By attacking a key point in the French fortress chain they would bleed the Entente to death. The result was a life-and-death struggle which by the early summer had sucked in more than 70 per cent of the French Army and threatened to turn the Entente’s concentric strategy into little more than a series of ad hoc relief operations. It was to seize back the initiative that at the end of May 1916 the British agreed to bring forward their first major land offensive of the war, on the Somme.
