The infantrymen, subjected to atrocious conditions in the trenches, were exhausted after three years of a war that was supposed to be brief but whose end was nowhere in sight. Sporadic mutinies occurred – particularly among the French poilus – when ordinary soldiers became fed up with the military strategy of continual waves of useless attacks resulting in massacres. These acts of rebellion, quickly put down by the army commanders, were also inspired by revolutionary ideas of the Socialist International spread through the ranks by Russian soldiers, whose country, under Bolshevik control since the February Revolution, was beginning to withdraw from the conflict.
