On the Western Front of World War I, during the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, dozens of dead French soldiers lay scattered on the muddy battlefield between Sovain and Tahiré in France, killed by German troops.

 　　On the Western Front of World War I, dozens of dead French soldiers lie scattered on a muddy battlefield between Sovain and Tahiré in France after being killed by German troops during the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914.

 　In the months following the outbreak of World War I on July 28, 1914, German forces rapidly invaded French territory and French troops retreated. Fears arose that the Germans would occupy the French capital, Paris. The allied British wanted to evacuate to port cities along the English Channel. The French Parisian military governor pushed for a counterattack against the German flank to prevent the German invasion of Paris.

　French reconnaissance planes spotted a split in the German lines, and the Allies decided to counterattack quickly on September 5, 1914. Hundreds of cabs from Paris were used to rush French soldiers to the front lines in the Marne River valley, about 48 km northeast of Paris. The First Battle of the Marne became the first major battle of the Western Front in World War I.

　Allied and German forces fought for about a week from September 6 to September 14, using machine guns, artillery, and cavalry charges, and the British and French allies were able to push the Germans back from Paris. After retreating some 65 kilometers, the Germans went into hiding north of the River Esne in northeastern France. A race to the sea ensued between the Allies and the Twits, who then built trenches and reinforced their lines in an attempt to invade and break out of each other's north.

　By the end of the First Battle of the Marne, French casualties totaled about 250,000, of which an estimated 80,000 were killed in action; German casualties on the Western Front in 1914 totaled about 500,000. Both sides then fell into a brutal trench warfare that was slow and invasive. Countless soldiers lost their lives and died for the sake of a small territorial gain. This battle would go down as the First Battle of the Marne, for it was also in 1918 that the Second Battle of the Marne occurred, pushing back the German offensive.