Second Battle of the Aisne

Background

By the end of 1916 Verdun and the Somme had cost France enormously without breaking the Western Front. In December Robert Nivelle replaced Joffre as commander-in-chief. He took over Joffre's plan for a joint Franco-British offensive and made it his own: a massive bombardment and a sudden, violent assault that would break the German line on the Aisne within 48 hours, at a cost his staff put at about 10,000 casualties. The British were to attack first at Arras, a week earlier, to draw German reserves north.

The ground was the Chemin des Dames, an east–west limestone ridge between the Aisne to the south and the Ailette to the north. The Germans had held its crest since September 1914 and had turned its old quarries, the creutes such as the Dragon's Cave at Hurtebise, into shelters, with tunnels to the front line and concealed machine-gun nests. The French sat on the lower slopes and in a bridgehead north of the river from Berry-au-Bac to Fort de Condé.

The plan went stale before it began. In March the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line, shortening their front by some 70 km and freeing divisions, several of which went to the Aisne; Elizabeth Greenhalgh argues that this withdrawal doomed the offensive before it was launched. The attack, first planned for February, was repeatedly postponed. German raids picked up French documents about it, and Nivelle talked about it freely. By April the Germans knew what was coming. The war minister Painlevé and several army group commanders doubted the plan; Nivelle offered his resignation at a meeting on 6 April, but the government kept him and the offensive.

The armies

Nivelle gave the attack to a new reserve army group under Micheler. Mazel's Fifth Army, on the right from Reims to Craonne, had 16 infantry divisions in five corps, a cavalry division, two Russian brigades and nearly 200 tanks. Mangin's Sixth Army, from Craonne west to Laffaux, had 17 divisions, among them colonial corps with battalions of tirailleurs sénégalais and zouaves, which Mangin used as shock troops; some 15,000 Africans faced the German line. Duchêne's Tenth Army, nine divisions, waited behind to exploit the breakthrough. About 2,000 guns fired a bombardment lasting two weeks.

The French tanks, the Schneider CA1 and Saint-Chamond of the Artillerie spéciale, were going into their first big attack. Slow, about 4 km/h, without turrets and with exposed fuel tanks, they were tied to the infantry in groups of four, with flags and carrier pigeons for signalling.

Opposite, Boehn's 7th Army held Vauxaillon to Berry-au-Bac with 14 divisions, and Below's 1st Army the line beyond towards Reims. They fought on the new doctrine of December 1916: a thin outpost zone, the main line on reverse slopes, a deep battle zone of machine-gun posts and Eingreif divisions ready to counter-attack. The Germans also held the advantage in the air, which blinded much of the French artillery observation.

The battle

CDB90 records 16 April–1 May as a single engagement, 317 (AISNE II), between the French Fifth and Sixth Armies and the German 1st and 7th Armies. This page follows it to the end of the offensive on 9 May.

16 April, 06:00: the assault. The attack went in at dawn along about 40 km between Soissons and Reims, in mist, cold and later snow. The bombardment had left many German positions barely touched. Machine guns in concrete posts cut down the first waves; on the plateau between Cerny and Craonne the French were thrown back, and the 10th Colonial Division lost about 150 officers and 5,000 men, half of them tirailleurs, in front of Hurtebise. Mangin's colonials broke on the Laffaux plateau by about 09:00. The objectives due by 09:30 were nowhere reached. Real gains came only below the ridge, near Soupir and Chivy, La Ville-aux-Bois and Loivre. On the right the Russian brigade took Courcy, and north of the Aisne the 42nd and 69th Divisions got into the German second position, some 4 km deep.

16 April: the tanks at Berry-au-Bac. Two groupements, Bossut's attached to XXXII Corps and Chaubès's to V Corps, attacked between the Aisne and the Miette towards Juvincourt. Bossut's Schneiders passed the Choléra crossroads on the Laon–Reims road around 10:00 and crossed the German second position; some reached a third between Juvincourt and Guignicourt. But the infantry could not follow, and German observers on the Craonne heights directed artillery on to the columns; 23 tanks were destroyed before they reached the front line. Of about 128 engaged, 57 were destroyed or burnt out and dozens more broke down or bogged. Bossut was killed in his tank. The survivors withdrew at about 17:30.

17–20 April: the Sixth Army's advance. Nivelle switched effort to the Fifth Army, which made little progress. The Sixth Army, attacking through the night, forced the Germans out of the Braye–Condé–Laffaux salient back to the Siegfriedstellung; Fort de Condé and Braye fell, the French advanced about 6 km and the Germans left guns and munitions behind. Laffaux was finally taken on 19 April. The offensive was suspended on 20 April; on 21 April the Tenth Army came into line between Craonne and Hurtebise.

22 April–1 May: limited attacks. Mass attacks gave way to local ones. The end of CDB90's engagement falls in this lull.

4–9 May: Craonne and the Californie plateau. At 18:00 on 4 May the 18th Infantry took Craonne by surprise and with the 34th gained the edge of the Californie plateau, but could not get down to the Ailette. On 5 May I Colonial Corps took the ruins of Laffaux Mill and Moisy Farm, and the Tenth Army attacked the Vauclerc plateau. A planned attack on Brimont was cancelled on government orders. German night counter-attacks from Vauxaillon to Craonne on 6–9 May were repulsed, and the offensive was abandoned on 9 May.

Aftermath

Nivelle's breakthrough never came. In ten days the French lost something like 120,000 to 140,000 men, the highest rate since 1914, for gains of a few kilometres; some divisions lost over 60 per cent, and the medical services, planned for far fewer, were overwhelmed. Yet the French had taken most of the Chemin des Dames plateau, the Craonne heights and nearly 30,000 prisoners, and German losses were heavy too.

The cost broke the army's patience. Refusals began in late April and early May, the 2nd Division refusing to attack on 3 May, and spread through some 50 divisions by June, mostly among troops at rest ordered back into the assault. Leonard Smith's study of the 5th Division, the most mutinous in the army that year, reads the mutinies as soldiers negotiating the terms of their service rather than refusing the war. Nivelle was replaced by Pétain in mid-May and sent to North Africa; Mangin and Mazel were removed. Pétain combined some 3,400 courts-martial sentences and between 40 and 62 executions with more leave, better food and rest, and limited offensives such as La Malmaison in October.

In France the battle became a byword for futile slaughter. The 'Chanson de Craonne', sung by mutineers and long banned, was performed at an official ceremony only in 2017, and a march 'without helmet or weapon' has been held at Craonne every 16 April since 2007.

Wargaming it

This is a battle where the attacker's plan is the problem, and that makes it a good teaching game. At army level, on a hex map from Soissons to Reims with corps or divisions, the French player must try to do in two days what history could not, against a German player who knows the plan and whose reserves sit behind the ridge. Victory points for limited objectives (Laffaux, Craonne, Juvincourt) let the French player choose Pétain's method over Nivelle's, and a running casualty count can trigger mutiny rules for divisions pushed too hard.

At brigade or divisional scale the best single actions are the colonials against Hurtebise and the Dragon's Cave, where creutes let German infantry emerge behind the attackers, and the tank attack at Berry-au-Bac: flat ground, a gun-line overlooking it from the Craonne heights, slow tanks with exposed fuel and infantry that must keep up. Weather matters: mist, snow and grounded observers should limit French artillery.

The what-ifs: no leak of the plan; Nivelle stopping after the first day, as he had half-promised Painlevé; the Brimont attack going ahead; or the Tenth Army committed on 17 April behind the Sixth Army's advance rather than the Fifth's.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.