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During June and July they had been mainly engaged in repelling German attacks on the Chemin des Dames, though Gouraud, who succeeded Anthoine in the Champagne command, secured some valuable local gains on the Moronvillers heights. The attack at Verdun was entrusted to Guillaumat, and his bombardment began on 17 August.

There was a more satisfactory proportion of gains to losses in the more limited operations which characterized Pétain's substitution for Nivelle as French commander-in-chief. After Nivelle's comprehensive disappointment on the Chemin des Dames and Moronvillers heights in April, Pétain restricted the field of his attacks and took ample time to prepare them.

To the west of the road from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet, the troops traversed the first German line and rushed forward for a distance of about 1,200 yards as far as a supporting trench, in front of which they were stopped by wire entanglements. A counterattack debouching from the west and supported by the artillery of Moronvillers caused a slight retirement of the French left.

It was as late as June that General Anthoine's soldiers had taken their stand to the left of the British armies, and after the tremendous fights along the Chemin des Dames and Moronvillers in April, it might well be believed that they were tired.

There were three main objectives: to clear the Chemin des Dames, to master the Moronvillers massif and other heights north and east of Reims, and to thrust between these two great bastions along the road to Laon. The artillery preparation began on 6 April and the infantry attack on Monday the 16th, a week after that on the Vimy Ridge.

Fresh attempts were made in May; Craonne was taken on the 4th, and the California plateau to the north of it and Chevreux in the plain to the east were seized on the 6th and held against counter-attacks, while east of Reims Auberive had fallen, and by the 20th the whole summit of the Moronvillers massif was said to have been secured.

The Moronvillers massif was thus outflanked, and by the middle of the month the Germans were evacuating the whole of their ground south of the Aisne. This retreat, coupled with the French advance east of St. Quentin, endangered the great apex of the German front in the St. Gobain forest, and by the 10th its abandonment was begun.

The French Tanks, here first employed, were disappointing, and Loivre was the only gain. The 17th was spent in beating off counter-attacks west of Reims, while the French offensive spread east to Moronvillers. Here the same tale had to be told; gallantry carried various points of importance, but a month's fighting failed to give the French complete control of their first day's objectives.

Here the German front is the same as they established and fortified it after the Battle of the Marne. It rests on the west side on the Massif de Moronvillers; to the east it stretches as far as the Argonne. It was intended to cover the railroad from Challerange to Bazancourt, a line indispensable for the concentration movements of the German troops.