Home › World History › World War I › First Marne
World War I · Western Front · September 5–12, 1914
The First Battle of the Marne
Just a month into the war, German armies were within 30 miles of Paris. In a week of desperate fighting along the Marne River, the French and British turned them back. The “Miracle of the Marne” saved Paris and wrecked Germany’s plan for a quick victory, and both sides began to dig the trenches that would define the war.
French infantry during the Battle of the Marne, September 6, 1914
Quick facts
The First Marne at a glance
| When | September 5–12, 1914 | |
| Where | Along the Marne River and its tributaries, east of Paris, France | |
| Sides | France and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) vs. Germany | |
| Allied leaders | Gen. Joseph Joffre; Gen. Joseph Gallieni (Paris); Field Marshal Sir John French (BEF) | |
| German leaders | Gen. Helmuth von Moltke the Younger; Gens. Alexander von Kluck and Karl von Bülow | |
| Troops | Roughly 2 million men on the two sides combined | |
| Casualties | About 500,000 killed, wounded, captured or missing on both sides | |
| Result | Allied strategic victory; Germans retreat to the Aisne River and dig in |
The big picture in 30 seconds
Why the Marne matters
- It ended Germany’s Schlieffen Plan to beat France in about six weeks.
- Germany now faced the long two-front war it had feared.
- The retreat to the Aisne began trench warfare on the Western Front.
- Moltke was replaced as German chief of staff within days.
2 million
soldiers in the battle
30 miles
from Paris at the German high point
About 600
Paris taxis carried troops to the front
500,000
approximate casualties
The road to the Marne
Germany’s plan for a quick war
Germany’s war plan, drawn up by Count Alfred von Schlieffen and changed by Moltke, aimed to avoid a long two-front war. Most of the German army would swing through neutral Belgium, sweep around Paris and crush France in about six weeks, before slow-moving Russia was ready. Then it would turn east.
In August 1914 the plan nearly worked. The Germans smashed the Belgian forts at Liège with giant siege guns, defeated the French in the Battle of the Frontiers and pushed back the small British army at Mons. For two weeks the Allies retreated south in the heat, sometimes 20 miles a day. The French government left Paris for Bordeaux.
Kluck turns
On the German right wing, General von Kluck’s First Army was supposed to pass west of Paris. Instead, to keep touch with Bülow’s Second Army, he turned southeast and passed east of the city, showing his flank to the French garrison in Paris. French airmen and cavalry spotted the turn. Joffre, calm and well fed as always, ordered a general counterattack for September 6.
Where it happened
The German wheel, and where it stopped
German armies poured through Belgium and Luxembourg into northern France. By September 5 they had reached the Marne east of Paris. The counterattack hit Kluck’s flank from Paris and drove into the gap that opened between the German First and Second Armies. By September 12 the Germans had fallen back about 40 miles to the heights above the Aisne River.
Simplified map.
How the battle unfolded
A week that changed the war
The battle stretched along a front of more than 100 miles, from the outskirts of Paris to Verdun.
The new French Sixth Army under General Maunoury strikes Kluck’s flank from the Paris area. Kluck swings his army west to meet it, which opens a 30-mile gap beside Bülow.
Gallieni requisitions Paris taxis to rush about 6,000 reserve soldiers to the front. Meanwhile the BEF and the French Fifth Army edge into the gap between the German armies.
With the gap widening and no clear news, Moltke sends staff officer Lt. Col. Richard Hentsch to the front. After talks with the army commanders, the German right wing is ordered to retreat.
The Germans fall back to strong positions on the Aisne River and dig in. Allied attacks there fail. The “race to the sea” begins as each side tries to outflank the other.
Paris taxis to the front
The legend of the taxis
General Joseph Gallieni, the military governor of Paris, saw the chance to hit Kluck’s flank and pushed Joffre to attack. On the night of September 7, with trains and trucks in short supply, his staff commandeered about 600 Paris taxicabs, most of them red Renault AG-1s. Driving in convoys with dimmed lights, they carried some 6,000 soldiers toward the battle near Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. The meters ran the whole time, and the army paid the fares.
Historians agree the taxis made little real difference to the fighting. But the story of Parisians rushing to save their city became one of the great legends of the war, and a symbol of the whole nation pulling together.
Commanders and soldiers
Who led the armies
.jpg/500px-Alexander_von_Kluck_(ca._1914).jpg)
Why it mattered
The end of a short war
Before the Marne, many on both sides expected the war to be over by Christmas. After it, Germany’s best chance of a quick win was gone, and the war settled into the trenches. A line soon ran from the North Sea to Switzerland, and it would barely move for more than three years.
“My center is giving way, my right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I am attacking.”
Attributed to Gen. Ferdinand Foch
Ninth Army, at the Marshes of Saint-Gond, September 1914 (the wording may be a legend)
See the whole war
World War I hub
Causes, fronts, battles and people of the Great War on one page.
Go deeper
Books and sources
- The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman (1962)
- The Marne, 1914, by Holger Herwig (2009)
- The First World War, by John Keegan (1998)
- More recommended books