Third Chantilly Conference

On Sunday 12 March 1916 at ten in the morning the commanders-in-chief of the Allied armies or their representatives gathered in the house of General Joseph Joffre at Chantilly. It was the third such conference at the headquarters of the French army, after the one in July 1915 and the one in December, at which the plan of the war for 1916 had been agreed. The numbering of these meetings is not settled, however. Some studies do not count the July conference and call the March one the second, giving the name “Third Chantilly Conference” only to the meeting of November 1916. The British chronology of the war briefly records under 12 March an “Allied military conference at Chantilly on general summer offensive”. The same date is given by the British official histories and by the diary of General Douglas Haig. In some lists the discussions last until 13 March.

Who came

According to the diary of Haig, who had commanded the British Expeditionary Force since December 1915, the war situation on all fronts was set out in a memorandum of the French staff, read by Joffre’s chief of staff, General Maurice Pellé. The participants commented on the individual points when they concerned their armies. Britain was represented by Haig and the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, Russia by General Yakov Zhilinsky, head of the Russian military mission in France, Italy by the deputy chief of staff, General Carlo Porro, Belgium by the chief of staff, General Félix Wielemans, and Serbia by Petar Pešić, until then chief of staff of the Montenegrin army.

Haig described the participants in notes full of prejudice, but conveying the atmosphere of the conference well. He thought Zhilinsky a very old man, a gentleman and a friend of the Tsar, who sincerely wanted to beat the Germans. Porro, in his view, read out long documents only to show that Italy could do no more: she lacked heavy guns and machine guns, which she expected from Britain and France. Pešić was most concerned with the rearming of the Serbian army, being rebuilt on Corfu, and with its transport to Salonika. Of Robertson Haig noted that he was not very quick to grasp what was being discussed and did not play the leading part in the discussions.

Verdun changes the plans

At the December conference the Allies had agreed that they would strike on the main fronts simultaneously as soon as they were ready, and until then would help whichever ally was attacked by the enemy. On 21 February the Germans attacked at Verdun, and the second promise became more urgent than the first. The day before the conference the Italian artillery opened fire on the Isonzo, and the Russians were preparing an attack on their Western Front. At the same time the French withdrew their earlier demands for reinforcing the troops at Salonika. According to the British official history, Joffre agreed that all available British divisions stationed in Egypt should be sent to France.

Decisions

The conference unanimously agreed that a general offensive by all the Allies should begin with the least possible delay in order to take the pressure off Verdun, its date to be agreed among the commanders-in-chief. The British history of the operations in Macedonia speaks plainly of a general offensive in the summer of 1916.

The Balkans were discussed at length. The participants concluded that General Maurice Sarrail’s Army of the Orient at Salonika could for the time being be neither reinforced nor withdrawn. Reinforcement was out of the question because of Verdun, and withdrawal because all free tonnage was needed to carry British divisions from Egypt to France and Serbian divisions from Corfu to Salonika. The Serbian army was to be reorganised and equipped there with a future offensive in mind. Joffre asked Porro whether the Italians could achieve anything from Vlorë, which they still held in Albania. Porro replied that Italy had the equivalent of three divisions there and could send a fourth, but the mountains ruled out an offensive. Robertson announced that the whole Salonika question would have to be taken up again, and reminded them that the Allies were demanding ships from Britain, without which she could not bring from South America the mules needed in Macedonia and in France. In the end it was decided to adapt the Army of the Orient to mountain warfare, and it and the Italians at Vlorë were told to threaten the enemy with attack so that he could not take troops away to other fronts.

At the end a wish was added that “the economic blockade of Germany should be tightened to the fullest extent possible”. The British historian of the blockade, Archibald Bell, later mocked that nobody knew what this was supposed to mean: such resolutions were easy to write and vote for, because none of those present had to explain how to carry them out. The Chantilly resolutions were passed on to the conference of ministers which met in Paris at the end of March.

Significance

The conference of 12 March did not change the principle adopted in December, but confirmed it in a new situation. Relief offensives were to start at once, while the great joint blow had to wait until the summer. Six days later the Russians attacked at Lake Naroch. The British government approved its army’s participation in the joint offensive only at the beginning of April. The summer blow agreed at Chantilly finally took the form of the Battle of the Somme, preceded by the Russian Brusilov offensive.