Читать книгу Joffre and His Army - Charles Dawbarn - Страница 10

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There is this satisfactory about a Frenchman—that rarely he disdains his origin. He is not the sort of man who spurns the ladder by which he mounted; rather does he contemplate with pleasure every rung of the way. Joffre, in that sense, is typically French. He rejoices in the modest origin which has given him the privilege of building his own fortune. But his pride and his independence come, I think, from his racial attributes. They are indigenous to the soil, to that fruitful soil of the Roussillon, the old province of France which came under the French crown in the reign of Louis XIV, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and as a result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Known to-day as the Eastern Pyrenees, and become one of the regular departments of France, it has preserved much of its old Spanish character. It has maintained a particular flavour, like the wine which grows in its smiling vineyards and the peaches that stretch for twenty kilometres, a vast and fertile garden, round Perpignan. The local capital is peculiarly Southern: sunny, wide-spaced, prosperous, embowered in handsome planes. The inhabitants wear the easy grace and captivating manner of people who, under a blue sky, do not find life too hard. Joffre's town of Rivesaltes is close by, connected by tram and rail. It is less agreeable of aspect than Perpignan, there is less pride in appearances; indeed, it is thoroughly Spanish in style, even if French in the temper of its politics. The inhabitants speak Catalan like their brethren on the further side of the Pyrenees, where newspapers are produced in the tongue, but their sympathies are as wholly French as those of their famous townsman. And what a cult of him there is! Every café and most of the shops have a portrait of him on the large scale, as if a small reproduction would not suffice for his reputation. The album of a local tobacconist is a gallery of the great man in various stages of his development. Old inhabitants contribute anecdotes more or less authentic of his studious yet sturdy youth, of his kindness and modesty, of his astonishing simplicity.

"Yes, he came here years ago and played manille with his father and his father's friends, and he would not allow his old acquaintances to change their manner of speaking to him; they were to say 'thee' and 'thou' as in the old days. His father's bit of land had become flooded. 'You must cut trenches to drain off the water,' he said to Joffre père, 'I know something about that; it is my métier.'..." When war broke out, the inhabitants had no doubt about anything. The country was safe. What was an invasion when Joffre was in command?

The future Generalissimo was a flaxen-haired boy, with a light complexion and a firm, straightforward and kindly expression. There was certainly little of the Southerner either in his face or in the square-cut vigorous figure, but he had the independence of the Catalan in his character. Though an excellent comrade and full of fun, he did not like to be interfered with in his work, and was ready to fight his tormentors to secure quiet. Later, the kind blue eyes, wide set beneath the bushy eyebrows, grew steel-like in their expression when an acquaintance tried to take advantage of his amiability to advance a protégé. Joffre has a horror of the recommendation. "Let the young man make his own way as I have made mine," he would say; "that is the only sound method." All his life he has been opposed to patronage; it annoys him, he feels it to be unfair—a mean advantage. When he was appointed Chief-of-Staff, and eventually Commander-in-Chief, in 1911, he received visitors only once a fortnight at his office in the Invalides, because he wished to avoid, as much as possible, bores and protectors of interesting young men. Merit is the only channel which he recognises for advancement. The knowledge of his utter impartiality has robbed his decisions, often sternly disciplinary, of all personal sting. The army felt that in him they had a final court of appeal, pure and fearless.

Boyhood's days at Rivesaltes were unaccompanied by a luxury, which might have dulled the edge of fine ambitions. The little house in the narrow Rue des Grangers where he was born, remains the symbol of his simplicity. The humble bedroom, flanked by dining-room and kitchen, where he first saw the light, the store-room above served by an outside pulley for the raising of winter's stores—all this speaks of a laborious and thrifty life such as the peasantry live hereabouts. The future General was one of eleven children of a working cooper. According to Joffre's sister, the family, of Spanish origin and called Gouffre, is of noble descent; but its fortune had dwindled when Grandfather Joffre, leaving his native country for political reasons, started as a tradesman at Rivesaltes. He left no particular heritage to his son Joseph, the offspring of middle age, whom he seems utterly to have neglected. Joseph was little more than a working man with a patch of vineyard close to the town. But for a friendly uncle, struck by his intelligence, Joseph Jacques César Joffre—our Joffre—would not have enjoyed the education which was his at the lycée at Perpignan and at the Polytechnique in Paris.

It was to his stay in that admirable school for civil and military engineers that he owes the groundwork upon which he has so successfully built. It gave him an immense advantage at the start. Though he passed into the school with the high number of fourteen and became, because of it, a sergeant in his dormitory, charged with keeping order amongst older lads—rather trying to his silent and unassertive character—he did not consistently show the brilliancy that was expected of him. On leaving, his number had fallen to thirty-five, which did not entitle him to high civil employment under Government. Whether as a consequence of it, or because of a pronounced vocation, he joined the Corps of Engineers as lieutenant. Already he had had a taste of the life, sufficiently discouraging, one would think, in the War of 1870, which broke in upon his school career. He served for some months as a junior subaltern in a fort round Paris. Even at that age, he was known for his silent seriousness, and the memory of the national defeat seemed to have sunk deeply into his soul. It made him a patriot, eager to work for France and for her re-establishment. That, more than anything else, fired his ambition, for he was not one to crouch at the feet of chance, waiting, as an arriviste waits, for his own advancement. Not until the moment of his Soudan expedition, in early middle life, did he expand to the full limit of his capacity, and then the call of country and the consciousness of duty done for France were responsible. Before that, he had not shown, I think, any great desire to progress beyond the common mark. But when he saw that he could be useful to his time and generation, a holy zeal possessed him to press on to the great achievement. And his tranquil courage and perseverance were rewarded to an extent that seemed incredible in his early years. But, even so, he would not regard his position as head of the army with complacency or self-satisfaction. "The war found me," he said to a lifelong friend; "I did not seek it." That is the note of the man.

His Soudan campaign, which came when he was a Commandant at the age of forty-three, gave him deserved renown, for it was a masterpiece of organisation. Before that, he had done more or less humdrum work on defences, gaining his captaincy that way, when working on the forts round Paris; he continued in the provinces and in Upper Tonking, where his constructions were aimed at the predatory Chinese. He fought them from Formosa, whither he had gone as a change from spade and trowel work, but partly, I suspect, to forget in change of scene the loss of a beloved young wife. Admiral Courbet, most famous of pioneers in the French Colonial domain, was then concluding the Tonking campaign, and employed him to the general satisfaction. The future Generalissimo was in fighting and fort building showing an equal talent. Finally, he exhibited a new side to his character by organising an artistic and industrial exhibition at Hanoi. Though wrapped up in his profession and seeming, daily, to take a greater pleasure in it, he showed adaptability and could turn his hand to anything.

His celebrated march to Timbuctoo again showed him as the all-round man, for there he had to think of everything. He had gone out into the wilds for a pacific object, for the building of the Soudan railway, destined to link the Senegal to the Niger river. His new post did not, strictly speaking, appeal to him. It interrupted his course of lectures on fortifications at the School at Fontainebleau, which succeeded to his command of the Railway Battalion of Engineers. It seemed to him like his own first-class interment. Surely there was no glory in building a railway in the desert; yet he was to find it there. At that moment France had become conscious of her colonial possessions, and with it had become the desire for development. A haphazard policy had been amended into a settled plan of pacific penetration by means of the Niger. The railway was to be the great instrument of civilisation, linking the two great waterways and making the desert blossom as a rose. It had begun at Kayes, the capital, under Colonel Galliéni, then commanding in Upper Senegal, and had been pushed to the hundred and sixteenth kilometre. Then yellow fever and a lack of credits from home brought it to an abrupt stop. Commandant Joffre, with his habitual vigour, added kilometre to kilometre until the hundred and fifty-ninth mark was reached.

Thereafter came orders to undertake an expedition to Timbuctoo. The mysterious city had been entered, just before, by Commandant Boiteaux, who had gone up the river Niger in a flotilla of boats as far as Cabara and there gained the city on foot. It was resolved to extend the French dominion over it and over the loop of the river as it sweeps downward to its ocean outlet. Joffre's duty was to support his superior, Colonel Bonnier, who had given him a rendezvous outside the city's walls. The Colonel was to go by river; Joffre followed the left bank with a force of one thousand, three parts of which were bearers and servants. He started from Segou, two days after Christmas 1893. The rendezvous never took place. The Colonel having made quicker progress, turned back to meet the Commandant, but failed to arrive; the column was assassinated. Only one white officer, Captain Nigotte, escaped to tell the tale in Timbuctoo, where fears were expressed for Joffre's safety. But the latter had acted with great vigour and yet caution in his dealings with the natives. He went quickly to the rescue of the few survivors of the column, chastised the murderers, and then, on February 12, entered the city without further fighting, carrying with him the bodies of the white officers. At the moment when the news reached him, he was engaged in crossing the river, in face of a hostile band of Tuaregs, who had burned his boats at the habitual crossing-place.

More than 500 miles separated Segou from Timbuctoo, and the journey had been beset with peril and difficulty, how difficult and how perilous is admirably told in Joffre's own report of the expedition. He showed good generalship by keeping his men in close order and by throwing out scouts to protect his flanks and rear. At night a careful watch was set over the camp, and the young Commander went the rounds to see that his black sentinels did not sleep at their posts. Water was a great difficulty, for there was either too much of it or not enough. Great flooded areas, where the river had overflowed, left swamps which could only be passed by circuitous marches in an unknown country. By contrast there was a stark and staring need of wells in a burning desert, where bearers dropped by the way for want of the precious liquid, and communications were endangered because posts left in the rear could not obtain the necessary water. In consequence, the young Commander had to scatter his column through the villages, where existed a species of boycott, for the natives had fled before the advance and had carried off all foodstuffs. Joffre kept a stout heart and a cool head in these trying circumstances. There was a good deal of fighting, especially in the later stages, but Joffre took the offensive, as the safer way, and did not allow himself to be attacked by the enemy. He fought to clear a path for his column.

His initiative and sense of responsibility shone in this crisis. When he entered the city the engineer in him reappeared, and he planned and plotted for the safety of the citizens. Strategic positions were seized and upon them were placed forts and blockhouses. Then, in his turn, he acted as political officer and received the submission of the tribesmen. In the midst of these high occupations he received orders from the Governor of the region to rejoin his railway at Kayes. For once in his life he disobeyed and sent his reasons, which, of course, were accepted. When, finally, he left Timbuctoo, he had made an excellent job of it. He had established his reputation as an organiser and soldier-colonist, and his reward was the red rosette which decorated his tunic of Lieutenant-Colonel. His first grade in the Order had been gained in Formosa. Timbuctoo closed the second colonial phase in Joffre's career.

The third was to open two years later when, as full Colonel, he was given fortification work to do in Madagascar. It was at the moment of British reverses in the Boer War. Certain memories, connected with Fashoda and Dreyfus, rankled in French breasts. The Paris Government felt it was as well to be prepared against possible enterprise on the part of the British fleet in the Indian Ocean; and so the defences of the big island were set hastily on foot. Diego Suarez, the naval base to the north, was fortified by Joffre under the eye of the Governor, General Galliéni, who was then gaining renown for his administration of the island. It was there that the two met and fraternised, as expatriated Frenchmen will, and learned to respect each other's qualities.

Therewith closed the final chapter in Joffre's colonial life. Henceforth he was to work in France, in the immediate path of the great office to which destiny was hastening him. Successively he commanded the 19th brigade of Artillery at Vincennes, and the 6th division of Infantry at Lille, of which town he was the military governor; at Amiens, he was head of the Second Army Corps. Between the stages of Brigadier and General of Division, he was director of Artillery at the Ministry of War. And so he performed the whole cycle of the military art, before arriving at the Superior Council of War where he was to receive the crown of the chief command. He had served in just the capacities, colonial and metropolitan, which equipped him for his great responsibility. No point in his experience could be considered useless from the building of forts to the construction of railways; from the organisation of a self-contained force on the Niger, to the command of troops in France; from his lectures to military students, to his direction of the artillery.

The supreme honour came to him on July 29, 1911. The Panther had dropped a noisy and menacing anchor in the quiet waters of Agadir. In spite of assurances of peace from Germany and the fixity of the pacifist idea in France, clear-sighted people saw the cloud of danger in the sky. Joffre had no misgivings on the subject. One of the earliest questions to occupy him was that of effectives. None but he and his charming wife, whom he had married on returning to France, will ever realise how hard he worked during the three years that intervened before the outbreak of the war. Sundays and weekdays—it was an incessant round. He was deeply convinced that the hour was approaching for the trial of the French military institutions, to which he was called to supply not merely the finishing touch, but, alas! a great deal of the foundation work. That was the tragedy of it, the tragedy of an optimism, which had ignored all German preparations. It had ignored the vast accumulations of engines of war on the frontiers of Lorraine and Belgium, it had ignored the meaning of the caves and subterranean passages prepared in advance in the Champagne and the Soissons district, just as it ignored the other phases of German activity, the systematic corruption, the spying, and the rest.

Thus Joffre came to the post which his persistent work had made a just, if onerous, reward. He was Generalissimo in new conditions. The old duality, which allowed one man to lead in war and another to prepare for it, was swept away. Parliament at last had awakened to its dangers, and MM. Caillaux and Messimy, Premier and Minister of War, had submitted to President Fallières a new decree designating Joffre the Supreme Commander in time of war and the Chief-of-Staff in peace.

It was an admirable choice. If it meant little to the public which had forgotten all about the march on the Niger, it meant a great deal to the army which felt comforted and relieved at the appointment of a sound and thorough administrator. For Joffre, by long contact, knew every cog in the military machine, which he was now called upon to direct. As divisionnaires went, he was the youngest of his rank in the army and had still some years before him which he could count his own. Thus he joined experience to a comparative youth, which was all in his favour. Probably the defects rather than the qualities of the organisation engaged his attention and stimulated his amazing energy to even greater efforts. At the age of fifty-nine he was faced with a task to try the strongest head, the steadiest nerves, the most robust health. Happily he possessed all three and placed them unreservedly at the service of the State. France was fortunate in her General-in-Chief. How he succeeded in the colossal burden of the Great War may be left for consideration to a future chapter.