Читать книгу The Battles in Flanders, from Ypres to Neuve Chapelle - Edmund Dane - Страница 5

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The plan of the Allied commanders, at once original and bold, was decided upon at that conference at the British head-quarters on the Aisne. From the first in this war the French Intelligence Service has shown itself excellent. The French Head-quarters Staff has not only been well and reliably informed of the enemy's preparations and movements, but promptly informed. In this instance the prospective movements were a matter of almost certain inference. Given the motives of the German Government, and the military principles favoured by the German Staff, both quite well known, and what they would do and how they would try to do it, was a conclusion that a general much less sagacious than Joffre might safely draw. The exact extent and character, however, of the German preparations, and the degree to which those preparations had been advanced was definite information of a valuable kind.

It is apposite here to note its effect. On September 9 the Belgians made a sortie in force from Antwerp, and on the following day recaptured Malines and Termonde. In consequence of this part of the German reinforcements, three army corps, which were on the march from Liège and had already reached the French frontier, had to be recalled. That army became engaged in the first attack upon Antwerp. The object, their diversion, had been gained. When, after discovering that an attack upon Antwerp was hopeless without heavy siege guns, they finally reached the front in France, the purpose for which they had been dispatched, that of attempting to outflank the Allies to the west of Noyon, had become impracticable.

We know now that the German Government had determined to avenge this disappointment by the capture of Antwerp. That, however, for the reasons already stated was fully expected. The siege employed another German army from September 25 to October 9. True, the Germans had the satisfaction of occupying the city, and of such political effects and impressions as that occupation produced. On the other hand there can be no sort of doubt that had those troops, thrown through the gap which then existed between Ghent and Bethune, seized Calais, and been able hold to the line from the coast to Bethune, the military effect would have been twenty times more serious. Instead of doing that the German Government swallowed the bait of Antwerp, only to discover when too late, and when they had let the critical days pass, that the hook was the British army at Ypres, which during a month's furious fighting in the effort to retrieve their error cost the Germans over 300,000 casualties, and what was worse, the wreckage of their Western campaign.

Before entering on a description of the operations which, in fact, during the later weeks of October and the first two weeks of November decided the future course of the war, it is advisable to have in mind a clear picture of the terrain of this mighty and memorable conflict.

If the reader looks at a map of France he will see that from the outlet of the Somme, the coast of the English Channel takes a sudden bend to the north, and that not far from Calais it swerves sharply round again to the east. If from near the mouth of the Somme we draw a line running north-east, that line, roughly parallel to the line of the coast from the point at which the shore bends round near Calais, will mark approximately the boundary of a difference in the height of the country above sea level. South-east of this line the country is considerably higher. North-west of it the country is as a whole low-lying and flat. In fact the line may be called an inland coast divided from the sea by a stretch of flats having an average breadth of some twenty-five miles. The eastern area of these flats is the Pas de Calais; the western area Flanders.

This inland coast line, geographically the northern edge of the plateau whose central and highest part is the chalk downs of Champagne, presents numerous sinuosities. Its course, that is to say, is a succession of capes and bays. In far-off times when in fact it was the sea coast, it must have presented a contour not unlike that of the present coast of Devonshire.

Formed of alluvial deposits and reclaimed little by little, the flats lying between this inland coastline and the sea are a very fertile tract. They gradually became the seat of a numerous population; and then, owing alike to proximity to the sea and to the number of the navigable waterways, the earliest and most important seat of industry and commerce on the Continent of Europe. The ancient capital of this country, the centre of its trade and the seat of its government when it formed an independent Dukedom, was Ypres. In the eighteenth century was made the discovery that underlying or contiguous to this area was one of the largest of the European coalfields. That discovery changed large parts of the flats by degrees into modern industrial districts.

The point to be kept in mind for present purposes is that geographically Flanders is one area, though now situated politically partly in France and partly in Belgium. Its two chief centres of population and industry are Ghent and Lille, both seats of the cotton trade, for like Lancashire in England, this Lancashire of the Continent is engaged mainly in the textile industry and in coal-mining. Lille is close to and in fact situated in one of the larger bays of the inland coastline already spoken of.

Nearly midway between Lille and the coast at Dunkirk there is a feature it is important to notice. The otherwise uniform flatness of the country is here broken by a range of low hills shaped like a crescent moon. This range of hills lies to the south of Ypres. From Kleine Zillebeke on the east to the Mont de Cats on the west the ridge is not more than ten miles in length. Ypres is situated within the crescent.

The feature is important to notice because of the streams which here take their rise. From the higher level of inland country there flow north-east the Scheldt, and north-west the Somme, and the lower courses of those rivers mark what may be called the natural outer boundaries of this flat area. From the hills south of Ypres again rise the Aa, the Yser, and the Lys. The first two flow outward towards the coast; the Lys bending first round to the south and then to the east, falls into the Scheldt at Ghent.

From Dunkirk eastward the country is protected against inroads of the sea by dykes. This part of it is below sea level. At Nieuport, the outlet of the Yser, there are locks which permit the outflow of the river at low tide, but bar the inflow of the sea at high tide. For a thousand years Flanders, owing to its natural fertility, has been the scene of a developed agriculture. Characteristic of it are the great substantial old farmhouses usually built round a square courtyard, places marked by the proverbial Flemish cleanliness and by the equally proverbial Flemish plenty. Practically every acre of the country was under cultivation. The only exceptions were the woods situated round the old châteaux and country houses, evidences of the general wealth. In addition to these there existed one or two not very extensive tracts of ancient forest.

Round Ypres, more especially to the east and north, these woods and pleasaunces formed an almost continuous ring. In the fourteenth century Ypres was a great industrial city with something like 200,000 inhabitants. During the struggles against first Spanish and then Austrian domination, and in the destructive wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it steadily lost its importance. The population dwindled. At the outbreak of the present war the number of inhabitants was not more than 20,000. The old city offered nevertheless many evidences of its former consequence and wealth. There was the monumental and famous Cloth Hall, one of the finest Gothic buildings in Europe. Erected by Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and adorned with statues of the forty-four Counts, it had a façade 462 feet in length, noble alike in design and in proportions. A conspicuous feature of the building was its central and massive square tower. In the Middle Ages Ypres was a fortress. From the top of the tower the view extended on every side over a wide extent of country. The sea and the coastline to the north, and the higher land across the Lys to the south came equally within the prospect. Conversely from outside Ypres the tower formed a notable landmark, seen rising above the horizon many miles away.

In old days the Cloth Hall was a great mart where, to merchants from every part of Europe, Flemish manufacturers displayed their fabrics, the then unrivalled wonders of the loom. In modern times, trade having departed save for an almost local industry in lace and linen, the Cloth Hall had become a museum and gallery of art. Under the public-spirited and careful government of the present Royal Family of Belgium, the building, one of the cherished monuments of the country, was in 1860 lovingly restored.2

Besides the Cloth Hall, however, and the fine cathedral dedicated to St. Martin, the former importance of Ypres was shown in its wide and elegant streets, bordered by antique Flemish mansions, abodes of an old world tranquillity, and with interiors like pictures. The most pleasantly situated perhaps of all the Flemish cities, Ypres was a favourite place of residence, an urban cameo set amid woods and hills of broad and sweeping yet softened outline, round about it a ring of peaceful villages, and the private seats of old-time and settled wealth.

If this was the ancient capital of Flanders, the scene on the farther side of the crescent of hills across the valley of the Lys presented the most striking of contrasts. In that direction the background of the picture was a forest of tall chimneys—the great city of Lille overhung by its cloud of smoke. The foreground was an apparent tangle of railways, roads, canals, brickworks, industrial villages, mills, dyeworks, machine shops, the multitudinous aspects in short of industry as it exists to-day, superposed upon the ancient Flemish features of the countryside—its spacious farms, its sluggish rivers, and its everlasting flatness.

For with the growth of commerce the rivers had been linked up with a network of canals, and over these, with joints represented by scores of bridges, had been spun a webwork of railways branching in all directions into sidings. Lille itself is but the centre of half a hundred industrial villages and smaller towns, the heart of a huge ganglion of commerce and manufacture.

Farther south we come to the coalfield. Of the discovery of the coalfield all this modern activity is the outcome. There the industry changes in character. Cotton mills give place to ironworks and blast furnaces. The face of the country is dotted with great mounds of "spoil." Its general aspect is grimier. In all directions it is cut up by narrow, badly-paved and rutty lanes, tracks leading mostly from the pits and works to the villages of the pitmen and ironworkers. To the tangle of canals and railways and railway sidings there is added this third tangle of foot and cart tracks, made for the most part as haphazard and as convenience directed. Through this maze of ways and byways the only guiding lines are the usually straight and excellent French main roads which sweep across the country from town to town with an imperial disregard of local obstacles. The plan and purpose of the main roads is largely military, and has come down from the days of the Roman occupation.

Such in brief are the main features of the country. As will be seen in the following pages, their bearing upon the operations of the war is of the first importance.