throughout the subsequent battle of the Marne, and during the early operations on the Aisne. It was not possible to replace our lost guns and machine-guns until nearly the end of September.”[35] At this time Bülow was pursuing Sir Douglas Haig along the Guise road. On the 27th, the 2nd Munster Fusiliers were cut off, and killed or captured, except a handful saved by the 15th Hussars. On the 28th, the weary remnant of an army which had marched 90 miles in four days, fighting continually, tramped down the Oise valley, from La Fère to Noyon. That evening, Gough’s cavalry, at the south of the Somme near Ham, and Chetwode’s a little farther east, in covering the retreat, had to bear two severe attacks, which they effectually broke. On August 26, Sir John French had met Generals Joffre and Lanrezac at St. Quentin, and had again found the attitude of the latter officer unsatisfactory. On August 29, at 1 p.m., General Joffre visited the British Commander at the latter’s headquarters in the Château of Compiègne. “I strongly represented my position,” Sir John reported to Lord Kitchener, “to the French Commander-in-Chief, who was most kind, cordial, and sympathetic, as he has always been.” The Field-Marshal was persuaded from this time on that “our stand should be made on some line between the Marne and the Seine.” The needed relief had already been arranged when the conference took place, by a movement which we may summarise as an inclination of the 6th and 5th French Armies toward each other across the British rear. Sordet’s three cavalry divisions had already passed from the right to the left of the British Army. D’Amade’s Divisions had done something to check Von Kluck’s advance by the Bapaume–Amiens and Peronne–Roye highroads. Nevertheless, Von der Marwitz’s cavalry was on the Somme on August 28. That day Lanrezac’s Army, which had retired from the line Avesnes–Chimay west-south-westward, took positions south of the Oise between La Fère and Guise. On the following day, August 29, while Joffre had gone from Lanrezac’s headquarters at Laon to consult Sir John French at Compiègne, Maunoury and Lanrezac struck two hard blows, the one eastward from the Santerre plateau toward Peronne, the other north-west from the Oise toward St. Quentin, against the two flanks of Kluck.