Frontiers and the Marne/Sambre. The Germans give the French some trouble, Britain tells Germany to pick on someone their own size.

   Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,

Nor thought of tender happiness betray;

Who, not content to that former worth stand fast,

Looks forward persevering to the last,

From well to better, daily self surpast:

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth

Forever, and to noble deeds give birth,

Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,

And leave a dead unprofitable name-

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws

His breath and confidence of Heaven's applause: 

This is the happy Warrior; this is He

That ever Man in arms should wish to be.

~The Happy Warrior, William Wordsworth

   After the great upheaval that was mobilization and mass migration to the front, the first few days of the Great War were strangely calm.  Once everyone had arrived at the fronts, there was a week or ten days with no action.  Most of this was used for hurried training and distribution of stores. For the old guard, veterans of the Franco-Prussian war forty-four years prior, this was all familiar territory.  The trains looked the same, the long columns of horses, men, and guns looked the same.  The weapons would look the same until the revolutionary power of magazine firearms became apparent. The battlefront was the same, in some places, and men found themselves on the same roads their fathers had tread in the Franco-Prussian war, and their grandfathers under Napoleon.  On the French side, even the Uniforms looked the same. Unlike the all the rest of Europe and most of the world at large, the French Army had not updated it's uniforms since the Napoleonic wars.  While the rest of Europe had updated its military uniforms to sturdy fabric in various shades of Khaki, handy camouflage in virtually any terrain, France went to war in bright red trousers, startlingly blue coats, and red caps.  Apparently they did not realize you could see those colors at a distance, while a well hidden, khaki-clad German or Brit you would not see until nearly on top of them.
     The Lorraine Offensive, the first of the war, began August 14.  The French advanced on Lorraine via the town of Sarrebourg as liberators and conquerors with bands playing and colors flying. That the Germans might also have plans to take back the "lost" territories of Alsace-Lorraine seems to not have entered their minds.  The Germans, meanwhile, were waiting for them, eight corps lay in wait for them, ready to attack as soon as the French army overreached itself.  France advanced into Reich territory for four days, as Germany contested but did not exactly oppose the advance.  The Germans led them on for 25 miles into their own territory, allowing France to take back Chateau-Salins, Sarrebourg, and Dieuze, all places that had been French from the 1600s until 40 years prior.
   It was then that the French line stretched too far and began to fall apart. This was what Germany had been waiting for, and began to fight back.  Superior German numbers (eight corps to the French six) forced France all along the front line back across ground they had just taken.  One by one the divisions of the French Army gave way until only the XX remained.  The rest of the Army was ordered to retreat behind the River Muerthe, which was the line from whence they had started six days earlier. The XX Army was nearly surrounded on both flanks, but managed also to retreat across the river by August 23.  By next day, the 24th, practically all French forces had retreated behind the River Meuse or to Amiens.

The Meuse at Dinant

      It was now just three weeks into the war, and Germany had already gained significant victories. It looked like Schleiffen's dream of a six-weeks war might come true.  To make it a reality, they would have to move to the one area that had not seen any action yet, the frontier with Belgium.  The fall of Liege and the retreat of the Belgian army had already paved the way for this. All that was needed now was to capture Namur, and Belgium would be secured. Despite this, France was seemingly unaware of the imminent danger. Lanrezac, the commander of the Fifth army expressed, even before the war began, that he feared Germany could easily get through Belgium with little effort and thereby envelop the French forces.  Joffre, however, was fixated on his own offense into Germany; and ignored this trepidation.  As late as the beginning of the Lorraine Offensive, Joffre continued to insist that the Germans would not deploy any major forces inside Belgium.  He would have a change of heart after the Fall of Liege.

Citadel of Namur at the confluence of the Meuse and Sambre Rivers

   Over the next few days, Joffre directed Lanrezac's Fifth Army to move into the area where the Meuse and Sambre Rivers joined, and meet with the British Expeditionary Force to repel the Germans as they moved from Belgium into France.  Thus the battle that the French name Sambre and the British called Mons would begin.  In its opening stages this is what military theorists call a "battle of encounter", in which the troops involved make the decisions rather than through orders reived from the chain of command. Indeed the orders received by the French were against engaging the enemy.  Most of the French force was in a dense belt of industrial buildings and cottages known as Le Borinage.  Lanrezac was afraid that any engagement in that area would result in street fighting and be lost to his control.  On the German side, Karl von Buelow gave similar orders.
     Soldiers have known for as long as there have been wars that it is very difficult to defend a river, unless it is very wide.  The conjunction of the Meuse/Sambre is not.  It is easier to defend the far, rather than the near bank.  But if the near must be defended, it is best to defend from behind the bank than right on it.  Lanrezac knew this, and thus had the bulk of the Fifth Army waiting on higher ground at Auvelais.  The trouble with this was, that higher ground was overlooked by the far bank, which would make them easily seen by the enemy.  The division on the high ground requested permission to either cross or fall back.  Both requests were denied, but reinforcements were sent to them.  Meanwhile, a German patrol, the 2nd Guard Division, appeared on the opposite bank and, wanting to take advantage of the opportunity, requested permission to attack.  They were given permission to advance, quickly found an undefended bridge and established a foodhold.  To the West, at Tergne the German 19th Division found another undefended bridge and crossed, without waiting for orders.  The division commander sent the rest of the regiment after them and drove the French away from the area.  Thus by the end of the day, a four-mile wide gap had been opened in the French line.
   Here Lanrezac had a choice, continue to hold the high ground that the French still possessed from the beginning, or heed the advice of his subordinates and counter-attack in an attempt to win back the territory the Germans had just gained.  He rather unwisely chose the latter.  The next morning, August 22 the French tried to attack the Germans, but were repelled with heavy loss.
   While the French were suffering heavy loss along the banks of the Meuse, the British Expeditionary Force had arrived with one cavalry and four infantry divisions.  They met German forces along another water barrier to the north, the Mons-Conde Canal, and seemed to be much more effective at defending such a barrier than the French.  Of course, all of Britain is surrounded by a water barrier, so defending such was second nature to them.  The BEF had originally intended to march with Lanrezac and advance into Belgium, but news of Lanrezac's defeat cancelled their plans.  Instead they were asked to defend the canal, and were asked to attack Von Kluck in an attempt to keep him out of France.  To demonstrate how poor French intelligence and communication were at this time, Von Kluck had already moved beyond both Lanrezac's position and the BEF.
     Of all the armies of Europe, the British Expeditionary Force was most up to the task of defending the Mons-Conde Canal.  It was an all-regular force of professional soldiers, seasoned for combat by decades of small colonial wars. British soldiers were armed with superior guns to the Germans and were also superior marksmen.  Many were veterans of the Boer War where they had learned the difficult lessons of trench warfare better than any other military force of Europe.  Once at the canal, they dug in and were firmly entrenched by the morning of August 23. In addition to the trenches, they were also able to shelter inside cottages and mining buildings, and behind spoil heaps*.

A company of the 4th Batallion of Royal Fusiliers resting in the town of Mons before the battle.  The Royal Fusiliers saw the heaviest fighting in the battle and won the first Victoria Cross of the war

Alexander Von Kluck, commander of the German First Army at Mons

Lieutenant Maurice Dease of the 4th Batallion, Royal Fusiliers. For his actions in the battle, he received a Victoria Cross posthumously

   The German soldiers coming into the area outnumbered the BEF six to one, but were caught completely by surprise.  They walked into what they thought was a deserted area and were immediately met by a volley that seemed to come from nowhere.  By the end of the day, Captain Bloem's forces were in ruins.  Many men had lost contact with their officers and did not rejoin until evening.  Five hundred had been killed or wounded, including three out of four of his battalion commanders.  Bloem was fortunately unharmed.  Many other German units had similar outcomes. The total German casualties were never fully disclosed, but may have reached 5,000. Total British casualties were, by comparison, a mere 1,600 killed, wounded, or missing. The Germans drew back, exhausted, while the British were flush with victory and a fight well fought. They were ready to fall back to a position a little south of the canal, and continue defending the Allies' left flank next day, but new orders came in.  They were orders for retreat.
   This couldn't be right! They had just taught the Germans a lesson in trench warfare and were fully prepared to teach the lesson over again tomorrow if the enemy had not quite grasped the concept.  Why did they have to retreat?  Lieutenant Edward Spears, the British Liaison with the French Fifth Army arrived at Sir John French's headquarters with the shocking news.  Because of the earlier German victory on the Sambre, Lanrezac determined the Fifth Army was to retreat south the next day to reinforce the ground still held there, drawing away from positions that Britain had helped them win at Mons-Conde.  If the French were retreating, their allies really had no choice but to follow.  Joffre would explain to the Minister of War the next morning "One must face facts...Our army corps...have not shown on the battlefield those offensive qualities for which we had hoped....We are therefore compelled to resort to the defensive....Our object must be to last out, trying to wear the enemy down, and to resume the offensive when the time comes."
    Less than a month into the war, Belgium had been laid waste and France was doing much worse than expected, despite the success of their British allies.  One wonders what course the war might have taken if the British had been allowed to push ahead and drive Germany back over the border.  For now, the Allies merely hoped to survive the struggle.

British soldiers retreating after the battle

*In America, especially the mining West, we refer to these as slag heaps, which is what I initially wrote. But for now this is still a European war, so I will use the European term.