Battle of the Aisne begins

On 12 September 1914 the French troops and the British Expeditionary Force, which for several days had been pursuing the German armies defeated on the Marne, reached the river Aisne between Compiègne and Berry-au-Bac. There they ran into an enemy who had stopped retreating. The Germans had occupied the heights on the north bank of the river and decided to defend them. Thus began the First Battle of the Aisne, the first great battle of this war in which both sides began to dig into the ground.

After the Battle of the Marne

From 9 September the German First Army of General Alexander von Kluck and the Second Army of General Karl von Bülow had been withdrawing northwards. The defeat in the Battle of the Marne did not, however, turn into a rout. The Allies advanced slowly: the soldiers were exhausted after three weeks of retreat and fighting, the roads were sodden from torrential rain, and the Germans blew up the bridges behind them and left strong rearguards.

The German command looked for a line on which the pursuit could be halted. It chose the heights beyond the Aisne. The river, about 30 metres wide and too deep to be forded, flows here through a broad valley. Above its north bank rise steep, wooded slopes, and on top stretches a plateau. Its highest part is a ridge along which runs a road called the Chemin des Dames, the “Ladies’ Way”. The name dates from the 18th century, when the road was made fit for the carriages of the daughters of King Louis XV. From the ridge the defenders could see the whole valley, while the attackers had to cross the river and climb uphill under fire.

12 September: reaching the river

On 12 September the Allies reached the Aisne along the whole of its middle course. On the left flank the French Sixth Army of General Michel-Joseph Maunoury was approaching the river on the stretch from Compiègne to Soissons, and its African troops entered Soissons, abandoned by the Germans, that day. In the centre the British under Field Marshal Sir John French crossed the small river Vesle and, after a day’s march in pouring rain, halted on the heights on the south side of the Aisne. In the evening the 11th Brigade of the British 4th Division crossed the damaged bridge at Venizel, near Soissons. To the right of the British the French Fifth Army of General Louis Franchet d’Espérey was pressing north towards the Aisne and Reims.

The Commander-in-Chief of the French army, General Joseph Joffre, believed that the Germans were still retreating and that it was enough to continue the pursuit. The orders for 13 September called for forcing the river and pressing on northwards, towards Laon.

13 September: the crossings

On 13 September the British crossed the Aisne on a stretch of about 25 kilometres between Venizel and Bourg. Most of the bridges had been destroyed, so the soldiers crossed on damaged spans, single footbridges, boats and rafts, while the sappers built pontoon bridges. At Missy soldiers of the 5th Division crossed in small groups by boat and raft. At Vailly units of the 3rd Division crossed in single file over a single plank laid across the destroyed bridge. On the right flank General Douglas Haig’s I Corps crossed the river at Pont-Arcy and at Bourg, where the aqueduct carrying the canal across the river had survived. Only the bridge at Condé, between Missy and Vailly, remained in German hands.

The same day the French Sixth Army was crossing at Soissons and west of the town. On the right flank the French XVIII Corps of the Fifth Army crossed the Aisne between Bourg and Berry-au-Bac and reached the eastern end of the Chemin des Dames ridge near Craonne.

The gap the Germans almost failed to close

Between the armies of Kluck and Bülow there was still a gaping gap, the same one which a few days earlier had decided the defeat on the Marne. The British and French were heading straight for it. The Germans plugged it at the last moment. General Hans von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps, released after the capitulation of the fortress of Maubeuge, came up by forced march through Laon and on 13 September, after covering, according to various accounts, about 60 kilometres in twenty-four hours, took up positions on the Chemin des Dames only a few hours before the British arrived. Behind it came troops moved by rail from Alsace and Lorraine, above all XV Corps. From them was formed a new Seventh Army under General Josias von Heeringen, which in the following days took over the sector between the First and Second Armies.

14 September: the attack on the ridge

On 14 September the British advanced to attack the plateau. In the morning the valley and slopes were shrouded in thick fog, which allowed units of I Corps to approach the ridge near Troyon and break onto it. Some sub-units even crossed the Chemin des Dames road. When the fog lifted, however, they found themselves under machine-gun and artillery fire from German positions on the heights. The Germans counter-attacked, and the fighting lasted all day. I Corps alone lost about 3,500 killed, wounded and missing that day, according to British estimates. The other British divisions, attacking west of Vailly, were held up on the slopes just above the river. When it became clear that the Germans did not intend to give way, the British command began issuing orders to dig in on the positions they had taken.

It was similar on the French sectors. The Sixth Army failed to push the Germans off the heights north of Soissons, and the Fifth Army did not break through at Craonne and north of Reims.

Dates of the battle

The British chronology of the war and the British official nomenclature of battles hold that the Battle of the Aisne lasted from 12 to 15 September 1914. It covers reaching the river, the crossings and the attacks on the ridge, and its end is marked by the moment when the British went over to the defensive and began to entrench. The fighting on the Aisne went on, however. The Germans counter-attacked, and the French renewed their attacks on both flanks, especially at Craonne and Reims. That is why French and German historians, as well as most modern studies, give the dates 12 or 13 – 28 September for the whole battle. British nomenclature treats the later clashes as separate, smaller actions.

Significance

On the Aisne the pursuit after the Battle of the Marne came to an end. The Germans, though beaten, halted on a favourable position and held it. Neither side could break the other’s defence, and neither intended to fall back. Shallow rifle pits, dug in haste and often without proper tools, turned within a few days into ever deeper lines of trenches. On the Western Front trench warfare was beginning.

Since frontal attacks had failed, both sides began to look for the enemy’s open flank further north. Thus began the so-called Race to the Sea, which in October carried the front line all the way to the coast of Flanders. The Chemin des Dames ridge remained in German hands for almost three years. In 1917 it became the objective of the bloody Nivelle Offensive, and in 1918 the Germans launched one of their last great attacks here.