The Guns of August by Tuchman Barbara W

Author:Tuchman, Barbara W. [Tuchman, Barbara W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780307567628
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 7069133
Publisher: Presidio Press
Published: 1962-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

“The Cossacks Are Coming!”

ON AUGUST 5 IN ST. PETERSBURG Ambassador Paléologue of France drove past a regiment of Cossacks leaving for the front. Its general, seeing the French flag on the ambassador’s car, leaned down from his horse to embrace him and begged permission to parade his regiment. While Paléologue solemnly reviewed the troops from his car, the general, between shouts of command to the ranks, addressed shouts of encouragement to the ambassador: “We’ll destroy those filthy Prussians! … No more Prussia, no more Germany! … William to St. Helena!” Concluding the review, he galloped off behind his men, waving his saber and shouting his war cry, “William to St. Helena!”

The Russians, whose quarrel with Austria had precipitated the war, were grateful to France for standing by the alliance and anxious to show equal loyalty by support of the French design. “Our proper objective,” the Czar was dutifully made to say with more bravado than he felt, “is the annihilation of the German army”; he assured the French that he considered operations against Austria as “secondary” and that he had ordered the Grand Duke “at all costs to open the way to Berlin at the earliest possible moment.”

The Grand Duke in the last days of the crisis had been named Commander in Chief despite the bitter rivalry of Sukhomlinov who wanted the post for himself. As between the two, even the Russian regime in the last days of the Romanovs was not mad enough to choose the German-oriented Sukhomlinov to lead a war against Germany. He remained, however, as War Minister.

From the moment the war opened, the French, uncertain that Russia really would or could perform what she had promised, began exhorting their ally to hurry. “I entreat Your Majesty,” pleaded Ambassador Paléologue in audience with the Czar on August 5, “to order your armies to take an immediate offensive, otherwise there is risk of the French army being overwhelmed.” Not content with seeing the Czar, Paléologue also called upon the Grand Duke who assured the ambassador that he intended a vigorous offensive to begin on August 14, in keeping with the promise of the fifteenth day of mobilization, without waiting for all his army to be concentrated. Though famous for his uncompromising, not to say sometimes unprintable habits of speech, the Grand Duke composed on the spot a message of medieval chivalry to Joffre. “Firm in the conviction of victory,” he telegraphed, he would march against the enemy bearing alongside his own standard the flag of the French Republic which Joffre had given him at maneuvers in 1912.

That a gap existed between the promises given to the French and the preparations for performance was all too apparent and may have been cause for the tears the Grand Duke was reported to have shed when he was named Commander in Chief. According to a colleague, he “appeared entirely unequipped for the task and, to quote his own statement, on receipt of the imperial order spent much time crying because he did not know how to approach his duties.

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