Two days later, on August 27, 1914, General Joffre brought together, using army corps and divisions recruited elsewhere, a supplementary army, the Ninth Army, which was detailed to take its place between the Fourth and Fifth Armies. He intrusted its command to a general, who, while commanding the Twentieth Corps, had distinguished himself by his brilliant conduct in Lorraine, General Foch. The establishment of the army of Manoury on the left of the French armies so as to fall on the right flank of the Germans when they marched on Paris; the establishment of a strong army under one of the best French generals at the center for the purpose of encountering the main weight of the German army; such were the two decisions of the French commander in chief, taken on August 25 and 27, 1914, which contained in germ the victory of the Marne, waged and won two weeks later. * * * * * CHAPTER XI FIGHTING AT BAY The forces of France also had been fighting to protect their retreat southward in these August days of 1914. After the passages of the Sambre were forced, during the great Mons-Charleroi battle, the Fifth French Army was placed in very perilous straits by the failure of the Fourth Army, under General Langle, to hold the Belgian river town of Givet. Hard pressed in the rear by General von Buelow's army, and on their right by General von Hausen commanding the Saxon Army and the Prussian Guard, the Fifth Army of France had to retire with all possible speed, for their path of retreat was threatened by a large body of Teutons advancing on Rocroi. On August 23, 1914, holding their indomitable pursuers in check by desperate rear-guard action, with their two cavalry divisions under General Sordet galloping furiously along the lines of the western flank to protect the retiring infantry and guns, the Fifth Army unexpectedly turned at Guise. At that point considerable reenforcements in troops and material arrived, making the Fifth Army the strongest in France. It now defeated and drove over the Oise the German Guard and Tenth Corps, and then continued its retirement. But the left wing of the French army was unsuccessful, and Amiens and the passages of the Somme had to be abandoned to the invaders. On Sunday, August 23, 1914, the Fourth Army, operating from the Meuse, was heavily outnumbered by the Saxon army around the river town of Dinant. They fell back, after furious fighting for the possession of the bridges, which the French engineers blew up as the army withdrew southward to the frontier. Soon after, at Givet, the Germans succeeded in wedging their way across the Meuse. Some advanced on Rocroi and Rethel, and other corps marched along the left bank of the Meuse, through wooded country, against a steadily increasing resistance which culminated at Charleville, a town on the western bank of the river. There a determined stand was made.