Craonne () is a commune in the Aisne department in

Hauts-de-France Hauts-de-France (; pcd, Heuts-d'Franche; , also ''Upper France'') is the northernmost region of France, created by the territorial reform of French regions in 2014, from a merger of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy. Its prefecture is Lille. The ...

in northern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

History

It was the site of the Napoleonic

Battle of Craonne The Battle of Craonne (7 March 1814) was a battle between an Imperial French army under Emperor Napoleon I opposing a combined army of Imperial Russians and Prussians led by Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. The War o ...

in 1814. The former town was totally destroyed by artillery during the

Nivelle Offensive The Nivelle offensive (16 April – 9 May 1917) was a Franco-British operation on the Western Front in the First World War which was named after General Robert Nivelle, the commander-in-chief of the French metropolitan armies, who led the offensi ...

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, inspiring the song La Chanson de Craonne. It was an

arboretum An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, m ...

. The town that exists today was rebuilt from the 1920s. Craonne 1917

Geography

The river

Ailette The ailette (French language for ''little wing'') was a component of late thirteenth and early to mid fourteenth century knightly armour Armour (British English) or armor (American English; see spelling differences) is a covering used to pro ...

forms part of the commune's northern border.

Population

Sights

* Arboretum de Craonne *

Chemin des Dames In France, the Chemin des Dames (; literally, the "ladies' path") is part of the route départementale (local road) D18 and runs east and west in the Aisne department, between in the west, the Route Nationale 2 (Laon to Soissons), and in the eas ...

* La Chanson de Craonne

History

Geography

Population

Sights

See also