It may seem odd, at first, that almost no study of the French army at the start of the Great War fails to discuss
Though a professional soldier, Grandmaison never achieved high rank, and he did nothing of importance in the war before being killed in combat(a fate his critics could consider poetic justice) in 1915.
Still, he deserves the attention. 3 years before the war began, as a lieutenant colonel in the Operations Bureau at army headquarters, Grandmaison delivered a pair of lectures that thrilled the generals in his audience. He heaped scorn on French military doctrine since the Franco-Prussian War, laying out a new approach that soon came to dominate the nation's military thinking.
His doctrine, remembered today as "the cult of the offensive," was rooted in the idea of all-out, nothing-held -back aggressiveness as the key to success in battle. And the word cult really does apply; by 1914 any French officer who failed to embrace it would find himself out of favor, suspect, and professionally sidetracked. The consequences were fateful, almost fatal. Faith in the offensive, in the power of men wielding bayonets to overcome any enemy, caused Joffre's generals to send their troops against German machine guns and artillery again and again in the war's opening months, and to persist even as casualties rose to horrifying levels.
Such thinking had been in the air of France in the prewar years.
later Nobel Prize winner, was preaching that elan vital, the life force, had a mystic power that if harnessed could enable the nation to defeat even the richer, more populous Germany next door. Also preaching was
the gifted strategist and military theorist who in 1908 became director of The War College in Paris. He declared in his books and the lectures that "the will to conquer is the 1st condition of victory." Grandmaison, enrolled at the college during Foch's tenure, became his disciple. Within a few years he was carrying belief in l'offensive a l'outrance, in aggressiveness without restraint, far beyond what even Foch had intended. His words were received with relief and gratitude by an officer corps tired of being told that the best France could hope for was to defend itself against the German military machine. Grandmaison's insistence that the generals should expect to conquer sounded to them like music.
The triumph of the new doctrine came in 1911. That July,6 months after Grandmaison's electrifying lectures, a showdown over strategy erupted in France's Supreme War Council. The newly appointed commander in chief, a certain
put before the council ideas on how to prepare for war with Germany, He had based his proposals on a concept called offense-in-defense; if war broke out, he said, France's armies should be arrayed at varying distances from the nation's eastern borders, where they would wait for the Germans to make the 1st move)impressively, Michel foresaw their invasion of Belgium) before deciding where and how to strike back. There were advantages to such an approach. It would enable the French to know where the enemy forces were situated and where they were going before deciding how best to move against them. It could require the Germans to commit themselves, perhaps over commit themselves, and wear themselves down on the offensive while all French options remained open. But to the believers in offensive a l'outrance, such thinking was heresy and not to be endured. It rejected what Grandmaison had taught them; that "for the attack only 2 things are necessary. To know where the enemy is and to decide what to do. What the enemy intends to do is of no consequence." Such words imply a willful blindness to the realities of the battlefield, but the beliefs on which they were based prevailed. Michel found it necessary to resign, and the Grandmaisonites became not just popular but the dominant faction in French planning.
It now became necessary to find a replacement for Michel, and the same
who in 1914 would become military governor of Paris emerged as the pivotal figure. He had opposed Michel's proposals, but less on grounds of theory than because of concerns about Michel's personal capabilities and his intention, in case of war, to use reserves as frontline troops(something that the French generals abhorred but the Germans would do with significant success).
offered the job to Gallieni himself, who was respected on all sides, and Gallieni declined. Asked to take a few days to reconsider, the general again immediately said no. He explained that he regarded himself as too old; he was 62 at the time, in uncertain health, and within 2 years of retirement. He said also that he had too little experience in the command of large armies, and that-what was most important to Gallieni himself, and most reflective of his integrity-he couldn't honorably assume an office that he had caused to become vacant by failing to support Michel. Gallieni asked to suggest someone else, he offered the name of
a respected senior officer who had lost an arm in the Franco-Prussian War. Pau however was politically unacceptable, a practicing Catholic at a time when republican France suspected Catholics of seeking a restoration of the monarchy.(Foch, educated by the Jesuits and brother of a Jesuit priest, carried the same liability.) Gallieni's 2nd suggestion,
presented no such difficulties. He was solidly republican but beyond that a man of no politics. Though he enthusiastically accepted the doctrines of Grandmaison, he was no ideologue and in fact displayed little interest in ideas of any kind. He had never attended any of the higher staff schools, had only limited experience in the command of large numbers of troops, and had never attempted to school himself in higher strategy. Because of the gaps in his experience, his appointment surprised many people. Gallieni however, knew what he was doing-he knew Joffre well.
Gallieni(his family, like the Bonapartes, were of Italian origin and had come to France from Corisca) was 21 years old when, on the very day in 1870 that France declared war on the Germans to start the Franco-Prussian War, he graduated from St. Cyr military academy. He was commissioned in the marine infantry, a branch that destined him for service in the network of colonies that France was establishing around the world. After the war, in which he became a prisoner of the Germans, he went on to assignments in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Tonkin(Vietnam). Responsibility came easily to him, and with responsibility came promotion. By the time he was 40 he was governor of French Sudan, and for 9 years beginning in 1896 he was governor general and commander in chief of the new colony of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. After putting down a rebellion there, he introduced an administration that made Madagascar not only peaceful but prosperous.
One of the needs at Madagascar was a system of fortifications for the colony's new naval base, and in 1896 an army engineer less than 3 years younger than Gallieni joined his staff and took charge of construction.
In May 1913 the bureau issued 2 sets of new field regulations. One was for corps and armies, and the other for units of division size and smaller. Both were saturated with the Grandmaison doctrine. "Battles are beyond everything else struggles of morale," they declared. "Defeat is inevitable as soon as the hope of conquering ceases to exist. Success comes not to him who has suffered the least but to him whose will is firmest and morale strongest." Grandmaison's staff also drafted Plan 17, which discarded the Michel approach and was duly approved by Joffre as the definitive statement of how his armies would be deployed when war came. The French equivalent of Schlieffen Plan, Plan 17 disregarded even the possibility of a German move into western Belgium, an inexplicable decision in light of what Michel had concluded years earlier. Though Plan 17 was more flexible than the Schlieffen Plan, leaving Joffre free to decide where and when to attack, that he would attack was beyond question.
Adherents of the cult of the offensive did very well during these prewar years. Foch, who could have claimed to be the cult's grandfather, was given command of a division of 1911 and of a corps just 1 year after that. That at the beginning of the war he wasn't given an army is surprising; the religious factor is likely the reason. Grandmaison was promoted to brigadier general and didn't long survive.
Those deemed to have insufficient faith in the offensive didn't prosper. One such officer was
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who as a lowly assistant professor of infantry tactics at the Ecole de Guerre had attracted unfavorable attention by persistently warning of the vulnerability of flesh and bone when confronted with 20th century firepower. In July 1914 he was, as a result, a mere colonel of 58, an obscure outsider expecting to be retired soon. Even mobilization and the start of the war brought no advancement. When the French 5th Army assembled(its commander, Lanrezac, was only 4 years older than Petain), Petain commanded a regiment and was still a colonel.
Gallieni had sunk into what appeared likely to be terminal obscurity. Before the start of the war, he had come around to Michel's view that if Germany invaded France, it would do so through Belgium. He had tried to explain his concerns to Joffre and the deep thinkers of the Operations Bureau but was ignored. Relieved by Joffre of responsibility for anything, he retreated to his country home and a kind of preretirement limbo. In July his wife died, and on the last day of the month he was informed by Messimy that, in case of mobilization, he would be named Joffre's principal deputy and successor if the need for succession arose. When mobilization came, he was given the promised title but no staff, no duties, no information about what was happening, and no access to the man whose chief support he was supposed to be. Joffre evidently regarded him as a rival and wanted to give him no opportunities to be seen or heard. Thus Gallieni, a thin almost comically homely man with tiny eyeglasses and a flamboyantly bushy mustache, spent the opening days of the war alone. He followed the opening movements of the armies on his maps and worried.
He was unresentful. As the danger to Paris increased and alarmed members of the government began to complain of Joffre's retreat and talk of replacing him, it was Gallieni, to whom the politicians would cheerfully have given the supreme command, who urged patience.
