Second Battle of the Marne ends

On 7 August 1918 General Philippe Pétain, commander-in-chief of the French army, announced in an order of the day victory in the Second Battle of the Marne. The battle, which had begun on 15 July as the last great German offensive of that year, had ended the previous evening. The Germans had withdrawn from the whole salient between Soissons and Reims and dug in behind the rivers Vesle and Aisne, and Pétain judged that there was no point in attacking them there off the march. Most accounts take 6 August as the last day of the battle. The British chronology of the war records its end under 7 August, the day of Pétain’s order.

Halt on the Vesle

After Soissons was retaken on 2 August, the French Fifth, Sixth and Tenth Armies set off in pursuit and on 3 August reached the Vesle and the Aisne along almost the whole front. There, however, the German artillery, silent until then, opened heavy fire on the plateaux south of the rivers, and a prepared defensive position was waiting on the opposite slopes. According to the British official history, which here summarises the French official history, on 4 August only a few patrols managed to cross the Vesle east and west of Fismes and near Braine. That day Pétain ordered the armies to push the Germans back beyond the rivers, but without exposing themselves to unnecessary losses and to defeat with a river at their backs. If the enemy defended the Vesle in strength, the troops were to dig in and await a decision from the high command. Air and ground reconnaissance on 4 and 5 August showed that the Germans were strongly entrenched behind the rivers. On the evening of 6 August, at 10.10 p.m., Pétain telegraphed the armies that until further notice no attempts were to be made to take the German positions north of the Vesle. The armies were, however, to pretend to be preparing a great attack, especially for 8 August, when Foch was preparing a British and French blow elsewhere.

On the French Sixth Army’s sector, opposite Fismes, there were at that time two American corps, side by side for the first time in this war. On 4 August, after heavy fighting, the American 32nd Division took Fismes on the south bank of the Vesle. On the night of 6–7 August it was relieved by the 28th Division. According to the guide of the American Battle Monuments Commission, the 32nd Division had advanced about 18 kilometres from the Ourcq and lost almost 3,800 men. On 7 August its successors unsuccessfully attacked Fismette, the suburb of Fismes on the other bank of the river. That same day the 6th Brigade of the American 3rd Division tried to cross the Vesle to the right of the town, also without success. The fighting for bridgeheads on the Vesle went on, even though the battle itself was over. The Americans took Fismette on 10 August, and at the end of the month the Germans retook it in a counter-attack using flamethrowers.

Pétain’s order

In his order of 7 August Pétain wrote to the soldiers: “Four years of effort, supported by our faithful allies, four years of trials stoically endured, are beginning to bear fruit. Broken in the fifth of his attempts in 1918, the invader is falling back. His numbers are melting away, his morale is weakening, while our American comrades, barely landed, have already made the bewildered enemy feel the force of their blows.” He recalled that earlier he had called for steadfastness and patience, because the Americans were coming, and now he called for tenacity and boldness, which would bring victory. The day before, Pétain had received the Médaille militaire, and General Ferdinand Foch had been made a Marshal of France.

Outcome

According to the French official history, quoted by the British one, from 15 July to 5 August the French armies and the Allied divisions fighting alongside them took 659 officers and 28,708 men prisoner and captured 793 guns and 3,723 machine guns. The French lost 2,539 officers and 92,626 men. The guide of the American Battle Monuments Commission calculates that at the start of the counter-offensive the Germans had 50 divisions between Reims and Compiègne and had to throw 27 more into the fighting. The Allies added to their 42 French, 6 American (equal in numbers to 12 French), 4 British and 1 Italian divisions a further 8 French and 3 American ones. German losses were not given. The Germans admitted only that for lack of replacements they had had to disband ten divisions. According to German figures cited by the British official history, battalions now had only 200–240 rifles in the trenches, and officers were short: in one regiment only four companies still had commanders of officer rank.

The battle wiped out all the gains of the May offensive on the Aisne and removed the threat to Paris. Ludendorff had lost the initiative, and Foch did not intend to give him time to rebuild his forces. The next day, 8 August, the British and French struck at Amiens.