The 1917 Mutinies

The mutinies of 1917 revealed the French army's human limits. Beginning with the 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, refusal to attack spread through 54 divisions. Soldiers formed councils, presented demands: more leave, better food, no more hopeless offensives. Revolutionary rhetoric appeared—"Down with war!"—but most mutineers sought reform, not revolution.

The mutinies reflected France's exhaustion. Soldiers knew the home front suffered—their families' letters spoke of shortages, strikes, defeatism. They felt betrayed by politicians visiting trenches briefly, then returning to Paris comfort. Class resentment surfaced: working-class soldiers saw bourgeois officers as careless with proletarian lives.

Pétain, replacing Nivelle, combined repression with reform. Courts martial condemned 629 mutineers to death, though only 43 were executed. Simultaneously, he improved conditions—more leave, better food, rest areas behind lines. Most importantly, he promised no more grand offensives until American arrival and tank production allowed breakthrough.

The mutinies' human dimension emerges from individual accounts. Corporal Henri Flament, sentenced to death then reprieved, wrote: "We were not cowards or traitors. We were men pushed beyond endurance. Three years in hell, watching friends die for meters of mud. We said 'Enough' because someone had to."