, the Franco-British counter-offensive began along the whole front from the outskirts of Paris to Verdun. On the Ourcq fierce fighting went on for the following days. Kluck moved one corps after another north, and the French brought up reinforcements. On the night of 7 to 8 September Gallieni sent some of the soldiers of the newly arrived 7th Division to the front in requisitioned Paris taxis. The Germans had the advantage in heavy artillery and several times came close to outflanking the Sixth Army.

Moving the whole of Kluck’s army to the Ourcq, however, opened a gap between it and Bülow’s army. British troops and the French Fifth Army entered it. On 9 September, fearing that the front would be cut in two, the German command ordered a retreat. Kluck’s army, close to success on the Ourcq, began to withdraw north, towards the Aisne.

Significance

The clash at Monthyon was on the face of it a local skirmish, but it set off an avalanche of events. Alarmed, Kluck turned his army against Paris, and this enabled the Allies to strike into the gap between the German armies. The Battle of the Ourcq tied down the main forces of the German right wing and decided the fate of the whole 1914 campaign in the west. The war of movement in France began to draw to a close, and a few weeks later both sides dug in on a line that largely survived until 1918.