Forming the 'Régiments d'Artillerie Lourde'

Phantom Batteries of Plan XVII (Part V)

Dec 20, 2022

Rimailho Howitzer Configured for Movement

When viewed within the context of the events that preceded it, the tale of the 2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment reveals the broad outlines of a sustained program that, while responsive to exogenous forces of various kinds, was far too systematic to be characterized as a mere exercise in improvisation. In July of 1911, when Joseph Joffre became the first ‘chief of the General Staff’ of the Third Republic, the mobile heavy artillery of the French Army consisted entirely of twenty-one batteries of Rimailho howitzers. Organized into seven ‘army heavy artilleries’ (artilleries lourde d’armée), these were the only mobile heavy pieces available for service with armies in the field.[15]

In the February of 1912, a modest reform of the fortress artillery converted the 4th Fortress Artillery Regiment into a test-bed for mobile heavy artillery.[16] After eighteen months or so of experimentation, this new regiment inspired the inclusion of an entirely new heavy artillery organization in the preliminary sketches for Plan XVII - the ‘army group mobile heavy artillery’ (‘artillerie lourde mobile, organe de groupe d’armées’).[17] In October of 1913, the division of mobile heavy artillery into two separate echelons evolved into a plan to create five heavy artillery regiments – four standard regiments to take the place of the old army heavy artillery and the sui generis 4th Heavy Artillery Regiment.

The initial impetus for the creation of the standard heavy artillery regiments seems to have been provided by the impending arrival of large numbers of modern 105mm heavy guns. (The order for these weapons, which called for 220 pieces to be delivered between August of 1914 and July of 1915, had been placed in April of 1913.) Additional motivation was, no doubt, created by the desire to provide some form of light field howitzer to armies in the field during the year or two it would take to acquire a modern weapon of that type.[18] The four standard heavy artillery regiments could not have been created, however, had it not been for the willingness of the French government to sacrifice a significant portion of its coast artillery. According to the ministerial decree of 16 April 1914, which provided a detailed agenda for the execution of the cadre law of 15 April 1914, exactly half of the peacetime batteries allotted to each of those regiments were to be the product of the three-stage conversion of twelve coast defense batteries. (The first stage of this conversion was the transfer of three batteries from a coast defense regiment to one of the standard heavy regiments. The second stage was the transformation the coast defense batteries into mobile heavy batteries. The third stage was the splitting of each of those batteries into two identical frameworks, each of which was then expanded into a complete heavy battery.)[19]

The degree to which the creation of the standard heavy artillery regiments made full use of available resources is underscored by the timing the third stage of the conversion process, the splitting of twelve transformed coast defense batteries into twelve identical pairs of mobile heavy batteries. While the division of the transformed coast defense batteries of the 1st, 3rd and 5th Heavy Artillery Regiments was scheduled for 1 July 1914, the mitosis of the three remaining batteries (those of the 2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment) was slated for 1 October 1914. The most likely reason for this delay was a shortage of personnel. That is to say, the French artillery of the summer of 1914 was able to find enough officers, non-commissioned officers or men to fill the many vacancies caused by the doubling of nine converted coast artillery batteries, but could not to do the same for twelve such units. The filling out of the order of battle of the 2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment thus had to be postponed until the autumn, when a new class of conscripts, as well as a new crop of junior non-commissioned officers and the products of a recently-instituted program to grant regular commissions to selected reserve officers, became available.

Notes:

[15] The version of Plan XVI in force at the start of 1913 called for six field armies and seven ‘army heavy artilleries’, each of which consisted of three batteries of Rimailho howitzers. The 7th Army Heavy Artillery (7ème Artillery Lourde d’Armée) reinforced the army heavy artillery of the Fourth Army. Engerand, La Bataille de la Frontière, p. 189.

[16] The 4th Fortress Artillery Regiment had originally been formed in 1910, to take charge of four coast defense batteries in the vicinity of La Rochelle. In February of 1912, it transferred three of those batteries to the 3rd Heavy Artillery Regiment, acquired six additional batteries (four of which had been coast defense batteries) and began its career as an experimental unit. In 1913, the 4th Heavy Artillery Regiment obtained two additional batteries, both of which had formerly served as coast defense units. Thus, of the nine batteries serving with the regiment at the time that it became the 4th Heavy Artillery Regiment, seven were converted coast defense batteries. ‘Decret de 6 février 1912 modifiant la composition des corps de troupe d’artillerie à pied’ and ‘Decret de 10 février 1913 modifiant la composition des corps de troupe d’artillerie à pied’. (Verbatim copies of both decrees can be found in contemporary issues of both the Bulletin Officiel de la Ministère de la Guerre and the official supplement to the Revue d’Artillerie.)

[17] In 1912 and 1913, the 4th Fortress Artillery Regiment experimented with two obsolete weapons – the 120mm heavy gun (Model 1878) and the 220mm medium siege howitzer (Model 1880). It is thus not surprising that the early sketches for Plan XVII provided the ‘army group heavy artillery’ with both weapons. Les Armées Françaises dans la Grande Guerre, Tome I, Volume 1, p. 23.

[18] Contemporary French discussions of modern light field howitzers generally assumed that such weapons would be issued to field artillery regiments. See, among other, Jules Challéat, ‘La Question de l’Obusier Léger’, Revue d’Artillerie, January 1913 and ‘OB’, Questions d’Artillerie d’Actualité’, Journal des Sciences Militaires, 15 December 1912.

[19] A condensed version of the ministerial decree of 16 April 1914, which is strangely absent from the Bulletin des Lois de la République Française, can be found in official supplement (Partie Officiale) to the Revue d’Artillerie, 25 June 1914.

This is the fifth post in The Phantom Batteries of Plan XVII. For links to the other posts in this series, please make use of the following aggregator: