Battle of Mons
1914 CE.
Shown on the map at 50.479°, 3.950°.
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.
Text from the Wikipedia article Battle of Mons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.