Just Finished Reading: Paths of Glory – The French Army 1914-18 by Anthony Clayton (FP: 2003)

When the French army launched its opening attacks against the German forces in Alsace it did so in a manner that would have been understood by Napoleon a hundred years previously. With drums beating the soldiers advanced in ranks wearing blue and red covered by cavalry in burnished silver helmets and breastplates shining in the morning sunlight. They faced a German army dug in, behind barbed wire and using machine guns and artillery. Predictably the French attack did not go well and the survivors of their elite units quickly realised that the game of war had changed beyond all recognition.

Here, in this rather short and often interesting work, is the reason why the French opened the war at odds with the new reality and the reason why they were so wedded to the idea of attack in an age that by far favoured the defence. It all boiled down, as these things tend to do, to politics as factions within the French political system fought for control of the armed services and fought to prevent the army from becoming an agent either for the Right or, God forbid, the Left staging a military coup with a new Napoleon at its head. It is hardly surprising in these circumstances that the army was, at times, so badly led, poorly trained and, until comparatively late in the war, badly equipped. It is also less than surprising to discover that incompetence at the top, and the blatant waste of lives with little to show for it, finally caused sections of the French army to revolt and refuse to fight. Knowing that they had a potential revolution on their hands all offensive operations where postponed until morale could be recovered. After much soul searching, changes in leadership, improvements in conditions and the arrival of the first American units a corner was turned and the offensive began again – but was soon overshadowed by the massive German assault determined to knock France out of the war before the Americans could turn the tide.

While I was familiar with much of the French experience on the Western Front I was unfamiliar with the political and military precursors that where responsible for France being unprepared when the Germans attacked in 1914. It was only by a fortunate mixture of luck, accident and German misunderstanding that Paris did not fall that fateful year. Once the ‘race to the sea’ had drawn a line of trenches across the face of western France to scene was set for the next four years. The war for France was one of survival, of grit and determination to hold on and most especially to eject the occupiers from their land (and not incidentally to retake Alsace and Lorraine lost in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71). I’m certainly now much more aware of the problems the French army operated under, the sometimes massive egos of the commanding generals and the ever present friction with their British and later American allies. It made me appreciate why some of the seemingly crazy tactics seemed to dominate the French military psyche to the determent of common sense and which directly contributed to so many French deaths. Interestingly it also goes some way to explain the thinking behind the development of the much maligned Maginot Line and the collapse of France in 1940. If not exactly gripping this was an interesting read and gives a useful insight into the French way of war on the Western Front.