the letter, which was to become a key source in the recrimination after the war, as being like a professor's critique of a B− thesis. Advance into Belgium Fifth Army contained I, II, III, X and XI Corps, the 4th Cavalry Division and two reserve divisions. Between 8 August—when Lanrezac sent his chief of staff General Hely d’Oissel to warn them—and 10 August, GQG scoffed at reports of strong German forces being spotted at Huy in Belgium, arguing that the Germans did not have enough troops for this to be likely and that the reconnaissance was unreliable. Lanrezac was already sufficiently concerned (11 August) about the German movement into Belgium to obtain permission to deploy one of his corps at Givet on the Meuse. Liège fell on 12 August, on which day senior British generals were still arguing, in London, as to how far forward the BEF should be deployed. That same day Joffre ordered Lanrezac to move his left corps—Franchet d’Esperey’s I Corps—up to Dinant. Lanrezac visited his superior, General Joseph Joffre on 14 August, and begged him not to have Third and Fourth Armies attack into “that death trap of the Ardennes” and to be allowed to deploy his own army facing north rather than northeast, so as to face a German march westwards through Belgium. Joffre was pleased at the good progress which the French were making into Alsace-Lorraine, and unwilling to listen. Lanrezac later wrote that he had “left with death in my soul.” At 7pm on 15 August, after German cavalry had been spotted at Dinant on the Meuse, Lanrezac at last obtained permission to redeploy from opposite the Ardennes. On that day Joffre issued his Instruction Particuliere No 10, stating that the main German effort would come through Belgium. Lanrezac was ordered to deploy into the angle of the Rivers Sambre and the Meuse, requiring him to make a march of 120 kilometres in 5 days. He was also required to hand over command of Eydoux's XI Corps—men from Brittany—to Fourth Army in the Ardennes. Meeting with Sir John French The British liaison officer Edward Spears later wrote that Lanrezac's reputation as an academic lecturer made him “the star turn” of the French Army. The British commander Sir John French, at his meeting with Joffre on 16 August, was advised to hurry up and join in Lanrezac's offensive, as he would not wait for