Russian troops in Marseille

On the morning of 20 April 1916 the French steamer Himalaya, with Russian soldiers on board, entered the port of Marseille. They were the first soldiers of the 1st Special Infantry Brigade, sent by the Tsar to fight on the Western Front. According to French press dispatches reprinted by the Italian Stefani agency, the ship berthed at the quay at about two in the afternoon. The military governor of Marseille, General Ménissier, came on board with General Guérin, who represented the commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre. They were introduced by the Russian military attaché in Paris, Colonel Aleksei Ignatyev. Bands played the Russian anthem and the “Marseillaise”, and the Russians crowded on deck saluted and cheered “hurrah” three times. The brigade commander, Major-General Nikolai Lokhvitsky, went ashore and passed in front of a French guard of honour, after which the disembarkation of the troops began. Some studies give 16 April as the day of the brigade’s arrival, but the dispatches of the time and most studies point to 20 April.

Soldiers for munitions

At the end of 1915 the French politician Paul Doumer, chairman of the Senate army committee and later President of France, came to Russia. France had lost hundreds of thousands of men in the first campaigns of the war and was counting on the reserves of manpower of its ally, which were thought to be inexhaustible. Doumer proposed that, in return for French arms and ammunition, which its army desperately lacked, Russia should send whole armies to France. Sources speak of 300,000 or even 400,000 soldiers. The Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, was against it, but Tsar Nicholas II agreed to send several brigades. The Russians set conditions: the soldiers were to remain under the command of Russian officers, and the French were to provide their sea transport.

The brigade was formed in January 1916. It was not an existing unit but two new regiments, formed from drafts from various reserve regiments. Colonel Mikhail Nechvolodov’s 1st Special Regiment was raised in Moscow and, according to some studies, consisted mainly of workers, and Colonel Dyakonov’s 2nd Regiment in Samara, mainly of recruits from the countryside. The brigade numbered about 9,000 men. Because the seas around Europe were closed or dangerous, it was sent by a roundabout route. Trains took the soldiers along the Trans-Siberian Railway and through Manchuria to the port of Dalny (Dalian), where they were embarked on French ships. They sailed via Saigon, Colombo and Aden, and then through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. The journey took more than two months.

The welcome in Marseille

On the same day Joffre issued an order of the day to the French army. “Our faithful ally Russia, whose armies are already fighting so bravely against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, has wished to give France a new proof of friendship,” he wrote. “Russian soldiers, chosen from among the bravest and led by the most highly regarded officers, are coming to fight in our ranks. You will welcome them as brothers.” From the port the Russians marched to the Mirabeau camp prepared for them outside the city. Because the soldiers were tired after the long journey, the great parade through Marseille was put off to the following day. On 21 April crowds filled the streets from the morning, and when the Russians marched, singing, under the triumphal arch on the Place d’Aix, people showered them with flowers. The French press wrote of “picked soldiers”, and a local newspaper saw in the parade under olive branches a herald of victory. More ships with Russians arrived in Marseille over the following days, according to French studies until the beginning of May. On 26 April the first units left by train for the training camp at Mailly in Champagne.

The arrival of the Russians mattered above all for propaganda. A few thousand soldiers meant little against the losses at Verdun, but it showed the French that their ally from the far east was with them on their own soil too. On 14 July Russian soldiers took part in the parade in Paris, and in the summer the brigade went into the line in Champagne. In 1916 three more brigades came: two were sent to the Salonika front, one to France. In the spring of 1917, after the February Revolution, the Russian brigades suffered heavy losses in the Nivelle offensive. Sent afterwards to the rear, to the camp at La Courtine, they mutinied, and in the autumn of 1917 the mutiny (PL) was put down by force.