For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails
On 27 May 1917, a swelling tide of indiscipline in the French army turned to outright mutiny. An estimated 30,000 men – many of them veterans of Verdun the previous year – abandoned the front-line trenches or refused to return to the front.
From late April, and into May, there were similar acts of defiance in almost half of the 113 divisions in the French army. Could the war have ended 18 months before it did?
The mutinies of 1917 were a taboo subject in France for almost 60 years. Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 movie Paths of Glory – vaguely inspired by the events of 1917 – was not shown in France until 1975 (although never formally banned).
The “Chanson de Craonne”, an anti-war song which became popular in the trenches in the spring of 1917, was first broadcast in France in 1976.
As a result, the scale of the revolt – and the extent and brutality of the repression which followed – has sometimes been exaggerated. Very few soldiers simply refused to fight. They were protesting mostly against futile, bloody and misconceived attacks on the German lines. If the Germans had launched an opportunistic offensive, most of the protesting soldiers would have returned to the trenches (and almost all did fight again).
All the same, this was the biggest act of collective indiscipline of any army on the Western Front in 1914-1918. At almost 100 years’ distance, one is tempted to ask not “Why?” but “Why not more often?”
The 1917 mutinies were partly a protest against poor food and repeated cancellation of leave. The French military high command was convinced that they were fomented by “pacifists and socialists”, egged on by German agents and inspired by the popular revolt which began in Russia that March.
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 momentsShow all 149 1 /149In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Supporting troops of the 1st Australian Division walking on a duckboard track near Hooge, in the Ypres Sector
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Final moments: The Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand with his wife Sophie in Sarajevo minutes before his shooting
AP
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Arresting Princip’s fellow conspirator Nedeljko Cabrinovic after a failed attempt to kill the Archduke on the same day
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Crowds in central London cheer Britain’s declaration of war on Germany
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The innocents: New recruits, with bicycles, training with the British Army in 1914
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War 1914: A lone soldier with a bicycle stands amid the remains of a German motor convoy which lines a country lane after an attack by French field guns in the battle of the Aisne in France
Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Troubled waters: The Cambridge eight included John Andrew Ritson (fourth from cox)
Museum of London, Christina Broom
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War John Andrew Ritson (left)
Museum of London, Christina Broom
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Dennis Ivor Day
Musuem of London; Christina Broom
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War German infantry advance through Belgium in August 1914
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Civilians near the Austrian lines in Serbia are strung up – probably as a reprisal for guerrilla resistance to the invaders
Miroslav Honzík/Hana Honzíková
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Captured soldiers of the Russian 2nd Army after their defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Wounded and exhausted British and Belgian soldiers retreating after the Battle of Mons
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Crowds gather outside a recruitment office
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War French General Joseph Joffre (second right), Commander- in-Chief of the French Armies, and General Michel Joseph Maunoury (right) on the front during the First Battle of the Marne. Six hundred scarlet taxis were requisitioned, at a cost of Fr70,102, to ferry reservist troops to the Battle of the Marne in 1914
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A French firing squad escorts a deserter to his execution in November 1914
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War One of the trenches from which deserters tried to escape
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War German soldiers in Wirballen, a border town between the German Reich and Russia
Mary Evans Picture Library
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Carl Hans Lody, who spied in Britain
Popperfoto/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Up to 12 million letters a week were sent to the front line via the wooden sorting office hastily set up in Regent’s Park in 1914
Royal Mail
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Survivors from SMS ‘Gneisenau’ in the sea off the Falkland Islands, with HMS ‘Inflexible’ in the background, 8 December 1914
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The ruins of the cloth hall and cathedral in Ypres during WWI
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Margot Asquith, the Countess of Oxford and Asquith and the wife of Britain’s wartime leader
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A wounded American in a London hospital reads a magazine with a red cross nurse by his bedside.
A. R. Coster/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A mass execution by firing squad following the unsuccessful Singapore mutiny of 1915
rebelsindia.com
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Indian soldiers serving in France were known for their fighting spirit
Underwood Archives/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Russian artillery positions outside Przemysl, during the six-month siege of the heavily fortified Austro-Hungarian city, part of present-day Poland
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Residents assess the damage after Suffolk was rocked by bomb attacks mounted by German Zeppelin
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War German infantrymen attack through a cloud of poison gas. By the end of the war, both sides had employed various kinds of gas
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Children of Armenian refugees in a camp
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Armenian civilians being led away by Ottoman soldiers
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A public hanging in Istanbul
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A pile of skulls from the Armenian village of Sheyxalan
AFP/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Allied troops at Anzac Cove (Gaba Tepe) during the Gallipoli campaign
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Allied troops unloading heavy guns in the Dardanelles
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Volunteer nurse Florence Farmborough was part of the Russian retreat from Gorlice
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Cunard liner RMS Lusitania, after secret Whitehall misgivings about the official account of one of the most controversial and tragic episodes of the First World War were revealed in newly-released government documents. Almost 70 years after the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland, some officials expressed concern that the truth was still being covered up
PA Wire
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The RMS Lusitania sailed from New York on 1 May 1915 on her last voyage; the liner was sunk off southern Ireland on 7 May
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Welsh Liberal politician and future Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863 - 1945) enjoys a quiet read of a newspaper in his garden with his faithful dog for company
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War French troops line up for inspection on a trench on the Western Front
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War German military prisoners, at Southend-on-Sea, on their way to Knockaloe
Print Collector/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The railway line running the length of the access road into Knockaloe, the biggest camp in the British Isles
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Survivors of the sinking in Cobh, Co Cork
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Robert Graves (1895-1985), who served on the Western Front from 1915 to 1917
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War 2nd Lieutenant John Kipling is thought to have been killed in The Chalk Pit, in Loos, France, on 27 September 1915
Wikimedia Creative Commons
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Laid to rest: Edith Cavell circa 1905
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Her funeral cortege in London in May 1919
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War George Samson is celebrated on a cigarette card of the time
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Flora Sandes, who rose from private to sergeant-major in the Serbian army, playing chess with her Serbian comrades. After the war ended, she was promoted to lieutenant
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Italian light infantry of the 1st Alpini Regiment on Monte Nero, during the Isonzo campaigns
Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War As Italian as mozzarella cheese: Giuseppe Ungaretti
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War French troops under shellfire during the Battle of Verdun
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A French soldier is shot during a counter attack
Alamy
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Devastation near Fort Souville, Verdun
Alamy
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Conscripts, among the first men ever to be compelled to join the British Army, undergo a medical
Central Press/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Chandeliers and bed rest
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The Pavilion was meant as a seaside home for the Prince Regent
Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Fun and games were vital
Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Patients get some sea air
Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The medical staff
Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Britain saw the Easter Rising as a stab in the back and the rebels, pictured here being led to captivity, as traitors. Subsequent executions made them into national heroes
Rex
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A steamer hit by a torpedo during the First World War
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The Ottoman army besieged the British forces for 147 days until they surrendered on 29 April 1916
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War General Sir Charles Townshend
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The tear-stained letter
Imperial War Museum
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Siegfried Sassoon as a second lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His bravery won him the Military Cross in July 1916, but he later turned against the war
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The sinking of the ‘Queen Mary’
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Admiral John Jellicoe, commander of the British fleet
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War German destroyers off the English coast
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War One of the architects of the revolt: Sharif Hussain, religious leader of Mecca
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War One of the architects of the revolt: Sir Henry McMahon, British minister in Cairo
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Emilio Lussu, who fought in the battle with the Italian Army, on the side of the allies, against the Austrians, who sided with Germany
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, whose face appeared on the recruitment poster ‘Your Country Needs You’
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Conscientious objectors at a protest on Dartmoor in 1917
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Objectors were forced to cultivate the soil although many were said to have spent much of their time "strolling on the moors, reading, smoking and talking"
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War British conscientious objectors leaving Dartmoor Prison under a gateway inscribed with the words "Parcere subjectis" ("Spare the conquered")
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Going over the top during the Battle of the Somme in 1916
PA
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The British Machine Gun Corps during the battle
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Canadian troops prepare for the charge
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Remains of the German airship shot down over Cuffley
Popperfoto
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Captain William Leefe Robinson received the VC for his courage
Hulton/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A British Mark 1 tank on the Western Front
Topical Press/Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A British soldier covers a dead German on the firestep of a trench near the Somme
Hulton/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Carnage on the road to Romania’s Turnu Rosu Pass. A German NCO stands beside an Italian-made cannon and the body of what may have been a gun crew member
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Edward Thomas, a Second-Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery, at home on leave in early 1917
Edward Thomas Fellowship
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Edward’s wife Helen with two of their three children, Merfyn and Bronwen
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War May Bradford writing a letter for an injured soldier in a French hospital
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Composer and poet Ivor Gurney (left) and the artist Paul Nash
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Filling shells at the Vickers munitions factory, Barrow-in-Furness. Strikers’ grievances included the use of female labour
BAE Systems Submarines
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The moment that ushered in the American century: President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to ratify a declaration of war against Imperial Germany
AP
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Supporters greet Lenin on his arrival at Finland Station, Petrograd, on 16 April 1917, after a week-long journey by sealed train from Switzerland
Everett Collection/Rex Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War War effort: Women war workers at Cross Farm, Shackleton, Surrey, in 1917
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War French ‘poilus’ at Chemin des Dames, where the bloody Nivelle Offensive of 1917 pushed many into mutiny
Rex
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War An early colour photograph of the crater left by the biggest of the blasts beneath German positions near Messines on 14 June 1917
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War British sappers laying the mines
Heritage Images/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The remains of a German trench
Alamy
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Ernst Jünger’s German platoon overcame the enemy forces with his ‘mastery of the situation and iron command’
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Siegfried Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart Hospital to be treated for ‘shell shock’ following his protest
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970), whose 1929 novel, ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’, was based on his wartime experiences. Here he is seen with Carl Laemmle of Universal Pictures (left)
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The conscription of reserve soldiers in Greece to fight on the Salonika front in 1916. The Greek city was ravaged by a fire the following year, which devastated the area and left thousands homeless
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Allied troops marching down the Boulevard de la Victoire in Salonika in 1916, the year before the great fire which devastated the Greek city
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Women leaving a munitions factory on Eiswerder Island in Spandau, near Berlin, at the end of their shift, in around 1917. They are crossing the bridge over the river Havel
TopFoto
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Female workers of the Spandau factory getting their dinner during the midday break
TopFoto
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Wet weather plagued the Third Battle of Ypres, which included the battles of Langemarck and Passchendaele. Perhaps 70,000 Allied soldiers died between 31 July and 10 November
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A British stretcher party
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War German prisoners on a duckboard track at Yser Canal, Belgium, on the opening day of the battle
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War 3rd September 1917: Veterans of the American Civil War at the opening of the Eagle Hut
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War US Ambassador Page greeting veterans of the American Civil War at the opening of the Eagle Hut
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War 22nd December 1917: Christmas preparations at the Eagle Hut
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Albin Köbis, who was shot as one of the ringleaders of the German naval mutiny in 1917
Alamy
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Stokers of the SMS Prinzregent Luitpold in 1913
Alamy
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Allied troops in what is now Zambia, in vain pursuit of the forces of the elusive German general Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Genius in the art of bush warfare: German general Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War German women and children queue for food rations
Alamy
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Crowds at Petrograd’s Winter Palace during the October Revolution. (Russia still used the Julian calendar, in which the West’s 7 November equated to 25 October)
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The Mayor of Jerusalem (with walking-stick) had tried to surrender the city to them
Imperial War Museum
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Allenby walks into Jerusalem: Sergeants James Sedgwick and Frederick Hurcomb of 2/19th Battalion, London Regiment, outside the city two days earlier
AP
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Artist John Nash not only painted the ordeals of Britain’s front line troops: he experienced them first-hand
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A British housewife with her grocery items after the introduction of rationing. The government feared hunger might lead to revolution
Rex
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Edmund Morel as an MP after his release
Topham Picturepoint
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A suffragist rally in Hyde Park
Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A newly enfranchised woman votes for the first time in 1918
Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Masked doctors and nurses treat flu patients lying on cots and in outdoor tents at a hospital camp during the influenza epidemic of 1918
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The immense long-range naval gun which was used to bombard Paris from behind the German lines in Picardy
TopFoto
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The immense naval gun was manned by 80 German sailors. It launched its shells from behind the German lines
TopFoto
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Walter Tull, left, Britain’s first black Army officer, in a photograph handed down to his great-nephew Edward Finlayson
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Tull was singled out for his "gallantry and coolness" following a daring raid across the frozen river Piave in January 1918
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The German air ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen
Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Baron Manfred von Richthofen's 'flying circus'
Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Dogs at the British War Dog School in Essex
Mary Evans Picture Library
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Tweed, far left, with his handler Private Reid
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A dog courier runs through barbed wire and mines to deliver a message
Corbis
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Piete Kuhr, pictured in 1915
Memoria Hürth
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Vera Brittain became a nurse during the war
Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The aftermath of the explosion at the munitions plant in Chilwell
Nottingham City Council
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Remains of a soldier on the Western Front, where millions were killed or wounded, or went missing
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War From left, Marshal Joffre, President Henri Poincaré, King George V, General Foch, and Field-Marshal Haig
Time life pictures/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Captured German officers receiving orders from a French officer
Universal Images Group/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War American troops advance on a German position on the Saint Mihiel salient, north-eastern France, in 1918
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War American soldiers of the 18th Infantry Machine Gun Battalion advance through the ruins of St Baussant on their way to the St. Mihiel Front
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War A group of captured Germans being marched through St Mihiel Salient
Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Wilfred Owen in uniform as a 2nd Lieutenant. The poet was teaching in France when the war began
Fotosearch/Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, circa 1920. The poet describes to his wife the rising tide of popular unrest in Munich
Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The interior of the railway carriage in which the Armistice ending the First World War was signed
Hulton/Getty
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The Allied delegation was led by France’s Marshal Ferdinand Foch (front row, second right)
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War The Royal Family appear on the balcony
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War People celebrate in the streets in 1918
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Crowds in London celebrate the end of hostilities on 11 November 1918
Getty Images
In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments First World War Crowds in London celebrate the end of hostilities in 1918
Getty
Mostly, they were caused by the brainless tactics of the French high command – especially the calamitous “Nivelle Offensive” which began on 16 April. General Robert Nivelle, appointed as French commander-in-chief after successes in the later stages of Verdun, thought – like other commanders before him – that he knew how to win the war.
It was merely a question of sending in infantry and tanks behind a “creeping barrage” which would destroy the German defences and open the road to Berlin. The result was a French version of the British debacle on the first day of the Somme the previous July. Sixty French divisions attacked near Reims and on the Chemin des Dames, a deeply defended ridge between two river valleys in the Aisne.
“At 6am the battle began, at 7am it was lost,” one French officer said. It continued intensively for another 13 days and then, on and off, into June. In the first three days alone, the French lost 40,000 men killed, 90,000 were wounded and 5,000 taken prisoners. Second Lieutenant Jean-Louis Cros, of the 201st Infantry Regiment, wrote a note to his family as he lay dying of shrapnel wounds on the first day of the offensive: “My dear wife, my dear parents and all I love, I have been wounded. I hope it will be nothing, Care well for the children, my dear Lucie; Leopold will help you if I don’t get out of this. I have a crushed thigh and am all alone in a shell hole. I hope they will soon come to fetch me. My last thought is of you.”
The attitude of the troops by mid-May is expressed in the war-long diary of Corporal Louis Barthas, of the 296th infantry regiment, which became a best-seller when it was published in 1977. Barthas was a 35-year-old barrel-maker from Aude in the deep South who was a socialist and pacifist when the war began. He fought, with distinction, before and after the mutinies. “They read out the order of the day from that mass-murderer of 16 April, General Nivelle, to inform his troops (that is to say, his victims!) saying amidst other nonsense that ‘The hour of sacrifice has arrived and we must not think about leave!’
“Reading this patriotic nonsense aroused no enthusiasm. On the contrary, it only demoralised the soldiers, who heard nothing but another terrible threat: new suffering, great dangers, the prospect of an awful death in a vain and useless sacrifice, because no one trusted the outcome of this new butchery.”
The mood of the French army that May is also immortalised in the refrain of the “Song of Craonne” (which already existed in other versions but achieved its greatest fame in the 1917 version linked to Craonne, a village on the Chemin des Dames ridge). “Goodbye to life, goodbye to love, goodbye to women,” ran the chorus. “It’s all over. This dreadful war is for ever./ It’s at Craonne, on the ridge,/ That we must leave our skins,/ Because we are all condemned men./ We are the sacrificed ones!” A reward of 1 million francs, along with immediate release from military duties, was offered in return for the identity of the song’s creator, but no one took up the offer.
Instead, on 15 May General Nivelle was sacked and replaced by General Philippe Pétain. He continued the offensive sporadically and suppressed the mutinies with a mixture of brutality and common-sense.
Leave was restored. The food was improved. Pétain made sure that the “poilus” (the hairy ones or common soldiers) saw him tasting their soup.
There were wild accounts later of whole French units being bombarded by their own artillery. There were claims, too, that rebellious regiments were “decimated” – every tenth soldier executed, as the Romans did with reluctant legions.
The official records, finally opened to historians in the late 1970s, tell a different story. Of the 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers who rebelled, 629 were condemned to death but only 75 were executed. Almost 3,000 were given lesser punishments. There were, in fact, more French soldiers executed for cowardice in 1914 and in 1915 than in 1917.
In a sense, the mutinies were successful. Under Pétain, the exhausted French army adopted a more passive and defensive posture until the summer of 1918. The burden of taking the offensive against the “Boches” in 1917 was enthusiasticaly taken up by the British commander, Sir Douglas Haig, with predictably bloody results at Passchendaele and Cambrai.
The mutinies – magnified by rumour – nurtured the political and social divisions in post-war France which helped to produce the collapse of 1940. The alleged influence of pacifists and socialists fed the obsession of the nationalist right wing and the military high command with betrayal and “internal enemies”. Twenty-three years after the Chemin des Dames, it was Philippe Pétain who came out of retirement to lead the collaborationist Vichy regime.
The 1917 battles and the mutinies remained in deep official shadow in France until the late 1990s. All the commemorative effort went to Verdun. The only monuments built on the Chemin des Dames were private ones.
In 1998, the Socialist Prime Minster, Lionel Jospin, chose to end all that. At the 80th anniversary of the war’s end, he went to Craonne and made a courageous speech. It was time, he said, for the mutinous soldiers of 1917 – “exhausted by doomed attacks, sliding in blood-soaked mud, plunged into deep despair”– to be “wholly restored to our collective national memory”.
The centre-right President Jacques Chirac protested but Jospin won the second battle of the Chemin des Dames. A few years later, the French army band began to play in public the Chanson de Craonne.
Tomorrow: The Big Bang at Messines Ridge
The '100 Moments' already published can be seen at: independent.co.uk/greatwar
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies