At this point Haig had 52 divisions in his front line Armies, and another 8 in GHQ reserve, and 3 cavalry divisions. British troops were tired and weakened, and British divisions had been cut in size from 12 battalions to 9. Allied intelligence did not fall for German deceptions that they might attack in Italy or the Balkans, but thought that the main attack might fall in the Cambrai-St Quentin (Third Army) sector. Haig privately thought the Guards Division "our only reliable reserve". He has been criticised for writing (2 March) that he "was only afraid that the Enemy would find our front so very strong that he will hesitate to commit his Army to the attack with the almost certainty of losing very heavily", but this in fact referred to the First, Third and Fourth (formerly Second, now renumbered, at Ypres) Army fronts which he had spent a week inspecting, and which were well-defended – Smuts and Hankey had come to the same conclusion in January. Haig thought the Canadians "really fine disciplined soldiers now and so smart and clean" compared to the Australians. Haig inspected Fifth Army (7–9 March) and noted widespread concerns, which he shared, at lack of reserves – he released one division from Flanders to Fifth Army and deployed another, under GHQ control, to the rear of Fifth Army. As late as 17 March Cox, who had replaced Charteris as Intelligence Chief, predicted that the German Offensive was not yet immediately imminent; Haig still believed that a power-struggle between generals and politicians in Germany (in fact the generals were very much in control) would determine if there was any attack. By 20 March deployment of German trench mortars had been reported by deserters, and British artillery began some spoiling fire. Germany launched an attack, "Michael" (21 March 1918), with 76 divisions and 7,000 guns, a force larger than the entire BEF (German divisions were somewhat smaller than British) and enjoying superiority of 5:1 over the 12 divisions of Hubert Gough's Fifth Army, which were spread thinly over line recently taken over from the French. Haig was initially calm on 21 March, as owing to the communications of the time GHQ was "an information vacuum" where news often took over a day to reach him, and spent much of the day entertaining foreign dignitaries including the US War Secretary. Third Army retreated as planned from the Flesquieres Salient, freeing up a division.