Imperial Russian soldiers on parade in France.Message and postmark Marseille, April 22, 1916.
"Nor was rebellion confined to the French. As the mutinies avalanched onward, it became apparent that the two Russian brigades had become a serious menace. It was not the number of Russians in France that posed the danger—a mere fifteen or twenty thousand men were indistinguishable atoms in this war of millions—it was what they represented. For by the spring of 1917 it had been conclusively established that the Russian brigades in France were the breeding grounds of mutiny."
After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne, begun on April 16 — an offensive that Nivelle had asserted would provide the breakthrough of the German line that would lead to victory, mutinous incidents broke out in the French army, particularly among the troops that had suffered the highest rates of casualties in the offensive. The mutinies were of greater or lesser severity, beginning in April, with increasingly disruptive incidents in May, and the most violent and serious in the first weeks of June. Four brigades of Russian soldiers were sent two France in the spring of 1916, two of them immediately being sent to the Salonika Front. The Russian Revolution of March provided a model for some soldiers.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, pp. 205–206, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
1917-06-09, 1917, June, French mutiny, Russian soldiers in France, mutiny, French mutinies, Russians in France
