Battle of Mons
| Battle of Mons | |||||||||
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| Part of the Battle of the Frontiers of the First World War | |||||||||
Royal Fusiliers resting in the town square at Mons before the Battle of Mons. The Royal Fusiliers faced some of the worst fighting in the battle and earned the first Victoria Cross of the war. | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| United Kingdom | German Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Alexander von Kluck | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 1,638 | 2,000–5,000 | ||||||||
Mons Mons: Belgian town and capital of Hainaut | |||||||||
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.