An hour before——at 3 a.m. on September 8——their guns pushed forward under cover of darkness, the general assault by Bülow’s and Hausen’s armies had begun. It was well planned according to the information of those commanders, and, considering how serious an obstacle the marshes presented to their centre, remarkably conducted. On the west, the resolution of the defenders of Mondemont would have gone for nothing without the increasing support of d’Espérey’s 10th Corps. At the left-centre, the marshes gave Dubois sufficient cover to enable him to wheel half his force eastward. Beyond that, the conditions favoured the enemy, for the only main roads converged upon Fère Champènoise; and, if the French were driven back, a dangerous block would inevitably be produced. Against the extreme right, the Saxons were not in great force; and, on that flank also, the neighbouring French Army gave vital aid. [Illustration: FOCH’S FRONT Sept. 8–9.] So, in the misty dawn of September 8, the greycoats, picked Prussians and burly Saxons, swarmed forward, seeming to renew themselves irresistibly. Foch, talking to his Staff overnight, had exclaimed that such desperation suggested the need of compensating for ill fortune elsewhere; and now he opened a black day with a characteristic phrase of stubborn cheer: “The situation is excellent; I order you again vigorously to take the offensive.” The situation excellent! Foch would not use words of meaningless bravado; he may have been thinking of d’Espérey knocking at Bülow’s side door. At this hour (7 a.m.), he could not yet know that the loss of Lenharrée had been followed by the turning of two regiments of the 20th Division, and two others of the 60th Reserve Division, defending the passages of the Somme-Soude, and that the lines on either side were crumpling up. So it was. From a number of personal narratives, often contradictory and exaggerated, we can draw an outline of what occurred in the surprise of Fère Champènoise, without pretending to determine exactly where, or by what failing of exhausted men, the confusion originated.