THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES 1917 - PART ONE
THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES 1917 – PART ONE
The First World War destroyed three empires, bankrupted one, severely strained another and enriched only one of the major participants. It was the most cataclysmic event in the history of modern Europe and left a legacy of bitterness that was to erupt again twenty years later. The Congress of Vienna after the French revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars established a pattern in Europe that kept the peace for a century. The wars that did occur – the Crimean and those of German unification – were local and did not spread across the continent in the way that the Thirty Years, Seven Years and Napoleonic wars had done. But much had changed since 1815, when Germany consisted of four kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurttemberg), six grand duchies, six duchies, eight principalities, four cities and Hanover (ruled by the British kings until 1837). Then in 1864 the Schleswig-Holstein Question brought war between Prussia and Denmark.
The Question had engaged European statesmen for decades. Palmerston, British prime minister 1855-58 and 1859-65, famously said: ‘only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business – the Prince Consort, who is dead, a German professor, who has gone mad, and I, who have forgotten all about it.’ In reality the question was really very simple: the duchy of Holstein had a majority German population and a minority of Danes, while Schleswig had a majority of Danes and a minority of Germans. Both duchies were part of Denmark but had a very broad measure of autonomy, with their own laws and taxation. Then, in 1863, King Frederick VII of Denmark died and was succeeded by Christian IX. Christian, under pressure from his parliament which had become more influential since the mini revolutions of 1848, announced that henceforth the two duchies would be ruled in the same way and subject to the same laws and fiscal policies as the rest of Denmark. Here was Prussia’s opportunity. In 1864, supported by Austria, the Prussians defeated the Danish army and the two duchies came under joint Prussian and Austrian rule. Although not called that at the time, this was the first war of German unification.
Austria never wished to see German unification except under her auspices, and disputes as to the governance of the two ex-Danish duchies provided Prussia’s next cause for the second war of unification, with Austria this time. On the face of it there was a huge Austrian advantage in population (34 million to 19 million), a larger army and the support of most of the larger German states, but the Prussian army was better trained, better equipped and better led and in seven weeks from 14 June to 26 July 1866 defeated one of the great powers of Europe. Prussia now annexed Schleswig Holstein and Hanover (not a British concern since 1837) and became the undisputed leader of the North German Federation, a customs free zone in which they included the south German states that had not joined the Federation and were left rudderless after the defeat of Austria. In 1867 Prussia (and the North German Federation) concluded a military alliance with the southern German states, the existence of which soon leaked.
Britain was happy with an enlarged Prussia, seeing her as a bulwark against France, Britain’s traditional enemy, while Russia was also content, seeing Prussia as a buffer to Austria. France, on the other hand, was concerned, knowing about the military alliance and suspecting the Prussia’s ambitions went farther than the North German federation and a customs union, and she lobbied against any suggestions of German unification. Having removed Denmark and Austria as obstacles to unification Prussia, guided by the ‘Iron Chancellor’, Otto von Bismarck, had to neutralise France. By a manipulation of diplomatic correspondence in relation to the question as to who was to succeed to the vacant Spanish throne, Bismarck enticed France into declaring war on 18 July 1870. Once again numbers favoured the French but, thanks to better road and rail communications, Prussia could amass more troops where they were needed, and supported by Krupp’s excellent modern artillery brought France to her knees in a matter of weeks. Some French garrisons held out but on 28 January 1871 France surrendered and her emperor, Napoleon III, nephew of the first emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, was captured and exiled to England. Prussia annexed Alsace (a German speaking province of France) and a third of Lorraine and imposed a huge indemnity of five million French francs (£200 million) on France to pay for the war (the equivalent amount that Napoleon had imposed upon Prussia in 1807) and held a victory parade in Paris. It was the third war of German unification and on 18 January, before the final French surrender, King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, and Germany was united as a federal empire, dominated by Prussia. Germany, long a collection of statelets was now one nation, increasingly nationalistic and of increasing economic strength.
Kaiser William died in 1888 and was succeeded by his son Frederick, who lasted only ninety days as Kaiser before dying of cancer. Frederick, who was a fair minded reformer, was Germany’s last chance of developing into a liberal democracy. Frederick’s son, William II, was of a very different stamp. Kaiser at the age of twenty-one, he may not have been himself a war monger but he allowed himself to be surrounded by people who were, and he certainly enjoyed the trappings of nationalism and militarism. In 1890 he freed himself from the steadying hand of Bismarck and dismissed the now seventy-five year old chancellor. In the same year the Kaiser did not renew the so called ‘insurance treaty’ with Russia, a long standing Prussian and then German measure to avoid ever having to fight a war on two fronts.
Although Prussia had decisively defeated Austria in 1866, Bismarck had arranged a military alliance with Austria, or more properly with the Austro Hungarian Empire, in 1879, and she and Germany would be allied in the coming world war. The empire was a rag tag collection of states including not only Austria and Hungary but what are now the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and parts of Poland, Italy, Romania and Ukraine, and, since 1908, Bosnia. Presided over by Franz Josef, emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, and on the throne since 1848, the empire was creaking. National fault lines were growing more obvious, and independence movements, although in their infancy in the early twentieth century, were an ominous sign of what might come. In the Austrian court there were those who thought that an external threat might serve to unify the empire and negate the breakaway movements.
Russia had been ruled by the Romanovs for 300 years. There were eighteen Romanovs, five were assassinated, four were women, nine married Germans and one was German. They were appointed by God and answerable only to God, but the times when the Russians would endure and tolerate absolute autocracy were coming to an end. Tsar Alexander III, who ruled from 1881, and who was married to the sister of Britain’s Queen Alexandra, was an absolute monarch with the character and force of personality to be so. When Germany had not renewed the insurance treaty in 1890 Russia, concerned that this presaged German ambitions on Russian territory, allied herself with France. When Alexander died in 1894 he was succeeded by his son Nicholas II who very much wanted to be an autocrat but lacked the character, personality and insight to be so. By virtue of his mother he was a first cousin of King George V of England who was also a first cousin of Kaiser William II (whose mother Victoria, Princess Royal, was a daughter of Queen Victoria).
France had long seen Germany as the potential enemy rather than England, with the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine a constant sore, and as German foreign policy became more aggressive so France looked to her own military preparedness. France, like all continental countries, relied on universal male conscription to man her army, but the military budget was never enough to include all those eligible for call up. By 1913 it was evident that if it came to war between France and Germany the Germans could field considerably more men than could the French. The solution was to extend the period of service in the field army from two to three years and to accelerate planning for war.
Britain had traditionally eschewed a continental commitment, being more concerned with the security of her empire, but as Germany under Kaiser William II became more belligerent the British began to become less pro German and less anti French. The Entente Cordiale signed between Britain and France in 1904 resolved colonial rivalry in Africa, and it did bring the two countries closer together, helped by King Edward VII who died in 1910 but who was very much a Francophile. The Anglo Russian Convention of 1907 settled conflicting ambitions in central Asia (The ‘Great Game’) and meant that England no longer saw Russia as a threat. Although neither of these settlements carried any obligation to support France, or the Franco-Russian alliance, in the event of war, Britain did have a long standing policy of maintaining a balance of power in Europe, where no one country could dominate the entire continent. She had also, since the Treaty of London in 1839, been one of the guarantors of the ‘existence, neutrality and sovereignty’ of the newly recognised state of Belgium which had broken away from Holland. Whether she liked it or not – and most did not – the British had at least a peripheral obligation to Europe.
Traditionally the defence of England was the Royal Navy – as the great Admiral John Jervis, Lord St Vincent, had said in response to a French threat in 1801 ‘I do not say they cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea’ – and since 1889 British policy had been that the Royal Navy was to be larger than the next two largest navies combined, which were those of France and Russia. Since 1907, however, a new naval rivalry arose, when Germany launched seventeen modern dreadnought type battleships between then and 1914. Since unification and the acquisition of a few colonies in Africa and the Pacific, Germany had developed a merchant marine, and hence she needed a navy to protect it – but not a navy of seventeen battleships! The only possible reason for Germany to develop a blue water navy would be to take on the only world naval power – Britain – at some time in the future.
The spark that set off what came to be known as the First World War was struck on 28 June 1914 in the Balkans, when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated on a visit to Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, by a Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Serbia had very much resented the annexation of Bosnia by Austria in 1908, and although there is no evidence that the Serbian government were behind the murder, Austria held it responsible. In an ultimatum that the British Foreign Secretary thought was ‘the most difficult one ever given to one country by another’ amongst other demands Austria insisted that all anti Austrian propaganda in Serbian newspapers should stop, that all anti Austrian officials be removed from office, that Serbia seek out the assassin and his accomplices and that Austrian officials be allowed into Serbia to assist and that an apology should be published in Serbian Army Orders. To the amazement of those who knew the bellicose nature of Serbian nationalism, their government accepted all the terms of the ultimatum except those pertaining to publication in Army Orders, on the grounds that to do so would precipitate a mutiny. Germany, whose government had surrounded itself with nations that, while not necessarily being potential enemies, were certainly unsympathetic to her, had assured Austria of German support should the Serbian question lead to war. From then on things moved quickly.