During the Great War the Knight King of the Belgians, Albert I of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, retreated with his men. The Germans attacked Liege on August 4, 1914, it fell three days later. The regular Belgium Army of 120,000 men was joined by 65,000 reservists, the militia, and almost 20,000 additional volunteers. The Belgians were pushed back from the frontier, but the army was able to retreat in good order.
The civilian population was told not to resist and to leave the fighting to the armed forces. The German commanders were convinced that the Belgians were lying. On August 15 the Germans captured the town of Dinat in Belgium, defended at the time by the French. A week later the German massacred the town based on the allegation they were hiding guerrillas and saboteurs. King Albert and whole Western world were outraged by the over 600 civilian deaths. Still, he had to keep fighting and retreating. Germany besieged the Belgian forts, the last bastions fell on August 17, and the government abandoned that capital, Brussels, the same day.
Course à la mer and The Battle of Yser
They continued fighting in September, the Germans overran most of Belgium, chasing King Albert’s forces—now joined by their French and British allies—in the “Race to the Sea”, hoping to cut them off from the English Channel and get around the allied flanks. The city Antwerp was besieged on September 28 and fell October 5, though the Germans were learning to be wary of Belgian courage. The Germans pressed their attack, pushing the allies back toward Calais and the Channel Ports. With both sides having arrived on the North Sea coast—the Germans as hunters and the allies as prey— neither could turn the other’s flank. Belgium was out of time and space. Germany now controlled around 95% of the kingdom. From October 16 to Halloween, they fought the Battle of the River Yser. This was the king’s last chance to keep a piece of Belgium free.
Over 60,000 Germans attacked 50,000 Belgians and legion of Frenchmen. The river was only about 60 feet wide, and yet, the army was on the coast. There was a chance. The Belgians lacked heavy artillery, but the British could fix that. The Royal Navy sent three warships to pound the Germans. Then the Belgians opened the floodgates and the North Sea water poured from the sluices, deluging an area a mile wide, slowing the Germans advance. They could not dig trenches and had to stand where they could be fired upon. Still the Germany army pressed on until October 30th when the Belgian plan came to shocking fruition as the land behind the Germans was flooding too! The Germans were stopped with attention refocusing on the ongoing First Battle of Ypres, which Germany now had to win to break through the allied forces. The battle lasted a month with over 100,000 casualties on both sides, wrecking much of the British Army, ending German hopes of a quick victory and making King Albert a hero. He held a bit of his country free from occupation. But what happened next would truly save Belgium. With only 5% of his kingdom under his government’s administration, Albert stayed with his army and held the Yser front, for four years and a month.
The whole of Belgium independence rested with maintaining the army and its separate existence from the British and French forces and their ambitions. King Albert’s policy was that Belgium was at war Germany but only associated with Britain and France by circumstances. As long as he held direct command of the Belgian Army and the Belgium Army was an autonomous force, then Belgium was unconquered. Legitimacy rested with the king and his men. It paid off. In September 1918 he took command of Groupe d'Armées des Flandres consisting of 12 of his own divisions but also 10 British and 6 French divisions. The King of the Belgians drove back 18 German divisions, and pressed the attack until Germany capitulated. He kept his army intact and his kingdom alive. It was a lesson the Americans had learned earlier.
The “Commander-in-Chief, America” attacked the capital of the United States.
Well, the British commander that is.
In the summer of 1777, Member of Parliament for Nottingham, Sir William Howe led the British Army sailing from New York: destination Philadelphia. The British Army’s theater commander-in-chief in the war to suppress the American “states” sought to end the rebellion. A year earlier the colonies had declared independence from King George III and Howe meant to make them pay for their insolence. He would smother their hopes and take their Congress.
At first the American commander-in-chief General George Washington of Virginia, did not know where Howe was headed, and it seemed he might be marching north to join the womanizing playboy General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne who would soon fight two battles at Saratoga against the Americans on September 19 and October 7, finally surrendering on the 17th. (Perhaps his reputation for womanizing is exaggerated, but it makes for a colorful image.)
However, by leaving New York and sailing south into the Chesapeake Bay, Howe effectively left Burgoyne unsupported. This allowed the Americans to concentrate their forces against the British, with the then hero Benedict Arnold beating Burgoyne, who could not coax the mistress of victory to his side.
But in the middle of that fight, on September 26, 1777, Philadelphia fell to the British. Earlier on September 11, General Washington’s 11,000 Continentals were beaten by Howe and his 15,000 strong army. Washington tried to keep his men between the city and the British, which allowed Congress to escape the city. When Howe marched into Philadelphia, the America government was gone. But so was the United States Army. The hope of the revolution rested on the bayonets of the Continental forces.
Taking Philadelphia was symbolic but not very much. The city of brotherly love was not the American center of gravity. Simply put the center of gravity (CoG) is the one big thing that keeps an enemy in the fight. It is the primary source of their power, strength, and balance. The famed Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz defined it as the “hub of all power and movement.” If you destroy or neutralize this hub, the enemy loses their ability to fight effectively, and their will can collapse. For some countries this is their capital, such as Paris tends to be for France.
The colonies had governed themselves separately for over 150 years by this point in their history. Philadelphia as the “capital” was a new thing, and in fact, the “capital” was wherever Congress happened to be. The newly proclaimed independent states retained nearly all political power in their hands and gave very little to their delegates in Congress. There was no real national bureaucracy to speak of in Philadelphia. However, when in when a government’s capacity and legitimacy are pushed to the brink during an emergency, but it remains unbroken and retains the allegiance of the people, its final reservoir of power is the military.
Washington and the army were the American center of gravity. As long as the army survived in Valley Forge, as long as it remained intact, in force, potentially threatening and in the field, then the war continued. The British could take New York, and they did, holding it until the end of the war. It did not matter. They took Charleston in South Carolina. It did not matter. And they took Philadelphia, which they held for 266 days.
What mattered was that Washington, despite the cold and disease, kept the army together as a force whose existence was a persistent subversion of British claims to be the legitimate authority in America. Like Albert of Belgium, George Washington saved his country by existing, by not yielding. The army proved that America was more than a mere experiment, it was a real country. Howe should have helped Burgoyne first; it probably cost the British the war because when the news of the surrender of a whole British Army reach Benjamin Franklin in Paris, it was just the news he needed to get King Louis XVI to join the war on America’s side. If Washington could keep the American forces in the fight, the French Army would join them, and the British would be in real peril. The message from Yser to Yorktown is “Just hold on to hope.” The men of the Continental Army carried American liberty on their cold, shivering shoulders. Just as Albert’s soldiers bore the weight of Belgium from 1914-1918.
The true greatness of America is not yielding to despair. Grit and the determination to go on against fear and tyranny built the American republic. In 1914 little Belgium had a king who understood that the first victory in war begins with the determination to fight. 250 years ago, the Father of our Country taught us that lesson from day one. Do not forget that if you love your country, you must first choose to hope when you want to despair. And then go get the job done.
