At nine o’clock the next morning (September 10) the Forty-second entered La Fere-Champenoise, where they found officers of the Prussian Guard lying, dead drunk, on the floors in the cantonments, surrounded by innumerable bottles of stolen champagne wherewith they had been celebrating their victory.

Two days later Foch was at Chalons, to direct in person the crossing of the Marne by his army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.

“The cavalry, the artillery, the unending lines of supply wagons,” says Colonel Requin, “the infantry in two columns on either side of the road; all this in close formation descending like a torrent to resume its place of battle above the passage on the other side of the river; was an unforgettable sight and one that gave all who witnessed it an impression of the tremendous energy General Foch has for the command of enormous material difficulties.”

XV

SENT NORTH TO SAVE THE CHANNEL PORTS

Germany’s plan to enter France by the east gate, in Lorraine, was frustrated with the aid of Foch.

Her plan to smash through the center of the armies on the Marne was frustrated, with the very special aid of Foch.

Blocked in both these moves, there was just one other for Germany to make, then, on the western front.

And on September 14, Joffre, instead of celebrating the victory on the Marne, was deep in plans to forestall an advance upon the Channel ports, and began issuing orders for the transfer of his main fighting bodies to the north.

All this, of course, had to be done so as to leave no vulnerable spot in all that long battle line from Belfort to Calais.

Joffre had clearly foreseen the length of that line.  He predicted it, as we have seen, in 1912.  Doubtless he had foreseen also that it would be too long a line to direct from one viewpoint, from one general headquarters.  What he was too wise to try to foresee before the war began was, which one of France’s trained fighting men he would call to his aid as his second in command.  He waited, and watched, before deciding that.

And late in the afternoon of October 4 he telegraphed to General Foch at Chalons, telling him that he was appointed first in command under the generalissimo, and asking him to leave at once for the north, there to coordinate the French, English and Belgian forces that were opposing the German march to the sea.

Five weeks previously Foch had been called to the vicinity of Chalons to assemble an army just coming into existence.  Now he was called to leave Chalons and that army he had come to know—­that army of which he must have been so very, very proud—­and go far away to another task of unknown factors.

But in a few hours he had his affairs in order and was ready to leave.

It was ten o’clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to be whirled from the Marne to the Somme.