Doullens conference

On 26 March 1918 the leading politicians and soldiers of France and Great Britain gathered in the town hall at Doullens, a small town north of Amiens. The great German offensive on the Somme had been under way for six days. The British armies were falling back, and an open gap threatened to form between them and the French. After a conference the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau and the British minister Lord Alfred Milner signed a short agreement. In it General Ferdinand Foch was given the task of coordinating the action of the Allied armies on the Western Front. For the first time since the beginning of the war the British and French forces in France had above them one man who could direct them jointly, although for the time being only to a limited extent.

Two armies, two strategies

Until March 1918 the two armies fought side by side, but each under its own command. Field Marshal Douglas Haig and General Philippe Pétain agreed their operations between themselves. The Supreme War Council at Versailles had indeed decided at the beginning of February to create a general Allied reserve under a committee headed by Foch, but the reserve never came into being, because neither commander-in-chief was willing to give it divisions. Instead Haig and Pétain agreed that in the event of a German attack they would come to each other’s aid.

When on 21 March the Germans struck General Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army and General Julian Byng’s Third Army, this arrangement quickly failed. French divisions arrived to help one at a time, and each commander thought above all of his own tasks. Pétain feared that the Germans would soon strike in the Reims area as well and march on Paris. Haig wanted at all costs to keep contact with the French and to cover Amiens, an important railway junction at the junction of the two armies. The crisis came in the night of 24–25 March, the day Bapaume and Péronne fell. At about 11 p.m. Pétain met Haig at his headquarters at Dury near Amiens. According to the British official history he showed him his orders: in the event of a further retreat the French troops on the Somme were to fall back south-westwards, covering Paris, and the British Fifth Army to the line of the river Avre. Haig asked whether this meant that the French would uncover his right flank. Pétain nodded and replied that it was the only possible course if the enemy forced the Allies to retreat further.

Milner in France

Haig concluded that the French wanted above all to cover Paris, even at the cost of separating the two armies. According to his own account, that same night he telegraphed for the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Henry Wilson, and Lord Milner to come to France, and wrote that unless Foch or some other determined general were given command of the operations, disaster would follow. Lord Milner, a member of the British War Cabinet, had, however, already left London for France on 24 March on the instructions of the prime minister David Lloyd George, before Haig’s telegram reached London.

On the afternoon of 25 March Milner took part in a conference at Pétain’s headquarters at Compiègne with the President of France Raymond Poincaré, Clemenceau, Foch and Pétain himself. That day Haig was waiting to talk to the French at Abbeville, where only Foch’s chief of staff, General Maxime Weygand, came. At Compiègne Pétain described his measures, and Foch demanded that more divisions be thrown into the battle, even at the cost of risk on other sectors. Milner refused to take a position until he had seen Haig. It was decided to meet the next morning at Dury. Haig, however, had called a conference of army commanders at the same hour in the town hall at Doullens, and proposed that the conference be held there at noon.

The meeting in the town hall

At 11 a.m. Haig conferred at Doullens with the commanders of the First, Second and Third Armies: Generals Henry Horne, Herbert Plumer and Byng. Gough was not summoned, because his army had already passed under the orders of the French general Marie Émile Fayolle. Byng said that on the southern flank both the Germans and the British were dead tired. Haig stressed that the present positions must be held to gain time for the French to arrive, and that the covering of Amiens was of decisive importance. He ordered Horne to withdraw three Canadian divisions from the line and keep them in reserve behind the Third Army.

Meanwhile the French were arriving: Poincaré, Clemenceau, the Minister of Armament Louis Loucheur, Foch and Pétain, as well as Milner and Wilson. According to Poincaré’s memoirs, Clemenceau confided to him anxiously that Pétain intended to fall back southwards while the British fell back northwards. Pétain was said to have told him: “The Germans will beat the English in the open field, and after that they will beat us too.” “Should a general speak, or even think, like that?” Clemenceau asked. Foch assured both politicians that the situation was not hopeless and that the breach in the front had to be closed, not widened. Milner and Wilson spoke for a few minutes with the British generals. Milner satisfied himself that no one intended to give up Amiens and retreat to the Channel ports, and that Haig had no objection to working under Foch’s direction.

At noon Poincaré opened the conference. Seated at the table besides him were Clemenceau, Loucheur, Foch, Pétain, Milner, Haig, Wilson, Haig’s chief of staff General Herbert Lawrence and General Archibald Montgomery, deputising for the British military representative at Versailles. Haig calmly described the course of the battle and declared that south of the Somme he could do nothing more, but that north of the river he would hold on. He placed the remains of the Fifth Army south of the Somme under Pétain’s orders. Pétain replied that this army had practically ceased to exist, and compared it with the Italians at Caporetto, which drew a sharp reply from Wilson. He then announced that 24 French divisions were on the way and that everything must be done to defend Amiens. At this point Foch intervened. According to Loucheur’s account he said that they must fight in front of Amiens, where the troops now stood, and that since the Germans had not been stopped on the Somme, not another step back could be allowed. Haig replied that if Foch would consent to give him advice, he would gladly follow it.

The agreement

Clemenceau took Milner aside and then called Pétain over. Milner talked to Haig, who, according to the British official history, was not only ready but positively glad to be subordinated to Foch. Clemenceau wrote a draft agreement under which the British and French governments entrusted Foch with coordinating the action of the British and French armies in front of Amiens. Haig pointed out that such a task would be very difficult unless Foch were given authority over the whole Western Front. Pétain at once agreed. In the final text General Foch was “charged by the British and French governments with coordinating the action of the Allied armies on the Western Front”, and to this end was to come to an understanding with the two commanders-in-chief, who were to furnish him with the necessary information. The agreement was signed by Clemenceau and Milner. Poincaré is said to have remarked: “I think, gentlemen, that we have worked well for victory.” Haig expressed relief that from now on he would be dealing with one man and not with a committee.

Foch lost no time. He ordered Pétain to speed up the movement of reserves north of the Oise and drove to Dury, where at about 4 p.m. he met Gough and demanded that no more ground be given up. To Fayolle’s chief of staff he gave written orders to hold the positions of the British Fifth Army south of the Somme at all costs, to support it as quickly as possible and then to relieve it. In the evening, at Maignelay, he ordered the commander of the French First Army to relieve the British XVIII Corps. That same evening Pétain cancelled his orders of 24 March, ordered Fayolle to cover Amiens and keep contact with Haig’s forces, and sent him a further ten divisions.

The dispute over credit

The Doullens conference quickly became the stuff of legend, and its participants later disputed the credit. The typescript of Haig’s diary, copied out after the war, contains a sentence saying that in the night of 24–25 March he summoned Wilson and Milner to France in order to have the command given to Foch “or some other determined general”. The British historian Elizabeth Greenhalgh has shown that these words are not in the manuscript diary, and believes that Haig added them later to claim the initiative for himself. The initiative came largely from the politicians: Milner came to France on Lloyd George’s instructions before Haig’s telegram arrived, and he negotiated the agreement with Clemenceau. Lloyd George and Wilson also claimed credit, and the prime minister later asserted that it was at Haig’s headquarters that a retreat to the Channel ports had been considered on 25 March.

Foch’s powers at Doullens were modest: he could coordinate operations, but not issue orders. Within a few days it became clear that this was not enough. On 3 April, at a conference at Beauvais attended by Lloyd George and the Americans, he was entrusted with the strategic direction of military operations, and on 14 April the governments agreed to give him the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in France.