Chemin des Dames

At the time, it was scarcely a carriage road, but it was the most direct route between Paris and the Château de la Bove [Wikidata], near Vauclair, on the far side of the Ailette.

The ridge's strategic importance first became evident in 1814 when Napoleon's young recruits defeated an army of Prussians and Russians at the Battle of Craonne.

Their names are as follows: During World War I, the Chemin Des Dames lay in that sector of the Western Front held by the French Army.

The front line then remained static until March 1917, during which time several thousand soldiers died in local attacks or coup de main operations.

To soften up the German defences, General Robert Nivelle, an artilleryman by training and experience, inflicted a six-day artillery preparation involving 5,300 guns.

On the first day, French infantry and some colonial Senegalese troops progressed to the top of the ridge in spite of intense German artillery counterfire and poor weather conditions.

However, as French infantry reached the plateau, the advance was slowed and then stopped by the intense fire of a very high number of the Germans' new MG08/15 machine guns.

By the Summer of 1917, order had returned to the French army, which won a major victory that August on the left bank of the Meuse at Verdun, driving the Germans from the positions they had taken at such high cost there in 1916.

A German breakthrough was aided by orders of a French general to mass troops in the front line – a tactic by this date discredited.

The penetration broke into open country and fighting went on from 27 May to 6 June 1918, but ran out of energy owing to lack of a strategic objective and lengthening supply lines.