First Battle of Artois ends

On 12 October 1914, according to the British chronology of the war, the First Battle of Artois came to an end. After two weeks of fighting, which had begun on 27 September, the front between Arras and Lens froze into trenches. The British website greatwar.co.uk ends the battle two days earlier, on 10 October, and many studies consider that it was decided in the first days of the month. There is no contradiction in this: in the second week of October only local fighting was still going on in this sector, and the end date depends on which of these actions is regarded as the last act of the battle.

The last clashes

The heaviest days of the battle passed with the crisis of 4 October, when General Joseph Joffre forbade General Louis de Maud’huy’s Tenth Army to retreat from Arras. From 6 October the German artillery shelled the town, while the infantry of both sides fought for individual villages and heights north of it. The fiercest fighting was for the hill of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, taken by the Germans on 5 October. The French of General Paul Maistre’s XXI Corps tried several times to retake it. They captured the area of the chapel on the summit, but sources date this success differently: some give 9 October, others 12 October. The rest of the hill, as well as the nearby villages of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire and Carency, remained in German hands.

Meanwhile both sides were shifting forces further north. The French front was being extended towards Loos and Lille, and on 10 October another battle began at La Bassée, this time involving British troops brought over from the Aisne. On 12 October, as the last clashes in Artois were dying down, the Germans took Lille, and to the north the Battle of Messines was beginning. The race to the sea had moved on to Flanders.

Outcome

The First Battle of Artois was inconclusive. The French failed to outflank the German wing and reach Douai, and the Germans did not take Arras. The front settled just beyond the town’s eastern suburbs, and Arras became a front-line town, battered by shellfire for four years.

The Germans, however, kept their most important gains. Lens with its coal mines remained in their hands, and above all the Vimy ridge and most of the Lorette heights, from which observers could direct artillery fire onto the French rear. The line drawn in October 1914 survived almost unchanged into 1915. To move it, the French later fought several bloody battles in Artois, in which tens of thousands of soldiers were killed.