Introduction
If a historian of the Great War were asked to nominate a senior military officer who most closely represented inappropriate advancement through class, position and influence, and not a little self-confidence and self-promotion, his choice would surely be General Robert Georges Nivelle. A cavalryman cum regimental colonel of an artillery unit at the Marne in 1914, his meteoric rise carried him to Commander in Chief of the French Army in December 1916. His equally fast demise found him in exile in North Africa in 1917. So how, what and when, went wrong?
The Rise
Nivelle had a good early war. He was quickly promoted to command III Corps in late 1915, and Second Army in April 1916; meanwhile gaining an enviable reputation for both charm and an ability to engage with the executive, both military and political. It was he, not General Henri-Philippe Pétain, who coined the slogan. 'Ils ne passeront pas - They shall not pass'. Whilst in command of Second Army, he had his greatest success: the recapture on the 24th October 1916 of Fort Douaumont in the Verdun Sector. Paramount in his success at Verdun was his clever, innovative deployment of the 'creeping barrage'. However, it was by no means an original ploy; the British had already used it on the Somme. The 'creeping barrage' tactic meant that the infantry advanced closely behind a cleverly orchestrated artillery barrage. This avoided the usual murderous void between the time the artillery lifted its barrage and the time when the infantry actually reached the enemy's trenches. This much-heralded success at Verdun, was followed by effective counter offensives east of the Meuse River in October and December 1916. Flushed by these successes, and an aura close to adulation that it brought from the war weary French nation, he made grandiose claims of having found the key to certain success on the Western Front and of the ability to 'end the War in 48 hours'. His self-promotion was considerably helped by the fact that Nivelle's mother was English with useful contacts with British society. Also, his fluency in the English language placed him in a particularly advantageous position when dealing with the British military and political elites. A combination of these factors prompted the French Prime Minister to nominate him as General Joseph Joffre's successor in December 1916. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd-George, not only heartily endorsed Nivelle's promotion, but in a countermove against the dominant position of the British C-in-C, General Sir Douglas Haig, agreed that the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) should be subordinate to Nivelle, i.e. under French command.
The Nivelle Offensive and Catastrophe
The subsequent disastrous 'Nivelle Offensive' was set in motion in the Chemin des Dames sector (between Rheims and Soissons) on 16th April 1917 with much clamour and acclaim - 'We have the formula….Victory is certain' - despite qualifications about the quality of the military planning and delaying tactics from both General Haig and General Pétain. Unfortunately, this boasting by Nivelle and his staff included clear indications of how and where the offensives would be launched which were verified from a plan captured by the Germans. Also, the Germans knew precisely what Nivelle's 'formula' was - after all he had used it twice before. The Germans, in their usual meticulous way, had made appropriate preparations and, in an inspired tactical move, had pulled back from their forward positions to their impressive fortifications on the Hindenburg Line. Thus they skilfully avoided the heavy pre-assault artillery barrage, but left behind belts of thousands of well sited machine guns to meet the French as they advanced. The inspired élan of the French founded under this rain of machine gun fire, and the assault petered out with over 120,000 French casualties - 90,000 of which required evacuation. Nonetheless, Nivelle, facing defeat and certain humiliation, obstinately continued the offensive. But, the fighting spirit of the French Army was broken, and, on the 5th May 1917, the mutiny of the 21st Division broke out. Despite severe reprisals on the mutineers, by June 1916, 54 divisions - 50% of the strength of the French Army - was involved. Incredibly, no inkling of these events reached German Intelligence. By skilful intervention and diplomacy, General Pétain was able to largely regain the confidence of the rank and file and the situation was stabilised without serious jeopardy. But the French Army was never quite the same fighting force again.
The fall
As for Nivelle, those who had so blithely pushed him into a post beyond his competence, were equally ruthless in disposing of him. When he refused to resign, putting all the blame for the Chemin des Dames fiasco on his second-in-command - General Charles Mangin - he was literally pushed out of office on the 15th May 1917, subjected to a humiliating court-marshal, and sent off into his North African exile. He never wrote his memoires, or offered any justification for his spectacular failure. So we have no idea of his side of this sad and salutary story and whether in his night-hours he was ever haunted by the sounds of the mocking baa-ing of his squandered regiments of soldiers as they 'were led to the slaughter'.
