The Great German Enveloping Movement 131 wing of the whole army, was exposed. On this flank, then, the Germans, evidently waiting for this event, flung five army corps — from 225,000 to 315,- 000 men — in one tremendous rush. Thus, at one stage, and the critical stage of the operation, the Allies were in this position: on the right flank and to the rear was the Army of the Moselle moving against their line of retreat. In the front was the main German army, commanded by Generals von Hausen and von Buelow; on the left flank and striking toward their rear were five corps, commanded by General von Kluck. In other words, the Allies were in great peril of being surrounded by two forces striking on their flanks and rear, while faced with a superior force at the north. Here, then, was the imminent shadow of a Sedan, far more gigantic than that of 1870, which might in a single operation dispose of at least 300,000 first line troops and permit a victorious German army moving south to interpose between Paris and the French armies on the Vosges and in Alsace and drive them north and eastward against the Bavarian-Aus- trian troops about Metz and Strassburg. Such, briefly, was the tremendous enveloping move- ment of the German General Staff, a magnificent ex- pansion of the elder von Moltke's plan, which in 1870 had shut one French army up in IVIetz and led to the capture of the other at Sedan. The purpose was now disclosed, alike in the French official state- ments and in the German bulletins, which for the first