ABSTRACT
From mid-September to November of 1914, after the Battle of the Marne, the battle front extended north as the Allies and Germans engaged in a series of attacks and counterattacks in an effort to gain the only remaining open ground, which lay from the Aisne River to the coast, in order to turn the other's flank. This was known as the Race to the Sea. In late August of that year, the French armies had failed in War Plan XVII to drive the Germans from Alsace and Lorraine. The Schlieffen Plan had been no more successful, as the German army ran short of manpower and swept east of Paris: On the Marne, General Joseph Joffre had rallied the retreating Allied armies to launch a great counterattack that had saved Paris and France. The opposing sides both searched desperately for a way to keep the war of movement open in hopes of gaining victory.
