The Price of Glory

by Alistair Horne

  De Castelnau’s position at G.Q.G. was a curious one. Following the disasters of 1915, pressure from above (principally from Galliéni, the gifted but ailing Minister of War) had forced a purge of the G.Q.G. upon Joffre. Foremost among the changes had been the appointment in December of de Castelnau to be Chief-of-Staff, as a sort of éminence grise at Joffre’s side. It was hardly a secret that Galliéni, no admirer of Joffre (who, among other things, had stolen much of the honour due to Galliéni for the victory of the Marne), wanted eventually to pull him back to Paris in the largely administrative capacity of a CIGS, while placing the executive command of the armies in the field under de Castelnau. Although the latter once jocularly remarked to Briand, the Premier, that in his relationship with Joffre ‘apart from sleeping together, we couldn’t do anything more to show our intimacy’, and although every afternoon — as part of the Chantilly ritual — he accompanied the Commander-in-Chief on his post-prandial stroll, Joffre and his coterie were as jealous as Turks of the brother-general placed so dangerously near the throne.

  Noël Marie Joseph Edouard, Vicomte de Currières de Castelnau, to give him his full title, was a warm-blooded Pyrenean like Foch and Joffre, but he was also a nobleman and the scion of a long line of fighting generals. There were few French wars in which the de Castelnau clan had not distinguished itself; there had been a General de Castelnau under the great Napoleon, and another had been selected by Louis Napoleon to accompany him into exile after the dismal capitulation at Sedan. Now sixty-five, the present head of the clan had also fought in the Franco-Prussian War. Partly, perhaps, because of the impact of this degrading defeat, partly because of heritage, he had become the ‘High Priest’ of the de Grandmaison sect of ‘Attaque à outrance’. It was he who in 1913 had told the Military Governor of Lille, General Lebas, that he would have ‘nothing to do’ with fortified strongholds. But, unlike most of the other apostles of this sect among the French General Staff, de Castelnau was a man of outstanding intellect, quick-witted and flexible. No force had taken a worse drubbing in the first mad onrush of Plan XVII than the Second Army that had then been under his command; yet, in the moment of defeat, he had made an astonishing turnabout. By a brilliant defence based on a clever choice of terrain that would have been beyond most of the other French generals at that time, de Castelnau saved the vital city of Nancy. In the defence of Verdun, it will be recalled, de Castelnau had already rendered an invaluable service in the ‘Intermediary Line’, hastily constructed as a result of his coup d’oeil in January, and — had there been time for the completion of the Third Position that he had also prescribed then — there seems a chance that the German breakthrough on the 24th might have been prevented altogether. Witness to de Castelnau’s very real ability was the fact that he had managed to rise so high in the French Army. For in Republican France, still on the rebound from the Dreyfus Affair, both his heredity and his religion told strongly against him. Known throughout the army as ‘le Capucin Botté’ (the Fighting Friar), in his entourage de Castelnau was always accompanied by his own private chaplain, a Rabelaisian Jesuit who also happened to be his nephew. It is held that, although he lived until the end of the Second World War, his clericalism and conservatism alone deprived him of his Marshal’s baton.

  Jean de Pierrefeu, who wrote a vivid and often caustic chronicle of the G.Q.G., describes de Castelnau as follows:

  A jovial, dapper little man, of quick and kindly speech, he was, with his martial bearing and white moustache, the typical French cavalry officer. He was absolutely worshipped by all disinterested persons at G.Q.G. When he entered the hotel,1 tapping the floor with his stick and looking about him with the mischievous and bright glances of a boy, every one came up to him instinctively, only too pleased to see him. He had the art of lighting up the faces of those he met by a single kindly word, and so making them his admirers in a flash. This little man, so alert and cheerful, radiated honesty and trustworthiness.

  It was not only the sophisticated staff officers at Chantilly who fell to the de Castelnau spell; soldiers at the front were equally susceptible. In some magical way, the sight of the dumpy figure in the long black cloak could rekindle the fighting spirit in utterly battle-weary troops.

  For all that de Castelnau had learned since 1914, he was still very much a ‘fighting general’ of the Foch school. Indeed, according to Poincaré, when Foch himself expressed doubts about an Allied offensive in 1916, de Castelnau ‘exploded’ with impatience. During the worst weeks of the Verdun fighting, de Castelnau impressed Colonel Repington (the elephantine Times correspondent who, in between the purveyance of social tittle-tattle from one dining table to another, was a fairly astute military critic) on his way to dine at the Ritz, with the words: ‘Rather than accept slavery at German hands the French race would the upon the battlefield.’ To tradition and instinct, de Castelnau could add personal reasons for wanting to hit hard at the enemy; three of his sons had already laid down their lives for France.

  Such was the man who departed post-haste for Verdun shortly after midnight on the 24th/25th of February. Brief as his rôle was to be in the battle, it was one of quite exceptional importance.

  De Castelnau paused at Avize to quell the pessimism at de Langle’s HQ and to telephone ahead a warning to poor Herr not to yield any more ground, or ‘the consequences would be most grave for him [Herr]’. At breakfast time on the 25th, he reached Verdun. There he found General Herr ‘depressed’, and ‘a little tired’; though this was hardly surprising. Despite his sleepless night, de Castelnau at once went on to the Right Bank and plunged into the work of re-animating the defence. While, at the front, the rout had still to reach its climax, behind the scenes, in the various headquarters, a transformation took place that was, by all accounts, miraculous. That day ‘wherever he went, decision and order followed him’. As his eyes roved over the terrain, speedily the agile mind made its appreciation. At 3.30 on the 25th, almost the precise moment when Sergeant Kunze was leaping into the moat of Fort Douaumont, de Castelnau was telephoning his conclusions to G.Q.G. Verdun could be saved. An effective defence could be maintained on the remaining cross-ridges of the Right Bank. There must be no retreat to the Left Bank. Pétain, he recommended, should now be put in command not only of the Left Bank, but of the Right Bank as well; the ‘fatigued’ General Herr should be kept on for a while as Pétain’s adviser, then quietly ‘limogé’. (He would not be among strangers; among those preceding him at that limbo for disgraced generals were the unfortunate Bapst, de Bonneval and Chrétien.) Making use of his plenipotentiary powers, de Castelnau then dispatched the necessary order to Pétain, without awaiting Joffre’s sanction.

  De Castelnau’s snap decision was one that in its fateful implications would affect not merely the course of the Battle of Verdun, or even of the war itself, but also the whole stream of subsequent French history. Although, later, as the salvation of Verdun seemed assured, the Joffre coterie claimed the honours, there is nothing to suggest that, at the moment of de Castelnau’s departure from Chantilly, Joffre had definitely made up his mind not to retreat to the Left Bank. (One also has to recall Joffre’s preoccupation during the six months preceding the German attack with the establishment of a line-of-withdrawal behind Verdun, on the Left Bank.) So there seems little doubt that the vital decision was de Castelnau’s, and his alone. The little cavalryman, embodiment of all the ancient martial instincts and panache of the race, had taken up the German gauntlet. France had done exactly what Falkenhayn had expected (and hoped) she would do. At least in his judgment of French national psychology, Falkenhayn’s appreciation had been accurate. Now the ‘bleeding white’ could begin.

  After the passage of nearly half a century, how easy it is to criticise the decision taken by a general in the midst of a most desperate battle. Why did he not do this instead? Why could he not have foreseen what we see now? Already since the Second World War critics have arisen to castigate Montgomery for not pressing home with sufficient zeal the pursuit of the defeat
ed Afrika Corps after Alamein. Perhaps they are right. But the stresses and strains of the moment, the all-important moral factors, tend to be submerged by time. In the vision of the military critic writing ex post facto, the uncertain temper of the men of Britain’s Eighth Army after years of consistent defeat becomes obliterated behind the imposing shapes of tactical and material considerations. So at Verdun. In the light of what we in our omniscience now know of Falkenhayn’s intentions, and of the hideous tragedy that was to ensue at Verdun, we may say that France should not have decided to hold the city at all costs. Winston Churchill, with extraordinary perspicacity, wrote at the time:

  Meeting an artillery attack is like catching a cricket ball. Shock is dissipated by drawing back the hands. A little ‘give’, a little suppleness, and the violence of the impact is vastly reduced.

  Instead of standing stubbornly and heroically on the Right Bank, the French could have drawn back their hands from Verdun, which, since the dismantling of its forts, was in any case no longer such an indispensable defensive pinion. Behind Verdun on the Left Bank the undulating hill and wooded country continues for some twenty-five miles, as far as Ste. Ménéhould. Here a fighting withdrawal could have been staged, with the German advance checked by successive lines of defence on each feature. With the means then available, a German breakthrough to the flat open country around Chalons-sur-Marne would have been virtually impossible. Instead a terrible toll of the Crown Prince’s manpower would have been exacted by the French 75s and machine guns in their prepared emplacements, at relatively little cost to the defenders. The attack would have petered out, leaving the Germans exhausted and weakened to meet the Allied sledge-hammer blow on the Somme.

  This is what could have happened. Had Pétain, the man who was to carry out Castelnau’s decision, been in de Castelnau’s place it is probably what would have happened. But a withdrawal, however fighting, was not in keeping with French military indoctrination of the First War; it was also not in keeping with the character of de Castelnau. Above all, in formulating his decision, de Castelnau was influenced by psychological imponderables. As Colonel de Thomasson, one of the more level-headed French writers on Verdun, remarks: ‘Sometimes sentiment provokes a courage which could not be otherwise inspired by cold reason.’ The army at Verdun was in a state of demoralisation bordering on rout. Eighteen months of un-remitted, bloody, disheartening failures lay behind it. Who knew whether it could now be called upon to fight a steady fighting withdrawal? Who could tell whether the rout might not merely be accelerated, turning into a complete collapse and unbarring the most direct approach to Paris? In the Franco-Prussian War in which de Castelnau had fought as a young officer he could recall all too vividly how, once it had started retreating, the French Army had never ceased until it was rounded up piecemeal. He knew his French soldier. With more spirit and élan on the attack than the dogged Britisher, he was also much more impressionable in adversity, altogether less capable of the kind of orderly, defensive retreat such as Britain’s soldiers have been accustomed to during so much of her military history. Moreover, these were French peasants fighting on French soil, every inch of it hallowed. In these circumstances, as de Thomasson remarks, ‘pure strategy cannot always have the last word’. Finally, could the nation morally survive the shock of losing Verdun, with all its legendary mystique? De Castelnau was committed; and so too was the man appointed to carry out de Castelnau’s decision.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PÉTAIN

  There had emerged a leader who taught his army to distinguish the real from the imaginary and the possible from the impossible. On the day when a choice had to be made between ruin and reason, Pétain received promotion.…—COLONEL CHARLES DE GAULLE, France and her Army (1938)

  Marshal Pétain has traced in our history pages some of which remain luminous while others give rise to interpretations that still conflict and arouse lively passions. We must celebrate the first. We cannot ignore the second.—ANDRÉ FRANÇOIS-PONCET (1953)1

  SIX weeks before the assault on Verdun, the French Second Army had been relieved by the rapidly expanding British Army, and was pulled back out of the line to form a general reserve. After the hard autumn fighting in the Champagne the rest was felt to be well deserved. For the Army Commander, ensconced at Noailles, life had become extremely leisurely, consisting of daily rides in the beautiful forest. In fact, limited as are the distractions in any French provincial town, it was really almost too quiet.

  When the first order announcing Pétain’s appointment was received by his staff, there was consternation at Noailles. It was after 10 p.m. and the General was to report to Joffre in Chantilly at 8 the next morning. But the General was not in his office; he was not in his quarters; he could be found nowhere. Alarm! France in her hour of need called for her saviour, but the saviour-designate was missing. Fortunately for her, however, Pétain’s Staff-Captain, Serrigny, knew — as a good ADC — something of the elderly bachelor’s habits. Ordering a staff car, he drove at top speed through the night to Paris. As he wrote years later in his long unpublished memoirs, ‘hazard or Providence made me knock on the door of the Hôtel Terminus of the Gare du Nord.’ It was now 3 a.m. The proprietess at first energetically — and no doubt with the liverishness customary to Parisian hôteliers roused at this hour — denied that Pétain had visited her hotel that evening. Serrigny played on her finer feelings, insisting that it was ‘a matter of life or death for France’. Eventually the proprietress admitted that the General was in the hotel, and somewhat hesitantly led Serrigny upstairs. Outside a bedroom door stood ‘the great commander’s yellowish boots with the long leggings, which, however, on that evening were agreeably accompanied by some charming little molière slippers, utterly feminine.’ Undeterred, Serrigny knocks at the door. Wearing ‘the scantiest of costumes’, the General emerges. There, in the dingy station-hotel corridor, ensues a brief conference; in its historic connotations — though perhaps rather different circumstances — a little evocative of Drake at Plymouth. Serrigny relays the summons from Joffre. Sobs from within the unlit bedroom. Pétain, impassive, decisive, tells Serrigny he must find a bed in the hotel. In the morning they will journey together to G.Q.G. Meanwhile the night imposes its own duties. To these Pétain now returns.

  What manner of man was this amorous general who was soon to earn from his countrymen so much honour and love, that would later be replaced by so much hatred and dishonour? At the time of which we write, Pétain was a bachelor of sixty, with commendable vigour for his age. After the war, a doctor who gave him a check-up (incredibly enough not recognising him) remarked: ‘One can see that you weren’t in the war.’ (Alas, but for his robustness, the final degradation might have been spared him.) With the commanding posture that was the unmistakable and indelible mark of St. Cyr, and clad in the uniform of ‘horizon blue’, there was no more impressive sight on a French parade ground. To have seen him and de Castelnau together, one might well have assumed that Pétain was the born aristocrat, the squat and rather swarthy general the peasant; though in fact it was the reverse. The cynical, observant Pierrefeu writes of Pétain on his advent to G.Q.G.:

  I had the impression of a marble statue, of a Roman senator in a museum. Big, vigorous, of imposing figure, impassive face and pale complexion, with a direct and thoughtful glance….

  And François-Poncet, on succeeding him at the Académie:

  … a majestic carriage, naturally noble… his blue eyes contained a certain mystery. One would think they were made of ice… from his whole personality emanated an air of sovereignty … Wherever he appears, he imposes… Whoever once saw this figure, will never forget it.

  Certainly women never did. His easy success often led him into precarious adventures; in 1917 the French intercepted a cable from the German Ambassador in Madrid reporting to Berlin that he had found a mistress for the new Commander-in-Chief, for the modest fee of 12,000 pesetas a month.

  Many of Pétain’s peasant characteristics remained with him throug
hout his life. One was his simplicity — which he shared in some measure with Joffre. That was about all they had in common. He was early to rise and late to bed. In rare moments of leisure he liked to potter around the garden, and always said he would take up farming when he retired. His favourite pastime of an evening was to leaf through historical albums, studying portraits of the men who had made their mark on Europe during the past half-century. He seldom went to bed before midnight, and then often read the plays of Corneille till 2 a.m. In contrast to Foch always ready to adopt the conqueror’s pose, one foot before the other, Pétain so hated being photographed that the only portrait Repington could find in 1918 for The Times was one of him characteristically glaring at the camera. At his trial in 1945, he himself insisted on wearing the very simplest uniform of a Marshal of France, his only decoration the Médaille Militaire.