Battle of Dinant 1914
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate. Wikidata lists more than one location for this battle; the first is shown.
Key facts
| Year | 1914 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | World War I era (1914–1918) | derived from year |
| Location | Belgium | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| Coordinates | 50.2500, 4.9000 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
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 (21–23 August) and Battle of Mons (23 August), 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 21/22 August 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 19 dead and 117 wounded.
On 23 August, the Germans attacked Dinant again, under the impression that the town was full of francs-tireurs (civilian irregular forces, who were defined as terrorists under German military law).
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Dinant (revision 1370109759), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Browse more: battles in Belgium · Europe · World War I era battles