page_title: First Battle of the Marne
section_title: Race to the Sea
hierarchical_section_title: First Battle of the Marne / Aftermath / Subsequent operations / Race to the Sea
caption_attribution_description: English: Diagram of German and Allied moves into Artois and Flanders, September-October 1914
context_page_description: The First Battle of the Marne was a World War I battle fought from 6–12 September 1914. It resulted in an Allied victory against the German armies in the west. The battle was the culmination of the German advance into France and pursuit of the Allied armies which followed the Battle of the Frontiers in August and had reached the eastern outskirts of Paris. A counter-attack by six French armies and the British Expeditionary Force along the Marne River forced the Imperial German Army to retreat northwest, leading to the First Battle of the Aisne and the Race to the Sea. The battle was a victory for the Allied Powers but led to four years of trench warfare stalemate on the Western Front.
  The battle of the Marne was a turning point of World War I. By the end of August 1914, the whole Allied army on the Western Front had been forced into a general retreat back towards Paris. Meanwhile, the two main German armies continued through France. It seemed that Paris would be taken as both the French and the British fell back towards the Marne River. The war became a stalemate when the Allied Powers won the Battle of the Marne.
context_section_description: From 17 September – 17 October the belligerents made reciprocal attempts to turn the northern flank of their opponent. Joffre ordered the French Second Army to move to the north of the French Sixth Army, by moving from eastern France from 2–9 September and Falkenhayn who had replaced Moltke on 14 September, ordered the German 6th Army to move from the German-French border to the northern flank on 17 September. By the next day, French attacks north of the Aisne led Falkenhayn to order the 6th Army to repulse the French and secure the flank. The French advance at the First Battle of Picardy (22–26 September) met a German attack rather than an open flank and by the end of the Battle of Albert (25–29 September), the Second Army had been reinforced to eight Corps but was still opposed by German forces at the Battle of Arras (1–4 October), rather than advancing around the German northern flank. The German 6th Army had also found that on arrival in the north, it was forced to oppose the French attack rather than advance around the flank and that the secondary objective, to protect the northern flank of the German Armies in France, had become the main task. By 6 October, the French needed British reinforcements to withstand German attacks around Lille.  The BEF had begun to move from the Aisne to Flanders on 5 October and reinforcements from England assembled on the left flank of the Tenth Army, which had been formed from the left flank units of the 2nd Army on 4 October.
  The Allied Powers and the Germans attempted to take more ground after the "open" northern flank had disappeared.  The Franco-British attacks towards Lille in October at the battles of La Bassée, Messines and Armentières (October–November) were followed up by attempts to advance between the BEF and the Belgian army by a new French Eighth Army. The moves of the 7th and then the 6th Army from Alsace and Lorraine had been intended to secure German lines of communication through Belgium, where the Belgian army had sortied several times, during the period between the Great Retreat and the Battle of the Marne; in August, British marines had landed at Dunkirk. In October, a new 4th Army was assembled from the III Reserve Corps, the siege artillery used against Antwerp, and four of the new reserve corps training in Germany.  A German offensive began by 21 October but the 4th and 6th Armies were only able to take small amounts of ground, at great cost to both sides at the Battle of the Yser (16–31 October) and further south in the First Battle of Ypres (19 October – 22 November).  Falkenhayn then attempted to achieve a limited goal of capturing Ypres and Mont Kemmel.
caption: German and Allied operations, Artois and Flanders, September–November 1914
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