![verdun before and after verdun before and after](https://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/WTC-Debrie2138-768x1024.jpg)
Since Joffre was also quite political in some ways (he worked hard to keep the government in the dark about what was going on in the military, what was going on in the war and tried to control war policy, rather than carrying out the policy given to him by the government) and until 1916, the government was surprisingly docile, allowing him to just about run the country (though he was unsuccessful in keeping the government uninformed of the war, mostly because elected delegates were serving in the ranks as soldiers as well as governing the country). It also fatally undermined the Marshall's prestige and he would be dismissed as supreme commander in 1916. While I have no idea why historians have settled on the number, the cost of Joffre's mistake is often given as 100,000 extra French lives over the course of the battle (out of something like half a million French casualties). The subsequent battle - with the Germans shelling the French in the remaining French-held fortresses and the French shelling the Germans in their own captured fortresses - would demonstrate that the fortresses were indeed able to hold out against heavy artillery. In the event, many of the fortresses would be without guns, but while explosives had been placed, the demolition had not happened when the Germans launched the Battle of Verdun, meaning they were able to capture several key forces. However, he made mistakes, among those the order to strip the guns from the fortresses of Verdun and to demolish the fortresses (because of events early in the war in Belgium, he thought that the forts would be unable to hold out against German heavy artillery). Arguably, it is his coolness and adaptability that meant France avoided a defeat like that of 1940 or 1871 during the rapid German advance of 1914. Marshall Joffre (the first Marshall ever created during the Third Republic) was the French supreme commander during the first half of WW1.