When was the Second Battle of Artois?

From 9 May to 18 June 1915. The main French attack, and the British attack at Aubers Ridge, began on 9 May.

What was the aim of the Second Battle of Artois?

To capture Vimy Ridge north of Arras, break through the German lines into the Douai plain and cut German railways, perhaps forcing the Germans to give up their salient in France.

Did the French reach Vimy Ridge in 1915?

Yes. On 9 May the 77th and Moroccan Divisions of Pétain's XXXIII Corps reached the crest within hours, but reserves were six miles behind and German counterattacks drove them off the same day.

How many men were lost in the Second Battle of Artois?

HistoryOfWar.org gives about 100,000 French and 75,000 German casualties; Mental Floss gives 102,500 French. The British lost over 11,000 at Aubers Ridge on 9 May alone.

Who finally took Vimy Ridge?

The Canadian Corps, in 1917, in the battle that opened the British offensive at Arras.

Second Battle of Artois, 1915: France's first assault on Vimy Ridge

Agence Rol, “Ruines de Carency”, press photograph, October 1915, Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Quick answer

What was the Second Battle of Artois?

The Second Battle of Artois was the main Allied offensive of spring 1915 on the Western Front. On 9 May the French Tenth Army attacked north of Arras to take Vimy Ridge, while the British attacked Aubers Ridge to the north. Pétain's corps, led by the Moroccan Division, broke through and reached the crest of the ridge within hours, but reserves were too far back and German counterattacks drove them off. Six weeks of fighting cost France about 100,000 men for little ground.¹

On the morning of 9 May 1915, for an hour and a half, the French army did what every general on the Western Front dreamed of: it broke clean through the German lines. By midday its spearhead stood on the crest of Vimy Ridge. By nightfall it had been pushed off again, and it would take five more weeks and a hundred thousand casualties to prove that the moment had passed.²

The spring offensive

By the spring of 1915 the German line bulged deep into France between Flanders and Champagne. General Joseph Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, planned the biggest Allied offensive yet to strike the northern side of that salient in Artois, against the German Sixth Army of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. The goal was Vimy Ridge, the high ground north of Arras. Beyond it lay the Douai plain and key German railways; a breakthrough there might force the Germans to give up their great salient.³ › First Battle of Champagne, 1914 to 1915

The attack was to be made by General Victor d'Urbal's Tenth Army, supported by 1,200 guns with 200,000 shells, a huge amount for 1915, in a bombardment that began six days before the infantry went in. To the north, the British First Army under Sir Douglas Haig would attack Aubers Ridge on the same day to tie down German reserves.⁴

Ninety minutes

The British attack on 9 May was a disaster. A short bombardment, limited by the shell shortage, left the German wire uncut and the machine guns intact; Mental Floss counts over 11,000 British casualties that day against about 1,000 German, and Haig called it off that evening, freeing German divisions to move south.⁵

The French attack went in at 10 a.m. after hours of bombardment. In the center, General Philippe Pétain's XXXIII Corps, with the Moroccan Division as its spearhead, achieved what HistoryOfWar.org calls a dramatic success: it advanced two and a half miles in the first hour and a half, and the 77th and Moroccan Divisions reached the crest of Vimy Ridge. The Moroccan Division included the 2nd Marching Regiment of the 1st Foreign Regiment, legionnaires who, by the account of the Legion's own veterans' association, crossed four kilometers of ground in waves, with three quarters of the officers of their leading battalion killed or wounded under machine-gun fire before they reached the heights.⁶

The breakthrough came faster than anyone had expected. D'Urbal's reserves were six miles behind the front, preparing to move up over the following days, while German reserves were much closer. German artillery made it hard to bring up the French reinforcements, and by the end of the day the French had been pushed back off the top of the ridge.⁷

Lorette and the Labyrinth

Elsewhere the advance had gone less well. In the north, on the spur of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the attackers met sweeping machine-gun fire; in the south, around Neuville-Saint-Vaast, they fought for a maze of trenches and tunnels the French called the Labyrinth. The Moroccan Division held its advanced positions without reinforcement. By 11 May it had lost almost half its strength, more than 5,000 men, and both its brigade commanders, Colonel Pein on 10 May and Colonel Cros on 11 May, had been killed.⁸

The battle now became what HistoryOfWar.org calls a battle of attrition in the maze of communication trenches and strongpoints behind the old German front line. A new push on 15 May failed. The British attacked again at Festubert from 15 to 25 May, gaining just under two miles at a cost of 16,648 casualties. On 16 June the Moroccan Division fought its way back onto Vimy Ridge, and was again thrown back. The offensive ended on 18 June.⁹

The cost

The French gained some ground, but not the ridge. HistoryOfWar.org gives about 100,000 French and 75,000 German casualties, and notes that the French knew attrition favored the side with more men; Mental Floss gives 102,500 French casualties and 2.2 million shells fired. Mental Floss quotes a reservist, Louis Barthas, describing a village cemetery near the front that was filling up every day with soldiers who died at the first-aid post, buried side by side in a long ditch.¹⁰

The fighting in Artois resumed in the autumn of 1915, together with the Second Battle of Champagne and the British attack at Loos. Vimy Ridge itself stayed in German hands until 1917, when the Canadian Corps took it.¹¹ › Battle of Vimy Ridge, 1917