French Army Mutinies (1917) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The French Army Mutinies of 1917 took place amongst the French troops on the Western Front

Western Front (World War I)

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...

in Northern France. They started just after the conclusion of the disastrous Second Battle of the Aisne

Second Battle of the Aisne

The Second Battle of the Aisne , was the massive main assault of the French military's Nivelle Offensive or Chemin des Dames Offensive in 1917 during World War I....

, the main action in the Nivelle Offensive

Nivelle offensive

The Nivelle Offensive was a 1917 French attack on the Western Front in the First World War. Promised as the assault that would end the war within 48 hours, with casualties expected of around 10,000 men, it failed on both counts. It was a three-stage plan:...

, and involved, to various degrees, nearly half of the French infantry divisions stationed on the western front. The mutinies were kept secret at the time, and their full extent and intensity has only been revealed recently.

Background

Nearly one million French soldiers (306,000 in 1914; 334,000 in 1915; 217,000 in 1916; 121,000 in early 1917) out of a population of twenty million French males of all ages had been killed in fighting by early 1917. These losses had deadened the French will to attack.

In April 1917, French Commander-in-Chief

Commander-in-Chief

A commander-in-chief is the commander of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the military...

General Robert Nivelle

Robert Nivelle

Robert Georges Nivelle was a French artillery officer who served in the Boxer Rebellion, and the First World War. In May 1916, he was given command of the French Third Army in the Battle of Verdun, leading counter-offensives that rolled back the German forces in late 1916...

tried to break the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

line on the Western Front

Western Front (World War I)

with a great attack at the Chemin des Dames

Chemin des Dames

In France, the Chemin des Dames is part of the D18 and runs east and west in the département of Aisne, between in the west, the Route Nationale 2, and in the east, the D1044 at Corbeny. It is some thirty kilometres long and runs along a ridge between the valleys of the rivers Aisne and Ailette...

on the Aisne River. For this attack the French adopted a tactic they had first used on a lower scale at Verdun in October 1916: a creeping barrage, in which artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

fired their shells to land just in front of the advancing infantry

Infantry

Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

. This was supposed to suppress the defending troops in their trenches right up to the moment that the attackers closed with them. The infantry was to follow the barrage so closely that they were expected to suffer many casualties from friendly

Friendly fire

Friendly fire is inadvertent firing towards one's own or otherwise friendly forces while attempting to engage enemy forces, particularly where this results in injury or death. A death resulting from a negligent discharge is not considered friendly fire...

shells falling short as this was a new tactic and not something fully comprehended at the time by military commanders.

Nivelle's attack (the Second Battle of the Aisne

Second Battle of the Aisne

The Second Battle of the Aisne , was the massive main assault of the French military's Nivelle Offensive or Chemin des Dames Offensive in 1917 during World War I....

) failed with enormous losses. Nivelle was removed from his command on 15 May 1917. He was replaced by General Philippe Pétain

Philippe Pétain

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...

The mutinies

The French troops at Chemin des Dames had suffered a steadily growing number of desertions since the end of April. On 27 May, those desertions turned to mutiny. Up to 30,000 soldiers left the front line and reserve trenches and went to the rear. Even in regiments where there was direct confrontation, such as the 74th Infantry Regiment, the men wished their officers no harm; they just refused to return to the trenches. The mutinies were not a refusal of war, simply of a certain way of waging it. The soldiers had come to believe that the attacks they were ordered to make were futile.

In the behind-the-lines towns of Soissons

Soissons

Soissons is a commune in the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France, located on the Aisne River, about northeast of Paris. It is one of the most ancient towns of France, and is probably the ancient capital of the Suessiones...

, Villers-Cotterêts

Villers-Cotterêts

Villers-Cotterêts is a commune in the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France.-Geography:It is located NE of Paris via the RN2 facing Laon...

, Fère-en-Tardenois

Fère-en-Tardenois

Fère-en-Tardenois is a commune in the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France, .-Population:-Personalities:It was the birthplace of Camille Claudel , sculptor and graphic artist.-Sights:...

and Cœuvres-et-Valsery

Cœuvres-et-Valsery

Cœuvres-et-Valsery is a commune in the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France.-References:*...

, troops refused to obey their officers' orders or go to the front. On 1 June, a French infantry regiment took over the town of Missy-aux-Bois

Missy-aux-Bois

Missy-aux-Bois is a commune in the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France.-References:*...

. According to historian Tony Ashworth, the mutinies were "widespread and persistent," and involved more than half the divisions in the French army. On 7 June, General Pétain and British commander Sir Douglas Haig

Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC, was a British senior officer during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force from 1915 to the end of the War...

had a private talk: Pétain told Haig that two French divisions had refused to go and relieve two divisions in the front line. Historian John Keegan estimates the true figure was over fifty divisions.

Detailed research in 1983 by the late French military historian Guy Pedroncini

Guy Pedroncini

Guy Pedroncini was a French academic and military historian specialising in the First World War, and notable as the biographer of Philippe Pétain and for his work on the French army mutinies of 1917...

, based on the French military archives, concludes that, altogether, 49 infantry divisions were destabilized and experienced repeated episodes of mutiny. This was calculated as: nine infantry divisions very gravely impacted by mutinous behavior; fifteen infantry divisions seriously affected; and twenty five infantry divisions affected by isolated but repeated instances of mutinous behavior. As the French Army comprised a total of 113 infantry divisions by the end of 1917, this puts the proportion of destabilized French infantry divisions at 43%. Conversely, only 12 artillery regiments were affected by the crisis of indiscipline.

The French High Command's response

On or about 8 June the military authorities took swift and decisive action: mass arrests were followed by mass trials. Those arrested were selected by their own officers and NCOs, with the implicit consent of the rank and file. There were 3,427 conseils de guerre (courts-martial

Court-martial

A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...

), at which 23,385 men were convicted of mutinous behaviours of one sort or another; 554 men were sentenced to death; 49 men were actually shot

Execution by firing squad

Execution by firing squad, sometimes called fusillading , is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war.Execution by shooting is a fairly old practice...

; and the rest sentenced to penal servitude. More up to date (1983) research by Pedroncini documents 2,878 convictions to hard labour and 629 death penalties. According to Pedroncini, only 43 executions were carried out and can be solidly documented. The lack of rigor in repressing the mutinies provoked adverse reactions among some of the French Army's divisional commanders. General Pétain and French President Raymond Poincaré

Raymond Poincaré

Raymond Poincaré was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France on five separate occasions and as President of France from 1913 to 1920. Poincaré was a conservative leader primarily committed to political and social stability...

, on the other hand, made it their policy to mend rather than to aggravate the French Army's morale.

According to French historian Denis Rolland, "there would have been about 30 executions. This number has always been controversial because of the difficulty of accessing the files until 100 years have elapsed."

From time to time, anecdotal accounts have emerged of whole French infantry units marched to quiet sectors and then deliberately hachés ("cut to pieces") by their own artillery. However there is no evidence that this ever happened.

Conversely, it is well documented that a rebellious Russian division of the Russian Expeditionary Force in France

Russian Expeditionary Force in France

The Russian Expeditionary Force was a World War I military force sent to France by the Russian Empire. In 1915 the French requested that Russian troops be sent to fight alongside their own army on the Western Front. Initially they asked for 300,000 men, an absurdly high figure, probably based on...

was encircled by French troops in September 1917 at Camp de La Courtine

La Courtine

La Courtine is a commune in the Creuse department in the Limousin region in central France.-Geography:An area of lakes, forestry and farming comprising the village and several hamlets situated in the Creuse River valley, some south of Aubusson, at the junction of the D25, D29 and the D992...

in central France and then fired upon with 75mm cannon

Canon de 75 modèle 1897

The French 75mm field gun was a quick-firing field artillery piece adopted in March 1898. Its official French designation was: Matériel de 75mm Mle 1897. It was commonly known as the French 75, simply the 75 and Soixante-Quinze .The French 75 is widely regarded as the first modern artillery piece...

. However only 19 rebels lost their lives. The leaders of the rebellion were shipped off to North Africa in penal servitude while the rest of the Russian troops (about 10,000 men) were demobilized and transferred into labor battalions.

Aftermath

Whatever the figure, along with the stick of military justice, General Pétain

Philippe Pétain

offered two carrots: more regular and longer leave; and, at least for the time being, an end to attacks.

Investigation and scholarly aftermath

The recent revelations on the extent and intensity of the mutinies were largely achieved by the publication, in 1967 and 1983, of highly detailed statistical research on the mutinies by Guy Pedroncini