Excerpt from History of the World War, Vol. 4 Aside from Petain and Foch, Nivelle was perhaps a logical selection. He had served with distinction under Petain at Verdun. When, as a consequence of his great achievements in defending the Lorraine fortress, Petain was promoted to command a group of armies, Nivelle, as his most conspicuous lieutenant, was named to succeed him in command of the Verdun Army. Under Nivelle's immediate command, although the supreme direction was Petain's, there had been organized that brilliant and amazing counter-offensive of October which had retaken Douaumont and Vaux and swept the Germans out of the. Area of the entrenched camp of Verdun. The last act of Nivelle before he departed to take over the supreme command was to direct the second Verdun counter-offensive, completing the liberation of the town from the Ger man menace which for ten months had threatened it. There was in addition the belief, wholly correct, that the coming of Nivelle to the supreme command would mean aggressive action. Joffre had on the whole advocated limited offensives; Petain was known to be hostile to great ventures which, ' if they failed, meant alike exhaustion of the man-power and the weakening of the morale of the French army; Nivelle was a champion of the attack. And a war-weary Allied world and a France whose hopes for the liberation of her soil had been greatly deferred - longed for decisive action. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.