Battle of Mons

The Battle of Mons, or the First Battle of Mons to differentiate it from another battle later in the war, was the first big engagement of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the First World War. It was a subsidiary action of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the Allies clashed with the German Army on the French–German frontier. At Mons, the British Army attempted to hold the line of the Mons–Condé Canal against the advancing German 1st Army.

Although the British fought well and inflicted disproportionate casualties on the numerically superior Germans, they were forced to retreat due to being outnumbered and the sudden retreat of the French Fifth Army (General Charles Lanrezac) which exposed the British right flank. Though initially planned as a simple tactical withdrawal and executed in good order, the British retreat from Mons lasted for two weeks and took the BEF to the outskirts of Paris, before it counter-attacked in concert with the French, at the First Battle of the Marne.

Background

Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 and on 9 August, the BEF began embarking for France. Unlike many Continental armies, the BEF in 1914 was small. At the beginning of the war, the German and French armies numbered well over a million men each, divided into eight and five field armies respectively; the BEF had c. 80,000 troops in two corps of long-service volunteers and reservists. The BEF was probably the best trained and most experienced of the European armies of 1914. British training emphasised rapid-fire marksmanship and the average British soldier was able to hit a man-sized target fifteen times a minute, at a range of 300 yd (270 m) with his Lee–Enfield rifle.