A panorama of Loretto Heights including part of Vimy Ridge. Notre Dame de Lorette, a pilgrimage site in 1914, stood on the Heights, and was, with Vimy Ridge, part of the high ground seized by German troops in the Race to the Sea after the Battle of the Marne. French commander Joffre hoped to capture Loretto Heights and Carency, a village the Germans had fortified, in the First Battle of Artois in December, 1914.