cavalry appeared to be assembled around Bailleul and Steenvoorde, while behind it strong forces of infantry were advancing,
the XIII. Corps to the S. and the XIX. to the N. of Lille. The
garrison of the city, although reinforced on the loth by a
detachment, were unable to make head against these over-
whelming forces, more especially as the presence of the German
cavalry in all the area to the W. deprived it of all hope of
succour; and after two days' bombardment Lille surrendered
to the enemy with its garrison on Oct, 12.
The battle, however, was now about to enter on a new phase with the entry into action of the British army.
Operations of the British in the Lys Valley, Oct. 10-18. The transfer of the British from the Aisne to the left flank of the French army in Flanders had first been proposed by Sir John French on Sept. 29; the details were quickly arranged between him and Joffre, and the withdrawal from the line commenced on Oct. 1. The cavalry moved off first by road on the 2nd, and were followed by the infantry between the 8th and 12th. Sir John French, on his arrival at Abbeville on the 8th, had planned a general advance by the II. Corps, then detraining there, to the line Aire-Bethune, covered in front and to the left by the Cavalry Corps, and the detraining of the III. Corps to the N. at St. Omer. The IV. Corps and the 3rd Cavalry Div., under Gen. Rawlinson, which had been landed on the Belgian coast in order to assist the Belgians in the defence of Antwerp and had assisted in covering their retirement to the line of the Yser, had been holding the line of the Lys around Ghent on the 11th, and were instructed to maintain themselves between that town and Courtrai for four or five days, if possible; it was intended to bring the rest of the army up on the right of the IV. Corps, so as to hold the Lys line from Ghent southwards. Rawlinson was authorized, however, in case he was attacked by strong hostile forces, to fall back in the direction of St. Omer, and as a matter of fact the retreat of the Belgians to the N. of him eventually necessitated his retirement by way of Thielt and Thourout to Roulers, where the IV. Corps arrived on Oct. 12, unmolested by the enemy.
On the 10th French visited Foch, and a plan for a combined Allied offensive for the 13th, to reach the line of the Lys from Lille-Courtrai, was then drawn up. The British were to advance with their right N. of Lille, to force the river Lys at Courtrai and join up with Rawlinson's IV. Corps below that town. The Belgians were also to cooperate in the north. In accordance with this plan, the British cavalry pushing forward on the nth came into contact with the German IV. Cavalry Corps, operating before the right wing of the VI. Army, in the neighbourhood of Nieppe forest, and forced them back towards the Lys; the II. British Corps reached the line of the Aire-Bethune canal. By the I4th the cavalry had cleared the country to the E. as far as the Wytschaete-Messines ridge and pushed patrols forward to the crossings of the Lys; but the II. Corps, wheeling up its left in the direction of Merville, became heavily engaged with German infantry (the XIII. and XIX. Corps of the VI. Army), which prevented their making much headway. The III. British Corps, having completed its movement to Hazebrouck by the 13th, began its advance eastwards, to bring it level with the left of the II. Corps. This objective, however, was not attained without serious and sustained fighting; the Germans (XIX. Corps and IV. Cavalry Corps) stubbornly defended Bailleul, Meteren, Neuve Eglise, Sailly and Nieppe one after the other; by the i6th, however, the British were in possession of all these places. The II. Corps also had worked their way forward by dint of determined efforts to the line Aubers- Givenchy, and came into touch with the XXI. Corps on the left of the French X. Army, on the Bethune-La Bassee canal.
While the II. Corps, despite determined and unceasing attacks, found further progress impossible beyond the line Givenchy-Festubert-N. of Aubers, which it reached on Oct. 18, the III. Corps entered Bois Grenier and Armentieres, and was able to establish itself on a line E. of these places, while the Cavalry Corps, guarding their left, continued the line along the Lys to Menin. By the morrow the assembly of the British army in the
N. was completed by the arrival of the I. Corps at Poperinghe, St. Omer and Cassel. The battle of the Lys now became merged in the greater battle of Ypres, in which the whole British force was engaged from Oct. 20 to Nov. 20, and the description of the fighting between these dates on the front of the British II. and III. Corps will be found under that head. It may be said, how- ever, that neither the British nor the Germans, despite their utmost efforts, succeeded in bringing about any material change in the situation on the front between the Bethune-La Bassee canal about Givenchy and the Lys to the N. of Armentieres.
(B) French Offensives in Artois, 1915.—During the month of Oct. 1914 the western front had stabilized across Picardy and Artois, from the Oise to the neighbourhood of La Bassee. The line had not been chosen at the will of either party, but marked the points which each side had reached and held during the confused and rapid series of actions known as the " Race to the Sea." While there was still open country to the north it had been worth no one's while to attempt to dislodge an enemy present in any force. And when the sea had been reached and the German attacks upon the Yser repulsed, neither side retained the energy to advance. Both, therefore, had time to elaborate their defences in comparative peace, and thereby the sinuous and haphazard line already established became permanent.
About Arras the line bulged eastward, leaving Beaurains German but making St. Laurent-Blangy, Roclincourt, and Ecurie French. To the north was a westward bulge which gave the Germans Neuville-St. Vaast and La Targette, Carency and Ablain, Angres, Lievin, and La Fosse Calonne. North of Fosse Calonne the line ran straighter to the west of Loos, Hulluch, Haisnes, and La Bassee.
Artois is a chalk country. The surface soil is clay, with patches of sand unsuitable for cultivation and therefore wooded. The principal natural feature of the region is a long isolated ridge running from N.W. to S.E., which overlooks all the countryside. This ridge culminates at the chapel of Notre Dame de Lorette. East of the chapel there is a gap marked by the village of Souchez. East of Souchez again, the ridge continues as Vimy ridge and gradually dies away south of Vimy village.
The sector was of first-rate importance both for economic and for strategic reasons. North of the ridge ran the principal French and Belgian coal seam the axis of which in Artois is roughly the line Bethune-Lens. Although the public mind was naturally slow to grasp the fact, nevertheless as soon as it became clear that trench warfare would result in the postpone- ment of a decision, first-class economic objectives, such as the coal-mines, began to increase in general military value and continued to do so until the decisive campaign of 1918.
Strategically, the German lines in Artois covered the Lille-Douai-Cambrai railway, their main transversal line behind all this part of their front. Should this line be cut, were it even brought under effective artillery fire, their railway traffic would be compelled to use the inferior line Lille-Orchies-Somain-Cambrai.
Although the final elaboration of trench warfare was a matter of years, its general characteristics, especially the strain and hardship of remaining immobile and in close contact with the enemy, appeared at once. The possibility of manoeuvre disappeared and war became an affair of ever-increasing masses of material. In Artois, the importance of the sector and the nature of the soil made the fighting fierce and continuous and the hardships peculiarly bitter. The clay soil churned into a soft and sticky mud into which men sank deeply and sometimes even were lost. Everywhere the ground was humid; the Lorette ridge itself was honeycombed with springs so that trenches dug even on its summit were difficult to keep clear of water. Weapons often became unserviceable, and the men themselves looked like walking lumps of mud. Nevertheless, the fighting was not only savage but continuous. A major operation was merely a crescendo in a never-ending series of furious lesser combats, all centring about the commanding Lorette-Vimy ridges.
Throughout the first three years of trench fighting on the western front, in most of the minor operations, and in every
