Second Offensive Battle of Verdun
The final French offensive closes the 1916 Battle of Verdun
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The day remembered as the end of Verdun was not an armistice. It was the day the French stopped their last 1916 offensive, at a farm called Chambrettes.
A farm called Chambrettes
On 18 December 1916, French forces completed the offensive begun on 15 December on the right bank of the Meuse, capturing the Chambrettes farm and ending the operation.
In those three days, four French divisions — supported by 886 assembled guns and directed by Charles Mangin under Second Army commander Robert Nivelle — recovered Louvemont and Bezonvaux and cleared ground in front of Forts Douaumont and Vaux.
They took 11,387 German prisoners, 115 artillery pieces, 44 Minenwerfer and 107 machine guns.
"German troops defeated" overshoots
The German line was pushed back from the recovered forts and many German troops were captured, but the German army was neither destroyed nor removed from every position around Verdun.
The French had not recovered every 1916 loss either: Germany still held Mort-Homme and Côte 304 on the west bank until the French offensive of 1917, and fighting in the region continued through 1917 and 1918.
The forts themselves had been recovered earlier — Douaumont on 24 October, Vaux re-entered on 3 November after a German evacuation — not during the December attack.
Where the endpoint comes from
The French Ministry of Armed Forces' chronology treats the cessation of this offensive on 18 December as the end of the 1916 battle. Oxford Bibliographies dates the end of the final counterattack to 19 December, so the endpoint is not uniform across scholarship.
Counting 21 February through 18 December inclusively gives 302 calendar days, and French institutional histories commonly round that to 300. The frequently quoted 303 days is not supported by the listed dates.
The Verdun Memorial records approximately 700,000 French and German casualties during 1916, which makes the widely repeated 700,000–1,000,000 range inflated at its upper bound.
Sources
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How this was checked
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Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.
What the sources leave uncertain
- French official and commemorative histories conventionally end the battle on 18 December, when the offensive stopped. Oxford Bibliographies dates the end of the final counterattack to 19 December, so the endpoint is not entirely uniform across scholarship.
- The phrase German troops defeated is broader than the evidence warrants. German positions were driven back and many troops captured, but the German army was not destroyed or removed from the entire Verdun sector.
- Counting 21 February through 18 December inclusively gives 302 calendar days; institutional histories commonly use the rounded expression 300 days.