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The Battle of Mons was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the First World War. It was a subsidiary action of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the Allies clashed with Germany on the French borders. At Mons, the British Army attempted to hold the line of the Mons–Condé Canal against the advancing German 1st Army. Although the British fought well and inflicted disproportionate casualties on the numerically superior Germans, they were eventually forced to retreat due both to the greater strength of the Germans and the sudden retreat of the French Fifth Army, which exposed the British right flank. Though initially planned as a simple tactical withdrawal and executed in good order, the British retreat from Mons lasted for two weeks and took the BEF to the outskirts of Paris before it counter-attacked in concert with the French, at the Battle of the Marne. Background Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 and on 9 August, the BEF began embarking for France. Unlike Continental European armies, the BEF in 1914 was exceedingly small. At the beginning of the war, the German and French armies numbered well over a million men each, divided into eight and five field armies respectively; the BEF had c. 80,000 soldiers in two corps of entirely professional soldiers made up of long-service volunteer soldiers and reservists. The BEF was probably the best trained and most experienced of the European armies of 1914. British training emphasised rapid-fire marksmanship and the average British soldier was able to hit a man-sized target fifteen times a minute, at a range of 300 yards (270 m) with his Lee–Enfield rifle. This ability to generate a high volume of accurate rifle-fire played an important role in the BEF's battles of 1914. The Battle of Mons took place as part of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the advancing German armies clashed with the advancing Allied armies along the Franco-Belgian and Franco-German borders. The BEF was stationed on the left of the Allied line, which stretched from Alsace-Lorraine in the east to Mons and Charleroi in southern Belgium. The British position on the French flank meant that it stood in the path of the German 1st Army, the outermost wing of the massive "right hook" intended by the Schlieffen Plan (a combination of the Aufmarsch I West and Aufmarsch II West deployment plans), to pursue the Allied armies after defeating them on the frontier and force them to abandon northern France and Belgium or risk destruction. The British reached Mons on 22 August. In the afternoon of that same day arrived a message from the French Fifth Army commander, General Charles Lanrezac, sent to Field Marshal Sir John French requesting the BEF to turn right to attack von Bülow's advancing flank. The French Fifth Army, located on the right of the BEF, was engaged with the German 2nd and 3rd armies at the Battle of Charleroi. French refused, instead agreeing to hold the line of the Condé–Mons–Charleroi Canal for twenty-four hours, to prevent the German 1st Army from threatening the French left flank. The British spent the day digging in along the canal. Prelude British preparations At the Battle of Mons the BEF had some 80,000 men, comprising the Cavalry Division, an independent cavalry brigade and two corps, each with two infantry divisions. I Corps was commanded by Sir Douglas Haig and was composed of the 1st and 2nd Divisions. II Corps was commanded by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and consisted of the 3rd and 5th Divisions. Each division had 18,073 men and 5,592 horses, in three brigades of four battalions. Each division had twenty-four Vickers machine guns – two per battalion – and three field artillery brigades with fifty-four 18-pounder guns, one field howitzer brigade of eighteen 4.5-inch howitzers and a heavy artillery battery of four 60-pounder guns. The II Corps, on the left of the British line, occupied defensive positions along the Mons–Condé Canal, while I Corps was positioned almost at a right angle away from the canal, along the Mons–Beaumont road (see map). I Corps was deployed in this manner to protect the right flank of the BEF in case the French were forced to retreat from their position at Charleroi. I Corps did not line the canal, which meant that it was little involved in the battle and the German attack was faced mostly by II Corps. The dominant geographical feature of the battlefield, was a loop in the canal, jutting outwards from Mons towards the village of Nimy. This loop formed a small salient which was difficult to defend and formed the focus of the battle. The first contact between the two armies occurred on 21 August, when a British bicycle reconnaissance unit encountered a German force near Obourg and Private John Parr became the first British soldier to be killed in the war. The first substantial action occurred on the morning of 22 August. At 6:30 a.m., the 4th Royal Irish Dragoons laid an ambush for a patrol of German lancers outside the village of Casteau, to the north-east of Mons. When the Germans spotted the trap and fell back, a troop of the dragoons, led by Captain Charles Hornby gave chase, followed by the rest of his squadron, all with drawn sabres. The retreating Germans led the British to a larger force of lancers, whom they promptly charged and Hornby became the first British soldier to kill an opposing soldier in the Great War, fighting on horseback with sword against lance. After a further pursuit of a few miles, the Germans turned and fired upon the Irish cavalry, at which point the dragoons dismounted and returned fire. Private E. Edward Thomas, a cavalryman and drummer, is reputed to have fired the first shot of the war for the British Army, hitting a German trooper. That very same day, having used British reconnaissance planes along with Lanrezac's messaging to his Army Staff, BEF's Chief of Intelligence, Colonel George Macdonogh warned Sir John French that three German army corps were advancing straight against them. The Field Marshal chose to ignore these claims, instead proposing to advance towards Soignies. German preparations Advancing towards the British was the German 1st Army, commanded by Alexander von Kluck. The 1st Army was composed of four active corps (II, III, IV, and IX Corps) and three reserve corps (III, IV and IX Reserve corps), although only the active corps took part in the fighting at Mons. German corps had two divisions each, with attendant cavalry and artillery. The 1st Army had the greatest offensive power of the German armies, with a density of c. 18,000 men per 1 mi (1.6 km) of front, or about ten per 1 m (3 ft 3 in). Late on 20 August General Karl von Bülow, the 2nd Army commander, who had tactical control over the 1st Army while north of the Sambre, held the view that an encounter with the British was unlikely and wished to concentrate on the French units reported between Charleroi and Namur, on the south bank of the Sambre; reconnais.... Discover the W T Larned Jean De La Fontaine popular books. Find the top 100 most popular W T Larned Jean De La Fontaine books.