I decided that a walkthrough of playing of the Clash of Giants: Tannenberg game, even solo (with all the deficiencies in competitive thinking that that entails) would probably create an undue influence on developments in the triple-blind running of the game that's underway (we're partway through Turn 2). So I thought that instead I'd embark on the other title in the first CoG pairing, the battle of the Marne.
This idea was reinforced by the timely arrival of Ted Racier's latest effort, a reboot of his early war operational games, 1914: Glory's End/When Eagles Fight, just published by GMT Games. The western front portion of this package features a short introductory scenario, also featuring the Marne battle. Between this, CoG: The Marne, and possibly a look at (though not a full playing of) relevant portions of GMT's other 1914 west front offerings, 1914: Offensive à outrance and Grand Illusion: the 1914 Campaign in the West, we should be replete with lovely maps and examinations of the opening portion of the war, which everyone thought would go so quickly and which instead lasted a very long time.
The First Battle of the Marne was, of course, not the beginning of the war on the western front. That had been what was called the Battle of the Frontiers, where both the French and German armies began plunging swiftly into the breakneck operational advances that their pre-war planning had assumed would be the key to success. The French, underestimating German numbers and resolve, had committed on a tremendously wide front and were driven back bloodily. The Germans, partly due to superior numbers and more effective concentration, had succeeded in their offensive moves.
And because the British and French armies had not engaged in as much pre-war communication, planning, and liaison as they ought to have done, the Germans had also found an opportunity to drive a wedge between the British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army, creating a gap they were at pains to exploit. French and British forces scrambled backwards in the Great Retreat, an exhausting pell-mell attempt to redefine defensible positions somewhere short of the outskirts of Paris.
In the battle of the Marne, French (and allied) commander in chief Joseph Joffre used the success of the German armies against them. Rushing forward to capture their operational and strategic goal, the French capital, the German First Army had become dangerously separated from the rest of the German front line. By pulling together a scratch force, the Sixth Army, Joffre enabled the Franco-British forces to attack the Germans' most successful force in detail, driving it backwards and halting the enemy advance. One of the best-loved, if historically uncertain, elements of the battle's narrative was the delivery of several battalions of the attacking French Sixth Army at a crucial point in the engagement, but a fleet consisting of all the commercial taxis and buses of the city of Paris, pressed into service to rush 6,000 men fifty kilometers to forestall a German advance.
I'm hoping to post a quick "unboxing" preview of Glory's End this weekend (I'll confess, dear readers, I didn't wait to unbox it...). If I have time to walk through an attempt at playing its Marne scenario, as well as one of CoG: The Marne, I will, but that may have to wait until next week.
I hope to have time to post another of my grandfather's letters this weekend. We'll see how overly ambitious I'm being.
War is a fascinating subject. Despite the dubious morality of using violence to achieve personal or political aims. It remains that conflict has been used to do just that throughout recorded history.
ReplyDeleteYour article is very well done, a good read.