WWI: the Battle of Guise - the French Counter-Attack

As Great Britain prepared to celebrate its annual Bank Holiday, the nation's Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, realized, as he received reports of mobilization of armies and declarations of war, that the assassination earlier in June of an Austrian Archduke was about to call a tune to which all of Europe would soon be grimly dancing. His friends would recall that as night drew on and the lamps were being lit in the city streets, Grey wrote: "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we...
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As Great Britain prepared to celebrate its annual Bank Holiday, the nation's Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, realized, as he received reports of mobilization of armies and declarations of war, that the assassination earlier in June of an Austrian Archduke was about to call a tune to which all of Europe would soon be grimly dancing. His friends would recall that as night drew on and the lamps were being lit in the city streets, Grey wrote: "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.'

A month into the war, Guise was a blueprint for the new identity of combat. The egos of military commanders would overrule strategy; their inability to adapt to the modern personality of battle would destroy lives and in several cases, their careers as well. Guise was nominally a victory for the Allies, who desperately needed one, but as was the case with so many of the victories in World War I, the price was high and the resolution undefined. What Guise did achieve was delay, something that the Allies needed, to relieve the pressure on the British Expeditionary Force and borrow time for the French Sixth Army, which had just been created. As a prelude to the famous Battle of the Marne, Guise was one of the many links in a long and bloody chain that would be forged over four bitter years.

As the days of August passed, the lights of Europe would indeed go out. Night was falling...