Customer Reviews

PATHS OF GLORY: The French Army 1914-18 (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

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In Paths of Glory, former Sandhurst professor Anthony Clayton provides the first complete history of the French Army in the First World War. While the narrative is a bit short (200 pages) and does not offer the depth necessary to analyze operations in detail, Clayton's work represents an excellent overview of the army that bore the brunt of the fighting for the Allies on the Western Front in 1914-1918. Clayton also makes the point that this army, much maligned because of its poor preparation for combat in 1914 and pitiful performance in 1940, still was capable of four years of sustained combat against the best army in the world. For readers accustomed to viewing the Western Front through German or British eyes, this volume offers a wonderful alternative.

Clayton begins Paths of Glory with a chapter on the French frontier offensive in 1914 and then backtracks in the second chapter to discuss pre-war strategy and doctrine. After this, Clayton then devotes one chapter to operations in each year of the war, plus a separate chapter on developments within the French army. There is also a separate chapter on peripheral operations involving the French (Gallipoli, Salonika, Italy, Africa and the Mideast). Appendices include order of battle in 1914, tactical organization, conscription and reserves, equipment, capsule biographies of the main French generals, and the career of a single French infantry regiment in 1914-1920. Clayton includes 14 simple sketch maps, which unfortunately only a few depicting operational movements or dispositions. The author also includes 43 photographs, ranging from leaders, to equipment to tactical scenes.

Clayton assesses the main French problem in 1914 as a failure of "strategic intelligence" in not anticipating that the main German army would fall in Belgium or that reserve formations would be used in the enemy's first echelon. This faulty intelligence assessment led to a rash offensive plan known as "Plan XVII", which was handicapped by rigid adherence to a faulty tactical doctrine, over-age commanders and inadequate heavy artillery. Despite all the French military flaws, the French army somehow survived the heavy losses in the frontier battles and managed to thwart the German drive on Paris by quick repositioning of forces. Clayton does not do a particularly good job of assessing how the French were able to avoid defeat in 1914, but tends to favor the "tough" no-nonsense leadership of Joffre, Foch and a handful of other French operational-level commanders. However, Clayton's defense of Joffre's command style rings hollow; certainly Napoleon would not have thought much of a commander who emphasized regular meals and uninterrupted sleep over visiting his troops.

Clayton focuses heavily on morale issues - always critical for French armies - in the chapters on Verdun and the 1917 mutinies. The mutiny is assessed as relatively limited in scope, but extensive in long-term effects. Perhaps the best chapters in Paths of Glory cover the post-mutiny period where Petain was able to lead the battered French army through a period of recovery. While Petain's later career as leader of Vichy France has darkened his name, his leadership abilities with a deeply-shocked army were astoundingly effective. Indeed, Petain was not only able to rebuild the French army's morale, but to re-equip and re-train the forces to fight a modern war; the result was a much more powerful French army in 1918 (although a brittle one).

Although Clayton offers some useful nuggets of information in places - such as information on French tank developments or the greater reliance on African troops - the volume is a bit too much of an overview, albeit with a Gallic perspective. Indeed, Clayton writes well and offers excellent insight about the fighting capabilities of the much-maligned French army, but the reader will come away from this book wishing that it had been 200 pages longer.

As other reviewers have said, getting anything in English about the French army in WWI is difficult, especially compared to the numerous English and American accounts. I therefore snapped this book up immediately looking for an account of those little known engagements. It's a fine book, well researched and informative, well written for the most part. But it left me wanting more detail. It primarily looks at strategic and operational level action rather than the tactical. Excellent for understanding the French command. I was hoping for more of a Lyn MacDonald approach. Perhaps this author will see these reviews calling for a more detailed view and write another in that vein. I would certainly purchase it.

The book summarizes all the famous major operations of the French Army during WWI, along with numerous thoughtfully-included maps and photos. It goes into much greater detail about the formation of French strategy, tactical doctrine, leading personalities, organization, equipment, logistics, and, significantly, unit morale (including the 1917 mutinies). In addition, the book also has a nice set of appendices with the August 1914 order-of-battle as well as summary bios of leading French generals. The author, Anthony Clayton, also covers the power struggles at the top of the military hierarchy between major military figures along with increasing interference from French gov't officials. Clayton did an excellent job describing Petain, Joffre, Mangin, Castelnau, and Foch.

This book is an ideal introduction to the major challenges facing the French army during WWI and its response to them. An English-language book covering the French army during WWI is somewhat difficult to find compared to the numerous works on the British army, and I was highly pleased with the quality of this one. Excellent, well-researched work! I hope the author makes an in-depth follow up sequel to this one.

I enjoyed this book very much. Almost everything I've read on the Great War has been from either the British or American point of view. The author states in the preface that little of the French experience from WWI has been translated into English. I was very pleased that a book about the war from the French point of view was written in English. France after all had the majority of the troops and suffered the most looses on the Allied side. I had hoped the author whould have gone into more detail on French equipment and weapons than he did, but that in no way detracts from this fine book. I highly recommad this work for anyone interested in WWI.

David Murphy

Anthony Clayton has written many good works on the French and British Army, with a great attention to detail regarding colonial troops. One of the very good aspects of this book, is that he examines the role in detail of colonial troops and commanders and what they brought to the WWI battlefield, something missing from most other works on the war. Read Clayton's "France, Soldiers, and Africa," as well as Douglas Porch's "The March to the Marne" for good backgrounds to this discussion.
Another interesting aspect of this book is Clayton's attention to morale in the French Army, and how he traces it over the course of the conflict.
I was disappointed, however, by three things in particular:
1. Clayton's writing style was much harder to read in this book than in his other works. It is choppy, there is too much information crammed into single paragraphs, and there are not enough section breaks, as the book jumps from topic to topic very quickly.
2. Much of the previous problem likely comes from the fact that the book is way too short. I get the impression that the editor forced Clayton to cram a great deal of information into less than 300 pages, and it shows. It should be twice as long.
3. No footnotes. A good bibliographical essay, but the lack of footnotes is a serious failing, especially for those like myself who would like to follow up on certain specific claims of this book.
Overall, a good read, on an under researched subject, but it could have been much better.

Most English-language memoirs and histories of the First World War typically focus on and reflect the experiences of the British "Tommies" on the Western Front. Such an approach often marginalizes the far more critical experience of the French army, which as Anthony Clayton argues diminishes their contribution to Allied victory in the conflict. Clayton's book is an attempt to rectify this. In a succession of chapters he intersperses a operational narrative of the French army on the Western Front with descriptions of its commanders and their strategies, the soldiers and their equipment, and the challenges they faced in the four years of trench warfare.

All of this serves as an informative summary of the French military experience in the First World War, one that is enjoyably written and generally accessible for the interested reader. Yet the book is not without its flaws. Foremost is its predominant focus on the French military experience in northeastern France. While understandable, Clayton takes this too far by reducing his examination of the army's involvement on other fronts to a single chapter and generally ignoring the broader context of French politics and society. Civilians are typically addressed only in terms of their direct interactions with the troops, while the heavily politicized world in which the French high command operated is treated often as background noise. Such a narrow approach deprives his analysis of critical elements necessary for understanding the forces at work in the French army during this period.

Also problematic is Clayton's handling of non-European troops fighting in the French ranks. While acknowledging the presence of thousands of North African, Senegalese, and Indochinese soldiers, the author never gives them the attention he grants to conscripts from France itself, often offering little more than stereotyping claims of questionable veracity. These beg for a reference to Clayton's source, yet there are no footnotes or endnotes, only a bibliography of the sources used. Such an omission minimizes the utility of the book, one that in the end leaves it to serve as a useful survey of the French army in the First World War and little more.

The author has done a splendid job of gathering his facts and doing his research. The book spells out the various campaigns, battles and commanders and the ordinary soldier. The book is rich with detail and informs the reader on the horrific conditions and enormous casualties the French suffered.
Easy to read and the chapters are detailed out well.
Worthy of any World War One bookshelf.

Mr. Clayton has done a good job on detailing the actions of the French army during the First World War, keying on the first two years and the horrific battles therein.
Plenty of facts and little known stories that make the reading enjoyable. However, as a European, he constantly refers to the metric system when describing advances or retreats. Also, he employs French terms for many of his passages and since I don't have a working command of the French, I was a bit stumped on several occasions.

Still, a good book that explains the French tactics, commanders, battles and issues within the army: the horrific casualties, leaves, desertion, the use of colonial troops and of course, the infamous 'mutiny' issues.
IronMike