First Battle of Albert ends

On 25 September 1914, according to the British chronology of the war, the First Battle of Albert came to an end. The chronology treats it as a four-day engagement that began on 22 September, together with the French attack in Picardy. Some British studies that divide the Race to the Sea into successive battles date it the same way.

Two ways of counting

Most modern historians, French and English-speaking, count this battle differently. In their view 22–24 September belong to the fighting in Picardy south of the Somme, and the Battle of Albert proper began only on 25 September and lasted until 29 September. Both approaches describe the same events and merely draw their boundaries differently. What is certain is that on 25 September the fighting north of the Somme did not end but was only gathering strength.

25 September

That day the French Second Army of General Noël de Castelnau set off east from around Albert. It was to outflank the German wing and come out in the rear of the troops fighting in Picardy. Instead of an open flank, however, it ran into German columns moving in the opposite direction. The II Bavarian Corps and XIV Reserve Corps of the German Sixth Army were attacking west, towards Albert and Amiens. The manoeuvre turned into a head-on collision.

To the end of September

Over the following days the Germans took Bapaume, reached Thiepval on the heights above the River Ancre and tried to break through to Albert. The French stopped them on a line from Maricourt on the Somme through Fricourt to Thiepval. Albert itself, shelled by German artillery, was largely destroyed. At the end of September the exhausted troops of both sides began to dig in, and the fighting moved further north, to Arras.

The front that came into being then survived almost unchanged until July 1916. It was on these same heights that the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in history, then began.