The Battle of Dinant was an engagement fought by French and German forces in and around the Belgian town of Dinant in the First World War, during the German invasion of Belgium. The French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) advanced into Belgium and fought the Battle of Charleroi and Battle of Mons from the Meuse crossings in the east, to Mons in the west. On 15 August 1914, German troops captured the Citadel of Dinant which overlooked the town; the citadel was recaptured by a French counter-attack during the afternoon.
French troops spent the next few days fortifying the Meuse crossings and exchanging fire with German troops on the east bank. A German raiding-party drove into Dinant on the night of but the attack degenerated into a fiasco, in which Germans may have fired at each other. Rather than consider that the small-arms fire may have come from the French troops on the west bank, the German soldiers blamed Belgian civilians, killing seven and burning down 15 to 20 houses in reprisal. The raiders withdrew having suffered and
On 23 August, the Germans attacked Dinant again, under the impression that the town was full of (civilian irregular forces, who were defined as terrorists under German military law). German troops of the 3rd Army massacred Belgian civilians while fighting French troops, who were still dug in along the west bank and on the east end of the bridge. The massacre was another reprisal against anticipated civilian resistance and was the largest of the German war crimes perpetrated during the invasion, which became collectively known as the Rape of Belgium.
Background
In 1914, the town had a population of and was an important strategic crossing on the Meuse, where the river flows through a south–north gorge. Three roads and a path converged on the town from the east, over an escarpment and down into the town, along which an attack from the east would come. The wooded ridge on the east bank was topped by the Napoleonic era stone Citadel of Dinant overlooking the town and the Meuse bridge, below. In 1914 there was a ribbon of streets about long on the east bank, a few hundred metres wide. Before the battle, the Mayor of Dinant urged the population to not take part in the fighting and forbade manifestations in support of the Allies.
Prelude
6–14 August
The German invasion of France began with the Occupation of Luxembourg and the invasion of Belgium on 4 August. Five German infantry brigades, three cavalry divisions with horse artillery and machine-gun detachments and ten battalions crossed the Belgian border. The 5th Cavalry Division and the Guard Cavalry Division advanced through Luxembourg and entered Belgium on 10 August, with orders to advance north-west to Dinant and then scout the Meuse as far as the French border near Givet. The town of Dinant was close to the French border, between Liège and Mons, on the east bank of the Meuse. On 6 August, Belgian engineers dispersed a patrol of German Hussars at Anseremme and on 12 August, French infantry at Dinant destroyed a cavalry patrol. By 14 August, the French Fifth Army had occupied Dinant and the west bank of the Meuse with two divisions; next day the main force of the German 3rd Army (Colonel-General Max von Hausen) arrived.
15 August
On 15 August, troops of the German 3rd and 4th Cavalry divisions, five battalions of and three field artillery groups, attempted to take Dinant by coup de main. The French I Corps held the west bank of the Meuse and at Dinant, the 2nd Division ( Henry Victor Deligny) had a battalion of the 33rd Infantry Regiment, two companies of the 148th Infantry Regiment (detached from the 4th Division) and a section of machine-guns in the citadel and in the exits from Dinant, towards the St Nicolas and Leffe suburbs. At German cavalry guarded the flanks as the 12th Battalion and the 13th Battalion supported by horse artillery and machine-guns, attacked the town and citadel. The Germans got a machine-gun into the citadel around and the French retreated through a small stairway along the cliff, having suffered 50 per cent casualties. descended the stairway and advanced into the town by