French return to Arras

On 30 September 1914, according to the British chronicle of the war, French troops reoccupied Arras, the capital of Artois. The town was not in German hands at the time, so this was not a recapture, but the return of regular troops after a month in which Arras had been practically undefended.

A town without troops

At the end of August, during the great retreat, the French territorial divisions abandoned Arras. On 6 September a German Landwehr detachment entered the town, but after two or three days, while the fate of the campaign hung in the balance on the Marne, the Germans withdrew. In the second half of September the first, small French units returned to the area of Arras. They were not, however, forces capable of stopping a larger attack.

A new army in the north

At this time both sides were trying to outflank each other to the north, in a manoeuvre that later came to be called the race to the sea. General Joffre was bringing corps after corps to his left wing. At the end of September he formed them into a new group under General Louis de Maud’huy, from which a few days later the French Tenth Army was created. X Corps, infantry divisions and cavalry were brought by rail and lorry to Arras and the surrounding area. According to the account of a French staff officer, by 1 October General Ernest Barbot’s 77th Division was already in Arras. The British chronicle links the reoccupation of the town with 30 September, which probably means the entry of the first units of this group. It meant that the French intended to defend Arras.

It came at the last moment. German columns were marching north from the direction of Bapaume and Cambrai, and on 1 October heavy fighting broke out around Arras. The French, instead of turning the German flank, had to defend themselves. The Germans took Lens, among other places, but did not capture Arras itself.

A town on the front line

The front came to a halt a few kilometres from the centre and remained there for most of the war. From October Arras was systematically shelled by German artillery. On 21 October 1914 the famous Gothic belfry of the town hall collapsed, and in the following years the cathedral and much of the old town were also destroyed. The inhabitants who stayed sheltered from the shells in cellars and medieval underground passages. In 1917 the old quarries beneath the town served as shelters for thousands of British soldiers before the great offensive at Arras.