Yet the obstacle had already done its work. On 3 September Schlieffen’s “strong right wing,” represented by Kluck’s First Army, had drifted forty miles to the east of Paris and was aligned to the south, with the Sixth Army and the Paris garrison behind it, the BEF on its right flank, the Fifth Army to its front and Foch’s Ninth Army menacing its left and threatening an irruption into the gap which had opened between it and Bülow’s Second Army. It was the existence of Paris and Lanrezac’s evasive manoeuvring that had brought about this result.
