For his services at Jutland, Jellicoe was given the
thanks of Parliament and a grant of £50,000. He was
named as First Sea Lord (operational head of the navy)
at the end of 1916, replacing Sir Henry Jackson, but
almost from the start of this command, he desired to be
removed from it. On 24 December 1917, Prime Min-
ister David Lloyd George removed Jellicoe, allegedly
over his refusal to guard Allied shipping with British
escorts. Raised to the peerage as Viscount Jellicoe of
Scapa in 1918, he was given the post of governor-gen-
eral of New Zealand following the end of the war, serv-
ing from 1920 to 1924. In his last years, Jellicoe wrote
two volumes of memoirs: The Grand Fleet, 1914–16:
Its Creation, Development and Work (1919) and The
Crisis of the Naval War (1920). He died in London on
20 November 1935 and was laid to rest with full mili-
tary honors near Lord Nelson in the crypt of St. Paul’s
Cathedral in London.
References: Napier, Robert M., Sir John French and Sir
John Jellicoe: Their Lives and Careers (London: The Patri-
otic Publishing Company, 1914); Jellicoe, Sir John, The
Grand Fleet, 1914–16: Its Creation, Development and Work
(New York: G. H. Doran, 1919); Terry, C. Sanford, The
Battle of Jutland Bank, May 31–June 1, 1916: The Dis-
patches of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and Vice-Admiral Sir
David Beatty (London: Oxford University Press, 1916);
Bruce, George, “Jutland,” in Collins Dictionary of Wars
(Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995),
12–21; “Jellicoe,” in Command: From Alexander the Great
to Zhukov—The Greatest Commanders of World History,
edited by James Lucas (London: Bloomsbury Publishing,
1988), 155–156.
Joffre, Joseph-Jacques-Césaire (1852–1931)
French general
Joseph Joffre was born on 12 January 1852 in the village
of Rivesaltes, in the province of Pyrénées-Orientales,
near the Pyrenees mountains. His family had been Span-
ish with the name Goffre, but this was changed after his
great-grandfather had fled to France. Joffre received his
education at the École Polytechnique in Paris, but his
studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-
Prussian War in 1870. He served in the French army
during the war and was a member of the brigade that
defended Paris against German forces. With the end of
the war in 1871, he graduated from the Polytechnique
and became an engineer in the French army. In 1876, he
was promoted to the rank of captain.
Joffre married, but the early death of his wife left
him so disconsolate that he asked to be stationed over-
seas, and he was sent to Indochina, then a colony of
France. He served with French forces in the occupation
of the island of Formosa (now Taiwan) in 1885, and for
three years afterward, he served as engineer in the city
of Hanoi, now the capital of Vietnam. He returned to
France in 1888 and worked on a series of engineering
projects until he was sent to Senegal in Africa in 1892 to
build a railway there. However, he was ordered to com-
mand a brigade of French forces marching on the city
of Timbuktu. After his return to France, he received a
series of promotions, rising to become general of brigade
in 1900 and general of division in 1905.
In 1910, Joffre was named to the Conseil Supérior
de la Guerre, the council of leading generals formed
after the disastrous Franco-Prussian War. A year later,
the minister of war, Adolphe Messimy, decided to name
one general to command the council and serve as chief
of staff to the French president. General Joseph Simon
Galliéni, recommended his good friend Joffre, who was
named to the new position. As chief of staff, he drew
up a plan to halt another German invasion of France,
a continuing grave threat to France. Plan 17, as it was
called, was presented to the Conseil Supérior on 18
April 1913, and thought it covered a possible German
invasion through eastern France, Joffre did not antici-
pate that Germany might attack through Belgium, to
the north. This left a gap in France’s defenses that would
prove to be lethal to the country just a year after the plan
was presented.
On 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on
France, plunging Europe into a conflict that would
last for four years and leave millions dead. With
the outbreak of war, Joffre became commander in
chief of French forces on 5 August 1914. The authors
of The Wordsworth Dictionary of Military Biography write:Joffre’s position in the supreme seat of military
power on the outbreak of the First World War
was... to some extent the result of precaution-
ary administration rather than that of merit.
Certainly he had gained little personal distinc-
tion on the field of battle, however inapplicableJoFFRe, JoSeph-JAcqueS-céSAiRe