Second Battle of Champagne begins

At 9.15 a.m. on 25 September 1915, after three days of bombardment, the French infantry went over to the attack in Champagne, east of Reims. So began the Second Battle of Champagne, the main part of the great Allied autumn offensive in the west. A few hours later and about 150 kilometres further north-west the French Tenth Army attacked, and earlier still that morning the British at Loos. The commander-in-chief of the French army, General Joseph Joffre, hoped for a breakthrough in Champagne that would force the Germans to retreat from France and relieve the Russians retreating in the east. In his order of the day of 23 September he told the soldiers that their onrush would be irresistible and would carry them at one stroke to the German batteries, beyond the enemy’s fortified lines.

The largest attack since the start of the war

For the attack General Noël de Castelnau, commander of the Army Group Centre, prepared two armies: the Fourth Army of General Fernand de Langle de Cary on the left wing and the Second Army of General Philippe Pétain on the right. On a front some 25–30 kilometres long, from Aubérive to Ville-sur-Tourbe, 20 divisions stood in the first line, with seven more behind them, and six cavalry divisions waited in reserve to ride out into the open through the gap. Each division attacked on a sector little more than a kilometre wide, in deep formation, wave after wave. From 22 September more than a thousand guns and trench mortars smashed the German trenches and wire, while heavy guns shelled roads and railway stations in the rear.

Facing them stood the German Third Army of General Karl von Einem, with seven divisions on the attacked sector and no substantial reserves. From the higher hills the Germans could see the French preparations and expected an attack. They had withdrawn most of their field artillery behind the second position, built largely on reverse slopes, and intended to make their main stand there. The Chief of the General Staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn, did not, however, believe in a great offensive. According to German sources, as late as the morning of 25 September he assured the Kaiser that the Third Army was taking too gloomy a view of the situation and that the French were no longer capable of attacking.

Rain and the first line

During the night heavy rain began to fall and did not stop until noon. It grounded the aircraft directing artillery fire and turned the chalk battlefield into mire. Even so, the first German line gave way on most sectors. Some regiments went into the attack with colours unfurled and bands playing. On the left wing the Fourth Army’s attack stalled before the fortifications of the Épine de Vedegrange and the Wacques farm, but in the centre the II Colonial Corps crossed the trenches by the road from Souain to Somme-Py and approached the Navarin farm. The corps of the Second Army crossed the road from Souain to Tahure and halted before the Bois Jaune wood and the Butte du Mesnil hill. On the right wing the I Colonial Corps broke into the Main de Massiges, a group of hills that from above resembled a hand with outspread fingers, which the Germans had been fortifying for months. That day General Jean-Baptiste Marchand, known from the Fashoda incident of 1898 and commander of a colonial division, was seriously wounded in the stomach.

The French broke through the first line in four places and in places advanced 3–4 kilometres. According to the French official history, they took about 14,000 prisoners that day and captured many guns.

Before the second position

By evening only two of the breaches reached the German second position. There the attackers ran into intact wire, which the artillery could not destroy because it could not see it, and into machine-gun fire. In the rear further waves of infantry and the cavalry waiting for the breakthrough crowded together. Joffre, judging the results promising, assigned Castelnau two reserve divisions and ordered the armies in eastern France to send to Champagne all their 75 mm ammunition beyond 500 rounds per gun. Pétain and de Langle de Cary issued orders to resume the attack the next morning.

On the German side there was alarm. The Third Army’s chief of staff proposed falling back a few kilometres, and Falkenhayn soon replaced him with Colonel Fritz von Loßberg, who ordered the second position to be held at all costs. Further divisions set off for Champagne from the reserves and from the Eastern Front. In the following days the French reached the second position on a wide sector and once managed to break through it, but German counter-attacks closed the breach. The breakthrough Joffre had hoped for did not come.