The First World War: 1914, the Marne and Marshal Foch

Riders in covered spiked helmets move through a crowded city street and columns march through a misty wood; a long line of old taxis full of soldiers drives along a wide road. Shells hurl up domes of earth, soldiers with bayonets run forward in silhouette, and men file along a stone-lined trench. Ferdinand Foch in his oak-leaved képi walks along a line of bearded soldiers, shakes hands among sailors in white caps and stands, bare-headed and moustached, among his officers.

In September 1914 the French and British armies stopped the German advance on the Marne, some fifty kilometres from Paris; the military governor of Paris, General Gallieni, sent reinforcements to the front in requisitioned taxis. Four years of trench warfare followed. In 1918 Foch, as supreme commander of the Allied armies, led the counter-offensives that ended in the armistice of 11 November.