The written histories of the French army during the opening
months of the First World War often focused on the battle of the Marne in
September 1914, a battle that it was crucial for the Allied armies to win. In
contrast, the opening phase of the fighting along the French frontier with
Germany has received remarkably little attention. In accordance with Plan XVII,
the majority of the French troops were sent eastwards to deploy opposite the
frontier with Germany, the direction from which the German army’s main thrust
was expected. Following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the French had built
fortresses along their eastern frontier. It was expected that the Germans would
attempt to avoid these and attack from the Metz area of Lorraine, and Plan XVII
allowed the French army to deploy and react to any German incursions.
Of course, the Germans had opted instead for a strategy of
envelopment; the much-discussed Schlieffen-Moltke Plan allowed for the German
army to send a large force, in fact the main effort of this attack, in a wide
sweeping manoeuvre through Belgium. This group of armies would, it was hoped,
sweep past Paris and into the rear of the main French armies. The French,
sandwiched between two German army groups, would be destroyed in a decisive
battle. This short campaign would then allow the Germans to turn eastwards to
deal with the Russian army, which, it was thought, would be mobilising much
more slowly. With the benefit of hindsight, the numerous flaws in the German
plan seem obvious but it should be borne in mind that similar plans for
large-scale enveloping manoeuvres were to prove successful on the Eastern
Front, in particular at Tannenberg in August 1914.
Joffre was not unaware of the possibility of a German attack
through Belgium but he refused to believe that this would be the main German
effort and as a result sent just a single army to cover his left flank to the
north. This was the French Fifth Army under General Charles Lanrezac. Joffre
would cling stubbornly to this belief as the early battles developed, refusing
to believe the reports from commanders on the spot that they were facing the
bulk of the German army in its advance through Belgium.
Joffre also planned for a series of vast spoiling offensives
that would shut down any German plan. The first of these would be launched into
Alsace, the Saar and Lorraine. The line of eastern fortifications would force
the Germans to attack through the Trouée des Charmes (the Charmes Gap), an
unfortified area between Toul and Epinal, and this would allow Joffre to
concentrate his forces to respond. A second wave of French offensives would be
launched towards Metz and, if the Germans came through Belgium, he would attack
through the Ardennes and detach the German right wing from the rest of the
army. France was, after all, numerically weaker in the field and these plans
allowed for the possibility of gaining local numerical superiority. Joffre was
confident that his plans would be successful and this would allow the five
French armies to contain and isolate the German forces in Belgium while also
engaging their central group of armies along the eastern frontier. Within the
French strategy there was, however, a dangerous tendency towards ‘mirror
imaging’ when predicting German moves. Perhaps the single biggest flaw in
Joffre’s plans was his assumption that the Germans would conform to his ideas
as to how they should deploy. The result was to be a near disaster.
Mobilisation began in France on 1 August 1914 and deployment
followed the minutely detailed timetables of Plan XVII. France called up
twenty-seven year classes for service, while also deploying its standing
conscript army and available colonial troops. Over 4,000 trains carried these
men across France to their designated railheads and from there they covered up
to 30km per day in route marches to their deployment areas. At this early phase
of the war French troops were still dressed in what can only be described as
nineteenth-century military splendour. The infantry wore red trousers and their
uniforms were topped with a red kepi. In the weeks that followed, officers
would lead attacks wearing white gloves and waving swords. The French cavalry
similarly wore red breeches but topped their uniforms with a polished brass
helmet, complete with plume. Cuirassier regiments wore polished breastplates.
The opening battles would show how unwise it was to advance on the enemy
wearing such distinctive and visible uniforms.
The initial French attack took place on the extreme right
flank of the French army when VII Corps of the First Army, supported by a
cavalry division, was sent to occupy Mulhouse. This would gain a foothold on
the Rhine and allow for later operations. On 7 August VII Corps duly crossed
the frontier but its commander, General Bonneau, was far from audacious as
local intelligence reports alarmed him with accounts of an Austrian outflanking
move through Switzerland. Nevertheless, his troops advanced with determination
and after a six-hour battle overcame German resistance at Altkirch with a
bayonet charge, as per regulations – but at the cost of over a hundred men
killed. Bonneau sent a telegram directly to the Minister of War, Adolphe
Messimy, in Paris, trumpeting a great victory while also by-passing the chain
of command. The next day Bonneau took Mulhouse without further fighting but on
9 August his position began to unravel. He was ejected from Mulhouse by a
series of counterattacks by the German Seventh Army (von Heeringen) and was
beaten back to the vicinity of the fortress at Belfort. Soon after, Bonneau was
removed from command. This initial phase of attacks had opened promisingly,
only to quickly disintegrate into a veritable rout. The organisation and
firepower of the German forces had overwhelmed the French formations. The
French artillery had proved ineffective while the standard infantry weapon, the
much-lauded Lebel rifle was found to be outdated. The Lebel proved to be
overlong and poorly balanced, while its tubular magazine made reloading much
slower. These problems were exacerbated by battlefield conditions. The French
senior commanders had been shown to be wanting, while at regimental level
officers found that there were too few maps and communications were poor. The
tendency for infantry and cavalry to put in spirited attacks, while awfully
gallant, also resulted in significant casualties.
In the immediate opening phases of the war there was little
time to process such lessons. The early battles of August 1914 – referred to
collectively as the ‘Battles of the Frontiers’ – comprised four simultaneous
battles in Lorraine, the Ardennes forests, Charleroi and Mons. The fighting
developed as the French army conformed to Plan XVII and the Belgian and British
armies also deployed in an effort to counter the unfolding German plan. French
offensives into Lorraine and the Ardennes followed a pattern that mirrored
General Bonneau’s experiences and they were repulsed by tactically superior
German forces.34 In front of Nancy, the French prepared to contest the German
advance, only to find that their southern flank in the Ardennes was exposed.
Full-scale retreat followed on 23 August. As the northern wing of the French
army at Charleroi also retreated, alarming gaps began to appear in the Allied
line. When the BEF retreated from Mons, a gap opened on its right between it
and its nearest French support. By 24 August all of the Allied armies were
being pushed back from the German advance, despite desperate rearguard actions
such as at Le Cateau on 26 August.
In Paris these developments were met with considerable
alarm. On 27 August the Union Sacrée coalition government was formed under
Premier René Viviani but any public confidence in this act of political unity
soon disappeared as the government was evacuated from Paris on 2 September and
sent to Bordeaux to escape the worsening situation. It is estimated that as
many as 500,000 Parisians followed the example of their political masters and
left the city.
The First Battle of the Marne, fought between 5 and 12
September, ultimately stabilised the Allied situation. It was, in fact, a
series of battles fought out along a 150km front that stretched from Compiègne
to Verdun, while at the same time other actions were developing on the eastern
front in Lorraine. These desperate days saw convoys of taxis used to ferry over
6,000 reservists to the front. The key moment came on 4–5 September, during the
prelude to the main battle, when General Gallieni realised that General von
Kluck’s First Army was swinging away from Paris and exposing its left flank.
This provided an opportunity for a French counter-stroke. Thereafter, now also
hampered by poor communications, the German commander Helmuth von Moltke found
his plan falling apart. The French armies and the BEF stubbornly held their
ground south of the Marne river, and when Colonel Hentsch, a German staff
officer, ordered a general retreat of the German First and Second Armies on 9
September, the battle was as good as lost. The German armies re-established
themselves over 60km away along a line on the Aisne river, which would be the
scene of another battle (the First Battle of the Aisne) later in September.
While this battlefield success was hailed as the ‘Miracle of
the Marne’, it was obvious to both sides that the inconclusive end to these
opening phases meant that the war would not be a short affair. Both the
Schlieffen-Moltke Plan and Plan XVII had failed to bring a decisive victory. In
a similar vein, the commanders and armies of both sides had exhibited problems
in terms of battlefield command, communications, training and equipment.
Joffre, who was lauded as the ‘hero of the Marne’, had shown great calm in the
face of the rapidly deteriorating situation, yet he had also displayed a
certain slowness and lack of imagination. In the months that followed, a series
of battles was fought in northern France and Flanders as the Germans and Allies
sought to outflank each other in the phase of fighting that came to be known as
the ‘Race to the Sea’. By the end of 1914 the front was static, with trench
lines running from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. A large tract of
France was occupied by German forces, which over time developed more elaborate
defences and trench systems. For the next four years French commanders would
try to figure out how to eject these German forces from French soil. It was a
problem that confounded many a high-ranking French general, and in the
immediate sense Joffre showed himself unequal to the new battlefield
conditions.
It was during the early battles of 1914 that Robert Nivelle
first came to popular notice. At the outbreak of the war Nivelle was an obscure
colonel, commanding a regiment of artillery. Born in Tulle in 1856, he was the
son of a French officer; his English mother was the daughter of one of the Duke
of Wellington’s officers. Following training at the École Polytechnique,
Nivelle was commissioned into the artillery in 1878 and later attended the
cavalry school at Saumer (1881). His early service was in the artillery and he
served in Tunisia and also in the Boxer Rebellion in China. In 1908, with the
rank of lieutenant-colonel, he was posted to Algeria. In 1912 he was promoted
to full colonel and commanded both the Fourth and Fifth Artillery Regiments in
the years before the war.
During the Alsace Offensive in 1914 Nivelle displayed great
skill in the deployment and use of his guns, and during the Battle of the Marne
(5–12 September 1914) he displayed great bravery and coolness under fire.
During this battle Nivelle realised that the infantry brigade to his front was
beginning to disintegrate and as the terrified infantrymen began to stream to
the rear, he limbered up his guns and drove them forwards through the
retreating troops. Technically speaking, it was exactly the opposite of what he
should have done at that moment. But instead of ordering his unit to safety in
the rear he deployed his regiment of 75mm guns and engaged the advancing
Germans over open sights. At point-blank range he coordinated an intense fire
on the German troops, halting their advance and stabilising his section of the
line. It was a courageous act; indeed, Nivelle never lacked personal courage.
In the First Battle of the Aisne (12–15 September 1914) he again laid down a
devastatingly effective fire on German formations. In reality, what we refer to
as the Battles of the Marne and the First Aisne consisted of a series of
dispersed and confusing actions but Nivelle performed well throughout this
period, especially at the engagements at Crouy and Quennevières.
Nivelle’s actions brought him to the attention of Joffre,
who was impressed by his initiative and offensive spirit. In November 1914
Nivelle was promoted to command of a brigade, and in February 1915 was promoted
again, to command of a division. Thereafter, his rise was nothing less than
meteoric, and in December 1915 he was appointed to command III Corps of
Pétain’s Second Army. By 1916 Nivelle had established a reputation that made
him a contender for the commander-in-chief’s position. He would be the prime
architect of the disastrous events of 1917. Nivelle was highly intelligent and
an excellent artillery officer. He was extremely effective in coordinating
artillery at regimental, brigade and divisional level. But it could be argued
that his later promotions took him beyond his abilities and out of his ‘comfort
zone’ as an artillerist.
For Joffre, the immediate problem was how to break the
German lines and restore a war of movement. From late 1914, and throughout
1915, he followed a programme for offensive action. These offensives came to be
characterised by the increased use of artillery, successive attacks by the
infantry and high casualty figures. In late 1914 Joffre initiated his First
Champagne Offensive, which ran from 10 December to 17 March 1915. This intense
phase of fighting saw separate battles developing along a wide front, including
three battles for the town of Perthes alone, with further fighting around Noyon
and Givenchy. Supplementary attacks took place at Verdun, Artois and Woëvre. By
the end of the campaign the French had advanced to a maximum depth of 2km into
the German lines. French casualties stood at more than 90,000 killed, wounded
or missing.
Unperturbed, Joffre turned his attention to the Artois
sector. He was convinced that the Germans were sending forces to the east to
counter the Russians and felt sure that he could break the line there. His
Artois Offensive was launched on 9 May and ran until 19 June, and incorporated
the British First Army under Haig. There were some significant successes. The
French preceded the attack with a five-day preliminary bombardment and Pétain’s
corps covered more than 5km in 90 minutes in one assault towards Vimy. The
British attack at Neuve Chapelle on 9 May was preceded by minimal artillery
preparation, however, and resulted in 11,000 casualties. Later French and
British attacks made minimal gains. When the offensive was finally shut down,
the French had lost more than 100,000 casualties.
Despite shell shortages and the difficulties of coordinating
such large-scale attacks, Joffre persisted – with similar results. The
Artois–Loos Offensive and the Second Champagne Offensive, which ran
simultaneously from 25 September to 6 November, resulted in 48,000 and 145,000
French casualties respectively. By the time these two offensives had been
called off in early November, the French army and the BEF had suffered over
320,000 casualties collectively.
In light of such enormous losses, it became increasingly
obvious to political leaders that they needed to exert greater control over the
military commanders, in particular Joffre. While the military complained about
the difficulties on the Western Front, German success in the Baltic during
their Vilnius Offensive in September 1915 spurred the Viviani administration to
try to gain control of the war. Yet the politicians would be thwarted in these
efforts. Since early 1915 Viviani had been pressuring Joffre to allow deputies
to visit the front on tours of inspection but permission was not forthcoming.
The government also wished to free up French forces for a campaign in Serbia
but Joffre would not release them. The final straw was Bulgaria’s entry into
the war on the side of the Central Powers in October. This occurred despite the
best efforts of the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, to keep
Bulgaria on the Allied side. Exasperated and looking increasingly ineffectual,
Viviani resigned in October 1915. He was succeeded by Aristide Briand, who
would fare no better.
In the aftermath of such huge casualties the French army
hoped for a period of rest and recuperation during the winter months of 1915/16
but on 21 February 1916 the Germans took the battlefield initiative to launch a
massive offensive against Verdun. This bloody battle would run in several
phases and last until December. As a result, it became the longest battle in
human history. Both sides allowed themselves to be drawn into a contest over
objectives of questionable strategic value. For France, the battle would later
define the struggle against Germany. In the decades after the war the ‘300
Jours de Verdun’ would be depicted as an existential battle and an iconic
period in French history. French efforts on the Somme in the summer of 1916
were largely successful, indicating that the army was developing tactically but
the Verdun battle overshadowed all other efforts. This is unsurprising. When
the battle finally wound down in the winter of 1916, the French had suffered
more than 550,000 casualties. To a modern reader, such casualty rates are
simply beyond comprehension. Yet in his plans for 1917, Joffre was intending to
unleash a further series of offensives.
Nivelle was also to play a significant role in the French
army’s struggle to maintain its grip on Verdun. At the outbreak of the battle
he was still in command of III Corps in Pétain’s Second Army. In April 1916 he
mounted a series of attacks with III Corps on the right bank of the Verdun
sector and achieved some success. But it was not without cost. Once again
Nivelle’s offensive spirit came to the attention of Joffre, who was impressed
with Nivelle’s confidence and ‘can do’ attitude, which was in striking contrast
to the pessimism of Pétain. Joffre saw an opportunity and promoted Pétain to
command the Groupe d’Armées du Centre (Central Army Group or GAC) and on 27
April 1916 Nivelle was promoted and appointed to command the Second Army. In
less than two years Nivelle had been promoted from colonel to
lieutenant-general.
At a time when the French people needed positive news from
the Verdun front, the choice of Nivelle to command the Second Army seemed a
wise one. Apart from his capabilities as a soldier, Nivelle knew how to handle
visiting pressmen and politicians and had a flair for providing well-timed quotes
for the press – what we would refer to today as ‘sound-bites’. After the German
capture of Fleury on 23 June 1916, and at a particularly desperate time for the
French, Nivelle concluded his order of the day with the inspiring line ‘Ils ne
passeront pas!’ (‘They shall not pass!’). This was trumpeted from the headlines
of newspapers and later became a national slogan that would be used on
recruiting posters and in army bulletins. Nivelle was not without his critics,
however, and some criticised him for the casualties incurred in his
counter-offensives.
It is worth taking a moment to discuss some of the other
personalities associated with Nivelle at this time. One of his divisional
commanders was General Charles Mangin, who commanded the Fifth Infantry Division,
made up largely of colonial troops. Mangin was an extremely tough and competent
soldier, who had seen much campaigning in the colonies before the war. He had
been wounded three times in various campaigns and had served in Mali, Senegal,
Tonkin and in the Fashoda expedition of 1898. In the immediate pre-war years
Mangin had pushed strongly for the establishment of a ‘Force Noire’,
effectively an army of black troops made up with regiments from France’s
colonies in Africa. In 1910 he published a work on the subject. Within Mangin’s
central idea lurked his belief that African and Arab troops were less
imaginative and less sensitive to pain and suffering. It now seems evident that
he apparently also viewed them as expendable, or perhaps just more expendable
than metropolitan troops. To modern sensibilities, Mangin’s views can only be
seen as intrinsically racist and insensitive but at the time he was considered
to be a successful commander and was valued by Nivelle within the Second Army.
During the summer of 1916 Mangin had pushed some reserve units to their
breaking point and there were calls for him to be removed, but Nivelle
intervened on his behalf and he remained in command. Among the common soldiers
Mangin was known as ‘the Butcher’ and his callous tendencies would become
apparent once again during the 1917 offensive.
An equally dark and somewhat mysterious figure was
Lieutenant-Colonel Audemard d’Alançon (often referred to as d’Alenson in
English sources). D’Alançon occupied the role of chef de cabinet for Nivelle.
This was a uniquely French appointment, combining the roles of military
secretary and chief of staff. The two men had first met in Algeria before the
war and it is now recognised that d’Alançon had a major influence on Nivelle in
the planning of operations. D’Alançon was suffering from a terminal disease –
tuberculosis according to contemporary accounts – and as a result he was driven
by an overwhelming desire to see the war concluded with a French victory in the
limited span still allotted to him. He was also a firm believer in the
potential of offensive action and he supported Nivelle’s offensive actions at
Verdun. He would later be a prime mover in the 1917 offensive, pushing
Nivelle’s agenda despite the doubts that were mounting on all sides. Edward
Spears wrote that he was ‘far more acute and intelligent than would have been
gathered from his appearance and he was no mean judge of men’. At a more
negative level, Spears noted that he:
Urged constantly, such was the frenzy of his haste, that
the tempo of the attack and the speed of the preparations should be increased,
until the impression one gained ceased to be that of high authority prescribing
dispatch but rather of an uncontrolled force like a swollen torrent rushing
madly onward.
His French counterparts expressed similar concerns. They
found that d’Alançon pushed for offensive action while also acting as a shield
for Nivelle against the doubts expressed by senior officers. General Micheler
referred to his ‘keen intelligence and character’ but also was concerned about
his influence over Nivelle, stating that d’Alançon seemed often divorced from
reality, showing a marked tendency to twist facts to fit his desired reality.
Jean de Pierrefeu, who served on Nivelle’s staff in 1917, was equally critical
of d’Alançon and later wrote that:
Colonel d’Alançon had the true gambler’s temperament, as
was proved by his reply to Colonel Fetizon, deputy-chief of the Third Bureau, a
calm methodical man of considerable common sense, who had asked, ‘And if we
fail? What then?’ D’Alançon replied, ‘Well, if we fail, we will throw our hands
in.’ We certainly lived in a gambling atmosphere.
These tendencies would reappear during preparations for
Nivelle’s offensive in 1917. The Nivelle–Mangin–d’Alançon partnership resulted
in further offensives during the later phases of the Verdun battle. Having
organised the counterattacks on the right bank of the Verdun sector in April
1916, Nivelle now focused his attention on Fort Douaumont, which had been lost
to the Germans in February. Quite apart from its symbolic value to the French,
the fort stood on a height at 1,200ft and dominated the surrounding area.
Despite this dominant position and its comprehensive defences, the fort had
fallen to the Germans quite easily. To add further insult, the Germans also
captured Fort Vaux in July and Nivelle’s attempt to recapture this fort was
beaten off with such high casualties that Pétain forbade any further attempts
to recapture the forts. However, during July Nivelle continued to mount
counterattacks against the German assaults. Mangin mounted a particularly
effective counterattack before being stopped in his tracks, with heavy
casualties, on 11 July.
While it is easy to criticise such offensives, the
alternative was to allow the Germans to break through and exploit. Nivelle also
persuaded Pétain to allow him to engage in further efforts to retake the forts
but accepted the caveat that he had to engage in very thorough preparations. In
the weeks that followed, Nivelle engaged in massive artillery preparations,
gathering more than 500 additional guns, including two 400mm railway guns, in
his planned attack zone. These were to support the Second Army’s existing
artillery. Ultimately there would be one artillery piece for every 15 yards of
front, with over 15,000 tons of shells stockpiled. The assault troops rehearsed
over ground prepared to resemble the approaches to Fort Douaumont and their
advance would be preceded by a creeping barrage once the attack began. On 19
October a three-day preparatory bombardment began, which targeted not only
Douaumont but also other known German positions and lines of communication in
that zone. This bombardment proved accurate and devastating, while the use of
gas shells proved extremely effective.
By the time the infantry assault began on 24 October 1916
the fort had been rendered virtually untenable due to the intensity of the
barrage and had already been partially evacuated. A thick mist aided the
attacking troops while the creeping barrage moved ahead of their advance. The
light artillery fired 70 yards ahead of the advancing French infantry, while
the heavy artillery fired 150 yards ahead. The whole movement was coordinated
using field telephone communications and the barrage lifted in stages to allow
the troops to advance. The troops crossed the devastated landscape at a rate of
about 25 yards per minute and on reaching the fort Mangin’s divisions (made up
of Moroccan and Senegalese troops and units of Coloniale infantry) cleared the
defences using flamethrowers. Nivelle repeated this success at Fort Vaux on 2
November and in a subsequent eight-division attack on 15 December he pushed the
Germans back a further 3 miles and captured more than 9,000 prisoners. The key
to Nivelle’s success seemed deceptively simple: methodical preparation followed
by massive and focused artillery bombardment. But unlike in previous
offensives, this artillery fire was concentrated along narrow corridors to
create lanes for the attacking infantry.
In the context of this vast attritional battle that had
ground down the French army and nation throughout much of the preceding year,
these successes seemed little short of miraculous. Criticism over continuing
these attacks as winter drew on, and the casualties incurred, was lost amidst
the general public rejoicing. Nivelle became a national hero and received much
attention in the French press. The Briand government, which was looking
increasingly threatened, also made much of this new public hero.
It has been repeatedly suggested that Nivelle’s fellow
generals, and in particular his immediate commander, Pétain, disapproved of his
methods. Yet at this time Nivelle was keeping step with Pétain’s own philosophy
of thorough preparation followed by a focused attack for a specific and limited
objective. In this context, Nivelle’s methods had potential for success.
Problems would occur in 1917, however, when he tried to develop attacks based
on these principles but on a vast scale. His success in 1916 imbued Nivelle
with the vast confidence that would later prove so damaging. To his staff
officers he announced ‘We now have the formula’, while in his parting address
to the Second Army he announced ‘The experience is conclusive, our method has
proved itself.’ Nivelle would later refer to these tactics as the ‘Verdun
Method’, while in the press it was referred to as ‘Nivelling’.
By late 1916 new armaments programmes were supplying better
equipment to the French army. There was more and better artillery, while at
battalion level there were increased numbers of weapons such as trench mortars,
light machine guns and flamethrowers. New infantry doctrine was drawn up to
reflect this and lessons were incorporated based on German infiltration
tactics. On the surface at least there was much to be confident about.
The French army was still wedded to the idea of the offensive and this would have dangerous consequences in 1917. Also, it became increasingly obvious to any observant staff officer that the troops were exhausted. Morale in the winter of 1916/17 was at an all-time low. This was against a backdrop of discontent on the home front and political uncertainty. All the indicators should have urged for caution but instead Nivelle precipitated perhaps the biggest gamble undertaken by the French army during the war.
