June 6, 19 1 8 
Land & Water. 
Battle of the Tardenois : By Hilaire Belloc 
THIS article is written in the course of Monday, 
June 3rd, and is based upon dispatches, the last 
of which was sent from French Headquarters late 
in the evening of Sunday, June 2nd. It is there- 
lore dealing with the great action upon which 
the whole fate of the war may well depend, in the ver}' heat 
of its most critical and least-decided phase. Not only is 
there no indication as yet of the direction events may ulti- 
mately take ; there is not even an indication of possible 
alternatives. Any one attempting to analyse the action at 
this stage from the very meagre accounts of it which have 
reai^hed us can pretend to no more than a statement of its 
simplest and most obvious elements, and a record of its 
varying features during the full seven da5s through which 
that record extends. After having attempted such a task, 
we will turn to the more genera! meaning of the struggle 
and to some judgment, however general, of its gravity. 
The elements of the situation at the moment of writing — 
the main factor? — are as follows. The enemj', after a highly 
successful offensive in which he was able to effect a great 
measure of sur])rise, found himself in a deep salient reaching 
to the Marne — a salient the immediate product of his success 
and too deep for its width. He determined, therefore, 
to enlarge it upon the flank where it was most threatened 
— the Western flank — and by Sunday night he had enlarged 
it, forming a great new secondary salient or bulge here, which 
carried him from six to eight miles further west. 
He was standing then upon the night of Sunday, June 2nd, 
with a front, the shape of which might be compared to a 
very flat letter D ; the top of the D represented the old Chemin 
des Dames front wliich he broke a week before. The bottom 
of the D represented a 14-miles occupation of the right bank 
of the River Mame ; the perpendicular stroke of the D 
represented the eastern flank of his salient from the Marne 
up to Rheims, while the round of the D was the bulge west- 
ward by which the enemy had enlarged'his area of occupation 
in the course of the past three days. 
Upon the north-western corner of the salient stands the 
town of Soissons, the French holdiilg the heights imme- 
diately to the west pf it, and the enemy apparently unable 
to debouch from the half-ruined city which they occupy. 
Upon the north-eastern comer of the salient stands the 
town of Rheims, which the Allies still occupy; the space 
between the two towns is about 25 miles. The total depth 
of the salient from the original front to the River Marne is 
also about 35 miles. The total new front which the enemy 
is holding from Soissons round by the west to the Marne, 
near Chateau Thierry, up the Mame for 14 miles to near 
Vemeuil, and so up to Rheims, is probably close on go miles. 
•I say "probably" because the constant fluctuation of the 
line is such that no e.xact measure be taken. But certainly 
by the evening of Sunday last, to which this description is 
confined, 80 miles would be an under-estimate of the new 
front the enemy has created for himself by his recent success, 
and something between 80 and go is the trae figure. It is, 
as we shall see in a moment, an important point. 
The area thus overrun by the enemy is in the main 
composed of a plateau called the Tardenois, which is the 
watershed between the basins of the Oise and the Marne. It 
is broken country- but well provided with roads, and in its 
central part open ; the plateau is cut through its middle 
by the sources and upper course of the little river Ourcq 
running westward : it is bounded for the most part on its 
westward side by a succession of great woods, the largest 
of which is the Forest of Villiers Cotterets. It is bounded 
on the south by the broad valley of the Marne which is not 
marshy like that of the Oise, and is nothing like so formidable 
an obstacle. Further, the Mame is easily crossed by a force 
coming from the north, because the heights which dominate 
the flat of the river valley stand upon the northern side. 
It is from these heights that the Tardenois Plateau falls 
sharply on to the water level. 
All round the edge of this very considerable area the enemj' 
by the evening of Sunday was using about 50 divisions, 
which is at his present establishment less than half a million, 
but more than 400,000 infantry, and not quite double that 
figure in total forces of every kind. Of this very large force 
much the thinnest part is along the Marne to the south, 
much the densest at the moment of writing is upon the west, 
where every effort is being made to extend the salient with 
the double object of removing dangerous pressure, and turning 
the French out of the Soissons comer. The remainder. 
probably not a third of the total, are upon the eastern side 
of the salient between the Marne and Rheims. 
The history of the action so far has been as follows : — 
Upon Monday, May 27th, the enemy having effected as 
he had done twice before in this season, a concentration, 
the existence of which was known, but the magnitude of 
which was not known, struck, after a very intense but short 
preliminary boniLarchnent, the whole front from the neigh- 
bourhood of Rheims to the Forest oi Pinon, which is some 
miles north of Soissons in the valley of the Aillet River. 
The front he thus attacked was a section of the quasi-per- 
manent defence in the field, which the Allied line and the 
German line opposing it had thrown up and maintained 
for many months — in some parts for several years — from 
the Swiss frontier to the North Sea. As we know, more 
than 60 miles of this, north of the Forest of Pinon, had gone as 
the result of the great German advance in March, but all 
this sector of between .30 and 40 miles east of the Forest 
of Pinon was part of what may be called the "wall" upon 
which the Allied defensive reposed during the perilous interval 
between the disappearance of Russia and the effective 
appearance in the field of the United States. As we shall 
see later, to bteak this wall piecemeal, to restore a war of 
movement, to disintegrate while he is still superior the armies 
of the Allies and the civilian stmcture behind them, is the 
whole object of the enemy. 
» 
The Action 
' The enemy, using the advantage of a new and success-" 
fully developed tactic to which he can lay credit (for it is 
a great achievement) succeeded in completely breaking the 
line in this, the third stroke, of his offensive. He had 
massed about 25 divisions with 15 reserve, making a total 
of 40. against a front of 7, and on the very first day he was 
right away five miles forward of the original line, and cros- 
sing the first obstacle, the Aisne. There was no possibility 
of considerable resistance before the centre of his advance 
after this first success had been so rapidly achieved. With 
the second day he was pouring across the second and smaller 
obstacle of the Vesle, by the evening of the third he was 
close to the Mame itself, and his advanced bodies may al- 
ready have come in sight of that river. At any rate, on the 
morning of the fourth day, the Thursday, light German 
units had appeared on the hills above the Mame from just 
above Chateau Thierry to the neighbourhood of Dormans. 
At this point, on the morning of the Thursday, the battle had 
completed its first phase, and we may note the results. There 
is a considerable claim to prisoners, between thirty and forty 
thousand, as a result of this extremely rapid overran ijing of 
the Tardenois, and the overwhelming of the original line. 
There is also a claim to 400 guns or more, many of them 
heavies, which the rapidity of the unexpected German suc- 
cess had made it impossible to remove. But the enemy, thus 
thrusting forward where he found least resistance, and reach- 
ing the Marne in 72 hours, after he had marched, at the furthest 
points for well over 30 miles, was in a salient or pocket very 
dangerous to himself. 
li it be asked why a striking advance dependent upon the 
very success of the mover should so rapidly produce a peril 
for him, the answer is to be found in that new method of 
his of abandoning topographical object for the mere weight 
of a blow, of which method we will speak in a moment. 
At any rate, on Thursday, the fourth day of the battle, he 
did find himself in peril through the depth of his salient. 
The cause is easy to understand. If you arc facing in any 
direction your strength is towards the point you look at 
and advance towards, jour weakness is on th'e sides. For all 
military advance is ultimately analysable as a column. 
You can only defend your flanks by facing round towards 
them. The longer your flanks get, therefore, in proportion 
to the width of the territory over which y9u advance, the 
narrower the V which you produce by your thmst forward 
after a success, the more in danger you are of a much 
inferior force striking at the base of your long wedge and 
cutting it off. 
The reason that the enemy's advance was shepherded 
into this curious shape was the situation at the two points 
of Soissons and Rheims. The enemy carried Soissons, 
indeed, but found he could not debouch against the French, 
who held the heights to the west. He tried to do it over 
and over again day after day, and constantly failed with 
