Germans take Péronne

On 24 September 1914 German troops occupied Péronne, a small town on the Somme in Picardy, important for its river crossings. It was not the first time. The Germans had already entered Péronne on 28 August, during the march on Paris, and left it after the Battle of the Marne, in mid-September. French studies state that they returned on 23 September. The British chronology records the capture of the town a day later.

Péronne lay in the path of the Race to the Sea. Both sides were moving troops north, trying to outflank each other. The Germans sent XXI Corps and I Bavarian Corps to the area to extend the front northwards and push the French back beyond the Somme. The Bavarians reached Péronne on 24 September, and over the following days they crossed the river and attacked westwards, towards Albert.

The front halted some fifteen kilometres west of the town, and for a long time Péronne became a German rear area, turned into a fortified strongpoint. During the Battle of the Somme in 1916 it was badly damaged by shellfire. The Germans left it in March 1917, falling back to the Hindenburg Line. They returned in the spring of 1918, and were finally driven out by the Australians, who at the turn of August and September 1918 took the hill of Mont Saint-Quentin above the town and Péronne itself. Today the castle houses one of the most important museums of the First World War, the Historial de la Grande Guerre.