obstinate that it was only in the course of May 29 that the
dominating heights at Crecy-au-Mont were captured.
On the following days the VII. Army pushed forward with its centre in a southern direction as far as the Marne. The right wing of the I. Army, which had extended the attack towards Reims on the left, pressed forward between the Marne and the Vesle against the wooded hills of Reims, but soon met here with unconquerable resistance, as strong French reserves had been placed on this front. The right wing of the VII. Army took Soissons, and between the Aisne and the Marne gained ground towards the heights S.W. of Soissons, and up to the eastern edge of the wood in Villers-Cotterets.
On the 2gth the occupation of the important road and rail centre of Soissons as well as of Fere-en-Tardenois was of tactical importance. In both places immense masses of material fell into the hands of the Germans, especially in the wooded country at Fere-en-Tardenois, where they captured a vast dump of French and American munitions, pioneer and transport material, which the French had not succeeded in removing in time in spite of a violent counter-attack. On the left wing on this day Reims, against the N.E. front of which the VII. Reserve Corps of the I. Army had advanced to the attack, was so surrounded with the German troops that all the roads and railways leading from Reims to the Marne lay under German fire.
On May 30 violent counter-thrusts by the French had held up the advance of the German right wing, while the German centre in a rapid advance had by midday reached the heights of the northern bank of the Marne between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans, on the possession of which the use of the important stretch of rail Paris-Epernay-Chalons depended. On both days the pursuing German troops had passed beyond the objectives fixed by the Supreme Army Command, so that they reached the Marne earlier than it had been thought possible. A further advance of the centre, pushed out southward like a wedge, beyond the Marne seemed to involve great risk so long as the German wings on the E. and W. had not won further ground and so broadened the base of attack.
On May 31 instructions went out from the Supreme Army Command not to penetrate farther S. over the Marne, but to extend the successes against the wooded heights of Reims and up the Marne towards the W. in the direction of Villers- Cotterets, so as to ensure above all the secure use of the railway line leading E. of Soissons from the Aisne to the Vesle valley, and to be able to give effective tactical support to the later attack by the XVIII. Army over the Montdidier-Noyon line, for which plans had been made.
On May 30 and 31, and particularly in the first days of June, strong counter-attacks were made by the French, with the strong reserves assembled in the district S.W. of Reims and S.W. of Soissons, plainly with the intention of pressing in the flanks of the German advance. All these attacks were nevertheless bloodily repulsed, as were the American attacks a few days later against Chateau-Thierry, which had fallen into the hands of the Germans on the 3ist.
In the first days of June the fighting became steadily more severe, as the Allied resistance, reenforced by an uninterrupted flow of fresh divisions, grew more obstinate and the counter- attacks progressively more violent and extended. The Germans therefore succeeded in gaining only little ground. The pow- erful impetus of the German attack had come to an end.
According to orders sent on June 7 from the Supreme Army Command, the VII. Army was, indeed, to continue to press forward slowly on both sides of the Aisne, but was otherwise to stand on the defensive; the I. Army was only to carry the attack farther where a gain of ground seemed necessary to reach a tactically more favourable position. The following days saw a series of local engagements extremely costly for the French, in which individual places, heights and tracts of ground changed hands many times without yielding definite success. On June 17 the German armies stood with their right wing and centre roughly on the line Noyon-Fontenoy, the eastern edge of the forest of Villers-Cotterets, Chateau-Thierry, and up the Marne
to Verneuil, the left wing had penetrated to the outlying woods W. of the wooded heights of Reims, and close to the W., N. and E. front of Reims, which was closely encircled. In view of the unexpectedly rapid advance of the centre of the VII. Army the strategical situation was unfavourably affected by the fact that the capture of Reims had not been effected; this made difficult the bringing up of drafts for the sections of the VII. Army pushed forward to the Marne, because of the lack of sufficient railways.
The tactical result of the battle of Soissons-Reims for the Germans was great beyond all expectation. Over 65 ,000 prisoners fell into their hands. The booty included about 700 guns and 2,500 machine-guns; in addition the French and English losses in materiel were enormous. The success was due primarily to the spirited attack of the infantry, the equally brilliant prep- aration and execution of the artillery attack and the complete surprise of the French and English. By the very clever mainte- nance of secrecy the French command was so successfully misled that they kept their reserves assembled at the wrong place. Thus it was possible by an attack with narrowly limited aims, carried out by relatively weak forces, to develop an operative success which ended in a substantial weakening of the fighting force of the Allies. Gen. Foch had been compelled to bring up gradually against inferior German forces more than 50 divisions. The German losses on the other hand were small, so that the exhaustion of force on the French and English side was far greater than on the German. (H. v. H.)
VI. THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE OF JULY 15 1918 The preceding German offensives of 1918, the Somme, the Lys and the Aisne-Marne, had left the German army with three salients projected from its main line on the western front, salients costly to hold and dangerous because the means were lacking properly to entrench them and the communications were deficient, both in roads and railways. Particularly was this true of the Marne salient. To push the attack on Amiens was obviously the desirable strategic course, but owing to the diffi- culty of organizing an attack there, and to the massing of Allied reserves behind that part of the front, it offered little chance of success. Ludendorff consequently turned his attention to pushing forward the Lys attack. But the nature of the terrain and the activity of the British artillery and aviation made the accumulation of the necessary materiel a difficult, slow and costly undertaking. Early in July it had become apparent that Crown Prince Rupprecht could not be ready before August. Something had to be done in the meantime to preserve the in- itiative. The attack in the Champagne was Ludendorff's solution of the problem. The Allied front in that sector was known to be weakly held. A successful attack there would not only ease the difficulties of communication in the Marne salient but might lead to the evacuation of Verdun, giving the Germans an additional and much-needed railway line for the supply of their armies in France. An additional result hoped for was the withdrawal of Allied reserves from N. to S., facilitating the German attack in Flanders planned for August.
The date set for the attack was July 12, but delays in the preparations deferred it to the i5th. The plan called for the VII. German Army to force the crossing of the Marne between Jaulgonne and Verneuil (20 km.), gain the heights S. of the Marne and advance eastward by both banks of the river on Epernay. Fifteen divisions were disposed for the attack on a front of 36 kilometres. The I. and III. German Armies, E. of Reims, were to advance southward on Chalons-sur-Marne, connecting with the VII. Army near Epernay. Their front of attack was 44 km., for which they employed 15 divisions in the front line and 10 in reserve. No attack was to be made about Reims itself since that city was bound to fall if the other attacks succeeded. On the French side the I. and III. German Armies were opposed by the IV. French Army of Gouraud; the VII., in the sector of attack, by the V. Army of Berthelot and the VI. of Degoutte. These French armies consisted in the main of worn or second- class troops but were fairly compactly disposed and were reen-
