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The French Army Mutinies of 1917 took place amongst the French troops on the Western Front in Northern France during World War I. They started just after the disastrous Second Battle of the Aisne, the main action in the Nivelle Offensive in April 1917. General Robert Nivelle had promised a decisive war-ending victory over the Germans in 48 hours; the men were euphoric on entering the battle. The shock of failure soured their mood overnight. The mutinies and associated disruptions involved, to various degrees, nearly half of the French infantry divisions stationed on the western front. The new commander General Philippe Pétain restored morale by talking to the men, promising no more suicidal attacks, providing rest for exhausted units, home furloughs, and moderate discipline. He held 3,400 courts martial; 554 mutineers were sentenced to death but over 90% had their sentences commuted. The mutinies were kept secret from the Germans and their full extent was not revealed until decades later. The immediate cause was the extreme optimism and subsequent disappointment at the Nivelle offensive in the spring of 1917. Other causes were pacificism, stimulated by the Russian Revolution and the trade-union movement, and disappointment at the non-arrival of American troops.〔Bentley B. Gilbert, and Paul P. Bernard, "The French Army Mutinies of 1917," ''Historian'' (1959) 22#1 pp 24-41〕 ==Background== Nearly one million French soldiers ( early 1917,) out of a population of twenty million French males of all ages, had been killed in fighting by early 1917. These losses had deadened the French will to attack.〔Keegan, pp 356-364.〕 In April 1917, French General Robert Nivelle promised a war-winning decisive victory. He proposed to work closely with the British Army to break through the German lines on the Western Front with a great attack against the German occupied Chemin des Dames, a long and prominent ridge running east to west just north of the Aisne River. For this General Nivelle applied a tactic which he had already inaugurated with success at Verdun in October 1916,:〔Simkins 2003, p. 78.〕 a creeping barrage, in which French artillery fired its shells to land just in front of the advancing infantry. This was designed to suppress the defending German troops in their trenches right up to the moment when the attackers closed in on them. Nivelle's attack (the Second Battle of the Aisne) completely failed to achieve its main war-winning objective. At the cost of very high casualties the offensive did accomplish some of its objectives: it exhausted the German reserves and conquered some strategic positions. A French tank attack had also been launched near Berry-au-Bac, but half of the Schneider CA1 tanks engaged were knocked out. The failure was widely felt. Nivelle was removed from his command on 15 May 1917 and was replaced by General Philippe Pétain.〔 A similar battle would have been considered a draw in 1915 but in 1917, after the huge losses at the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme, the psychology of the soldiers was fragile. The overall failure and the heavy casualties caused a collapse in the morale of the French infantrymen who had been so enthusiastic just a few days before.〔Gilbert and Bernard, p 28〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「French Army Mutinies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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