What was the First Battle of Champagne?
It was the French offensive against the German trench line in Champagne, east of Reims, that began on 20 December 1914 and was called off in March 1915. General Joffre hoped to break through the new Western Front; after three months of winter attacks around Perthes-lès-Hurlus and Beauséjour the French Fourth Army had gained only a few kilometers, at a cost of tens of thousands of casualties.1
The First Battle of Champagne was the first great test of the trench war that had settled over the Western Front in the autumn of 1914. It showed, at enormous cost, that infantry could not break a well-entrenched line by courage alone, and the French high command spent the rest of 1915 failing to learn the lesson.2
A war of siege
By mid-November 1914 the race to the sea had ended on the North Sea coast, and the front had settled along a line of nearly 700 kilometers from the sea to the Swiss border, where the armies dug in. Mental Floss's centenary series notes that the battles of 1914 had already shown the enormous advantage that machine guns and quick-firing rifles gave the defender.3
General Joseph Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, did not give up on the offensive. He believed in the breakthrough: a heavy bombardment, an infantry assault, then exploitation into open country. He had several reasons. The Russian army was under heavy pressure in the east, and Joffre meant to wear down a German army forced to fight on two fronts. Asked about the cost later in 1915, he is said to have answered that he was nibbling at them. Artois and Champagne were chosen as starting points because a breakthrough there would open room to maneuver.4
Joffre's plan
The main blow in Champagne fell to the French Fourth Army of General Fernand de Langle de Cary, a veteran who, according to HistoryOfWar.org, had been called out of retirement in August 1914 and had fought in the Ardennes and on the Marne. It was to attack the German Third Army in Champagne while the Tenth Army attacked in Artois, with diversionary attacks all along the front to pin the Germans down. Mental Floss describes the aim as threatening the Germans with encirclement and forcing them to retreat.5
An attack in Artois, on the Lorette ridge from 14 to 24 December, had already failed: the long bombardment gave away surprise, the infantry moved too slowly across the torn ground, and German reserves arrived by rail and truck to seal the gaps. The Champagne attack went ahead regardless.6
Winter attacks
The offensive opened on 20 December 1914. On the first day the Fourth Army made small advances, but the attack ran out of steam almost at once: the Germans rushed machine gun crews to cover the gaps that French artillery had opened in their wire. As December ended Langle de Cary probed other points of the line, but every local gain was retaken by German counterattacks.7
The fighting went on through January and February, around Souain, Perthes, Beauséjour and Massiges, in attacks that, as Theatrum Belli puts it, gained derisory ground for losses as heavy as ever.8
A few kilometers
The offensive dragged on into March 1915 and was then called off. HistoryOfWar.org ends it on 17 March 1915, Theatrum Belli on 18 March. The advance, Theatrum Belli writes, was limited to a few kilometers. The gains, Theatrum Belli writes, were derisory: the village of Perthes-lès-Hurlus and the small fort of Beauséjour.9
The sources used here give no separate count of the losses. Theatrum Belli does not separate the two winter battles, but writes that the First Battle of Champagne and the First Battle of Artois together cost the lives of more than 200,000 French soldiers. HistoryOfWar.org simply says that little was achieved.10
The same method again
The French high command remained convinced that infantry well supported by artillery could break the German line. In September 1915 Langle de Cary's Fourth Army attacked in Champagne again, with Pétain's Second Army beside it, and again broke into the first German positions only to stop in front of the second. According to HistoryOfWar.org, Langle de Cary was later made a scapegoat for the early failures at Verdun in 1916.11
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”; John Rickard, “Fernande de Langle de Cary, 1867-1927”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”; Erik Sass, “WWI Centennial”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”; Erik Sass, “WWI Centennial”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Fernande de Langle de Cary, 1867-1927”; Erik Sass, “WWI Centennial”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”; Erik Sass, “WWI Centennial”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”; John Rickard, “Fernande de Langle de Cary, 1867-1927”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”; John Rickard, “Fernande de Langle de Cary, 1867-1927”. ↩
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”; John Rickard, “Fernande de Langle de Cary, 1867-1927”. ↩
Sources
- Theatrum Belli, “Les offensives de 1915”
- John Rickard, HistoryOfWar.org, “Fernande de Langle de Cary, 1867-1927”
- Erik Sass, Mental Floss, “WWI Centennial: First Battle of Champagne Begins”
