End of the Second Battle of Champagne

On 6 November 1915 the last fighting of the great autumn battle in Champagne, which had begun on 25 September, died down. This date for its end is given by the British chronology of the war and also by German studies, which speak of the autumn battle in Champagne. The date is conventional. General Joseph Joffre had broken off the offensive proper at the beginning of October, when ammunition ran short, and in the middle of the month he ordered larger operations to be halted both here and in Artois. The last weeks of the battle belonged to the Germans, who with counter-attacks took back part of the ground the French had won.

The counter-attack of 30 October

From 7 October further divisions arrived on the front of General Karl von Einem’s Third Army, many of them brought from the Eastern Front. Facing them stood the exhausted armies of General Noël de Castelnau’s army group. From the middle of October the Germans carried out individual counter-attacks to eliminate salients in the front. On 30 October, after a long and heavy bombardment, they struck with larger forces. According to German studies the attack was made by VIII Reserve Corps, reinforced among others by the 5th Bavarian Division and the 4th Infantry Division. The French communiqué spoke of masses of infantry thrown in on a front 8 kilometres long, from Hill 193 to the village of Tahure. It admitted that the Germans had taken the summit of the Butte de Tahure itself, which the French had captured with great difficulty at the beginning of October. The other attacks, aimed at the village of Tahure and at the La Courtine strongpoint, were according to the French repulsed by barrage fire, and 356 Germans were taken prisoner.

Hill 199 and La Courtine

At the beginning of November the fighting shifted east, to the area of Massiges. On 3 November, according to German studies, the German 56th Infantry Division recaptured the whole of Hill 199 north of the village in a surprise attack. The French communiqué wrote that the Germans, after a bombardment with asphyxiating gas shells, attacked the positions south of the Chausson farm and were repulsed, except on a few stretches of forward trenches on Hill 199. In the following days the fighting went on between that hill and Maisons de Champagne. The French reported that they had first driven the enemy out of a trench he still held, but that in the evening the Germans established themselves in it again with a fresh attack. In front of La Courtine the Germans attacked with flamethrowers, and French communiqués reported further attacks repulsed. The Germans also made small territorial gains near the Navarin farm.

After 6 November the communiqués from Champagne spoke only of heavy artillery fire between Tahure and Hill 199 and of isolated attacks in the trenches. Both sides were exhausted, and winter was approaching.

Balance

The French advanced 3–4 kilometres in Champagne and took more than 20,000 prisoners, but they did not break through the German second position, and the last German counter-attacks took back part of their gains. French losses are estimated at 140,000–180,000 killed, wounded and missing, and German losses at 72,000–85,000, depending on the source and the period covered. The offensive contributed to a political crisis in France: at the end of October the Viviani government fell, and Aristide Briand became the new prime minister. General Joffre kept his post, but in December command of the Fourth Army passed from General Fernand de Langle de Cary to General Henri Gouraud.

The front in Champagne stabilised for a long time. For the Germans the experience of this battle confirmed the value of defence in depth, with a second position hidden on the reverse slopes. Joffre and the British, meanwhile, began planning an even larger joint offensive for 1916, but before it came about, in February 1916, the Germans attacked at Verdun.