Neither at French nor at British Headquarters were these dispositions exactly known; still less could the German commander’s intentions be known. The last stage of the British retirement, asked for by General Joffre, had taken the body of Sir John French’s troops out of direct contact with the enemy. They had to embody newly-arrived men and guns, and then to return over this ground. Joffre’s order of September 4 had named as the British line for the evening of the following day “the front Changis–Coulommiers, _facing east_, ready to attack in the general direction of Montmirail”——due east, that is to say, not north-east. It is evident, from this instruction, that the Generalissimo (1) did not anticipate any serious resistance west or south of Coulommiers, for the British could not be fighting on their north flank while marching due east, and they could not start from Coulommiers when the enemy was 8 miles farther south; and (2) did not anticipate a sudden withdrawal of Kluck northward, which would require the British to turn thither in aid of Maunoury. When Joffre and French met at Melun on September 5, the instruction was modified, but not radically; it was now, in Sir John’s words, “to effect a change of front to my right——my left resting on the Marne, and my right on the 5th Army, to fill the gap between that army and the 6th.” The right of the 5th Army, however, was not at Coulommiers——both Changis and Coulommiers were in the hands of the enemy——but Courtacon, 12 miles farther to the south-east; and to join the 6th and 5th Armies implied a north-easterly, not an easterly frontage. Joffre so far recognised the difficulty of filling this wide space with five divisions as to instruct Gallieni to send across the Marne the 8th Division of the French 4th Corps; and this came in, with prompt effect, between Meaux and Villiers-sur-Morin, 5 miles farther south, beside the British 3rd Corps, at 9 a.m. on September 6. There then still remained a space of over 20 miles between the 6th and 5th Armies, and it is, therefore, idle to suggest, as some zealous partisans of Gallieni have done,[59] that the British commander was needlessly nervous as to the continuity of the line, when it became evident that considerable bodies of the enemy were spread across his path. [Illustration: The BRITISH Turn-About]