The Aisne in the First World War

The Aisne rises in the Argonne forest near Sainte-Menehould, flows first north and then west, through Vouziers, Rethel and Soissons, and joins the Oise near Compiègne. It is 356 kilometres long. During the war its middle course, from Soissons to Berry-au-Bac, was one of the axes of the Western Front, and above its northern bank the valley was dominated by the ridge along which runs the road called the Chemin des Dames. Three great battles were named after the river: in 1914 trench warfare began here, in 1917 the Nivelle offensive stalled here, and in 1918 the Germans broke the front here and reached the Marne.

September 1914: the first trenches

After their defeat in the Battle of the Marne the German 1st and 2nd Armies fell back northwards and halted on the hills beyond the Aisne. The river was about 30 metres wide here and too deep to ford, and from the ridge the Germans could see the whole valley. On 12 September the French and the British Expeditionary Force arrived, and the next day they crossed on damaged spans, footbridges, boats and pontoons. The German VII Reserve Corps, however, had occupied the ridge only a few hours before them.

On 14 September the attack on the plateau stalled under machine-gun fire, and on 15 September the British command ordered the troops to dig in. In the First Battle of the Aisne shallow rifle pits turned within a few days into lines of trenches, and the British lost about 13,500 men on the river. For them, this is where trench warfare began. Since frontal attacks had failed, both sides tried to outflank each other to the west in the Race to the Sea, and at the beginning of October the British left the Aisne and moved to Flanders.

The front on the river (1915–1916)

For the following years the front ran along the river and the ridge. In January 1915 the French took Hill 132 at Crouy, north of Soissons, but the Aisne, swollen by rain, swept away the bridges behind them, and in the Battle of Soissons they lost almost their whole bridgehead on the northern bank. At the eastern end of the ridge, at Craonne, the Germans could see the whole valley and the plain around Reims, which their artillery shelled for four years.

The Chemin des Dames (1917)

On 16 April 1917 the French infantry went over the top on a front about 40 kilometres long, from Laffaux near Soissons to Courcy near Reims. General Robert Nivelle had promised a breakthrough within 24, at most 48 hours. In the Second Battle of the Aisne, the main blow of his offensive, German machine guns that had survived the bombardment mowed down the attackers, and by evening the French had taken in most places only the first lines of trenches. For the first time in the French army, tanks went into battle.

In the following weeks the French took a large part of the ridge, and on 4 May they recaptured the ruins of Craonne, but there was no breakthrough. According to the British official history they had lost 96,125 men by 25 April, and the French Ministry of the Armed Forces gives nearly 140,000 soldiers put out of action. The disappointment set off mutinies that affected units of some fifty divisions, mostly in the departments of the Aisne and the Marne. On 15 May Nivelle was replaced by Philippe Pétain.

The fighting for the ridge went on until the autumn. On 23 October 1917 the French Sixth Army took the fort at the western end of the Chemin des Dames in the Battle of La Malmaison, and on the night of 1–2 November the Germans abandoned the whole ridge as far as Craonne and fell back beyond the Ailette valley.

May 1918

In the spring of 1918 the Aisne sector was considered the quietest on the front, which is why four exhausted divisions of the British IX Corps were sent here to rest. On 27 May at one in the morning the German artillery opened fire between Reims and Soissons. The commander of the French Sixth Army, General Denis Duchêne, had packed his troops into the front line against Pétain’s directives and failed to blow the bridges in time. In the Third Battle of the Aisne the German 7th Army took the ridge in a few hours, crossed the river by undamaged bridges and in the evening stood on the Vesle, about 20 kilometres from its trenches.

On 29 May the Germans took Soissons, and on 30 May they reached the Marne. The shoulders of the breach at Soissons and Reims held, however, and an attack conceived as a diversion left the Germans in a deep salient that was hard to supply.

Back on the river (August–November 1918)

After the Second Battle of the Marne the Germans withdrew from the salient. On 2 August they gave up Soissons and blew the bridges over the Aisne behind them, and on 3 August the French reached the Vesle and the Aisne along almost the whole front. In the second half of the month the Tenth Army of General Charles Mangin attacked on the hills between the Oise and the Aisne in the Second Battle of Noyon.

The last chapter came in October. After their defeats on the Hindenburg Line and in Champagne, on 9 October the Germans began to withdraw along the whole front from the Oise to the Argonne. On 13 October the French entered Laon, and on 14 October they liberated the ruins of Craonne: the Chemin des Dames was in their hands again. On the upper course of the river the French Fourth Army reached the Aisne at Vouziers, and for several weeks the front ran along it. Only on 6 November, after a great German retreat, did the French take Rethel, and five days later the armistice came into force.