Battle of the Ardennes begins

On 22 August 1914, in the forests of the Ardennes, in the Belgian province of Luxembourg (PL), the battle between two French armies and two German armies began in earnest. French corps marching through the woods in fog ran into Germans ready for battle in many places at once. The day went down in history as the bloodiest in the history of the French army.

Advancing blind

The commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, was convinced that the Germans had sent their main forces through northern Belgium and that their centre in the Ardennes was weak. He wanted to strike there, at the flank and supply lines of the German armies marching west, and split the German front. He gave the main role to General Pierre Ruffey’s Third Army and General Fernand de Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army, reinforced at the expense of other armies. On 21 August, the day after the defeat in Lorraine and on the day the Battle of Charleroi began on the Sambre, the Fourth Army crossed the river Semois and set off towards Neufchâteau (PL), and the Third Army towards Arlon. The first day brought only minor skirmishes.

French reconnaissance failed. Units had too few maps and did not know how many enemies they faced. Coming towards them were two strong German armies: the Fourth Army of Duke Albrecht of Württemberg and the Fifth Army of Crown Prince Wilhelm. According to the British official history the two sides had similar strength: the French about 361,000, the Germans about 380,000 men. The Germans, however, advanced more cautiously, and some of their units had dug in on the hills and at the edges of the woods.

A black day

On the morning of 22 August the columns collided in many places at once. At five in the morning, in thick fog and rain, the V Corps of the Third Army attacked entrenched Germans without artillery support near Longwy, where a French fortress had been under siege for two days. When the fog lifted, German artillery caught the French batteries in the open, and a counter-attack routed one of the divisions. To the north of it the IV Corps ran into entrenched Germans near Virton and was also thrown back. At Ethe (PL) the French 7th Division lost, according to the returns, more than 5,000 men. The French infantry in red trousers and dark blue greatcoats, advancing with the bayonet, fell under machine-gun and artillery fire.

The heaviest blow fell on the Colonial Corps at Rossignol (PL). Its 3rd Colonial Division was to march to Neufchâteau that day, and the corps commander did not expect to meet the enemy before 23 or 24 August. In the forest north of the village the head of the column ran into German infantry in well-chosen positions. Bayonet charges in the dense forest, with visibility of a few dozen metres, achieved nothing. At about eleven German artillery destroyed the bridge over the Semois, the only road by which reinforcements could come up, and German divisions worked round the French flanks. By evening Rossignol was burning and the remnants of the division laid down their arms. The division lost more than 10,000 men and ceased to exist as a fighting unit. Its commander, General Léon Raffenel, and a brigade commander, General Charles Rondony, were killed, the first French generals to fall in this war. The other brigade commander was taken prisoner.

Further north the 5th Colonial Brigade reached Neufchâteau but was thrown back, and the 33rd Division of the XVII Corps lost most of its artillery at Bertrix. Only on the northern wing of the Fourth Army were the corps not seriously engaged.

The bloodiest day

That day, along the whole front of the Battles of the Frontiers, in the Ardennes, on the Sambre and in Lorraine, some 27,000 French soldiers were killed according to frequently quoted estimates, and at least 25,000 according to other figures. No other day in France’s history brought its army such losses. Many wounded were left on the battlefield without help. The dead were buried hastily where they fell. Civilians also became victims of the fighting. At Tintigny the Germans killed 63 inhabitants, and after the battle more than a hundred inhabitants of Rossignol, accused of helping the French, were shot at Arlon.

What came next

Joffre ordered the attack to be resumed the next day, but the armies were not capable of it. On 23 August the Germans forestalled the French, and by evening the remnants of the Third and Fourth Armies had fallen back to their starting positions, and soon began withdrawing behind the Meuse. The British official history observed that the defeat would have been even greater but for the premature attempt at envelopment made by the Crown Prince. The defeat in the Ardennes, together with the defeats at Charleroi and Mons, forced the Allied armies into the Great Retreat.