The 1917 French Army Mutinies

Podcast transcript

In late May and early June of 1917, the French Army faced what could have been an existential crisis.

After three years of some of the most brutal conflict that the world had ever seen, many soldiers had had enough.

Thousands of troops refused to obey orders and refused to go along with the suicidal attacks that were the hallmark of trench warfare.

In response, the French turned to one of their greatest heroes to solve the problem.

Learn more about the French Army Mutinies of 1917 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

By May 1917, France was feeling the full toll of the First World War.

Estimates are that by May, France had lost 1,000,000 men out of a total population of 20,000,000 men over the last three years, which includes everything from infants to the elderly.

The French had suffered appalling casualties during offensives at Verdun and the Battle of the Somme, and morale was deteriorating.

It wasn’t just that there were heavy casualties; it was that so many of the casualties came from what were ultimately futile offensive operations. Men were ordered to climb out of their trenches, where a hail of machine gun bullets awaited them.

France certainly wasn’t alone in taking massive casualties. However, in May of 1917, several things were coming to a head.

The immediate trigger for the mutinies was the catastrophic failure of General Robert Nivelle’s spring offensive in April 1917.

Nivelle promised a decisive breakthrough against the German lines on the Chemin des Dames ridge. Nivelle assured political and military leaders that his meticulously prepared assault, supported by massive artillery bombardments, would collapse German defenses within 48 hours at minimal cost.

However, the attack began under unfavorable conditions, including incomplete surprise and well-fortified German positions. It quickly stalled, resulting in devastating French casualties—roughly 120,000 men in the first few days—while failing to achieve its strategic goals.

This betrayal of trust was crucial. Soldiers could endure hardship if they believed it served a purpose, but the Nivelle Offensive shattered their faith that their leaders had any viable plan for victory.

Other things were happening in April as well.

On April 6, the United States formally entered the war by declaring war on Germany.

Many of the front-line French troops were excited by the news that they might be getting some help. Fresh units from America that hadn’t suffered from three years of war.

However, many of the French troops assumed that this meant that the Americans would be arriving in a matter of days. They didn’t realize that the United States didn’t even have much of a standing army at the time, and that it would take months to recruit, train, and transport all those soldiers to the Western Front.

There was one other thing as well. In February of 1917, the Russian Revolution overthrew the Tsar. News of the revolution spread rapidly across Europe, reaching French troops and offering a powerful example of how soldiers and workers could force change by challenging authority.

This created anxiety among French commanders, who feared that revolutionary sentiments might take hold in their own ranks as exhaustion and dissatisfaction with leadership already ran deep.

While most French soldiers were not seeking a political uprising like what happened in Russia, the revolutionary fervor in Russia heightened their sense that they had the power to protest. It also contributed to the leadership’s response to the mutinies.

The first signs of rebellion appeared in late April, but the crisis exploded in May 1917. These weren’t chaotic, undisciplined riots. The mutinies were surprisingly organized and focused, revealing the soldiers’ underlying military discipline even in the midst of rebellion.

The pattern was remarkably consistent across different units. Soldiers would refuse orders to attack, but they continued to defend their positions against German assaults. They weren’t abandoning France or helping the enemy – they were essentially going on strike against what they saw as suicidal offensive operations.

Repeated across dozens of French divisions: when ordered to move up to the front for another attack, entire units would simply refuse to march. Officers found themselves powerless as hundreds of men sat down and declared they would fight defensively but would no longer participate in futile offensives.

Within a few weeks, the problem had become enormous for the French Army. Mutinies affected 68 divisions out of France’s total of 110 divisions. This wasn’t a localized problem – it was a collapse of military authority that threatened France’s ability to continue the war.

The mutinies were mostly by infantry units. Artillery and cavalry units that were not subject to the worst of the war were much less likely to strike.

The mutineers’ demands reveal much about their state of mind and the conditions that drove them to rebellion. Their grievances fell into several categories.

First was Military Concerns. Soldiers demanded an end to poorly planned offensives that wasted lives without achieving meaningful objectives. They wanted competent leadership and realistic military strategies.

The soldiers in the trenches knew what the generals were unable to grasp: that the strategy of heavy artillery bombardment followed by an infantry rush over the trenches simply didn’t work.

Second was Living Conditions. The men demanded better food, improved medical care, and more regular leave to see their families. After three years of war, basic human needs were being ignored.

Thirst was Fair Treatment. Soldiers protested harsh discipline, inadequate rest periods, and the vast gulf between officers’ privileges and enlisted men’s hardships.

Notice what they didn’t demand: they weren’t calling for France to surrender or make peace with Germany. They weren’t demanding a political revolution or the overthrow of the government. This was a military rebellion focused on military issues.

I should also note that the mutinies were not violent. They didn’t attack their officers. They often just refused to move or attack.

For example, on June 5, 1917, when the soldiers of the 74th Regiment were ordered to return to the front, 300 of them adopted a resolution refusing to go back to the trenches. Instead of outright rebellion, they simply marched to a nearby village and staged a sit-down protest on the road.

Similarly, when the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 18th Infantry Regiment were told to head back to the front—despite having been previously assured of generous leave—they declined to comply. However, they made it clear they held no personal animosity toward their commander, even cheering “long live the Colonel” as they disobeyed the order.

The response of the French government was crucial to resolving the crisis. General Philippe Pétain replaced Nivelle as commander-in-chief, and his approach was markedly different from his predecessor

Before I get into the specifics of the response, I should note that Philippe Pétain has appeared in several different episodes. Most importantly, he was the titular head of Vichy France during the German occupation in WWII.

However, at this point, he was still a hero in France.

So, if you ever wanted an example from history that provides proof of what Harvey Dent said in The Dark Knight, that “You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain,” it would have to be Philippe Pétain.

Pétain understood that the army’s problems required both punishment and reform. Carrot and stick.

On one hand, from a military discipline standpoint, he couldn’t just ignore the fact that thousands of troops were disobeying orders.

On June 8, there were mass arrests. He court-martialed over 3,400 soldiers, with 554 receiving death sentences, though only 26 of the death sentences were carried out. This demonstrated that mutiny had consequences. However, the number of arrests and sentences was tiny compared to the number of men and units that had refused to follow orders.

On the other hand, Pétain implemented sweeping reforms that addressed the soldiers’ legitimate grievances. He improved food quality and quantity, established more regular leave schedules, upgraded medical facilities, and most crucially, adopted a defensive strategy that avoided costly offensives until American reinforcements could tip the balance.

Many of the reforms were undertaken explicitly to avoid a revolutionary spiral, like the one that occurred in Russia.

As an aside, believe it or not, there were a small number of Russian troops who were stationed in France during the war. The Russian Expeditionary Force in France was sent to France at the request of the French government at the start of the war. There were a bit under 9,000 Russian troops stationed on the Western Front.

On April 16, 1917, the Russian forces elected their own Soviet to represent them and to replace their officers. It took them until April to even find out about the February Revolution.

After this, fearing that Russian soldiers might start a revolution that could spread to France, any Russian who didn’t express loyalty to the Russian Provisional Government was relocated from the front lines to central France.

The Russian soldiers who expressed a loyalty to the revolution eventually mutinied and were surrounded and attacked by loyalist Russians on September 14th, killing nine and wounding 49.

The mutineer Russians were then arrested and sent to penal camps in North Africa.

By the end of June 1917, the mutinies had largely subsided. Pétain’s reforms and promises of improved conditions gradually restored morale and discipline. The French Army became more cautious, and major offensive operations were paused until mid-1918.

The mutinies had a profound impact on French strategy for the remainder of the war. In addition to adopting a more defensive posture until the influx of American troops, politically, the crisis led to a heightened sense of accountability in both military and civilian leadership.

To fully appreciate the significance of these mutinies, consider what was happening elsewhere in 1917. The Russian Army was collapsing entirely, leading to revolution and Russia’s exit from the war. The Italian Army would suffer a catastrophic defeat at Caporetto later that year. Germany was implementing unrestricted submarine warfare, hoping to starve Britain into submission.

France’s ability to resolve its military crisis while maintaining the war effort was crucial to the Allied cause. The mutinies could have ended France’s participation in the war, which would likely have resulted in a German victory.

At the time, almost no one knew that this was happening. The French government suppressed news of the mutinies so that the Germans couldn’t take advantage of them, and to prevent it from harming French morale on the home front.

In fact, the reason why so few people are aware of these incidents is that the French covered up what had happened for decades afterwards.

It wasn’t until 1967, fifty years after the mutiny, that the records were unsealed. It was then that historian Guy Pedroncini published his book “The Mutineers of 1917.”

Although the mutinies of 1917 were largely kept quiet, they had a profound impact on the French Army and the strategy for the remainder of the war.

The crisis also revealed the importance of maintaining the connection between military leadership and the soldiers they command. Generals who treated their men as expendable resources discovered that those resources could refuse to be expended.

Perhaps most significantly, the mutinies showed that patriotism and military rebellion weren’t necessarily contradictory.

The French soldiers weren’t abandoning their country – they were demanding that their sacrifice be meaningful rather than wasteful.

The 1917 French Army mutinies represent a fascinating case study in the limits of military authority, the psychology of soldiers under extreme stress, and the delicate balance between discipline and morale that determines an army’s effectiveness.

They remind us that behind the grand strategies and political decisions of war lie individual human beings whose endurance, while remarkable, is not unlimited.