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French infantry pushing through enemy barbed wire, 1915. During World War I, France was one of the Triple Entente powers allied against the Central Powers.Although fighting occurred worldwide, the bulk of the French Army's operations occurred in Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Alsace-Lorraine along what came to be known as the Western Front, which consisted mainly of trench warfare.
Countries in beige were on either side or neutral in the war. At the start of World War I in Europe, there were two main sides, the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire; and the Allies: France, the U.K., Belgium, Portugal, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Greece, and the Russian Empire.
French cavalry during World War I played a relatively minor role in events. As mounted combatants proved highly vulnerable to the firepower of infantry and artillery , the various units of this arm essentially carried out auxiliary missions during the " Great War " (from 1914 to 1919), even if the beginning of the conflict corresponded to its ...
Western Front; Part of the European theatre of World War I: Clockwise from top left: Men of the Royal Irish Rifles, concentrated in the trench, right before going over the top on the First day on the Somme; British soldier carries a wounded comrade from the battlefield on the first day of the Somme; A young German soldier during the Battle of Ginchy; American infantry storming a German bunker ...
The Allies or the Entente was an international military coalition of countries led by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Italy, and Japan against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria in World War I (1914–1918).
Les Armées françaises dans la Grande guerre [French Armies in the Great War] (in French). Vol. X-2 : Ordres de bataille des grandes unités : divisions d'infanterie, divisions de cavalerie. Paris: Impr. nationale. 1924.
In August 1914, following the outbreak of the Great War, the French Armed Forces numbered some 1,300,000 soldiers, and by the end of the war the French Army had called up 8,817,000 men, including 900,000 colonial troops; of these around 1,397,000 French soldiers were killed in action, mostly on the Western Front.
Important military rivalries in human history have come about as a result of conflict between French peoples and other European powers. Anglo-French rivalry, for prestige in Europe and around the world, continued for centuries, while the more recent Franco-German rivalry required two world wars to stabilize. [6]