Nivelle becomes commander-in-chief

On 12 December 1916 the French prime minister, Aristide Briand, formed his sixth government, much smaller than the previous one, with a new war minister, General Hubert Lyautey, and a five-man war committee that was to direct the war. On the same day the government changed the command of the army. A decree of 12 December, published the next day, entrusted General Robert Nivelle, commander of the 2nd Army at Verdun, with command of the Armies of the North and North-East, that is, of all French forces in France. General Joseph Joffre, commander-in-chief since the beginning of the war, kept the title of general-in-chief of the French armies, but was now to be merely technical adviser to the government, with a consultative voice in the war committee. The British chronology of the war on which our timeline is based records both events together under 12 December: the “reorganisation of the French Government”, in which Briand remained prime minister, and Nivelle’s promotion.

A crisis of confidence

Joffre’s position had been weakening for many months. The British official history lists the charges made against him in Paris: neglect of the defences of Verdun before the German attack in February, the disproportionately modest results of the bloody Battle of the Somme, and in the autumn the defeat of Romania, whose collapse many blamed on the high command. He was even reproached for the calm and phlegm for which he had been praised two years earlier, after the victory on the Marne. Deputies were also irritated that Joffre could not abide interference in army matters and spoke only to the President, the prime minister and the war minister, whereas in republican France parliamentarians were used to having insight into military affairs.

As early as June 1916, at the first secret session of the Chamber of Deputies devoted to Verdun, Briand had to promise to curb the commander-in-chief’s powers, but during the Battle of the Somme he did not keep that promise. In the autumn new charges were added. The war minister, General Pierre Roques, Gallieni’s successor, returned from an inspection at Salonika proposing that the forces of General Maurice Sarrail be reinforced and placed directly under the government rather than under Joffre, to whom Sarrail had been subordinate since December 1915. From 28 November to 7 December the Chamber sat in another secret session. According to the American historian Robert Doughty, on 29 November Briand promised there to revoke the decree that a year earlier had given Joffre authority over all the armies and, in vague terms, to appoint the general technical adviser to the government. He won a vote of confidence by 344 votes to 160, whereas half a year earlier he had had 440 votes against 80.

Briand, however, did not want to sacrifice Joffre. As the British official history puts it, he valued him above all as the creator of unity among the Allies, which in 1916 had been achieved almost entirely thanks to him. According to Joffre, the prime minister, talking to him on 3 December, promised him a marshal’s baton, his own staff and “the direction of the war”. Command of the forces in France was to go to someone else, but under his supervision.

The new government

The government formed on 12 December was, as the British official history put it, built “on a narrower and stronger basis”. According to Doughty, Briand reduced the Council of Ministers from 23 to 10 members, and some former ministers became under-secretaries of state. The most important decisions were to be taken by the war committee, modelled on the small War Cabinet that David Lloyd George was just then forming in London. Its members were Briand, who was also foreign minister; the finance minister, Alexandre Ribot; the war minister, Lyautey; the navy minister, Admiral Lucien Lacaze; and the socialist Albert Thomas, hitherto an under-secretary of state and now Minister of Armament and War Production. The War Ministry thereby lost its control over supply, entrusted to Édouard Herriot, and over armaments production.

The new war minister in place of Roques was Lyautey, Resident-General of France in Morocco, popular in the country but disliked by the left. He received the telegram with the offer in Morocco on 10 or 11 December (sources give both dates). He was not to reach Paris until 22 December, so in the meantime Admiral Lacaze carried out his duties. The mathematician Paul Painlevé, until then education minister, refused to join the new cabinet. According to historians he did not want to sit alongside Lyautey and, moreover, would have preferred General Pétain in Joffre’s place. On 13 December the government presented itself to the Chamber and, according to Doughty, won a vote of confidence by a majority of only about 30 votes.

Nivelle instead of Joffre

The choice of the new commander surprised the army. Of the possible candidates, Nivelle held the lowest post: he commanded only an army, and he was promoted over the heads of three army group commanders, Generals Ferdinand Foch, Philippe Pétain and Louis Franchet d’Espèrey, and of General Noël de Castelnau, who since December 1915 had been Joffre’s chief of staff. The British official history observed that his appointment rested in effect on a single victory as an army commander, the recapture of Fort Douaumont on 24 October. Both Briand and President Raymond Poincaré considered Pétain too cautious, while Foch, who had commanded the French on the Somme, shared with Joffre the criticism for that battle. The British liaison officer Edward Spears, who knew what went on behind the scenes at French headquarters, wrote years later that it was Joffre himself who proposed Nivelle as his successor. He expected that a younger general, inexperienced in high command, would depend on him.

That, however, was not how it turned out. According to Doughty, Joffre, reading the newspapers on the morning of 13 December, is said to have remarked: “This is not what I was promised.” He was particularly offended by the title “general-in-chief” (général en chef) in place of the previous “commander-in-chief” (commandant en chef). He went straight to Paris, but Briand persuaded him to accept the new post. Personnel decisions followed in the next few days. Foch lost command of the Northern Army Group, Castelnau was to go on a mission to Russia, and Generals Charles Mangin and Adolphe Guillaumat received armies. Guillaumat took over the 2nd Army at Verdun from Nivelle.

Who was Nivelle

Robert Nivelle was 60. He was born in 1856 in Tulle, was a gunner and a graduate of the École polytechnique, and his mother was English. He spoke fluent English, which eased his dealings with British politicians and generals. In 1914 he was still only a colonel, but at the Battle of the Aisne, when he brought his guns forward almost to the front line, he attracted attention. He rose quickly: in 1915 he commanded a division and then a corps, with which he fought at Verdun. On 1 May 1916 he took over the 2nd Army from Pétain. On 23 June, at the most dangerous moment of the battle, when the Germans took Thiaumont and Fleury, he issued the order of the day from which the slogan “Ils ne passeront pas” (“They shall not pass”) grew.

In the autumn Nivelle and Mangin prepared on the right bank of the Meuse attacks with limited objectives, preceded by massive artillery fire and carried out close behind a creeping barrage. After the recapture of Forts Douaumont and Vaux, Nivelle was convinced that he had found a method of breaking through the front that could be applied on any sector and on a much larger scale. The British official history summed it up thus: overwhelm the defence with a massive bombardment, then, behind a deep creeping barrage, take the enemy’s entire system of fortifications in a single day, right up to his artillery positions. Nivelle promised that such a violent blow would rupture the front within 24, at most 48, hours. When he took up command, his troops at Verdun were completing preparations for a second attack, planned for 15 December. His words were often quoted in later years: “The experience is conclusive. Our method has proved itself.”

Significance

Briand’s compromise did not last even two weeks. Lyautey would not accept Joffre advising the government on matters he regarded as the war minister’s domain, and the attacks in parliament did not let up. Formulas of 18 and 21 December stripped Joffre of what authority he had left: Nivelle was to deal with the government, the British and the Belgians directly. The British official history called the position of Joffre, a general-in-chief without the right to command, a “farce”. At the end of December the victor of the Marne departed.

As early as 20 December Nivelle visited the British commander, General Douglas Haig, at Cassel and presented his plan to him. Haig was delighted with it. Instead of the attritional offensives agreed in November at Chantilly, the French were to break through the front in the spring of 1917 with a surprise blow on the Aisne. The self-assured, eloquent Nivelle also won over Lloyd George. His offensive in April 1917, however, did not bring the promised breakthrough, cost heavy losses and led to mutinies in the French Army. In May 1917 Nivelle was replaced by Pétain.