End of the Battle of the Matz

The British Battles Nomenclature Committee ends the Battle of the Matz on 14 June 1918. It had, however, been decided earlier. On the first day, 9 June, General Oskar von Hutier’s German Eighteenth Army advanced about 10 kilometres in the centre, and on 10 June it reached the Oise at Ribécourt, about 10 kilometres from Compiègne. On the western flank of the breach, however, the French assembled five fresh divisions and about 140 tanks and placed them under General Charles Mangin, who happened to be awaiting a new posting. Mangin promised to attack the very next morning, although part of his artillery was not due to arrive until the night, and Ferdinand Foch backed this haste.

Before noon on 11 June, after a short and, as French sources admit, relatively weak artillery preparation, four French divisions advanced eastwards from the area of Méry and Courcelles. They moved under cover of the morning mist, with aircraft overhead and Schneider and Saint-Chamond tanks behind them. The attack took the Germans by surprise: the French recaptured Méry and Belloy, cleared the valley of the river Aronde and took over a thousand prisoners and several guns. In the afternoon they were halted by the fire of German artillery that had not been silenced. On 12 June the counter-attack was resumed at dawn, but succeeded only in part. That same day the German Seventh Army attacked south of the Aisne towards Compiègne to help Hutier, but its attack, code-named “Hammerschlag”, was broken up by French artillery fire.

On the evening of 12 June, according to the German monograph on the battle, the Supreme Army Command ordered both attacks to be broken off. Erich Ludendorff later wrote that the Eighteenth Army had received the order as early as 11 June, to avoid losses in the face of the gathering French reserves. On the French side, Foch and Philippe Pétain agreed on 12 June that Mangin would not press his attack any further, because the divisions had to be spared in case of a blow on the Somme. On 13 June the French made only local attacks to improve the line, and isolated German attacks and shelling continued until 14–15 June. Foch considered that the German offensive had come to a halt on 13 June, and the Americans count the Montdidier–Noyon operation up to that day.

The outcome was disappointing for the Germans. They had gained a strip of ground about 10–14 kilometres deep, but they had not joined up the salients on the Somme and the Marne and had not seriously threatened Compiègne. According to frequently cited estimates each side lost about 25,000–35,000 men, the French losing many prisoners on the first day, and of Mangin’s roughly 140 tanks almost half were disabled or destroyed. The French defence, this time deployed at least partly in depth, did not crack as it had on the Aisne, and the rapid counter-attack with tanks foreshadowed the way of fighting that was to bring success in the summer. The French official history notes, however, that after three weeks of fighting the French army was almost at the end of its reserves, while the Germans still had considerable forces in hand. The next day, 15 June, the last offensive of the Austro-Hungarian army in Italy began, and Ludendorff started to prepare his next blow, this time on both sides of Reims.