In addition, British guns, though vastly outnumbered by the German artillery, gave most effective support. By the early afternoon, the Germans had established a great superiority of artillery, but their advance was slowed by murderously accurate rifle fire by the British defenders.
From that time onward the guns were gradually extended westward as battery after battery came into action against the British II Corps. The battle opened in earnest about 10:30 am with a bombardment by German batteries located on high ground northeast of the Mons salient. The bulk of the day’s fighting thus fell upon the salient formed by the canal loop around Mons, but the envelopment of the British left did not succeed, in part because of the delay caused by the phantom British force in Tournai. Once Kluck had grasped the real state of affairs, his plan appears to have been to envelop both the British flanks while bombarding the front heavily with his guns. By late morning, Kluck had realized that the British were in strength on the canal and that the troops at Tournai, now known to be French, had retired toward Lille. The town was actually held by two French territorial battalions, but Kluck halted three corps to deal with the possible threat to his right flank. Indeed, there was a delay early in the day caused by a report that Allied troops, perhaps British, were detraining in force at Tournai, some 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Mons. The German First Army had been ordered to shift its direction of attack from southwest to south, toward Mons, but Kluck was ignorant of the position of the British force. When day broke on August 23, the British force of about 75,000 men and 300 guns was opposed by some 150,000 men and 600 guns of the German First Army under Gen. The loop in the canal also constituted an obvious salient, and Smith-Dorrien had prepared another, more defensible, line linking the villages of Frameries and Boussu. South of the canal, the crests of the high ground afforded the British useful sites for artillery, but the slag heaps of the numerous mines limited observation to some extent. Muddy ditches and barbed-wire fences impeded movement, but clumps of trees and bushes provided valuable cover and were of service for the enemy’s machine guns. A canal that looped north of Mons provided a valuable defensive line, while the terrain on the opposite side held numerous difficulties for the attackers. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps on the British left, where the situation was not unfavourable for the British. As matters turned out, the German attack on the BEF was directed almost entirely against Gen.
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