Twelve town councillors and the Attorney-General were taken as hostages, and were only released on September 11th after much anxious suspense and annoyance.
At first, the Imperial army merely passed through Amiens on its forced march “nach Paris.” From the 1st to the 9th of September there were practically no Germans in the town. Occasionally, officers paid hurried visits, exacting further requisitions, and breaking open the safes of the Savings Banks.
On September 9th, a garrison was installed, and a major appointed Kommandant of the town. Injunctions, prohibitions, and requisitions became more severe immediately. It was forbidden to be in the streets after 8 p.m., or to sell newspapers. Motor vehicles were seized, and Frenchmen residing in Amiens who had not been mobilised, were ordered to the Citadel. Two-thirds of them were eventually released, but about a thousand young men were sent away into captivity. They had scarcely left, when the Germans withdrew precipitately from the town.
On September 11th, only a few laggards remained. The effect of the defeat on the Marne was making itself felt.
On the 12th, General d’Amade’s advance-guards, returning from the vicinity of Rouen, re-entered the town and took a few prisoners. The territorial divisions occupied Amiens until the 17th, when they left in a north-easterly direction, taking part at the end of the month in the battles at Péronne and Fricourt, which again fixed the front line positions. Relieved and protected by lines of trenches, Amiens was safe from the enemy until March, 1918.
How Amiens was saved in 1918
In 1918, a new onrush of the German armies brought them almost to the gates of Amiens. On March 21st, Ludendorff opened his great offensive by hurling a million fanatical troops against the 5th British Army. Bapaume, Péronne, and Montdidier fell in a few days; a stretch of territory, sixty kilometres broad, was occupied by the enemy, who captured enormous booty. For a moment, the road to long-coveted Paris seemed open. Thanks, however, to the prodigious resistance of the French troops, who barred the valley of the Oise, the breach was promptly closed. It was then that the enemy returned to his first objective, i.e., the separation of the two Allied armies. On March 27th the Germans hurled themselves at Amiens, which formed the hinge of the Allies’ front.
