In January the chief centre of interest was in that part of the Aisne valley which lies to the north of the old city of Soissons.[7] You will remember that the Allies had captured the city, and the flat lands to the north of it, during the great advance in September 1914. Turn to the map on the next page and find the village of Cuffies.[8] On 18th January this village was in French hands, and so was the village of Crouy,[9] to the east of it. On the road from Soissons to Laon, and between Cuffies and Crouy, you will notice a spur of the plateau marked Hill 132.[10] To the south-east of Crouy there is another spur, marked 151. On 8th January the French made attacks on both these hills. They specially wished to capture Hill 132, because it would give them a gun position from which they could command the road to Laon.
In the drenching rain the French pushed forward, dragging their guns with great difficulty up the slippery slope. They carried three lines of German trenches, and were soon in possession of the hill. Meanwhile other troops had seized Hill 151. Though the Germans tried hard to recover the positions next day, they could not do so. Nothing happened on Sunday, 9th January; but on Monday, about noon, no less than two German corps, under von Kluck, were launched against the French, who were holding the hills. On the 12th the struggle grew very violent. The French were pushed off the eastern side of Hill 132, but with great difficulty they managed to cling to the western slopes.
During the four preceding days the weather had been very bad. Torrents of rain had descended without ceasing, and by the 12th the river was in high flood. It had been rising for days, and now it was swirling along like an angry torrent, threatening to carry away the only bridges by which the French could bring up reinforcements and ammunition. By the 13th all the bridges but two had been swept away, and the French decided to retreat across the river while they had the means of doing so.
They retired slowly and skilfully. Their batteries were withdrawn from the hills one by one, without letting the Germans know that they were being moved to the rear. The commander of one battery did not give the order to retire until the Germans were within five hundred yards of him. It was perilous and difficult work getting the guns down the steep slope. The gunners man-handled them until they reached the foot, and then they were limbered up and taken across a shaky pontoon bridge which had been thrown across the river at Missy. Guns on the right and centre had to be abandoned, but not before they were rendered useless.
By the evening of the 14th the Germans had advanced their line until they held the whole of the north bank of the Aisne from a mile east of Soissons to Missy. By this time the French, who only numbered 12,000, had been reduced to half their strength, and they had lost about twenty guns. Von Kluck had begun well, and, under the eye of the Kaiser, he now made a great effort to capture Soissons. Had he done so, he would have been in possession of a railway junction and the best bridge over the Aisne. He would also have been able to force the French to retire from the whole line of the river.
The floods had not reached Soissons, so the French were able to pour reinforcements into the city. A great struggle took place at the village of St. Paul, on the right bank of the river, about a mile to the east of Soissons. The Germans advanced in dense masses, and won the village; but the French artillery speedily drove them out, and von Kluck found that he could advance no further.
The Germans trumpeted abroad this little success as a smashing victory; but it was of no particular consequence, for they had only slightly improved their position, and in doing so had suffered a loss of at least 10,000 men. It was not so much German guns and rifles that drove the French from the spurs which they had won as the flooding of the river. Nature had fought for the Germans, but still they could not "make good." Some writers thought that it was very clever of von Kluck to postpone his big counter-attack until his enemies had a swollen river and flooded fields behind them; but the fact was that he could not attack earlier, because his reinforcements were late in arriving. The Germans owed their success not to good generalship, but to good luck.