At 10 am on December 15, the attack was made. French and German batteries engaged in artillery duels, and above the battlefield pilots contested for supremacy of the skies. Good weather returned on December 9, and Nivelle recommenced the preparatory barrage. The Germans launched a violent offensive on December 6 in an attempt to preempt the French assault and captured Hill 304. Bad weather intervened, however, delaying the plan and allowing the Germans to learn of its existence, so the value of a surprise was lost. Artillery preparation began on November 29 with a 750-gun barrage. In order to exploit his successes, Mangin planned to attack again on December 5 over a 6-mile (10-km) front on the right bank, with the intention of retaking in one blow the whole of the former second French line, which had been lost on February 24. Mangin was a gifted strategist, but he was widely regarded as a spendthrift when it came to the lives of his men, and his commitment to offensive warfare at any cost earned him the nickname “the Butcher.” By that evening the French had retaken Douaumont along with 6,000 German prisoners, and by November 2 the fort at Vaux was once again in French hands. An infantry assault followed on October 24, with three divisions advancing behind a creeping artillery barrage. Nivelle approved, and that offensive was initiated on October 21 with an artillery barrage across a broad front. Charles Mangin, who had held command of a section of the French defensive line from Fleury to the right bank of the Meuse from June 22, proposed a scheme to liberate the Verdun region. At the conclusion of this enormous expenditure of blood and treasure, the lines were little changed from where they had been in early February. French guns at Verdun fired over 10,000,000 rounds with the field artillery, over 1,000,000 medium-calibre rounds, and 600,000 large-calibre rounds. From February through July, the Germans had used 43 divisions. With that the active period of the Battle of Verdun came to an end.įrom February 21 to June 15, the French army had fielded 66 divisions at Verdun by December 1916, roughly 75 percent of the French army had seen action on the Meuse. Local fighting continued throughout the month, and the final significant German attack, on September 3, yielded no gains. The French retook Thiaumont on August 3 and Fleury the following day, with the Germans regaining Thiaumont on August 8. The advance crumpled up on the slopes of Souville, and another German attack on August 1 failed. On July 11 the Germans made yet another attack on Verdun, assaulting the line from Vaux to Souville with 12 regiments.
The general Allied infantry assault began on July 1, and the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties-with 20,000 killed-on the first day alone. The preliminaries of the great Franco-British offensive on the Somme started on June 24 with a weeklong artillery barrage.
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