Joffre becomes Marshal of France

On 26 December 1916 General Joseph Joffre tendered his resignation as commander-in-chief of the French armies to the Minister of War, and the same day President Raymond Poincaré made him a Marshal of France. This dignity, known since the Middle Ages, had not been conferred on anyone since the fall of Napoleon III’s empire. The last marshal appointed before Joffre had been Edmond Le Bœuf in 1870, Minister of War on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, and the Third Republic had not made use of it in the 46 years of its existence. The British official history wrote that the President had “revived the ancient dignity in his honour”. For Joffre, the victor of the Marne, it was above all a consolation prize for having his command taken from him.

Two weeks earlier, on 12 December, the government of Aristide Briand had entrusted the command of the armies in France to General Nivelle. Joffre kept the title of commander-in-chief of the French armies and was to be technical adviser to the government, but it soon turned out to be a title without power. He demanded that Nivelle in France and General Sarrail in Macedonia be placed under him and that he continue to coordinate the operations of the French armies with the Allies. The formula of 18 December, however, limited him to the role of adviser and intermediary in passing on the decisions of the two commanders to the military missions with the Allies, and the formula of 21 December gave Nivelle direct contact with the government and with the British and Belgian armies. According to the American historian Robert Doughty, Admiral Lucien Lacaze, the acting Minister of War, would not even let Joffre approve citations for distinguished units. The British official history called his position a “farce”.

The matter was settled by the new Minister of War, General Hubert Lyautey, who arrived from Morocco on 22 December. Lyautey would not accept a technical adviser to the government working alongside the minister, because he regarded that role as his own, and according to the British liaison officer Edward Spears he threatened not to join the government if Joffre stayed in his post. Briand, who did not want another crisis, gave way, and Joffre, as Spears wrote, agreed to go. He received the marshal’s baton, which the Prime Minister had promised him as early as the beginning of December, on the day of his resignation. Nivelle in France and Sarrail in Macedonia were from then on directly subordinate to the Minister of War.

Spears described years later how the man who had commanded two and a quarter million soldiers with the help of a staff of 450 was left with three men. Of the whole staff at Chantilly, only his orderly officer volunteered to go with him. On the way to Paris he was passed by a speeding car flying the commander-in-chief’s pennant, carrying Nivelle. In Paris an office was found for the marshal only with difficulty. Joffre came to it punctually every morning with his famous leather briefcase, in which, as Spears wrote, he now carried only a newspaper, and sat for hours at an empty desk. He never complained in public.

Joffre was still very popular in France and abroad, and the government was yet to make use of this popularity. In April 1917, when the United States entered the war, he went there with the former prime minister René Viviani and persuaded the Americans to send a division of their own to France as soon as possible. In February 1918 he was elected to the Académie française. He never again held a real command. After him, during the war and shortly after it, Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Pétain, among others, were made Marshals of France.