{"id":26010,"date":"2014-05-28T08:28:10","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T12:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26010"},"modified":"2025-11-08T13:15:40","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T18:15:40","slug":"the-oddly-neglected-battle-of-amiens-1918","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/28\/the-oddly-neglected-battle-of-amiens-1918\/","title":{"rendered":"The oddly neglected Battle of Amiens, 1918"},"content":{"rendered":"

In History Today<\/em>, Nick Lloyd<\/a> wonders why the allied victory at the Battle of Amiens does not have the same degree of recognition that the British disaster at the Battle of the Somme does:<\/p>\n

For the historian John Terraine, who fought a long and lonely battle to rescue the reputation of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig \u2013 commonly caricatured as a \u2018butcher and bungler\u2019 \u2013 the Battle of Amiens was his vindication. In his article for History Today,<\/em> written in 1958, Terraine revisited the scene of the infamous \u2018black day\u2019 of the German army on August 8th, 1918. As Terraine reminds us, this battle was a far cry from the barren, bloody results of the first day on the Somme, July 1st, 1916, when the British army suffered its worst day. According to Terraine, Amiens was a triumph of \u2018planning and method \u2026 of co-ordination and cunning; of the valour and efficiency of the British artillery and tanks; and of the courage, initiative and dash of the infantry\u2019.<\/p>\n

Much of what Terraine wrote still stands. Amiens was a decisive moment, kicking off Marshal Ferdinand Foch\u2019s \u2018series of movements\u2019 that would end with the German government appealing for peace negotiations on October 3rd (an essential prelude to the Armistice on November 11th). Amiens was a perfect demonstration of not only how effective British and Commonwealth forces had become by 1918 \u2013 developing an embryonic blitzkrieg \u2013 but also how the German army had no answer to this kind of combined, all-arms approach to warfare.<\/p>\n

Purists will be offended by Terraine\u2019s failure to explain the role of the French army at Amiens (which extended the attack to the south), but more intriguing is the sidelining of Sir Arthur Currie\u2019s Canadian Corps. Indeed, Terraine\u2019s focus on generals Rawlinson and Monash (although not incorrect in itself) seems to miss how important the Canadians were to the battle; it would be true to say that they made the Battle of Amiens. Their four divisions in line, deployed in the centre along the Amiens-Roye Road, formed the spearhead of the assault. At the end of the day they had driven eight miles into the position of the German Second Army.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In History Today, Nick Lloyd wonders why the allied victory at the Battle of Amiens does not have the same degree of recognition that the British disaster at the Battle of the Somme does: For the historian John Terraine, who fought a long and lonely battle to rescue the reputation of Field Marshal Sir Douglas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,62,1118,7,5,246],"tags":[31,1607,955,1219],"class_list":["post-26010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-cancon","category-europe","category-germany","category-history","category-military","category-ww1","tag-army","tag-arthurcurrie","tag-canadiancorps","tag-hundreddays"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Lw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26011,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010\/revisions\/26011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}