Joffre subsequently spent much of his career in the colonies as a military engineer, serving with distinction in the Keelung Campaign during the Sino-French War (August 1884 – April 1885).

General Victor-Constant Michel, the Vice President of the Conseil supérieur de la guerre and Commander-in-Chief designate, was sacked after proposing a defensive strategy in the event of war with Germany.

Messimy took the opportunity to merge the office of vice president with the Chief of the General Staff and create a single professional head of the Army.

In his memoirs Joffre later admitted that he had been mistaken (he was also unaware of the fall of Namur and of the extent of the fighting at Mons and Charleroi on his left), but at the time he demanded that the French Fourth Army resume the offensive and provide lists of unsatisfactory officers for dismissal.

[22] On 25 August, rejecting the advice of his staff officer General Berthelot that Lanrezac be ordered to attack westwards against the inside of the German right wing, he instead had Major Maurice Gamelin draw up plans for a French concentration at Amiens, with many of the troops drawn from the French right wing in Alsace, and with regret also ordered the successful counterattacks of the Third Army and the Army of Lorraine be called off.

[23] Michel-Joseph Maunoury was put in command of the newly formed Sixth Army, which initially assembled near Amiens and then fell back toward Paris (26 August).

[38] On the night of 3–4 September Joffre sent a handwritten note to Gallieni, wanting Maunoury to push east along the north bank of the Marne, although not specifying a date.

That same afternoon, Henry Wilson, the BEF sub-chief of staff, was negotiating separate plans with Franchet d'Espèrey, on the British right, which envisaged the Sixth Army attacking north of the Marne.

[47][48][49][50] On 7 September Gallieni, who had been going over Joffre's head and speaking to the war minister and President Raymond Poincaré, was ordered not to communicate directly with the government.

[52] On 7 January 1915, over Joffre's opposition, President Poincaré came out in favour of the proposal of Franchet d'Espèrey, Gallieni and justice minister Aristide Briand for an expedition to Salonika, which he hoped would detach first Turkey then Austria-Hungary, leaving Germany "doomed.

Gallieni, who favoured a strong war ministry with his own operational staff, complained bitterly in his diary about the politicians' unwillingness to stand up to Joffre.

On 1 December Poincaré and Briand met with Gallieni, who agreed that Joffre be commander-in-chief, with Castelnau—who was soon sidelined—as his chief of staff, although under the war minister's orders.

[59] In autumn 1915 Colonel Émile Driant, commander of a chasseurs brigade and a member of the Army Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, complained to Gallieni of how Joffre had been removing guns and garrisons from Verdun and even preparing some forts for demolition.

[64] Late in March 1916 Joffre and Briand blocked a proposal by Lord Kitchener and Sir William Robertson to gradually withdraw five British divisions from Salonika as the Serb troops arrived.

[66] The French General Staff had decided in August 1915 to partially disarm all the Verdun forts, under the erroneous assumption that they could not resist the effects of modern heavy artillery, and the Germans initially made good progress against fortifications that had had their guns removed.

Gallieni presented a highly critical report to the council of ministers on 7 March—read in his usual precise way—criticising Joffre's conduct of operations over the last eighteen months and demanding ministerial control, then resigned.

[70] Joffre was successfully lobbied by Robertson, and at the second Chantilly Conference (15–16 November 1916) they agreed to concentrate on the Western Front in 1917 rather than sending greater resources to Salonika.

Coming on the back of the disappointing results of the Somme campaign and the fall of Romania, Roques's report further discredited Briand and Joffre and added to the parliamentary deputies' demands for a closed session.

[9][73] It is unclear exactly what Briand had told Joffre about his role; he commented, "This is not what they promised me," when reading the newspaper on the morning of 13 December and was put out to be described as "general-in-chief" rather than "commander-in-chief."

However, he soon found that he had no real power—the acting war minister (Admiral Lacaze, as General Lyautey had not yet returned from North Africa to take up the position) forbade him even to approve units' being granted the fourragère—and on 26 December, the day he was promoted Marshal of France, he asked to be relieved.

Joffre initially considered recommending the incorporation of US companies and battalions into the French and British armies, but realised that the Americans would never accept this.

[74] The party sailed to the US on the Lorraine II, making an effort to cultivate reporters on board, who noticed how busy Joffre kept his small staff.

He landed on 24 April at Hampton Roads, where he was welcomed by Admiral Henry Mayo, commander-in-chief of the US Atlantic Fleet, Ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt.

[77] On the last day of his visit to Washington, Newton D. Baker, the secretary of war, introduced him to General John J. Pershing, just selected to command the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).

"[78] On 13 June Pershing, who had landed at Boulogne that morning, met Joffre, Paul Painlevé (war minister), Viviani and Foch (chief of staff) in Paris.

In 1922 he was welcomed in Broadway, New York with a ticker-tape parade, a few months after Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander during World War I. Joffre died at the age of 78 in Paris on 3 January 1931.

[86][87][88] According to British author Alan Palmer, many French generals were of the generation educated in the Catholic teaching which had grown up after the Loi Falloux and therefore, unlike Joffre, suspected of hostility to the Third Republic.

He kept his cool when the initial attempt to have Maunoury envelop the German west flank at Amiens failed, requiring a retreat on Paris.

While the Battle of the Marne was going on, he handled the problems faced by Foch's Ninth Army at the St Gond Marshes, by de Langle's Fourth and Sarrail's Third near Verdun and by Castelnau's Second in the Nancy area.

A French aircraft carrier bearing Joffre's name was under construction at the start of World War II but was never completed due to France's rapid fall in 1940.