For more than three years the inhabitants of Lille had heard the guns thundering almost at their gates, as for a long while the front was bounded by Armentières and Lens. In December, 1914, the Battle of Artois partially cleared Arras. The offensive of May-June, 1915, was marked by the capture of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Ablain-St.-Nazaire, Carency, Souchez, stopping at Vimy Ridge and hemming in Lens on the south. The victory of September-October, 1915, cleared Lens further to the north, by the capture of Loos. In March, 1918, a powerful German offensive from Armentières, forced the Allies back for several months, until the successive and correlated offensives of the Allies, under Foch, beginning on July 18th, finally liberated the French soil, town by town, and village by village. In August and September there was an advance along the whole front from the Argonne to the Artois, while in October, the Artois-Picardy front also burst into flames.
While the French, in the centre of their line of attack, crossed the Oise at Mont-d'Origny, to the south-west of Guise, the British, north of Douai and east of Lens, encircled Lille more closely on the south, and approached Séclin, Aubourdin and Quesnoy-sur-Deule.
At the other end of the front, on the left, Belgian, British and French forces under the King of Belgium, Albert I., took the offensive, and on the 14th, 15th and 16th. of October, in spite of the rain and mud, took Roulers and Thourout. Meanwhile, the 2nd British Army captured Menin, crossed the Lys 9 miles from Lille, taking from the rear the northern defences of the latter. In possession of Menin and Bouchain, the British continued to encircle Lille and Douai, and approached the two ends of the important Menin-Tourcoing-Roubaix-Cysoing-Orchies-Somain-Cambrai railway.
On the 14th, the Germans, who were preparing to evacuate Lille, destroyed the railway behind them, and on the 15th, burnt the goods station of St. Sauveur, after hurriedly plundering it.
At 4 a.m. on the 17th, the inhabitants were ordered to form up and march towards the British lines.
At 5 a.m. on the 17th the last of the Germans left Lille, after blowing up all the bridges and a number of locks on the canal.
At noon, on the 1,536th day of the war, the 5th British Army entered Lille, after a four years' occupation.
Although they had organized powerful defences to a depth of 12 miles around the town (barbed-wire entanglements, concrete trenches, etc.), the Germans made only a faint show of resistance. To console the people at home, the newspapers (Strassburger Post) announced that "retreat was the only way to preserve the elasticity of the front and prevent a break-through at all costs." (See opposite, map showing, step by step, the advance of the Allies, from August 1st to October 18th, 1918.)
The joy of the liberated population may best be expressed by the words with which the Mayor of Lille received Président Poincaré on October 21st: "For four years we have been like miners buried alive, listening for the sound of the rescuers' picks; then all at once the dark gallery opens and we perceive the light."
In Paris, the news was received with singing and cheers. In the Place de la Concorde, the Statue of Lille was decorated with the French and British colours and flowers. The Fourth National Loan, named the "Liberation Loan," opened under the most favourable conditions.