Third Battle of the Scarpe ends

On 4 May 1917 there were no new attacks at Arras. After the defeat of the previous day, when three British armies had attacked in the dark and been repulsed almost everywhere, the divisions of the Third and First Armies reorganised their ranks and counted their losses. At 1.15 a.m. the Londoners of the 56th Division abandoned the trenches they had taken at Cavalry Farm on the Cambrai road, and stragglers who had survived the day in shell holes in front of the German lines came back under cover of darkness. The Canadians held on to the captured village of Fresnoy, and by the morning of 5 May they had been relieved by the British 5th Division. The British official history (Cyril Falls) writes that on the front of the Third and First Armies everything was decided within 24 hours. The British Battles Nomenclature Committee recognised 4 May as the last day of the Third Battle of the Scarpe.

The Paris conference

The most important decisions were taken that day in Paris. In the morning the soldiers met: Field Marshal Douglas Haig and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, together with Generals Robert Nivelle and Philippe Pétain. They agreed that the original Allied plan no longer applied and that there could be no more talk of breaking through the front. The aim was now to be to wear down the enemy’s strength by relentless attacks with limited objectives, making the greatest possible use of artillery. It was all the more necessary to give the Germans no respite because, according to the generals, the German command wanted to hold out until unrestricted submarine warfare took effect. Two matters which Falls considers the most important were also settled unofficially: the British would conduct the main operations of the summer, and the French would support them with strong attacks and take over part of the British front. The details of dates and places were to remain secret even from the governments, because in France the offensive on the Aisne had been discussed publicly, including in the Chamber of Deputies. The agreement subordinating Haig to Nivelle, concluded for the duration of the spring offensive, lapsed together with it.

In the afternoon a conference of politicians met at the Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, with the Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Alexandre Ribot and the French Minister of War, Paul Painlevé. It dealt mainly with the Salonika front, and on the Western Front it endorsed the generals’ view. Haig left before the end of the talks to return to his headquarters. On 4 and 5 May the French resumed their attacks on the Chemin des Dames.

The end of the Battle of Arras?

The British chronology of the war records that the end of the Third Battle of the Scarpe on 4 May concluded the whole Battle of Arras. This was also the division adopted by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee for the fighting of the Third and First Armies: after 4 May there was no further general attack here. The fighting nevertheless went on. At Bullecourt the Australians were defending a foothold in the Hindenburg Line, and the Battle of Bullecourt was to last until 17 May. Haig wanted the armies at Arras not to break off operations until forces had been moved north, so that the Germans would not realise that the battle was coming to an end. For this reason most accounts, and following them our page on the Battle of Arras, take the middle of May as its end. Falls describes local fighting right up to 24 May.

This later fighting brought both defeats and successes. On 8 May a fresh Bavarian division retook Fresnoy, which Falls regarded as the most serious loss the British suffered from German counter-attacks in this battle. On the other hand, on the evening of 11 May the British 4th Division at last took the chemical works at Rœux, which had been fought over since April, and on the night of 13 May Scots of the 51st Division occupied the village, which the Germans had abandoned. On 16 May they beat off a strong German counter-attack.

The reckoning and Flanders

Since 9 April the three British armies had advanced at Arras by a few kilometres at the furthest point, taken Vimy Ridge and Monchy-le-Preux and captured, according to the official history, about 20,900 prisoners and 254 guns. According to the same history, this had cost them just under 150,000 killed, wounded and missing. Falls observes that after a brilliant start, and certainly after 24 April, the offensive achieved no further major success. The Battle of Arleux was on the whole a failure, and the attack of 3 May “nothing less than a disaster”.

Haig had already decided to shift the main effort to Flanders in order to clear the Germans from the Belgian coast. The Paris conference removed his last doubts. On 7 May at Doullens he told his army commanders that in a month he would attack the Messines ridge south of Ypres, and he began to move artillery and divisions north. The Battle of Messines began on 7 June, and at the end of July the great offensive at Ypres got under way.