Joseph-Jacques-Césaire Joffre

French military leader

• Born: January 12, 1852
• Birthplace: Rivesaltes, France
• Died: January 3, 1931
• Place of death: Paris, France

Joffre was the chief of staff of the French armies facing the armies of the German Empire in August, 1914. His armies halted the German tide at the First Battle of the Marne, and his actions between August 25 and September 5, 1914, enabled other commanders to blunt, disrupt, and eventually turn back the invading Germans.

Early Life

The future marshal of France was born in Rivesaltes, France, near the eastern edge of the Pyrenees Mountains. Joseph-Jacques-Césaire Joffre (zhoh-zehf-zhahk-say-zehr zhofreh) was one of eleven children, his father a manufacturer of barrels and casks. Joffre very early showed an aptitude for mathematics and science and at the age of seventeen was enrolled in the École Polytechnique. A year later, he entered the army as a junior lieutenant in the military engineers during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and endured the Siege of Paris in one of the outer forts. After the war, Joffre returned to the École Polytechnique, graduating in 1876 and receiving a commission as a captain in the army engineers. He was first involved in the construction of fortifications along France’s eastern frontier until 1885, the year that his wife died.

On the death of his wife, Joffre requested colonial service and was given assignments over the next fifteen years in Vietnam, Africa, and Madagascar. During this time, he served for three years as the chief military engineer in Hanoi, organizing the defenses throughout the upper Tonkin area. In 1888, he returned to Paris in the Engineering Directorate with later service at the War College at Fontainebleau as a professor of fortifications. Further service in the early 1890’s was spent building railroads in West Africa. It was serendipity that Joffre was called on in 1894 to lead a French relief expedition to rescue the French position against the native Tuaregs. He ended by securing the entire region for France. A hero in a country starved for heroes in the 1890’s, Joffre was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1896, he was recalled to France as the secretary of the Military Commission on Inventions but was almost immediately posted to Madagascar.

It was in Madagascar that Joffre made his reputation as a military engineer under the command of General Joseph Gaillieni. He managed the construction of the defenses for the new French naval base at Diego-Suarez. Joffre’s rise to the top ranks of the army was fairly rapid, particularly with Gaillieni’s patronage. In 1900, returning to France, he became a brigadier general in command of the Nineteenth Artillery Brigade, stationed at Vincennes.

In 1905, Joffre was promoted to major general and served in the ministry of war as director of engineers. One year later, he assumed command of the Sixth Infantry Division and by 1910 was the corps commander for the Second Corps at Amiens, becoming a member of the Supreme War Council. The council served as an advisory board to the minister of war during peacetime. From the ranks of the Supreme War Council in time of war would come the chief military commanders for the armed forces.

Life’s Work

In 1911, in what was a surprise compromise choice, Joffre was appointed the chief of the Army General Staff. General Gaillieni again played a key role in shifting support toward Joffre, who was believed to be apolitical and a loyal republican with few aristocratic or ultra-Catholic associations. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, Joffre’s reputation, therefore, particularly earned for him the support of the parties of the Left. Joffre’s age, fifty-nine at this time, also recommended him as one who could provide continuity at the top of the command structure for a reasonable period of time. In his new position, General Joffre also served as vice chair of the Supreme War Council.

Joffre realized that he lacked both operational command and general staff experience. He appointed General Noël de Castelnau as his deputy chief. They devised a strategy to be used in the event of war with Germany. This so-called Plan Seventeen, in combination with frontal offensive tactics devised by the operations branch, was to prove disastrous. Plan Seventeen envisioned a French offensive crashing through Lorraine and pushing back the German forces. Both Joffre and Castelnau were aware of the possibility of a German attack through Belgium and unsuccessfully attempted to station French troops in Belgium in 1912. The British government, particularly, while advocating closer cooperation with the French, was loath to acquiesce in such a move. Plan Seventeen did provide for what was thought to be sufficient French forces centered on Sedan to prevent a successful German attack through Belgium. What Plan Seventeen failed to imagine were the size, scope, and the force of the German attack through this region. The strategy also called for the French to send two of their armies up through the Ardennes to disrupt a German offensive.

When war broke out in August, 1914, and to stem the German tide sweeping through Belgium, Joffre, in support of the British position, moved the French Fifth Army into Belgium to hold the sector around the Meuse and Sambre rivers on the outer flank of the British Expeditionary Force. The French and British position in Belgium then collapsed under the weight of the German advance, while the French forces advancing through Lorraine ground to a halt. At this point Plan Seventeen simply fell apart, and Joffre was compelled to begin a general retreat, which continued until his armies were fighting in the suburbs of Paris.

It was during the retreat that Joffre showed his greatest attribute as a military commander. Through his calm, cool, and collected leadership, he rallied the defeated French forces. Joffre kept his armies in good order and prevented the retreat from becoming a rout. Joffre was everywhere visiting the troops. He replaced failed commanders and broke one hundred generals in a week, replacing some of his oldest friends and comrades. Joffre restored and reinvigorated the command structure, and without question his actions between August 25 and September 5 enabled others to play decisive roles at the critical hour, as Joffre prevented his armies from being encircled by the Germans.

On September 6, 1914, Joffre’s finest hour arrived. The French forces turned on the enemy, launching a splendid counterattack that slowed and then halted the German attack at the Battle of the Marne. Joffre had moved the French armies from their positions in Lorraine and, acting with other forces, including those sent to the front by Gaillieni, blunted and reversed the German advance. This moment was the high point of Joffre’s success as a military commander.

Soon after the First Battle of the Marne, the western front settled into the debilitating trench warfare that was to exhaust and bleed both sides in a protracted way for the remainder of the war. It was a stalemate, and, despite attempts around Artois and Champagne in 1915, Joffre could not break through the German lines. As the heavy losses mounted and as troop morale plummeted, Joffre came under increasingly severe criticism in the parliament. In late 1915, it was clear, with changes in the war ministry and a revamping of the general staff, that Joffre’s days were numbered.

The year 1916 proved to be disastrous for Joffre and his forces. In February, the Germans began their powerful and prolonged attack against Verdun, resulting in heavy loss of life on both sides over the course of the year. The month of July was another bitter time for the French troops, who, in support of the British, launched an attack along the Somme River. The loss of life among the French and British forces was appalling, and the resulting gains in territory could be measured in yards rather than miles.

The state of affairs was too much for the French government, and on December 13, 1916, the premier, Aristide Briand, dismissed Joffre by pretending to promote him. Joffre was made commander in chief of the French forces and was to act as a technical adviser to the French government. By December 27, it was clear that Joffre had definitely been removed from active command, and the government promoted him to marshal of France.

Marshal Joffre continued to serve France and in 1917 headed a mission to the United States to spark American enthusiasm for the war. After the armistice, he became the chief of a military mission to Japan. In 1918, he was elected a member of the prestigious French Academy and spent the remainder of his years with loyal staff members writing his memoirs. Joffre died in Paris on January 3, 1931.

Significance

Joffre has been faulted for many things. Certainly, he was neither an aggressive leader nor an innovative thinker. Whatever strategic concepts he had, Plan Seventeen was heavily flawed, and the tactics devised by the general staff were absurd, particularly in the face of the bitter and protracted trench warfare along the western front. Nevertheless, at the critical point in the initial German advance, Joffre remained calm, replaced many military commanders, selected the generals who ultimately won the war, and restored the morale of the French forces. It was at the Battle of the Marne that Joffre prevented France from falling to the forces of the German Empire. Thereafter, although much admired by both his peers within the French army and the opposing German commanders, Joffre simply did not have the imagination, the training, and the broader vision needed to find a way out of the bloody stalemate that plagued the French nation until 1918.

Bibliography

Clayton, Anthony. Paths of Glory: The French Army, 1914-1918. London: Cassell, 2005. This history of the French army during the Great War includes profiles of Joffre and other senior military commanders, as well as descriptions of their campaigns.

Dutton, David. “The Fall of General Joffre: An Episode in the Politico-Military Struggle in War Time France.” Journal of Strategic Studies of Great Britain 1 (1978): 3. Dutton’s work is an excellent analysis of Joffre’s fall from power in reaction to the politicians’ unhappiness with the military conduct of the war.

Horne, Alistair. The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916. New York: Penguin, 1993. Another well-written work setting forth the story of Joffre’s involvement with the bloodshed of Verdun.

Isselin, Henri. The Battle of the Marne. Translated by Charles Connell. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966. This work details Joffre’s involvement in his finest achievement of the war. It is a fair analysis of Joffre’s leadership.

Joffre, Joseph J. C. The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, Field Marshal of the French Army. Translated by T. Bentley Mott. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932. This account covers French prewar planning and Joffre’s role as French commander from 1914 to 1916. Surprisingly, it is a generally accurate and even account.

King, Jere Clemens. General and Politicians: Conflicts Between France’s High Command, Parliament, and Government. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951. A detailed, well-researched account of the struggle between the military and civilian leadership in France.

Ralston, David B. The Army of the Republic: 1871-1914. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967. Ralston analyzes Joffre’s role in the command structure in France between the wars. This work includes the effects of the Dreyfus affair and the relationship between the parliament and the army, which became nonpolitical, forging an entente with the politicians.

Williamson, Samuel R., Jr. The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904-1914. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969. This work reviews Joffre’s limited role in forging the Entente Cordiale. This work is a detailed study of a world of bureaucratic politics.