| abstract
| - Nearly one million French soldiers (306,000 in 1914; 334,000 in 1915; 217,000 in 1916; 121,000 in 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. In April 1917, French Commander-in-Chief General Robert Nivelle tried 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 attack, general Nivelle applied a tactic which he had already inaugurated with success at Verdun in October 1916,: 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. The attacking infantry was to follow the barrage so closely that it was expected to suffer some casualties from friendly shells falling too short. Whether Nivelle's attack (the Second Battle of the Aisne) was a total failure is controversial. It achieved some of its objectives, exhausted the German reserves and conquered some strategic positions on top of the Chemin des Dames ridge but with exceptionally high French losses. This was partly due to bad weather, partly to the fact that the Germans had used the many underground quarries under the Chemin des Dames as shelters but mostly to the appearance in very large numbers of the new lighter and more portable German MG08/15 machine guns. A French tank attack had also been launched near Berry-au-Bac but it led to the destruction of half the Schneider CA1 tanks that were engaged. A similar gain/losses balance in casualties may have been considered a draw in 1915 but in 1917, after the losses of the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme, the Chemin des Dames early casualties caused a collapse in the morale of the French infantryman. It also became unacceptable to French public opinion which was kept informed daily by the newspapers. Nivelle was removed from his command on 15 May 1917 and was replaced by General Philippe Pétain.
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