Must I leave Paris for a village? The flight to Bordeaux by the French Government. As the Allies retreated, the advancing Germans threatened Paris. On Monday afternoon, August 31, 1914, the French Cabinet Council began moving the Government to Bordeaux, packing documents, gold, and other valuables to keep them from falling into the hands of the Germans. The move culminated early in the morning of September 3 when President Poincaré, the Ministry, and members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies left, having turned the administration and defense of the city over to General Joseph Gallieni.
Die Flucht nach Bordeaux'Muss i' denn, muss i' dennzum Städtle hinaus!'The Flight to Bordeaux'Must I, must ILeave here for a village!'Signs and labels:Nach BordeauxPoincaréFranzösische StaatskarreFranzösische StaatsschatzGesetzbuchFrench National CartFrench TreasuryStatute BookSigned: C.D.Reverse:Verlag Hermann Worlff, Berlin S.59, Boppstr. 7
Black and white postcard with an embossed floral border, and a calendar for 1914. Two girls play at a water trough fashioned from a log, ribbons in their hair, and toy boats floating. On the trough, a poem:"This little card I send, and prayThat round about your path each dayThe light of love may shine alway."E. Hutchinson806J Copyright. Beagles' Postcards © Beagles' Postcards
Calendar from the French magazine Le Petit Journal with scenes including (clockwise from top left) the capture of a German battle flag by Zouaves and Chasseurs à pied, a French artillery crew manning a 75mm. field gun, a dragoon moving into position, a heavier gun firing, entrenched troops, and marines advancing. The calendar includes Roman Catholic holy days, saints days, fête nationale (Bastille Day), and the time of sunrise and sunset. Illustration by L. Bomblec (?).
Children dressed as Allied soldiers run to bring the New Year, 1916. France carries the 1, the United Kingdom (in a kilt) and Belgium — his national roundel on his hat — the 9, Serbia and Russia the 1 of the decade, and Italy the 6. Japan, bearing a flag, hurries to catch up. A folding calendar card for 1916 by G. Bertrand.Reverse: the calendar for 1916Inside:With best wishes for a happy Christmas with love from Wallis
1917 Wedgwood Calendar Tile with the United States Navy Yard in Boston on the face, and the 1917 calendar on the reverse.
1918 YMCA folding calendar card of two child French and American soldiers dancing beneath a ball of mistletoe and the words "With much Love", by Ray or R.A.Y.
"J'ai reçu le mandat de défendre Paris contre l'envahisseur.Ce mandat, je le remplirai jusqu'au bout.Army of Paris, Inhabitants of Paris,The members of the Government of the Republic have left Paris to give a fresh impulse to national defense.I have been entrusted with the task of defending Paris against the invader.That task I will fulfill to the end.GalliéniMilitary Governor of ParisCommandant of the Army of Paris" *
"J'ai reçu le Mandat de dèfendre Paris contre l'envahisseur. Ce Mandat, je le remplirai jusqu'au bout.(Proclamation du 3 Septembre 1914)I received the mandate to defend Paris against the invader. This mandate, I will fill to the end.(Proclamation of September 3, 1914)General Joseph Gallieni" *
"At about 3:20 P.M. personnel at the Nordholz base spotted what appeared to be an airship, and then saw a large flash of flame and heard an explosion. In a few minutes a report by telephone stated that a Zeppelin had fallen in flames near Neuwerk Island. Coastal batteries near Cuxhaven had a clear view of the disaster, and a sentry who had watched LZ.10 struggling shoreward with the upper portion of her hull shrouded by clouds, said he had seen a flash of lightning and with that a jagged flame that burst from the hull. Others saw the fire spread until the nose of the airship tilted down and she began to dive at about 80 degrees, and eventually piled up on the tidal flats, and burned in great clouds of smoke." *
". . . At about 1:50 A.M. I noticed a red glow in the northeast of London. Taking it to be an outbreak of fire I went in that direction. At about 2:05 A.M. a Zeppelin was picked up over N.N.E. London (as far as I could judge). Remembering my last failure, I sacrificed height (I was still at 12,100 feet) for speed and made nose-down for the Zeppelin. I saw shells bursting and night-tracer shells flying around it. When I drew closer I noticed that the anti-aircraft fire was too high or too low, also a good many rose 800 feet behind—a few tracers went right over. I could hear the burst about 3,000 feet from the Zeppelin.I flew to about 800 feet below it from bow to stern and distributed one drum along it (alternate new Brock and Pomeroy). It seemed to have no effect. I therefore moved to one side and gave it another drum along its side—without much apparent effect. I then got behind it (by this time I was very close—500 feet or less below—[)]and concentrated one drum on one part underneath. I was then at a height of 11,500 feet when attacking the Zeppelin. I had hardly finished the drum when I saw the part fired at glow. In a few seconds the whole rear part was blazing. When the third drum was fired there were no searchlights on the Zeppelin and no A.A. was firing. I quickly got out of the way of the falling Zeppelin and, being very excited, fired off a few red Very lights and dropped a parachute flare." *
"'We had no warning of any kind,' grieved one sailor. 'Before we knew what was happening, the roof was lifted off the shop, blown into the air, and fell in a thousand pieces among the men. It was flying glass, which was thick and heavy, that did the damage. We were dashed out of our hammocks to the floor, all mixed under broken glass. The men on either side of me were killed.'" *
"On September 3, Marshal Foch's 'Directive' prescribed that while (1) the British armies supported by the left of the French armies continue to attack in the general direction Cambrai—St. Quentin, and (2) the centre of the French armies continues its action to drive the enemy beyond the Aisne and the Ailette, (3) the American Army after delivering at the latest by September 10 their attack on the St. Mihiel salient should prepare 'as strong and violent an offensive as possible in the general direction of Mezières, covered on the East by the Meuse and supported on the left by the attack of the Fourth French Army (Gouraud).'" *
* Quotation contexts and sources
During the four and half years of the Great War from the summer of 1914 to November 11, 1918, over eight million combatants and six million civilians died. In battle, they were killed by new and increasingly powerful weapons, 70% by artillery fire, and in higher percentages than in Europe's wars of the previous century. Civilians died from starvation, from being shelled and bombed, and from genocidal operations against ethnic minorities.
In the war and its aftermath, the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey were destroyed, and new nations were born and reborn.
New technologies were invented and young ones advanced rapidly - the airplane, poison gas, the machine gun, the tank, flame-throwers, submarines. Industrial production of the technologies, of shells, of bullets, of barbed wire, grew to unprecedented levels.
Societies changed. Women entered the wage labor market to free men up for combat and to meet the production demands of the war. Passports, identity cards, and increased border controls became increasingly common.
When the war itself ended, related wars continued: in Russia, Civil War between the new Bolshevik government and its enemies, both foreign and domestic; in Turkey, war by Greece to seize islands in the Aegean Sea and parts of the mainland of Turkey itself; in Ireland, war for independence from Great Britain.
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of Austria-Hungary, a team of seven conspirators with grenades, pistols and cyanide capsules/tablets, joined the crowds that had turned out to see Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie von Hohenberg. A failed assassination attempt - a grenade that slightly wounded spectators and two in the royal couple's entourage - altered some plans and led to other events. A planned visit to City Hall went ahead, but a decision to visit the victims in hospital necessitating a changed route, a failure to inform the drivers of the change, the lead driver's attempt to back to correct the mistake - put the Archduke's stopped car in front of the most determined of the assassins, the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. He stepped forward, averted his eyes, and fired twice, shooting the Archduke through the throat and his wife through the groin. The couple was dead within an hour. The gun, the bombs, the cyanide Princip took, and some of the conspirators would be traced to Serbia.
The Archduke was not popular in Austria-Hungary, and the reaction to his death was muted. But Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, polyglot nation with populations that wanted to leave the empire. Princip had acted to advance his vision of a union of South Slavs that included Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Vienna, the capital, government officials feared the rise of Serbia, which had been victorious and doubled its size in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.
Initial concerns in other European capitals of an Austro-Hungarian response to the assassination lessened as July passed. In Petersburg, the Russian capital, government officials felt they must support Serbia if Austria-Hungary acted. The French and Russian governments communicated their support of their alliance and mutual commitment to aid the other in the event of war. The government of Great Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente with Russia and France, heard little that alarmed it. In Berlin, capital of the German Empire, which was allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, there was support for a quick and limited military action by Austria-Hungary.
Defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and humiliated in 1908 when it failed its Balkan ally Serbia, and did not prevent Austria-Hungary's incorporation of Slavic Bosnia-Herzegovina, many government officials in Russia felt the country must act in the next crisis when it inevitably arose. Many in the French government wanted to restore the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but feared a Germany that had a population half again as large as that of France, and worked to strengthen its ties with Russia, in part by financing its ally's rapid recovery from the 1905 war. Having seen the creation and rise of the Balkan states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, that had all wrested land and nationhood from the Ottoman Empire, and had come close to eliminating Turkey in Europe, Austria-Hungary feared losing its peoples and territories to these nations and to nations that did not yet exist. Great Britain, with the most powerful fleet in the world, and rule over one quarter of the world's population, but with a small army that was not structured for a European land war, was troubled by Germany's expansion and strengthening of its fleet. Many in the German military thought that war with Russia was inevitable, and that, with the recovery of Russia from the war and revolution of 1915, it should come sooner rather than when Russia had become even stronger. The military also feared a two-front war, facing France to the west, and Russia to the east. The military plan to address this, the Schlieffen Plan, aimed for a rapid defeat of France so that troops could be transported by rail across Germany to face the slowly-mobilizing Russians.
When Austria-Hungary's response to evidence that Serbia had played a role in the assassination came, there was little time for governments to react. Austria-Hungary submitted demands of Serbia that included unconditional acceptance within 24 hours. As European governments learned of the response, and hurried to react, Serbia accepted all by one of Austria-Hungary's demands, that which most impinged upon its sovereignty. The ambassador receiving the response left immediately for Vienna. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and on the next day bombarded Belgrade, its capital.
Russia mobilized its army in support of Serbia, but with a mobilization plan that activated troops facing not only Austria-Hungary but also Germany. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Luxemburg to begin its assault on France. France ordered general mobilization effective August 2, and began executing its plan to attack Germany along their border, through Alsace and Lorraine. On August 3, Germany declared war on France, and requested passage of its troops through Belgium to attack France along its northern border. Belgium, defending the neutrality that France, Germany, and Great Britain had pledged to support, refused. On August 4, Germany invaded Belgium. In Great Britain, where there was significant opposition to the war, the invasion of Belgium shifted the opinion of the public and the government. Britain declared war on Germany.
Across Europe, millions of men were in motion, on trains, horseback, and on foot. France and Britain were bringing troops and laborers from its colonies and the British Commonwealth, France from Algeria, Senegal, and Dahomey, Britain from Egypt and India. Generals had not assembled armies this large before, and had not put them into motion, nor led them into battle. Most generals, most soldiers, most civilians thought the war would end in months, that their their army would be in Berlin, in Paris, in Petersburg, by Christmas, before 1915. Only a few saw this war would be different, and would not end for years.
