In the opening stages of WW1...

They didn't though. They just only relied on field artillery and advancing in mass formation, they didn't slowly march.
The uniforms weren't "Napoleonic style" either

t. lindybeige
French tactics, especially in artillery, were constantly in advance of British ones, easily shown by battles like the Somme

>throw the unit into grinder
>couple survivors return
>reinforce the unit with new guys
>throw it into battle again
>most of them die, few survivors return and are reinforced before being sent to battle again
>rinse and repeat until the unit has suffered casualties well beyond its nominal strength (I.e. you have unit with nominal strength of 1000 men that suffers 1500 casualties thanks to it being reinforced during the battle)

> gamechanging stormtrooper tactics
Those were the Eastern fuckwits, lindy.

German did the same in Belgium.

Lmao
Brits only truly showed up in mid 1916
By that time, the French had already halted the German advanced and turned the front into a stalemate

Brits then arrived and, feeling more clever than everyone else, they charged at machine guns in dense formation without artillery support (something the French had figured not to do by 1914) at the 1st day of the Somme

>have 1000 men in a unit to begin with
>send 750 out into the field
>they all get slaughtered
>you now have 250 men left
>you get reinforcements
>you now have 250 (+750 reinforcements) in that unit
>send them out into the field
>900 die this time
>you now have 100 men left in the unit
>technically you've lost more than 100% of the unit since you started with 1000 and lost more than a 1000

BEF was a major factor in the Battle of the Marne - they attacked through a gap between two German armies, a major contribution to the victory (I am of course NOT discounting the ~1million or so frenchmen there).

They continued to play a major role in large actions such as the battles at Ypres.

I believe you're referencing the Somme. Yes it was the biggest British action to that point, and mostly a fuck up, but they had been there the whole time.

Britain didnt have a large conscript army (because they didnt need one) so it took them some time to build up whereas the French and Germans had to have a complex mass mobilization system or suffer catastrophe.

Anywayys. Since youre taking potshots, I'll just remind you of the French mutiny of 1917 which basically put you in a supporting role for the remainder

>BEF was a major factor in the Battle of the Marne - they attacked through a gap between two German armies, a major contribution to the victory (I am of course NOT discounting the ~1million or so frenchmen there).
That's revisionism fed by British delusion
The 30,000 British troops present at the First Marne sure helped, did their best....etc, but they weren't in any way indispensable to victory

>Anywayys. Since youre taking potshots, I'll just remind you of the French mutiny of 1917 which basically put you in a supporting role for the remainder
>you
I'm not French tho, stop assuming stuff
And you're wrong anyway
With the 1917 munity, Britain merely equalled France in term of contribution on the Western front (rather than passing first like you imply) and merely for a few months
By 1918, the French were once again the major contributor by far

British usefulness on the Western Front goes like that

1914: irrelevant
1915: irrelevant
1916: useful
1917: very useful
1918: useful

quick reminder that a lot of photographs depicting early war french soldiers insanely charging in a napoleonic fashion at the ennemy were taken during the great manoeuvres of 1913 then re-used to depict the battle of the Marne. I do not deny that the french charged this way. They did. OP's photo is probably, probably not, one of them. I mean, behind a photograph there is a photographer. And photographers covering the Great War were not as suicidal as the ones who later covered the Vietnam War and WW2. The french war propaganda was reluctant to show how the war was managed in August 1914 because the attacks were deadly and useless but the propaganda was happy to re-use pre-war photographs in order to show the public the first battle of the Marne victory. Take nothing at face value regarding WW1 photographs with a caption attached to it.

The French mutiny of 1917 was globally localized on the Chemin des Dames during the second battle of the Aisne and lasted 1 month or so. It surely had huge military consequences that lasted 2 or 3 months later but only on a localized part of the front desu.
Also, look at where the Hundred Days Offensive took place on a map, you'll see that this area is for the british the closest point from Britain and has the shortest ressuply line and for the germans the farthest away from Germany and the longest resupply line. No need to explain why the Entente chose to attack there.

Brits charged 1914-style in 1916 in the Somme because they thought the mines they triggered off under german lines had been effective enough for the them to literally stroll towards the german first trenches that were now on alert. Most of the mines were partially inefficient. For the brits infantrymen that followed the explosions it was devastating, like it was for the US landing on Omaha after the aerial and naval bombardment. Thus the brits have had on the 1st July 1916 their own "22 August 1914" (deadliest day in french military history)

>1914-1915
>Irrelevant
lmao, yeah I imagine France would have done just fine all on its own up until 1916. Don't be facetious.

>this is what Brits actually believe and are taught in school
WE

France was basically alone until the Somme, tard
Do you think the 50,000 troops of the early BEF mattered on a front where 2 millions French faced 3 millions Germans?

>yeah I imagine France would have done just fine all on its own up until 1916
And yet that's basically what happened. France held the front pretty much on its own until 1916. Up until that point, the number of British soldiers involved into the actual fighting was ridiculously low compared to the French.

If you think there were only 50,000 British troops serving on the Western Front up until the end of 1915 then you're really on something.

>Britain pioneered all the gamechanging stormtrooper tactics
Explain it because i think they didn't. Also you contradict yourself: stormtroopers were first german

>and they were the first to get tanks to be useful

Partially true.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_tank#Operational_use_in_World_War_I
Although the brits first used tanks on a battlefield, it was in no way useful that day. Eternal anglos have forgotten to write on the wiki page that the first battle where tanks were used the proper way was on the 16th April 1917 when the french used 127 tanks. They eventually failed to exploit the breakthrough though. The battle of Cambrai in November 1917 was where the brits finally have properly achieved an efficient breakthrough

jeez