The French Mutinies of 1917

The eyes say it all

By April 1917 the French army had suffered one million deaths. Indeed, by the end of 1914, in just five months of war, they had suffered one million casualties. At the beginning of the conflict, the war was just a glorious game, and the French army advanced onto German machine guns in red pantaloons with bands playing led by officers who thought it chic to die in white gloves.

The German Verdun offensive of 1916 (February - December) had ostensibly been a German defeat however, the French had played directly into the German’s hands who viewed the battle as one of attrition- simply a means to kill French soldiers. At the end of the battle, the French had suffered about 400,000 casualties while the Germans suffered nearly 350,000. The French could ill afford such horrendous losses at this stage of the war. After being mauled so thoroughly in 1916, the French army was in no state for major offensive action in 1917 and wise heads in the military and civilian government should have realised this harsh reality. The leader of the French army at the end of 1916 was General Robert Nivelle. Nivelle was a rather charming General and unlike most of his contemporaries was able to vocalise well-constructed sentences in both French and English. More importantly, Nivelle had formulated a plan. He stated that he would lead an offensive on the Aisne which would shatter the German lines and perhaps bring the war to a successful end. Nivelle announced that he had discovered the secret of victory. For reasons, not governed by logic or reality, the French government decided to put Nivelle’s plan into action. The Germans wanted no part of the plan and they made a strategic withdrawal, between 16^th - 20^th of March, in the Aisne region to new secure lines (the vaunted Hindenburg line). Sound heads now thought the offensive unnecessary, but Neville was a man spellbound and would not relent. To compound Nivelle’s problems, the Germans had captured a French soldier complete/replete with the battle plans- there would be no surprise in this battle.

  

On 16^th April the French infantry went over the top. It was clear by the end of the first day that the offensive would not achieve its ambitious goals and the French suffered 90,000 casualties. By the end of three weeks, the butcher’s bill stood at 180,000. There were gains in territory and it was not as if this offensive was any worse than other Allied offensive. The problem lay with Nivelle’s conviction that this battle would put the German’s to flight. Sadly for Nivelle, and the French army, the German line held. Nivelle had promised much and the exhausted French army had fought/thought this battle on reserves of hope. Once it became clear that the offensive had stalled, and the hope unfulfilled, morale collapsed.  

Due to the battle’s failure, Nivelle disappeared into the pages of history and was replaced by Petain who favoured the doctrine of defence. Petain's slogan: “We must wait for the Americans and tanks” saved many French lives.

You must forgive this rather extensive preamble: it is difficult to follow what subsequently transpired without this lengthy introduction.

Widespread insurrection and frank mutiny followed the battle. Soldiers marched to the front bleating like sheep. Within a short period, 54 divisions were refusing to take orders from their officers and soon it was estimated that there were only two reliable French divisions on the Western Front. Tis strange but news of the mutiny did not reach the foe. If the Germans had attacked at this time they would have confronted scant resistance and, potentially at least, would have forged deep into France; mayhap, threatening the capital, Paris (sacre bleu). Even if the Germans had had wind of the mutiny it is unlikely that they could exploit the French’s loss of spirit with any strength. Offensives on the Western Front required immense organisation of troops and logistics in-depth- this cannot be extemporized or made manifest because of unusually favourable opportunities on the front. The fluid battle doctrine of the Second World War did not yet exist.

The mutineers, in some units, were organised along Soviet lines. The recent unrest in Russia provided a template for semi-organised rebellion. To be fair, many French soldiers feared election as leaders of their units. They rightly surmised that so-called ‘ring leaders’ would receive harsh treatment by the authorities in the near future. And after all, most of the soldiers did not want a social revolution, they wanted better food and leave and most of all they did not want their lives squandered on pointless and fruitless offensives. Indeed, it was a lack of organisation, motivation and coordination which doomed the formulation of revolution according to Lenin or even Marxist dictate. Regardless, the French, and by extension, their British allies, were mighty/mightly scared at the time and some doomsayers predicted the demise of the French army with a disastrous consequence for the future conduct of the war.             

  

The French authorities were in a dilemma: of course, they could not condone the mutiny but a heavy hand would have made the situation worse and so they acted according to prudence. On the positive side, food rations were improved together with the promise of leave. Petain assured the soldiers that there would be no further offensives for the rest of 1917. It is estimated that 50 French soldiers were executed although this may have been an underestimate as records of the period were understandably suppressed. The judicious use of the ‘carrot and the stick’ worked and the soldiers returned to their trenches. They would defend the trenches but the offensive spirit was, no more. The British would have to take up the offensive slack and thus suffer the grinding mill of mud and bullets at the battle of Passchendaele, later that year. As a postscript: the French were against this battle from the start. They did not want the British army to be ground down to a stub. Passchendaele did not lead the British army to mutiny, but it destroyed the idealism of the British soldiers. From then on it would be a pragmatic, professional assault on the German defences; the days of romantic heroism were long gone, but the slaughter remained.