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Progress along the whole French front continued in October; Gouraud's right pressed on to a level with, and then in advance of, the American left towards Challerange and Grandpré; his centre advanced towards Machault, and on his left Berthelot took Loivre, Brimont, and forced the passages of the Suippe at Bertricourt and Bazancourt, and of the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac.
For that plan was now his dominant aim, while the repulse of Blücher was chiefly of importance because it would enable him to stretch a hand eastwards to his beleaguered garrisons. But Blücher was not to be thus disposed of. While withdrawing from Soissons to the natural fortress of Laon, he heard that Napoleon had crossed the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac, and was making for Craonne.
On the 27th of May the Germans caught Foch by surprise and launched a violent attack on the Chemin des Dames, between Soissons and Berry-au-Bac. This formed the third phase of their great offensive. In four days they pushed before them the tired French divisions, sent into that sector to recuperate, a distance of fifty kilometers and reached the Marne.
On the canal from the Aisne to the Marne the French bombarded the trenches, batteries and cantonments of the Germans in the environs of Sapigneul and of Neuville, near Berry-au-Bac. Grenade engagements took place near the Bethune-Arras road and north of Souchez. In Champagne and in the Argonne also, long range artillery fighting rent the air.
By the end of the week the Germans were back on a line running nearly due east from a point on the Oise behind Compiègne to the Aisne, along it to Berry-au-Bac, and thence across Champagne and the Argonne to Verdun. They had failed in Lorraine as well, where the climax of their attack was from the 6th to the 9th.
The heavy artillery was planted here, the infantry intrenched around it, and strong defense trenches were established along the River Suippe that runs into the Aisne near Berry-au-Bac. On Friday, September 18, 1914, the first movement of the second phase was begun, when the Germans launched a sharp counterattack on the French center.
The German headquarters was silent concerning the fight on this date. While the French continued to hold their position on the eastern extremity of the Chemin-des-Dames they threatened to turn the right flank of the Laon bastion by an advance over the open ground north of Berry-au-Bac.
Shopkeepers and peasants of Celles, of Conde, of Attichy, along the way to Berry-au-Bac and from Billy to Sermoise, all those who have now fled from the Valley of the Vesle and the valley of the Aisne had just the same story to tell monotonous, yet awful because of its tragedy. It was their fate to be along the line of death.
They realized the importance of holding the line at all costs, for if the French advance proved successful, it would mean the isolation of Laon, upon which the Hindenburg line depended. North of Berry-au-Bac, where the old line of battle swings to the southeast toward Rheims, the French forces gained their greatest advance.
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