End of the Battle of Soissons

On 14 January 1915 the Battle of Soissons came to an end. The last French units withdrew to the south bank of the flooded river Aisne, and the Germans occupied the northern suburbs of Soissons and pushed outposts forward to the river. The battle, which had begun on 8 January with the French capture of Hill 132 above the village of Crouy, ended in a clear defeat for them.

The German counter-attack

The counter-attack was prepared by General Ewald von Lochow’s German III Corps of General Alexander von Kluck’s 1st Army. On the morning of 12 January the German artillery, including heavy guns and trench mortars, rained shells on the French trenches on the hill. Before noon the infantry of the Brandenburg 5th Division went into the assault. At about midday the French lost Hill 132, and the Germans broke into their former trenches and took the northern edge of Crouy. The French artillery was short of ammunition. The French 14th Infantry Division came up to help, but its night and day counter-attacks failed.

On 13 January the Germans struck at a second point, on the plateau near Vregny, east of Crouy. The French had concentrated their reserves at Crouy, and the attack, launched from the ravines running down to the river, took the defenders by surprise. By the evening the French units held only the wooded slopes right above the Aisne. Generals Michel Joseph Maunoury, commander of the 6th Army, and Henri Berthelot, commander of the group of reserve divisions fighting there, decided to withdraw their troops across the river.

Retreat across the flooded river

Torrential rain had been falling for several days, and in the night of 11–12 January the Aisne burst its banks. The current tore away the pontoon bridges over which supplies and reinforcements were brought up. The flood destroyed the military bridges at Missy and Venizel. When in the night of 13–14 January and towards morning the French crossed to the south bank, the most important crossing left was the stone bridge at Venizel, under fire from the German heavy artillery. According to French accounts, part of the rearguard did not manage to cross the river, and a German attempt to force it at Venizel was repulsed by artillery fire from the south bank.

On 14 January the Germans took Vauxrot and the northern suburbs of Soissons and reached the Aisne on the stretch from Crouy to Missy. The town itself remained in French hands. According to French estimates the front moved back by less than two kilometres, but the French lost almost all of the bridgehead on the north bank that they had held since September 1914.

According to contemporary accounts, the fighting was watched by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The German press presented the battle as a great victory, and General von Lochow received the Pour le Mérite.

Losses and the “Soissons affair”

According to the German official history, the Germans lost about 5,500 killed, wounded and missing, and took about 5,200 prisoners, 35 guns and 6 machine guns. French losses are estimated at 11,000–12,500 men, about twice the German figure.

A defeat so close to Paris caused alarm in France. The official explanations blamed it above all on the flood, which had cut off the troops on the north bank from reinforcements. The Minister of War, Alexandre Millerand, nevertheless reprimanded the commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, for costly and fruitless attacks. Joffre shifted the responsibility onto his subordinates: Berthelot and the divisional commanders lost their posts. In French politics the battle went down in history as the “Soissons affair” (l’affaire de Soissons). Among those fighting at Crouy, in the ranks of the 231st Infantry Regiment, was the writer Henri Barbusse, who later dedicated his novel Under Fire (Le Feu) to the comrades who fell there.