1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Joffre, Joseph Jacques Césare

JOFFRE, JOSEPH JACQUES CESARE (1852–), marshal of France, was born at Rivesaltes (Pyrénées-Orientales) on Jan. 12 1852. While he was still a student at the École Polytechnique the Franco-German War broke out. He was given a temporary appointment as a sub-lieutenant and was employed with the artillery engaged in the defence of Paris. On the signing of peace he returned to the École Polytechnique to complete his course, and on Sept. 21 1872 was given a permanent appointment as a lieutenant in the engineers. In April 1876 he became a captain and was posted to a railway works company; after three years spent on the defence works of Paris, he returned to regimental duty in 1879. In 1885 he took part in the expedition to Formosa, and for his services was (Sept. 7 1885) made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. From Formosa he went, as chief engineer, to Hanoī, and became responsible for the organization of the defences of Upper Tonkin. He returned to France in July 1888 and was attached for duty to the department of the inspector of engineers (War Office). Promoted commandant in May 1889 he next served for two years at Versailles with a railway operating unit. In 1892 he was seconded for service under the colonial administration, and was sent to the Sudan in order to direct the works on the Senegal-Niger railway. While in the Sudan he greatly distinguished himself in command of the force which made the brilliant and audacious march to Timbuctoo to relieve the ambushed Bonnier column, and was made a lieutenant-colonel (March 6 1894) and an officer of the Legion of Honour (Dec. 26 1894). In 1896 he returned from the Sudan and became secretary to the Military Inventions Commission, a post which he continued to hold after his promotion to colonel in Aug. 1897. Four years later he was—while serving in Madagascar under Galliéni—made a general of brigade and was appointed to command the 19th Artillery Bde. at Vincennes. He was at the same time made a member of the Comité technique du génie. In 1903 he became director of engineers at the War Office, and was promoted a commander of the Legion of Honour. He was made a general of division on March 24 1905, and then successively held appointments as military governor of Lille, commander of a division, permanent inspector of schools, commander of the II. Corps (Amiens), and member of the conseil supérieur de la guerre.

On first being nominated to the conseil supérieur de la guerre Joffre was designated, in case of war, to be head of the administrative and lines-of-communication services, for which task his varied experience evidently fitted him. When, however, disputes arose between the generalissimo designate, Michel, and the general staff as to the plan of campaign to be prepared for, Joffre was selected to succeed Michel, after Pau had declined the office and Galliéni had been set aside on account of age. The appointment was a surprise, as Joffre was a “colonial” and an administrator who was not familiar with the particulars of the one problem which the generalissimo might be required to solve. It was intended to give him as assistant Castelnau, a “metropolitan” soldier thoroughly versed in the details of European staff work. Castelnau however, probably on account of his clerical connexions and sympathies, was set aside, and when Aug. 1914 came Joffre’s staff was constituted entirely of men of a younger generation, amongst whom Berthelot at once took the lead. Covered by his authority, it was they who conducted the offensive into Lorraine, the battle of the frontiers, and the retreat that followed. Joffre himself, by nature and through experience, was essentially a man of authority, and, feeling perhaps that the greatest need of the army and the nation in the crisis was confidence in the leader as leader, he gave himself up entirely to the act of commanding. His operations bureau indicated when and where the armies should move and fight; he himself displayed ceaseless activity to ensure that they did so. Thus, while for want of energetic command the victorious German offensive was breaking up, the French retreat, in Joffre’s strong hands, became more and more coherent, till finally, when Galliéni’s initiative began the counter-stroke of the Ource, by a supreme act of command Joffre bade the retreating army turn about and take the offensive, and was obeyed. Earlier disasters and the stabilization of the Germans in the heart of northern France were forgotten in gratitude for the Marne, and in Dec. 1914 Joffre’s prestige at home and abroad was higher than that of any living man. Those who knew the inner history of the crisis were even less inclined than the rest to diminish this prestige, as it seemed that Joffre possessed the secret that had escaped all the general staffs, that of effectively commanding an army of two million citizen soldiers spread over an immense front. Moreover, that prestige was considered essential to the realization of the project of centralizing the command of all Entente forces in French hands.

During 1915, however, when Joffre and his G.H.Q. had settled down to a trench warfare for which they were not prepared, criticism began to make itself felt, especially as to the aloofness of G.H.Q. from the front, its arbitrary methods, and its stubborn attitude with respect to the civil power and Parliament. Had it not been well known that Joffre was a moderate Republican, this last—always, to the French political mind, indication of a possible coup d’état—would alone have caused Joffre’s overthrow. Millerand fell from power chiefly because he would not reassert the Ministerial rights usurped by G.H.Q. Briand followed, and his ingenuity was taxed to the utmost in pacifying criticism while retaining Joffre, behind whose imperturbable authority the bureaux of G.H.Q. acted as they pleased. In Dec. 1915 the endeavour to impose an effective control on G.H.Q. took shape in the appointment of Joffre as commander-in-chief of French forces in all theatres; but in assuming the new and wider responsibility Joffre managed to retain his immediate command of the armies of the western front, from which it had been intended to remove him by this step. Complaints, however, which had grown more and more audible as each offensive of 1915 ended in disappointment, came to a head in the winter of 1915–6 when the French Parliament became alarmed about the state of the Verdun front. To direct inquiry by the Government, Joffre returned a direct answer that this front was safe and well equipped—coupled with a protest against any reports bemg listened to other than his own,—and when the storm of the German offensive broke upon this front, found it weak, and nearly swept it away, Joffre’s prestige received a blow from which it did not recover. Although the policy of the Briand Government towards the general survived both the resignation of Galliéni and the secret session on Verdun, the slow progress of the battle of the Somme and the disastrous sequel to Rumania’s intervention led in Nov. to the final step being taken. Nivelle was placed in charge of the armies in France, Sarrail restored to his independence as commander in the east, and Joffre called to Paris as “technical adviser to the Government” (Dec. 13). A few days later (Dec. 16) he was created a marshal of France—the first since 1870. Thenceforward his rôle in the war was that of a spectator, except for a period in which he was sent on a mission to the United States (spring 1917). Marshal Joffre was elected a member of the Académie Française in 1918. Having in July 1914 been given the grand cross of the Legion of Honour, he had received the still higher honour of the médaille militaire in Nov. 1914.

His evidence before the Briey Commission as to the early events of the war, republished under the title La préparation de la guerre et la conduite des opérations, is the most important document that has appeared on the French side concerning 1914. The story of his tenure of the command, on its political side is given in Mermeix’s Les Crises du Commandement, part i.