At the time of its construction the fort controlled the Meuse and the railway line linking Reims, Montmédy, Givet and Hirson.

The Fort des Ayvelles was reduced in status in 1899, its masonry construction rendered obsolete by the advent of high-explosive artillery shells.

[1] The fort features particularly elaborate double caponiers to protect the outer wall and ditch on opposite corners, as well as 7-metre (23 ft) counterscarps.

The fort and a subsidiary battery featured Mougin casemates, each armed with a single de Bange Model 1877 155 mm gun.

The fort possessed 53 artillery pieces in 1899, manned by 880 men, and disposed in two-level casemates on a north-south line.

[2][3][4] The caponiers were damaged by both world wars and by the French military in explosives tests in 1960 in preparation for demolition of the urban fortifications of Charleville Mézières.

[5] In addition to its own Mougin casemate, the pentagonal detached battery was armed with 10 artillery pieces, served by 150 men.

Under these circumstances, Georges Lévi Alvarès requested permission from the Fourth Army to evacuate the fort in the event of German attack.

Georges Lévi Alvarès, who had remained at the Fort des Ayvelles, committed suicide on the 27th.

The 102nd DIF was the successor organization to the Defensive Sector of the Ardennes, which had administered a weak section of the Maginot Line fortifications.

[5][9] The most notable victims were les quatres cheminots d'Amagne ("the four railway workers of Amagne"), René Arnould, Georges Boillot, Robert Stadler and Lucien Maisonneuve, executed on 26 June 1944 for sabotage at the Amagne-Lucqy depot.