The Meuse in the First World War

The Meuse, Maas in Dutch, flows north from the Langres plateau, through the French Ardennes and Belgium, to the Netherlands. During the war it was one of the axes of the Western Front. The fortresses of Liège, Namur and Verdun stood on its banks, and its valley was one of the main routes from Germany into Belgium and France. In 1914 the Germans forced the river within a few weeks, for the next four years the front crossed it at Verdun, and in 1918 the Americans fought their greatest battle along it.

The crossings (August 1914)

The first objective of the German invasion of Belgium was Liège with its bridges over the Meuse. On 4 August the Belgians blew up the bridges at Visé and Argenteau, and the guns of Fort Pontisse smashed the bridge of boats that German cavalry tried to throw together there. Liège, ringed by twelve forts, held up the German advance for almost two weeks. The town and its bridges fell on 7 August, but the last forts surrendered only on 16 and 17 August. The war in the west began in the Battle of Liège.

Further upstream lay Namur, where the Sambre flows in. The Germans took it with heavy artillery in five days, and the last forts surrendered on 25 August. South of Namur, in the angle between the Sambre and the Meuse, stood the French Fifth Army. On 15 August its I Corps held the bridge at Dinant, but on 23 August the Saxon Third Army of Max von Hausen forced the river near the town and threatened the flank of the French, who were losing the Battle of Charleroi.

In Dinant itself the Saxons, convinced that civilians were firing on them, shot 674 inhabitants that day, and over the following days about two-thirds of the town’s buildings were destroyed. It was one of the worst crimes of the invasion.

In France, between Mézières and Stenay, the French Fourth Army fell back behind the Meuse after its defeat in the Ardennes and blew up the bridges. In the Battle of the Meuse on 25–28 August it repulsed the crossings of the German centre until it was ordered to retreat further. Mézières remained in German hands until November 1918, and in September 1914 the Supreme Army Command moved there.

Verdun and the Saint-Mihiel salient (1914–1917)

After the Battle of the Marne the front settled so that it crossed the Meuse north of Verdun. The fortress formed a jutting bulge, and on 24 September 1914 the Bavarians took Saint-Mihiel on the Meuse, halfway between Verdun and Toul. A salient was formed that cut the railway along the Meuse and left Verdun with a single railway line and the road to Bar-le-Duc.

On 21 February 1916 Erich von Falkenhayn attacked on the east bank of the Meuse. His objective was the heights above the river, from which German artillery would dominate the battlefield. Because French guns on the left bank were striking the Germans in the flank, in March the attack was extended to the west bank, to the hills of Mort-Homme and 304. The Battle of Verdun lasted until 18 December and was the longest battle of the war.

Philippe Pétain supplied the defenders along the Sacred Way from Bar-le-Duc, and the two sides together lost about 700,000 men. In the autumn the French retook the forts on the right bank, and in August 1917, in the Second Offensive Battle of Verdun, Mort-Homme and Hill 304 as well.

The last offensive (1918)

On 12 September 1918 the American First Army of John Pershing attacked the salient the Germans had held for four years. In the Battle of Saint-Mihiel the Americans and French eliminated it in two days and, according to Pershing’s report, took almost 16,000 prisoners.

Two weeks later, on 26 September, the same army set off northwards in the corridor between the Meuse and the Argonne. The objective of the Meuse–Argonne offensive was the railways through Sedan and Mézières, on which the supply of most of the German forces in France depended. From the high east bank of the river German artillery fired into the valley from the flank, and the Americans broke through one position after another at a cost of about 117,000 killed and wounded.

After the breakthrough of 1 November the Germans fell back along the whole sector west of the river. On 4 November the American 5th Division crossed the river south of Dun-sur-Meuse, and on 6–7 November the Americans reached the heights above Sedan. Ferdinand Foch, however, sent the French into the town itself, and on 10 November they retook Mézières. On the east bank fighting went on until the morning of 11 November.

At the moment of the armistice the Germans still held the narrow Meuse valley as far as Fumay and Givet on the Belgian border, but under its terms they had to leave it. On 21 November the British entered Namur, this time without a single shot.