There were two Battles of the Marne, both during the First World War. However, the name generally refers to the first, which took place from September 5 to 12, 1914; the second Battle of the Marne, meanwhile, took place from July 15 to 18, 1918.
In 1914, France, England and Russia declared war on Germany and Austria:the First World War began. France hopes to take its revenge against Germany because it has not forgotten its defeat of 1871. In August 1914, the German armies cross Belgium and invade France; Paris is threatened. In September, during the Battle of the Marne, the Germans were pushed back. The armies then came to a standstill face to face on a front that stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland.
The first Battle of the Marne was one of the turning points of the war, since it marked the failure of the Schlieffen plan and the beginning of the war of position, after the episode of the race to the sea.
In the fall of 1914, the Allied troops were in full retreat after their defeat on the borders, the British Expeditionary Force was already planning its withdrawal to the Channel ports, for a possible re-embarkation. General Gallieni, commander of the French troops in charge of the defense of Paris, then meets Lord Kitchener to propose a generalized joint counter-attack when the Germans arrive on the Marne. On September 2, the latter changed the course of their armies towards the east:they threatened to surround the armies coming from Lorraine, as indicated by aerial observations, of which this was one of the first uses. General Joffre created a new army in Paris, the Sixth, commanded by General Maunoury. Gallieni will use it to lead an attack on the flank of von Kluck's 1st German Army, from the Marne, between Nanteuil-le-Haudouin and Meaux, on the afternoon of September 5. Attacked in its turn in force from September 7, the Sixth Army resisted until the 9th, thanks, among other things, to the emergency dispatch of 10,000 men from the Paris garrison, of whom nearly 6,000 were transported by six hundred taxis from the capital requisitioned by General Gallieni. Led mainly by Renault AG, this transport will go down in history as one of the first uses of motorized troops ... and civilians.
Finally, on September 9, the Sixth Army, beaten, fell back behind the Marne. Von Kluck will then make the mistake of chasing her hoping to complete her elimination. But his advance opens a gap of about fifty kilometers with the second army of Karl von Bülow, located on his right. Taking advantage of this opening, the French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force rushed in and attacked the two German armies on their exposed flanks. Disorganized by this maneuver, exhausted by their previous advances, slightly outnumbered, the two German armies were in turn forced to withdraw, until September 13. The halt to the two most powerful German armies responsible for enveloping the Allied troops marks the failure of the Schlieffen maneuver. But, in the words of General Chambe, then a young cavalry officer, it was a battle won but a victory lost. Indeed, if the Franco-British armies then put an end to the irresistible advance of the German armies commanded by Von Kluck, Von Bülow and Von Moltke, they could not or did not know how to exploit this advantage by pushing these armies out of French territory, but only a few tens of kilometers to the north, initially inducing the race to the sea and then the stabilization of the front, that is to say the beginning of a war of position which was to last four years.
* It was during this battle that Jean Bouin and Charles Péguy died.
* In reaction to the Allied victory in this battle, the Kaiser's decision-making was undermined, which provoked in Germany the spontaneous drafting of a manifesto by 93 Germanic intellectuals of international renown on October 4, 1914. This document had function of showing the whole world the unequivocal support of the German ruling and intellectual class for their leader Wilhelm II