The Chantilly Conferences were a series of three conferences held between 1915 and 1916 by the Allied Powers of World War I. The conferences were named after Chantilly, France, where the meetings took place.
The Chantilly Conferences were a series of three conferences held between 1915 and 1916 by the Allied Powers of World War I. The conferences were named after Chantilly, France, where the meetings took place.
Held from July 7, 1915, the first inter-allied military conference of the First World War was convened at Grand Quartier Général (GQG) Chantilly, France shortly after Italy entered the war against the Central Powers. Attending were representatives from Britain (including the BEF Commander-in-Chief Sir John French and the BEF Chief of Staff William Robertson), France (Alexandre Millerand, the Minister of War and Joseph Joffre, the Commander-in-Chief), Belgium, Italy, Serbia and Russia. Joffre told the delegates that concerted, coordinated action would create the most favourable conditions for an Allied victory to present themselves. No specific undertakings were agreed upon as a consequence of the conference. A later conference at Chantilly about five months later, was more ambitious in its aims and led to a commitment by the Allies to begin an offensive should an Ally be endangered by the Central Powers. [1]
From 8 to 12 December 1915, an Allied military planning conference took place at GQG, Joffre's headquarters in Chantilly with the military representatives of the Allied powers, France, Britain, Russia, Serbia and Italy, to form a common strategy for 1916 against the Central Powers. [2] The British representatives were the BEF Commander-in-Chief Sir John French and Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir Archibald Murray (in their final days in those roles before being replaced by Douglas Haig and Robertson respectively). General Carlo Porro (it) represented Italy. [3] Joffre proposed and his Allied counterparts concurred that the offensives of the Allied armies on the Western Front should be delivered simultaneously or close enough so that the Central Powers would be unable to transport reserves from one front to another". [4] [5] [6] The coordinated offensives were planned to commence as soon as possible, with local, limited attacks taking place in between, further to enervate the enemy, weather permitting. [7]
From 12 to 13 March 1916 another meeting at Chantilly endorsed the plan for synchronised attacks, Russia to begin with an offensive at about 15 May and the rest joining in about two weeks later. Serbian troops had been re-equipped and were to be transferred to Salonika, the Italian army in Albania and the Franco-British Armée d'Orient in Macedonia would indefinitely maintain the threat of an attack. The delegates also agreed that the blockade on the Central Powers should be increased. [8]
From 15 to 16 November 1916, the Allied generals met at Chantilly and the political leaders met in Paris before a combined session. In a memorandum, Joffre wrote that the combined offensive had shaken the Central Powers in 1916 and that a spring offensive should exploit this in France and against Bulgaria. Joffre suggested that the Russian army could be re-equipped, with arms and equipment sent from the west, to knock Bulgaria out of the war. Joffre wanted a bigger offensive on the Western Front than that of 1916 and for it to begin in February, to prevent the Central Powers from forestalling the Allies as they had in 1916 but the British claimed that they could not be ready until May and the Russian and Italian delegations followed suit. At the conclusion of the meeting, all agreed to a plan that would have decisive effect but that the February deadline was unachievable. Considerable time was devoted to discussion of the Balkans and the defeat of Bulgaria by attacks from the east and south and agreed that the force at Salonika be augmented, provided that troops were not diverted from France. The military leaders met with the politicians, with some disagreement about a force of 23 divisions for Salonika. Aristide Briand said that both meetings came to the same conclusions but David Lloyd George claimed that it was "little better than a farce". [9] Before planning could begin in detail, Joffre was sacked and replaced by Robert Nivelle who substituted an altogether more ambitious plan for 1917. [10]
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and the French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the river Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies. More than three million men fought in the battle, of whom one million were either wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in all of human history.
The First Battle of the Marne was a battle of the First World War fought from 5 to 12 September 1914. It was fought in a collection of skirmishes around the Marne River Valley. It resulted in an Entente victory against the German armies in the west. The battle was the culmination of the Retreat from Mons and pursuit of the Franco-British armies which followed the Battle of the Frontiers in August and reached the eastern outskirts of Paris.
Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre was a French general who served as Commander-in-Chief of French forces on the Western Front from the start of World War I until the end of 1916. He is best known for regrouping the retreating allied armies to defeat the Germans at the strategically decisive First Battle of the Marne in September 1914.
Aristide Pierre Henri Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic. He is mainly remembered for his focus on international issues and reconciliation politics during the interwar period (1918–1939).
Ferdinand Foch was a French general and military theorist who served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War. An aggressive, even reckless commander at the First Marne, Flanders and Artois campaigns of 1914–1916, Foch became the Allied Commander-in-Chief in late March 1918 in the face of the all-out German spring offensive, which pushed the Allies back using fresh soldiers and new tactics that trenches could not withstand. He successfully coordinated the French, British and American efforts into a coherent whole, deftly handling his strategic reserves. He stopped the German offensive and launched a war-winning counterattack. In November 1918, Marshal Foch accepted the German cessation of hostilities and was present at the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
Field Marshal Sir William Robert Robertson, 1st Baronet, was a British Army officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) – the professional head of the British Army – from 1916 to 1918 during the First World War. As CIGS he was committed to a Western Front strategy focusing on Germany and was against what he saw as peripheral operations on other fronts. While CIGS, Robertson had increasingly poor relations with David Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and then Prime Minister, and threatened resignation at Lloyd George's attempt to subordinate the British forces to the French Commander-in-Chief, Robert Nivelle. In 1917 Robertson supported the continuation of the Battle of Passchendaele at odds with Lloyd George's view that Britain's war effort ought to be focused on the other theatres until the arrival of sufficient US troops on the Western Front.
Plan XVII was the name of a "scheme of mobilization and concentration" that was adopted by the French Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre from 1912 to 1914, to be put into effect by the French Army in a war between France and Germany. It was a plan for the mobilisation, concentration and deployment of the French armies, to make possible an invasion of either Germany or Belgium or both, before Germany completed the mobilisation of its reserves simultaneous with a Russian offensive.
Joseph Simon Gallieni was a French soldier, active for most of his career as a military commander and administrator in the French colonies. Gallieni is infamous in Madagascar as the French military leader who exiled Queen Ranavalona III and abolished the 350-year-old monarchy on the island.
Robert Georges Nivelle was a French artillery general officer who served in the Boxer Rebellion and the First World War. In May 1916, he succeeded Philippe Pétain as commander of the French Second Army in the Battle of Verdun, leading counter-offensives that rolled back the German forces in late 1916. During these actions he and General Charles Mangin were accused of wasting French lives. He gives his name to the Nivelle Offensive.
The Battle of the Frontiers comprised battles fought along the eastern frontier of France and in southern Belgium, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The battles resolved the military strategies of the French Chief of Staff General Joseph Joffre with Plan XVII and an offensive adaptation of the German Aufmarsch II deployment plan by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. The German concentration on the right (northern) flank, was to wheel through Belgium and attack the French in the rear.
The Third Battle of Artois, was fought by the French Tenth Army against the German 6th Army on the Western Front of the First World War. The battle included the Battle of Loos by the British First Army. The offensive, meant to complement the Second Battle of Champagne, was the last attempt that year by Joseph Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, to exploit an Allied numerical advantage over Germany. Simultaneous attacks were planned in Champagne-Ardenne to capture the railway at Attigny and in Artois to take the railway line through Douai, to force a German withdrawal from the Noyon salient.
Michel-Joseph Maunoury was a commander of French forces in the early days of World War I who was posthumously elevated to the dignity of Marshal of France.
Charles Lanrezac was a French general, formerly a distinguished staff college lecturer, who commanded the French Fifth Army at the outbreak of the First World War.
The Lake Naroch offensive in 1916 was an unsuccessful Russian offensive on the Eastern Front in World War I. It was launched at the request of Marshal Joseph Joffre and intended to relieve the German pressure on French forces. Due to lack of reconnaissance, Russian artillery support failed to overcome and neutralise the well-fortified German defenses and artillery positions, leading to costly and unproductive direct attacks, hindered by the weather. On 30 March General Evert ordered a halt to the offensive.
Maurice Paul Emmanuel Sarrail was a French general of the First World War. Sarrail's openly socialist political connections made him a rarity amongst the Catholics, conservatives and monarchists who dominated the French Army officer corps under the Third Republic before the war, and were the main reason why he was appointed to command at Salonika.
Henri Mathias Berthelot was a French general during World War I. He held an important staff position under Joseph Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, at the First Battle of the Marne, before later commanding a corps in the front line. In 1917 he helped to rebuild the Romanian Army following its disastrous defeat the previous autumn, then in summer 1918 he commanded French Fifth Army at the Second Battle of the Marne, with some British and Italian troops under his command. In the final days of the war he again returned to Romania, helping fight the Hungarians during the Hungarian–Romanian War and then briefly commanded French intervention forces in southern Russia in the Russian Civil War, fighting the Russian Bolsheviks in Bessarabia (1918).
The Grand Quartier Général was the general headquarters of the French Army during the First World War. It served as the wartime equivalent of the Conseil supérieur de la guerre and had extensive powers within an area defined by the French parliament. The GQG was activated by parliament on 2 August 1914, after the violation of French borders by German military patrols, and remained in existence until 20 October 1919.
The French Military Mission to Romania was a mission led by General Berthelot, and sent from France to help Romania during World War I. French officers, aviators and medical staff trained and supported the Romanian army. As the Bolsheviks took power in Russia and began negotiations for ending hostilities, Romania signed an armistice in December 1917 and sent the military mission back to France.
The Calais Conference took place in the French city of Calais on 6 July 1915. It was intended to improve communication between the British and French governments on strategy for the First World War. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the British and French prime ministers H. H. Asquith and René Viviani. The meeting was poorly organised and no formal record was made of the decisions. The French thought that the British had committed to a major offensive on the Western Front while the British thought they had persuaded the French that the main British effort that year should be in the Gallipoli campaign. A meeting between military leaders at the conference led to a target of 70 divisions being set for the British Expeditionary Force, which would require the imposition of conscription.
The Calais Conference took place in the French city on 4 December 1915. It was the second Anglo-French political conference in Calais that year, following a conference on war strategy in July. The December conference focussed mainly on the issue of whether to continue the war on the Salonika Front. The British, under prime minister H. H. Asquith, foreign secretary Edward Grey and secretary of state for war Lord Kitchener favoured evacuation of the front following the loss of Serbia to Bulgarian occupation, the French under prime minister Aristide Briand, favoured continuing the effort.
