One hundred years ago today the First Battle of Champagne
began on the Western Front. By this point in the war trench warfare was fully
established all along the Western Front. Manned trenches stretched continuously from the English
channel to the Swiss border. Neither the French, British or German armies had
planned for, or even trained for, this type of warfare. Though the use of
trenches in warfare dated back to ancient times they had never been constructed
on this scale. None of the militaries involved, from the lowest ranking foot
soldier to the highest ranking general had any practical experience in dealing
with this situation. Any solution would have to come from trial and error and the
First Battle of Champagne was the first major attempt to break the deadlock
brought on by the creation of the trenches.
At the start World War One the conventional wisdom of the
day was that wars were won by aggressive action and brilliant maneuvers. War
was to be won much like a game of chess, the player who got all of his pieces
in the right places would win. It would be the French who would be the first to
apply this thinking to trench warfare with disastrous results. 
The German invasion into France had been stopped and now the
French were trying to expel the Germans from French territory and it seemed by
mid December that an opportunity had presented itself. The frontline was shaped
like massive bulge (Grey redlined line) that meant that the German forces at
the tip of the bulge could be attack from two sides (in this case from the
north and the south). Additionally, the Germans realized that the goal of capturing
Paris and crushing the French in one fell swoop before Russia could react was
not going to happen. Despite Germany's successes in the east, it had to
relocate thousands of troops from the Western Front to the Eastern Front to
keep from being overwhelmed by the Russian army. Following these movements the
French now enjoyed a numerical advantage over the Germans, who were relying on their
trenches to make up for their reduced numbers. With the Germans outnumbered and
in a vulnerable position the textbook action was for the French to attack, and
thus the First Battle of Champagne began.
The plan was for the British would launch a series of attacks
in northern Belgium (Figure A) prior the main French attack. This would
distract the Germans and cause them to move reinforcement to the north were
they could not help against the French offensive. Then the French would attack
to the north (Figure B) and south (Figure C) of the bulge (or in military terms
"salient") in German lines in the Champagne region (hence the name of
the battle). This would force the German forces (Figure D) to retreat as they
would not risk being cut off and surrounded by the French forces. The Germans
would fall back until they could "straighten" their front line
(Figure E) so they would no longer have a vulnerable salient (or bulge) for the
French to attack. This would allow France to retake much of the territory they
had lost to the Germans. But the battle did not go even remotely as planned.
The British attack failed to make any progress against the Germans
(Figure A) or even serve as much of a distraction. The French main attacks (Figure
B) stalled. The French made almost no progress against the German trenches and
could not break through the German lines. The French quickly realized that
attacking at specific points was yielding little result. The German could
funnel all their reinforcement into the trenches at the points of the French
attacks and every German artillery piece for miles could be focused on right
were the French were trying to break through. So the French began expanding the
width of their attacks (Figure C) in the hopes that the Germans would have to spread
themselves (and their artillery support) so thin that at some point the French
would achieve a breakthrough through the weakened German lines. But all that
was accomplished was that more and more French soldiers were drawn into an offensive
that was going nowhere, all the while casualties mounted. Occasionally the French
were able to push the Germans back and capture a portion of the Germans front
line trenches here and there. But the Germans would inevitable counter attack
and the French would be forced back to their own trenches, and no progress
would be made.
The First Battle of Champagne would last for more three
months with the final attacks were not called off until March. Casualty estimates of
the battle vary but approximately 90,000 French soldiers were killed, wounded
or captured. The Germans loss were only half as many, around 45,000. The battle
was a brutal early lesson in the hazards of trench warfare, which strongly
favored the defender. The French learn that relatively small numbers of defending
soldiers in a trench supported with machine guns and artillery could resist a
much larger force. It was also learned that any attack against an enemy trench
that was not supported by artillery fire (to make the defenders keep their
heads down) was essentially suicidal. Finally the French saw how even if portions
of the first, or even second, line of
enemy trenches were captured they were vulnerable to counter attacks from the
defenders in support trenches because it was very hard, as the battle raged, to
move up the supplies and heavy weapons needed defend the captured trenches.
The First Battle of Champagne failed to move the frontline
as the French had hoped. This failure would set the tone for the Western front,
which would become an obsession with finding a way to break through the enemy's
trenches, end the stalemate and get the armies moving again.
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