France in World War I

Abstract

The French Army of the World War I (aka, the Great War) carried the weight of the Allied war effort on its shoulders, providing the second-largest proportion of fighting troops, holding a majority of the Western Front, and providing multiple smaller allied nations with the materiel needed to fight in multiple theaters of war. Like many other forces entering the conflict, the French had to rapidly adapt to modern warfare. Adjusting from dated uniforms and tactics was a painful experience, which the French soldier, known as the poilu, excelled at. After the initial shock of combat during the Battle of the Frontiers, the army was able to rally a defense along the Marne River and counterattack alongside their British allies. With the onset of the war in the trenches, the campaign of 1915 saw repeated assaults in Artois and Champagne in what would become the bloodiest year of the war for France. In addition to efforts on the Western Front, the French deployed forces to assist the British in the Dardanelles and the Serbians in the Balkans. The year 1916 would center around the brutal attritional combat at Verdun and the Somme, while 1917 saw the disastrous Neville Offensive on the Chemin des Dames and occurrences that have been referred to as a “collective disobedience” among the French forces, followed by a period of rebuilding and limited assaults. The last year of the war witnessed France assisting the British in repulsing the German Spring Offensive before dealing with concentrated offensives toward their own lines. While training and equipping the newly arrived American Expeditionary Forces, the French Army began a series of assaults in July that began the defeat of the Germans in the west. The historiography of the French military effort has changed rapidly as more sources become available. Debate continues over battles, tactics, personalities, and social themes, which have tended to focus on the social experience of the poilu and his war. Recent historians have begun a process of reevaluating the French war effort to show just how powerful and leading a force the French Army truly was. Additionally, growing studies in German and English language historiography are emerging to open France’s history to a multitude of new audiences.