Robert Doughty's 2005 "Pyrrhic Victory" may be the most extensive English-language account available of Franch strategy and operations during the First World War. Doughty has combed a variety of archives to document that, contrary to popular myth, France sought throughout 1914-1918 to execute a coherent strategy of fighting a multi-front war in order to maintain pressure on Germany. Moreover, France executed this strategy despite increasing shortages of manpower, a ferocious battlefield learning curve for its general officers, and several crises of confidence.

France understood itself in 1914 to be at a distinct disadvantage in population and industrial base with respect to Germany. This disadvantage drove France to seek out allies throughout the war. France would rely on the huge but unsophisticated Russian Army to force Germany to fight a two-front war and on a reluctant Great Britain to help defend France itself.

In 1914, France and Britain narrowly avoided defeat in a war of movement that culminated in the miracle victory at the Battle of the Marne. As the Western Front stabilized into hundreds of kilometers of opposing trenches, France and its allies would spend the next four years trying to break the stalemate in France while applying pressure on German and its allies through operations in Turkey, the Balkans, Italy and Eastern Europe.

Doughty recounts the tense struggles between French civilian and military leaders over the best way to identify and carry out a winning strategy. The inability to impose a decisive battle on the Western Front in 1914 led to experimentation with siege tactics, renewed offensives in 1915, and a reluctant acceptance of a strategy of attrition by 1916. A premature return to a strategy of decisive battle in early 1917 nearly broke the French Army. France leaned heavily on the British Army to carry the load during much of 1917 while suppressing mutinies and scraping the bottom of its manpower barrel. Key changes in leadership, especially the elevation of Generals Petain and Foch, enabled France to ride out the supreme crisis of renewed German offensives in early 1918. The arrival in numbers of trained U.S. troops on the front lines by summer 1918 enabled the Allies to go over to the offensive and finally defeat an exhausted German Army.

Doughty's narrative makes clear what a close-run thing the Allied victory was. Despite a total nation effort to field and equip an enormous Army, France had been bled white by 1917 and was completely exhausted in the military sense by 1918. The maturation of a mass British Army on the continent, and the creation of a mass American Army in France, both events fostered by French leadership, enabled France to persevere to a pyrrhic victory that may have gutted its national resources and will for a generation.

"Pyrrhic Victory" is a scholarly work written perhaps as much for other scholars as for the general reader, who may find it a long dry effort at over 500 pages. Doughty has included some good maps; this reviewer wishes he had included a few more. Doughty's discussion of French strategy and operations might have included more commentary on corresponding German actions, making the external context of French actions a little clearer.

These minor criticisms aside, this is an exceptional work of military history, very highly recommended to students of the First World War, especially those seeking insight to evolving French strategy.

Tis book was an outstanding contribution to my understanding of WWI. Most popular histories if the war are tainted by an overly British viewpoint on the French performance. This book adds a bit of balance. For example, I've read British criticism of French trench systems elsewhere. Nowhere was it explained that the French were defending in depths with strongpoints as opposed to the British concept of continuous front line trenches, a concept that was to cost them in the 1918 offensive. French strategic alternatives are well-discussed here, along with events at GQG, and the book sheds light on the French view of Allied grand strategy. Given my earlier reading on WWI, I had a caricature view of the French army of the day. This book outlines French doctrine and strategic alternatives very well. Certainly, many things should have been done differently, but this book clarifies why things were done as they were on the French side.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in serious study of WWI. I think the only way to get better insight would be to delve into the archives for oneself.

In "Pyrrhic Victory", General Robert A. Doughty, formerly an instructor of military history at West Point for 20 years, writes an excellent, detailed history of the French Army’s strategies and operations during The Great War from 1914 to 1918. He meticulously covers every single major engagement on the Western Front through these years and provides what some have called the definitive, analytical study on the subject.

That being said, this is not a book for the casual reader of military history. In that it deals specifically with the analysis of combat operations during World War I, the focus of the book is narrowly focused on this area of study alone.

For such a study, Doughty does provide some very illuminating areas in his research but only a few times does his prose generate a sense of excitement over the subject matter. As a former West Point history instructor, one gets the feeling that his book was designed as a text for The Point as much as it was for commercial distribution. As a result, his writing at times becomes pedantic and dry at points. However, this should not lessen anyone’s interest in reading this text if combat operations is what you are interested in studying. No doubt, despite the failings of the prose at times, this book will definitely provide the reader with an in-depth look at how the French Army performed in these years.

The problem with the way the book is written is its inherent lack of color. Doughty appears to have written such a text as clinically as possible with little background information about the major actors on the battlefield in this tragic event. His intent is to only cover strategy and operations.

However, The French Army did not fight in a vacuum. Many complex factors provided the reasons why the French were on the battlefield in the first place; most importantly their loss in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, a conflict the French initiated, though some historians are of the opinion that Otto von Bismark, then chancellor of Prussia, provoked. France’s loss in the conflict forced them to concede Alsace and Lorraine to the Prussian Army, which incensed French politicians and the public at large right through 1918. And though Germany would later attempt to formulate its own security through several alliances with surrounding nations, France sought to literally surround Germany with an alliance with Russia, making Germany far more concerned about her security than she would have been had such an alliance not been developed.

Doughty does describe the various politicians in power during the war years but again fails to provide enough color about them to give the reader an indication as to why they thought the way they did.

From the point of view towards the military leaders it is natural that the author would provide the most information about the first French commanding General, Joseph Joffre, who was in charge of French forces from 1914 through the early part of 1917. For whatever reason, Doughty seemingly implies from his writing style that he exonerates Joffre’s gross incompetence as a tactician by the way his descriptions of the man are so terribly impartial.

First and foremost, Joseph Joffre was a very capable military engineer since that is what he was originally trained as, as well as served as in the French Army. As a military administrator he had many talents that should have been used to greater advantage than the position he was in allowed him to do. Even as a strategic thinker, Joffre demonstrated some capability. However, his tactical thinking was entirely enmeshed with the prevalent French belief in elan, the philosophy that French forces should always be on the offensive and not bother with critical maneuver or defensive planning.

Robert Doughty makes this clear in his writing but provides no indication of his own thoughts on the man’s generalship considering that the massive losses the French Army experienced up through the end of his term, were entirely his fault in similar style to the waste of lives that southern General Robert E. Lee engaged in with his frontal assaults. The result is a confused feeling one contends with when reading about this general’s tactical incompetence while wondering if the author feels the same way or he is just simply providing the facts.

On the other hand, for Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch who appears to be a disciple of Joffre’s and who would become the commander of all French forces in mid to late 1917, the author provides early, glowing credit for this man’s bringing the war to a victorious close in November 1918. However, Foch hardly deserves this credit.

Instead, the true hero of the French Army was Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain. Of all the senior commanders of the French Forces, Joseph Petain was not only the most cautious towards protecting the lives of his men but the most innovative and successful on the development of French operation tactics on the battlefield. As a result, Petain had a masterful understanding of the tactical situations he was faced with and planned all of his operations accordingly.

Unlike Foch, Petain was also given command of the French Army just as it entered into a series of severe mutinies, whose underlying factors began in 1916 and came to a head in early 1917 after the Nivelle Offensive, which was one of the biggest disasters for the French Army during the entire war.

As other historians have noted, the French Army by the end of 1915 was done. It had been summarily defeated by German Forces at this time and would defeat the French Army summarily again after continued French attempts to force German forces out of France by the winter of 1917\1918. In 1916, Joffre, with some help from Foch would throw exhausted French forces up against the more adept and modern German Army to the point that by the time of the Nivelle Offensive, French troops were ready for peace at any cost and wanted it no matter how they got it.

It was Petain who quelled the mutinies and then reinvigorated the French Army as well as reformed it with quite a number of innovations during 1917 when for all intents and purposes there was little left of the French troops to give. He did such a masterful job of it that by early 1918 the French were able to provide one last push to bring the war to a close by halting an early German offensive in the spring and then taking the initiative and finally defeating the German Army in October\November 1918.

Oddly enough, the tenor of Doughty’s writing on this great French general never seems to provide him with the credit due him.

The only thing one can hold against Petain is his allowance that several of the French mutineers were executed to serve as an example to the rest of the troops. This was grossly inexcusable considering that all of the mutineers had very legitimate grievances in that they were provided with terrible conditions to fight under with no consideration for leave, rest, requisite food and rations, decent medical care, and the like. On top of that, by early 1917 they had spent two years in the trenches watching their friends and colleagues get blown to smithereens with no apparent reason in sight.

Imprisonment yes. But execution, why? Unless a French soldier had committed murder of another soldier or officer, execution was taking things too far given the circumstances. However, Doughty provides no background as to why such executions took place.

Though the quality of Robert Doughty’s writing is consistent throughout the book, the section that describes the Nivelle Offensive seems as if it was given short-shrift for such an important battle. Robert Nivelle, the man who became the commander of French forces for a very short time after Joffre was relieved was even more incompetent than Joffre tactically and created a disaster for the French in his offensive in early 1917. Yet, Doughty does not seem to spend much time on this important battle, though it provided the spark that generated the severe mutinies that were to come.

Other historians have seen Nivelle as a somewhat complex character, with major flaws to be sure. However, Doughty seemingly brushes this general aside to simply move onto the next phases of his book.

Doughty’s treatise also provides good overviews of both the British and American forces that fought. alongside the French. However, only with America’s general John Pershing does he indicate any true dislike for the methods of his generalship, which are richly deserved. In fact, Pershing appears to be such an incompetent at times that one is left to wonder who the French had more serious problems with, the Germans or the American command structure. Douglas Haig, the commander of British forces during the conflict whose tactical capabilities are spotty at best but not as seriously impaired as Pershing’s, does get some respect from Doughty but only to the limited extent that he deserves.

In the end, the reader will have to take note of the fact that "Pyrrhic Victory", provides a very limited but excellent view of the French experience in World War I. His only mistake that I could find was his interpretation of Premier Georges Benjamin Clemenceau’s failure to foster a completely vindictive peace on the German nation. This is not true and one wonders why Robert Doughty would make such a historical error. Clemenceau was in fact spearheaded the drastic allied peace with Germany due to his incessant hatred of the German people and was for his time a definitive war monger. Though others at the Paris Peace Conference certainly played their destructive parts, Clemenceau should be given special credit for his meanness, which credited him with the dismantling of the entire German nation.

To be sure, Robert Doughty provides an in-depth, detailed study of how the French Army performed in World War I. There is no doubt that such a book should be in every serious military historian’s library who studies World War I as a primary area of interest. However, Doughty does not provide enough background information for the major French personalities or even the issues confronting German forces that provided the French with their victory far more so than French talent on the battlefield.

In the end, France and her allies did not win the conflict, Germany lost it. And militarily speaking there is a huge difference...

It's just a pleasure to finally have a flawlessly researched account of the French army's saga in it's most destructive war. I think what makes this book so likable, is the simple fact that it tells a story that most of us aren't that familiar with. This has tons of operational detail, but the author did a good job of making it readable in spite of that. Nearly all the notes are from primary sources, and since I finished this I have been able to understand and comprehend the Great War better on the grand scheme of things, that is, above the prevailing Western Front trench warfare picture. I learned many new things, including the global strategic mindset of the French command pertaining to the Balkans, Russia, Bulgaria etc. Also, I was impressed by the fact that the French were actually trying to do better after 1914-15. Something about the French military intrigues me, I'm really not sure exactly why, but this book only enhanced my interest and amazement. Vive la France!

If you are looking for a battle history of the French Army in the First World War - this isn't that book. It IS an interesting account of the way the French Army worked - how it devised it's plans, who implemented them, the relationship between the military and the government, and how the strategy changed over the course of the war as new leaders took command. It focuses on the entire war - not just the Western Front - and on the overall picture, which includes production and supply of her armies. One revelation - to me - was just how much of the fighting the French shouldered during the war, what they thought about their British allies and how they came to resent what they felt was a lesser effort by the British during the war. All is all a good, not great book, but I have no regrets reading it. It certainly broadened my horizons.

Very interesting look at the French perspective, which in turn had a significant impact on the other allied states.

This is my favorite history of all time. Doughty manages to achieve a perfect balance between the presentation of fact-based information and narrative. Said another way, after reading this book, I thought a little less of almost other histories I have read to date.

In short, this is a book about how the French conducted their campaign and over all war strategy. It provides insight, from a French perspective, on how the French generals interacted with their allied counterparts and with their own politicians. It is a Seriously important book that counter-balances all the British and American perspectives on the conduct of the war. Since it was the French, fighting on their own soil who doggedly persevered, losing the most men and producing the most war materiel than any other nation, one cannot say they truly understand the war without the French perspective. This book corrects that in an important way. If you are looking for colorful, detailed battle accounts this is not your book, but if you are interested in grand strategy and how the generals dealt with politicians then it is. The greatest contribution to my mind was how clearly Foch was the grand strategist, while Petain was the great technician, together they made a winning team, despite their own tensions and the impatience of Clemenceau. Their perspectives on the British and Americans are also useful. There is a serious lack of detailed maps, so reading this with a good WW1 atlas would be helpful. Highly recommended.

Very good... no problems with the mail service.

Les options stratégiques des leaders politiques et militaires Français et alliés, ainsi que les opérations de leurs armées, sont expliquées avec une clarté et une précision inégalées. A tel point que même la complexité de la situation dans les balkans devient aisément compréhensible.

L'armée française constitue le coeur du sujet, mais tous les acteurs, alliés ou ennemis, sont étudiés avec le même brio.

I have to admit a bias for the French Army of the Great War, an army which has been forgotten and never given its due, out of the 100 or so miles of the Western front it held most of that, the British army held no more than 90 or so miles . From the start the French Armies losses were greatest and the burden highest until the British could start to contribute later on.

In one day in August 1914 , the French lost 27,000 men, in the whole of August 1914 the British losses were 7,000. thus it continued unabated.

The book now tells of the strategies of the French and how they planned for years and feared an attack on their own land how they defended it , evolved and triumphed but with greater losses than the British .

Très bon travail objectif, dans un style clair sur le combat mené par la France.

Toutefois plus de cartes précises sur les différentes manœuvres auraient été utiles.

Un lecteur ignorant de la géographie française aurait sûrement beaucoup de mal à s'y retrouver.

National histories of a World War always carry the risk of not providing the necessary overview and of engaging in special pleading. Yet the lack of a detailed history in english of the French army in the Great War has both weakened the overview and the narrower national studies, for the French truly were the Prince in Hamlet; they underpinned and held together the Western Front while the British and Americans could learn their trade. Robert Doughty's book does an admirable job of providing an overview of policy and strategy (he is excellent on the latter)of the nation and its army, and of providing enough operational detail to please those interested in the execution of those policies and strategies.

Thoroughly recommended.