On 6 June 1919, near Cēsis, the German Landeswehr and Iron Division began their attack on the freshly formed positions of the North Latvian Brigade and the Estonian Army. On the same day, the Cēsis Regiment’s volunteer Schoolboy Company, made up of pupils from Valmiera and Cēsis, experienced its first battle – the unit numbered 108 young soldiers, many of them only teenagers. This clash opened the Cēsis Battles, whose later victory thwarted the plans of the pro-German Niedra government and von der Goltz in the Baltics.

The Cēsis Battles were one of the decisive moments of the Latvian War of Independence. The Latvian and Estonian victory in June 1919 strengthened the position of Kārlis Ulmanis’s Provisional Government and halted an attempt to subordinate Latvia to a pro-German political order.