Headstones at La Nécropole Nationale de Pontavert. The cemetery contains the remains of 6,815 soldiers, 67 of them British, 54 Russian, and the remainder French. Of the total, 1,364 are entombed in the ossuary. © 2014 by John M. Shea
"Except for bureaucratic scuffling, most of the fighting associated with the Nivelle offensive had ended by April 25, and a sense of failure swept over the army and the government. Between April 16 and 25 the French suffered—according to estimates by French historical services—134,000 casualties on the Aisne, including 30,000 killed, 100,000 wounded, and 4,000 captured. Though more soldiers had died in Joffre's offensives in 1915, the casualties in Nivelle's offensive occurred over a relatively brief period and exceeded those of any month since November 1914."
French commander-in-chief Robert Nivelle rose to prominence at the end of 1916 when he retook much of the ground that had been lost to the Germans in the Battle of Verdun. He replaced Joseph Joffre as commander on December 27. Nivelle conveyed nothing but confidence in his plans to break the German line in his spring offensive, confidence his generals did not share, confidence that was unmoved by the German strategic retreat in March to a shortened, heavily fortified line. The British began his offensive on April 9, east of Arras. Canadian troops captured Vimy Ridge — high ground that had been a German stronghold since 1914 — but the British suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war in gaining little else after the first day. The French attack on April 16 — the Second Battle of the Aisne — came to grief in its first hours. In days of fighting Nivelle's troops crossed the Aisne River and eventually captured the heights of Chemin des Dames. From there they could look across at the next German stronghold: the Ailette River and the plateau of Laon to which the Germans had retreated.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, pp. 353–354, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
1917-04-25, 1917, April, Nivelle, Nivelle Offensive, Joffre, Robert Nivelle, Joseph Joffre,
