Born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, in 1852, Charles Louis Marie Lanrezac was an unusual military personality of the Great War as a general who played one of the most controversial strategic roles. Although he was replaced by Generalissimo Joffre just before the First Battle of the Marne, during his thirty-two days of effective command in August of 1914 he kept the French Army from being annihilated.

Victor Lanrezac was from a creole family from Guadeloupe and the son of an officer who rose up through the ranks. His father, Auguste, had fake ID papers made under the name of Lanrezac, anagram of Cazernal, to remain anonymous, Charles Louis Marie Lanrezac came from a family of the lesser nobility in Toulouse and whose ancestor, Augustin Théreze de Quinquiry d'Olive, from a Tolouse family of the lesser nobility, had had to sell his belongins at a place called "Cazernal" – an erroneous transcription of "du Cabanial” – before emigrating to Hamburg to escape the Reign of Terror. From garrison to garrison, the modest Lanrezac family lived in Cherbourg when, with a scholarship granted by the Prefect of the Manche department, Charles was admitted to the Special Imperial Military School of Saint-Cyr ranking 75th out of 250, after having been kicked out of the Prytanée Militaire de La Flèche in September 1869. Barely one year later, on 14 August 1870, Second Lieutenant Charles Lanrezac took up his first assignment at the 13th Infantry Regiment.

On 20 September, the Second Empire had fallen and the Government of National Defence decided to continue the struggle by raising new armies. This young soldier was assigned to the 15th Army Corps, the future Army of the Loire, commanded first by General de la Motte Rouge and then by General d'Aurelle de Paladines. When the enemy broke through the French positions around Orléans, the army had to evacuate the city starting on 11 October. At the Battle of Coulmiers (9 November), and during the fighting north of Orléans (24 November), Lanrezac demonstrated his great courage and was temporarily promoted to the rank of lieutenant and decorated with the Legion of Honour on the battlefield. In January 1871, his unit joined General Bourbaki’s Army of the East to try to bring relief to Belfort and to take the Prussians from behind in Alsace. The undertaking was in vain. Lieutenant Lanrezac took part in the fighting at Héricourt (15-17 January), stayed with his unit at Besançon to provide cover for the army’s retreat, and just barely avoided internment in Switzerland after the Battle of Larnod on 20 January.

Once the war was over, Lanrezac completed his officer training at Saint-Cyr and joined his new unit, the 30th Infantry Regiment in Annecy. Thus he began a perfectly traditional military career. In 1873, he married Félicie Marie-Louise Dutau, his mother’s cousin from Réunion Island, in Paris. Promoted to captain on 21 February 1876 at the 24th Infantry Regiment, he obtained his military staff certification in 1879 and was named assistant professor of military arts at Saint-Cyr, before joining the occupation brigade staff headquarters in Tunisia at the 113th for five years. His brilliant record and his command skills earned him a place as a professor at the École Supérieure de Guerre and then a promotion to battalion leader through seniority in July 1892.

From 1896 to 1899 he was at the 104th Infantry Regiment in Paris. At the same time, he taught military history, strategy and general tactics at the military school. A hard worker with a colourful personality (which had already led to a few comments) and an exemplary teacher, his classes were quickly met with his students’ enthusiasm and was highly appreciated by the staff. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was appointed assistant director of studies at the École Supérieure de Guerre in 1898. Three years later, he had earned the rank of colonel and was put in command of the 119th Infantry Regiment in Paris, where he "turned out to be as good a corps leader as he was an eminent professor", his superiors noted.

In March 1906, he took on the interim commandment of the 43rd Brigade in Vannes and in May was promoted to Brigadier General. His superiors recognised his worth and he held the position of chief of staff of an army during the mobilisation exercises in the Vosges in 1908. His rise continued in 1909 – in May he became commander in chief of defence of the Reims group, for which he was appointed governor, and he became a member of the Army Staff Technical Committee, a consultative body under the Minister of War, in August. In 1911, he commanded the 20th Infantry Division in Saint-Malo, becoming a major general in March. And soon, at the height of his glory, Lanrezac was noticed by General Lyautey – "when an army has a leader of his value, he should be at the top," he wrote on 13 November 1911 – adding the departments of Finistère, Loire-Inférieure (now Loire-Atlantique), Morbihan and Vendée to his command in 1912. It was on his suggestion that he left his command on 10 April 1914 to join the Supreme War Council. He replaced General Galliéni at the head of the 5th Army on 24 April 1914 and, just before the war, was promoted to the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honour at the age of sixty.

When the war broke out, Lanrezac took command of the 5th Army after a short meeting of the army chiefs of staff that he found disappointing due to General Joffre’s apparent lack of a strategy. Familiar with the German language and press, he presented the generalissimo with a report on 31 July 1914 in which he stressed the importance of the sector of the Meuse; the document received no follow-up. He had 300,000 men under his orders, with 800 cannons, 110,000 horses and 21,000 vehicles. In the first half of August he set up his headquarters at Rethel and concentrated his troops between Vouziers and Aubenton before moving toward the northeast border. On 6 August, he received the order to provide support to the Belgian troops on the Meuse, while the Germans had been in Belgium since 3 August, laying siege to the city of Liège. Lanrezac received authorisation to move one of his units to the north, forward on the river, and managed to push back a German cavalry corps in the Dinant sector on 15 August. This episode led the generalissimo to deploy Lanrezac’s army on the northern border (toward Jeumont and Charleroi) where, with the British under Field Marshal French, the allied armies covered the northern and eastern fronts all the way to Maubeuge. From 21 August, Joffre decided to focus the offensive on the Belgian front and the Ardennes, against the 5th and 6th Armies of the Reich, von Bülow’s 2nd Army and von Kluck’s Army. From 21 to 23 August, the fighting around Charleroi, at Tamines, Roselies and Mons did not go well for the Franco-British forces which, following orders from Army Headquarters, desperately attacked an entrenched, hidden enemy. The French army was threatened with encirclement and therefore with annihilation. On 23 August, Lanrezac decided to totally override the generalissimo’s combat instructions and ordered a retreat, escaping the German armies and confirming his abandonment of the XVII attack plan two days later. This bravado earned him the enmity of the officers in Joffre’s entourage, with the general seeking to go without his services. The same attitude reigned leading up to the Battle of Guise between 26 and 29 August 1914. Before receiving the order to turn the attack to the north to assist the British 2nd Corps which had been taken by surprise at Le Cateau, Lanrezac was given one day to give his army a rest and to prepare his attack. On 29 August, he squared off his troops: the 10th Corps to the north-northwest on the south bank of the Oise, toward Guise, the 3rd and 18th Corps rounded out with reserve troops slipping along the river and coming up to the Germans from the west.

The joint attack backed up by batteries of 75-mm guns surprised the German army staff, which abandoned the Schlieffen plan. Paris was saved. Von Bülow decided not to pursue Field Marshal French and continued on the heels of the 5th Army. The 5th had won a defensive victory, but the German 1st and 2nd Armies still had the initiative and tried to surround Lanrezac and his men, with their flanks unprotected and still in retreat. The French reached the Marne, crossed it and set up their headquarters at Sézanne. At 5 pm on 3 September, Lanrezac was relieved of his command and replaced by General Franchet d'Espérey... Two days later, the First Battle of the Marne began.

There were many reasons for his dismissal: the stubbornness of a leader whose only interest was his troops, his tendency to disobey, his poor relationship with Field Marshal French while the French army staff was doing everything it could to deal carefully with this ally, his implicit recognition of the Germans’ strategic superiority – their action plan (the Schlieffen plan) was mobile and played offense whereas the XVII plan was just a plan for troop concentration, the need to blame someone to explain the “debacle” of the first engagements. Lanrezac later wrote, "In General Joffre’s position, I would have acted just like him; we didn’t have the same way of seeing things, neither from the tactical point of view nor from the strategic point of view; we couldn’t agree... I had decided not to attack the generalissimo, because I had no right to judge his acts on other parts of the battlefield."

Lanrezac was put under the orders of General Galliéni, military governor of Paris, who sent him to Bordeaux where the Government had taken refuge. Starting in the month of October, Lanrezac was entrusted with temporary missions: inspector of the teaching centres for the students at the Saint-Cyr military school in October 1914, inspector of the École Normale Supérieure and the École Forestière in 1915, inspector general of the infantry depots and camps for the 19th and 20th regions in February 1916, etc. At the end of 1916, the Generalissimo was dismissed. The Staff Headquarters and the Government sought to repair the injustice by offering him positions that were worthy of his skills. Lanrezac refused and got General Lyautey to appoint him to the position of inspector of infantry instruction. Pétain, now promoted to Generalissimo, raised him to the dignity of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour on 3 July: "through his military science and his skill at executing one of the most difficult manoeuvres in which he was highly successful and rendered the most eminent services to his country". On 1 August 1917, Charles Lanrezac left active service for health reasons.

Efforts to rehabilitate the general then began. In 1917 and 1918, several articles in "Le Correspondant" by Engerand, MP from the Calvados department, questioned the basis of his dismissal. General de Maud'huy, in an article published in "Le Gaulois" in 1920, wrote that Lanrezac had saved France at Charleroi. General Palat, in his "Histoire de la Grande Guerre", informed the French public of the respect his former adversaries, von Bülow and von Hausen, had for him. In 1922, the disgraced General Lanrezac was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Crown of Belgium with the War Cross with palm for Charleroi. On 29 August 1924, the anniversary of the Battle of Guise, he was awarded with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. This rehabilitated the general’s memory. He was presented with the army insignia on 6 September at Neuilly-sur-Seine by Maréchal Pétain and the Minster of War, General Nollet.

Charles Lanrezac died on 18 January 1925. His tomb at Montmartre cemetery bears the inscription: "A celui qui, en août 1914, sauva la France" (To the man who saved France in August 1914).

In the highest form of rehabilitation and national recognition, General Lanrezac’s remains were transferred to the Invalides in 1933.

Lieutenant Colonel Driant is famous for having died at Verdun, on the 22nd February 1916 at the battle for the bois des Caures. But he had previously followed a literary career, under the pen name Captain Danrit, and a political career as an elected MP for the 3rd constituency of Nancy from 1910. Emile Cyprien Driant was born on the 11th September 1855 in Neuchâtel (Aisne) where his father was a notary and justice of the peace. A pupil at the Reims grammar school, he received the top prize for history in the national competition. Affected by the defeat of 1871 and witnessing the Prussian Troops passing through, Emile wanted to become a soldier, going against his father's wishes for him to succeed him. After receiving an arts and law degree, in 1875 he enrolled at Saint-Cyr at the age of twenty. He left four years later to begin a most worthy military career: "though small, he is sturdy, with unfailing good health, very active and always ready; a strong horse-rider and a very strong interest in equestrianism and very intelligent, he has a great future ahead of him" one of his superiors was to write. He served in the 54th infantry regiment in Compiègne and then in Saint-Mihiel.

Promoted to Lieutenant in 1883 with the 43rd infantry regiment, he was posted to Tunis where General Boulanger, then governor general of Tunisia, appointed him as Ordinance Officer - he gave him the hand of his daughter, Marcelle in marriage. Promoted to Captain in 1886, he followed Boulanger, who was then appointed Minister for War, to Paris. Preferring action to political matters, he returned to Tunisia with the 4th zouaves - the Boulangiste affaire would earn him the mistrust of his entourage and a posting far from Tunis, to Aïn-Dratam on the Algerian border. The Driants returned to Tunis and set up home in Carthage where they moved in the Catholic circle of Cardinal Lavigerie, then Primate of Africa. Driant used this lull in his career to write under the pseudonym of Danrit. Success was forthcoming and novels followed: La guerre de demain, La guerre de forteresse, La guerre en rase campagne, La guerre souterraine, L'invasion noire, Robinsons sous-marins and L'aviateur du Pacifique, etc. Along with Louis Boussenard and Paul d'Ivoi Captain Danrit was one of the main writers of the Journal des voyages. His tales were inspired by the Verne style of adventure novel, but retold through the defeat of Sedan and French colonial expansion. The discovery of the world and its wonders evoked the riches that could be drawn upon and the threats to avoid; the extraordinary machines, that for Verne had allowed travel through the air and across the sea, were now primarily the vehicles of war for destroying the enemy. His work is typical of the colonial adventure novel of the 19th century, more specifically of the way of thinking during the years leading up to the First World War. In his writing, a great deal of time was devoted to the army. It confirmed his admiration for great men and his mistrust of members of parliament. It reflected general public opinion, obsessed with the threat of war. It also followed the daily discussions in the press, ever conscious of international incidents (Fachoda in 1898 and the Moroccan crisis provided the narrative framework for L'Alerte in 1911), and of the risk of unrest that they brought in themselves and of the obsession of the decline of France and Europe. Thus, in L'invasion jaune, it is the avaricious capitalist Americans who allow the Asian countries to arm themselves, by selling them guns and ammunition. He also imagined how current arms could be used in great numbers in a worldwide war: deadly gas, aeroplanes, submarines, the role of each invention is considered using the perspective of a large-scale offensive. Officer and fiction writer merged when he wrote his historical trilogy of educational work aimed at young people: Histoire d'une famille de soldats (Jean Taupin in 1898, Filleuls de Napoléon in 1900 and Petit Marsouin in 1901). Captain Danrit thus wrote close to thirty novels in twenty five years.
Recalled to France, the "soldier's idol" was appointed as an instructor at Saint-Cyr in 1892, basking in the glow of his prestige as a military author and visionary: his writings heralded trench warfare. In December 1898, he was made Head of Battalion in the 69th infantry division in Nancy following a four year return to the 4th zouaves. After a short stay in the city of Nancy, he fulfilled his wish to command a battalion of chasseurs. He took command of the 1st Battalion of Foot Chasseurs stationed in the Beurnonville barracks in Troyes. His determination and bravery led him to risk his life on the 13th January 1901 when he intervened to reason with the deranged Coquard in the suburb of Sainte-Savine. Despite his brilliant service record, Driant's name was not on the list for promotion. Politically engaged in right wing Catholicism, he suffered the counter-blows of the prevailing anticlericalism during the years of the law of separation of the church and state, and found himself implicated in a business involving staff records, where officers were graded according to their religious views. A press campaign accused him of having organised a service at the cathedral in Troyes for the festival of Sidi-Brahim and of trying to compromise his men's freedom of conscience by forcing them to attend the service. Suspended for a fortnight, he requested his retirement and decided to enter politics in order to stand for the Army in Parliament; he was then fifty years old.
Beaten in Pontoise in 1906 by the liberal Ballu, he made the most of his collaboration on L'Eclair, in which he published a number of anti-parliamentary diatribes, to take a trip to Germany. As a result of his observations on the large-scale manoeuvres in Silesia, he published a book with the premonitory title, Vers un nouveau Sedan, whose conclusion was most eloquent: "a war that would set us against Germany tomorrow would be a disastrous war. We would be beaten like in 1870, only more comprehensibly than in 1870". These words that first appeared in seven articles just before the elections of 1910, earned him his election in Nancy opposite the radical Grillon. A regular at the sessions of the Chamber of Deputies, mixing Mun's social Catholicism with the thinking of Vogüé and Lavisse, he intervened to pass the bill for military funding, supported Barthou during the vote on the "Salute Bill" which raised national service to three years and protested against the declassification of border strongholds - he managed to save that of Lille in 1912 -. Pre-war he took a keen interest in the brand new military aviation industry. Driant opposed the arguments of Briand and Jaurès, drawing on examples from events in Russia. The army had to play an essential role, above all as a means of educating the working classes and, where applicable, as a counter-revolutionary tool. That was the concept of the military school and social apostolate, which was in keeping with the camp of Dragomirov, Art Roë and Lyautey. He thus became interested in social struggles, in so far as they could compromise national defence. He supported the independent so-called "yellow" trade-unionism founded by Pierre Biétry with support from the industrialist Gaston Japy. They advocated the association between labour capital and money capital. Driant's bills defended the principle of liberty through individual ownership, by means of the progressive participation of workers in the capital of businesses. During the legislature of 1910-1914, the principal ballots of MP Driant included resolutions such as the ten hour day, pensions, freedom of trades unions and various social aid measures.
When war was declared, he asked to return to service and was assigned to the headquarters of the Governor of Verdun to General Coutenceau's department. He requested and was granted command of the 56th and 59th Battalions of Foot Chasseurs of the 72nd Infantry Division, which was made up of reservists from the North and East, 2,200 men in total. He was in charge in the Argonne and the Woëvre. Tested in the fighting in Gercourt, a village in the Meuse that Driant took back from the Germans, his troops did not take part in the first battle of the Marne but were responsible for defending the Louvemont sector. They took back and strengthened the bois des Caures sector. "Father Driant", knew how to listen to his chasseurs, distributed the finest cigarettes and cigars and attended in person the funerals of his heroes at the Vacherauville cemetery. A member of the Army Commission, he was responsible for the bill that led to the creation of the War Cross in the spring of 1915. It was notably he who announced the imminence of the German offensive on Verdun and the lack of human resources and equipment on the 22nd August in a letter addressed to the President of the Chamber, Paul Deschanel: "we think here that the hammer will strike along a line from Verdun to Nancy... If the Germans are prepared to pay for it, and they have proved that they are capable of sacrificing 50,000 men to take a place, they will get through". Despite a visit by MPs, an inspection by Castelnau in December 1915 and a question posed to Joffre by the Minister for War, Galliéni, nothing was done. Moreover, on the 21st February 1916, whilst the army of the Reich concentrated its action on the Verdun sector, only Driant's 1,200 men and 14 batteries faced the attack by 10,000 soldiers and 40 batteries. The Chasseurs held out heroically for more than 24 hours and sustained heavy losses, allowing reinforcements to arrive and maintain the front line. The position of the bois des Caures, held by Driant and his men, was pounded by 150, 210 and 300 mm canons for two days. On the 22nd February at midday, the Germans launched an assault on the chasseurs' positions. Grenades and flame throwers finally overcame the French resistance. Driant gave the order to retreat to Beaumont. Hit in the temple, Driant died at the age of sixty one.
On the evening of the 22nd February 1916, there were only 110 survivors from the 56th and 59th regiments. The announcement of the disaster gave rise to a great deal of emotion. Alphonse XIII of Spain, an admirer of Emile Driant, asked his ambassador in Berlin to carry out an enquiry into his disappearance. They wanted to believe he had been injured, taken prisoner or escaped abroad. A letter from a German officer who had taken part in the fighting at Caures to his wife, provided by his mother, Baroness Schrotter, put an end to the rumours: "Mr. Driant was buried with great care and respect and his enemy comrades built and decorated a fine grave for him, so that you will find him in peace time" (16th March 1916). His sacrifice was used by the press and war publications to galvanise the troops. The Chamber of Deputies officially announced his death and his funeral eulogy was read on the 7th April by Paul Deschanel and on the 28th June Maurice Barrès' League of Patriots held a formal service at Notre-Dame (Paris) led by cardinal Amette. The military man was thus reunited with the novelist ... He was buried by the Germans close to the spot where he fell, although his personal effects were returned to his widow via Switzerland. In October 1922, Driant's body was exhumed. A mausoleum chosen by ex-servicemen, including Castelnau, has been erected there. Each year a ceremony is held there on the 21st February in memory of colonel Driant and his chasseurs who died defending Verdun.

Jean-Dominique Larrey (Born 8 July 1766: Died Baudéan - 25 July 1842: Lyon)

Dominique Larrey is a key figure in the history of military medicine. Dubbed the “Providence of Soldiers”, he was a surgeon who performed 800 operations at the Battle of Eylau and is credited with creating mobile ambulances.

Born in Baudéan, near Bagnère-sur-Bigorre, in 1766, into a protestant family from the Pyrenees, Dominique Larrey is the figurehead of Napoleonic battlefields. He studied medicine at the Hôpital Lagrave in Toulouse, under the tutelage of his uncle, Alexis Larrey, a correspondent at the Royal Academy of Surgery. He submitted a thesis on bone decay when he was just twenty-three years old and then left for Paris where his uncle had recommended him to Desault, chief surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. He enrolled at the Naval Surgery School in Brest, where he learned the rudiments of early surgery that he was able to apply as chief surgeon on the frigate Vigilante.

In 1791, after passing the highest examinations in his field, he worked at the Hôtel National des Invalides under the protection of Sabatier.

In 1792 he joined the Rhine Army and accompanied it as a doctor on a military campaign in Germany. It was at the Battle of Spire, in September 1792, that he was able to apply the principles of naval surgery. He defied the ban which prohibited medical officers, on land, from being within one league of the battlefield and making them wait for fighting to cease before attending to the injured. 

This gave him the idea to improve the poorly organised health service by creating, in Mayence in 1793, an advanced training course for his colleagues. In the Rhine Army, the surgeon Baron François Percy created light ambulances, small chests on wheels used to transport not only nurses but also collapsible and folding stretchers.

Back in Paris, Larrey, his second in command, came up with the idea of "flying ambulances", horse-drawn carriages used to transport the wounded, which would provide a means to evacuate incapacitated soldiers from the battlefield and operate on them within twenty-four hours. Until then, wounded soldiers were left abandoned on the battlefield for several days, laying amongst the dead, until they were eventually gathered up by peasants.

In 1796, Larrey was appointed as professor of surgery at the recently opened military teaching hospital in Val-de-Grâce. An experienced field surgeon, he took part in campaigns for the Revolution, Consulate and Empire. He also founded a school of surgery in Cairo. 

Surgeon-in-chief to the Consular Guard (1800), general practitioner for the health service, and surgeon-in-chief in Napoleon’s Grande Armée, Larrey travelled across Europe, visiting Germany, Spain and Austria. At the Battle of Eylau (8 February 1807), he performed some 800 operations in three days. Napoleon I offered him his sword and soon appointed him Commander of the Legion of Honour. He was ennobled as a Baron on the field of Wagram (1809).

His experience in amputation saw him save the lives of nearly three-quarters of the soldiers wounded and avoided the spread of tetanus. He continued to accompany troops on the road and battlefields, which earned him the nickname of the "Providence of Soldiers” during the French Invasion of Russia (1812). Emperor Napoleon, who described Larrey as "the most virtuous man I've ever known", bequeathed him 100,000 francs.

In 1813, in Lutzen-Bautzen, Dominique Larrey is credited for practising the first case of forensic medicine.

Injured and imprisoned in Waterloo, on the verge of being shot, he was saved by a Prussian officer, Blücher, whose son he had already treated.

Liberated, he was concerned about his fate under the Restoration, but eventually received confirmation of his title of Baron in 1815. He was a member of the first year of the Academy of Medicine and made a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1829.

Dominique Larrey died in Lyon after returning from an inspection in Algeria, in 1842, aged 76.

< Joséphine Baker in 1948.

Josephine Baker entered the Pantheon on 30 November 2021 at a ceremony presided over by the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The American-born music hall legend who was a member of the French Resistance and an anti-racist activist fought for every cause. The perfect embodiment of the role of women engaged in the struggle led by Free France, she received full honours from her adoptive homeland.

Visit an online exhibition about Josephine Baker on the Musée de la Résistance website

Born on 3 June 1906 to Carrie McDonald and Eddie Carson, Baker grew up in a poor neighbourhood of St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 13, she left home and worked as a waitress. She first started dancing in small dance troupes before joining the Jones Family Band that performed from Washington to St. Louis. She moved to New York at the age of 18 where she performed in various productions including the Folies Bergère and the Revue Nègre.

In 1925, her troupe performed in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The young artiste swiftly won the hearts of Parisian audiences where jazz was all the rage. A cabaret dancer, she performed a dance number named the ‘Danse Sauvage’. A year later, she was headlining revues at the Folies Bergère. She danced there sporting her famous belt of bananas and took to singing too. In 1930, she performed her revue at the Casino de Paris, hers following the show of another legendary music hall artiste, Mistinguett, including the song ‘J’ai deux amours’. In Europe, she notched up success after success: she was named queen of the Paris Colonial Exposition in 1931, starred in films ‘Zouzou’ with Jean Gabin and ‘Princesse Tamtam’, performed at the Casino de Paris in ‘Si j'étais blanche’ and in 1934 put on ‘La Créole’, an operetta by Offenbach.

The following year, Josephine Baker was back in the US where she presented her show to mixed reviews. She returned to France where, in 1937, she married a Frenchman and became a French citizen.

When war was declared, she was still able to perform at the Folies Bergère and the Casino de Paris alongside Maurice Chevalier. Faithful to her adoptive country, Josephine Baker joined the Resistance, working for Free France's intelligence service serving as a sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force. It was Daniel Marouani who suggested to Jacques Abtey, head of the military counter-espionage unit in Paris, to enlist her.   During the phony war (September 1939 to May 1940), Josephine Baker gathered intel on the location of German troops from officials she would meet at parties. At the same time, she performed at the Maginot Line fortification to raise the troops’ morale. However, from summer 1940 onwards, the Maginot Line was breached and, due to the racist laws instated by the government, she was banned from the stage. Scheduled anyway to go on tour around Portugal and South America, accompanied by Abtey, she smuggled intelligence to Portugal written in invisible ink on her music scores. She revived ‘La Créole’ as a means to resume contact with Captain Paul Paillole, chief of the French secret service, in Marseille before rejoining Abtey in Portugal, then a neutral country, and heading over to North Africa. En route for Morocco, she helped Solmsen, a German-born film producer, and her friend Fritz to leave France.

Settling in Marrakesh, she fostered political relations: Moulay Larbi el-Alaoui, the sultan’s cousin, and Si Mohammed Menebhi, his brother-in-law, son of the former Grand Vizier, and Si Thami el-Glaoui, the Pasha of Marrakesh. From 1943 onwards, Josephine Baker was a true ambassador of Free France. In the spring, she went on a long tour of North Africa, Egypt and the Mashriq. For the occasion, she was officially appointed sub-lieutenant of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force. Baker’s resistance activities were made public in 1949 in a book published by Jacques Abtey (La Guerre Secrète de Joséphine Baker) accompanied by a letter from General de Gaulle.

Official recognition was received on 18 August 1961: General Valin awarded her the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre with palm.

Remarried to Jo Bouillon, she was an active defender of civil rights and came to the aid of war victims, hosting a series of charity galas. Her charity work ended up eclipsing her entertainment career from which she retired in 1949. She bought a château in Milandes, in France’s Périgord region, and adopted 12 children.

After ending up in financial strife, she resumed her world tours performing in theatres where cabaret had stopped being such a huge money-earner. Her dogged determination brought her back to the Bobino stage in 1975 for a show that took a look back on her life. The success was short-lived since she died four days after the premier following a short illness.

Sources : Abtey J., 2e Bureau contre Abwehr, Paris, La Table Ronde, 1966 - Abtey J., La Guerre secrète de Josephine Baker, Paris, Siboney, 1949

Bilé S., Noirs dans les camps nazis, Editions du Serpent à Plumes, 2005

For more information:

• A page dedicated to Josephine Baker’s induction into the French Pantheon

Born on the 2nd February 1889 in Mouilleron-en-Pareds, in the Vendée, into an old aristocratic family from French Flanders, Jean-Marie de Lattre de Tassigny received a first class education at Saint Joseph's college in Poitiers.

Military career

From 1898 until 1904 he trained at the naval School and was accepted by Saint-Cyr in 1908. He took classes at the 29th Dragoons in Provins. He was a pupil at Saint-Cyr from 1909 until 1911, in the "Mauritania" class where he came fourth in his year. In 1911 he attended the school of cavalry in Saumur. In 1912 he was posted to the 12th Dragoons in Pont-à-Mousson and then to the front. During the First World War he was captain of the 93rd infantry regiment and ended the war with 4 injuries and 8 commendations. He was then posted to the 49th infantry regiment in Bayonne from 1919 to 1921. In 1921 he was sent to Morocco to the 3rd bureau and to the headquarters for the Taza region until 1926. From 1927 to 1929 he took courses at the French war college with the 49th class. He married Simone de Lamazière in 1927 and they had a son in 1928. In 1929 he became Head of Battalion to the 5th infantry regiment at Coulommiers.

In 1932 he was promoted to the high command of the army and then to that of General Maxime Weygand, Vice-President of the Upper War Council, as Lieutenant Colonel. In 1935 he became Colonel, commanding the 151st infantry regiment at Metz. Between 1937 and 1938 he took courses at the centre of higher military studies and in 1938 became the governor of Strasbourg's Chief of Staff.

Second World War

Promoted to Brigade General on the 23rd March 1939, by the 2nd September 1939 he was Chief of Staff of the 5th army. On the 1st January 1940 he took command of the 14th infantry division, which he commanded during the confrontations with the Wehrmacht at Rethel, where his division held out heroically, as far as Champagne and the Yonne, miraculously maintaining its military cohesion in the middle of all the chaos of the debacle. From July 1940 until September 1941, he was deputy to the Commanding General of the 13th military region at Clermont-Ferrand and then became Division General, commanding troops in Tunisia until the end of 1941. He subsequently commanded the 16th division at Montpellier and was promoted to General of the army corps. When the Free Zone was invaded by German troops, he refused to obey the order not to fight and was arrested. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the State tribunal of the Lyon section. Managing to escape from Riom prison on the 3rd September 1943, he went to London and then on to Algiers, arriving on the 20th December 1943, after promotion to the rank of Army General by General de Gaulle on the 11th November 1943. In December 1943 he commanded the B army, which became the first French army. He landed in Provence on the 16th August 1944, took Toulon and Marseille, headed back up the Rhone valley and then the Rhine, liberating the Alsace, entering Germany and advancing as far as the Danube. He represented France at the signing of the armistice on the 8th May 1945 in Berlin at the headquarters of Marshal Joukov.

After the war

Between December 1945 and March 1947, he was Inspector General and Commander in Chief of the army. In March 1947 he was Inspector General of the army and then Inspector General of the armed forces. From October 1948 until December 1950, he was Commander in Chief of the western European armies at Fontainebleau. He became High Commissioner and Commander in Chief in Indochina and Commander in Chief in the Far East (1950-1952) and established a national Vietnamese army. Exhausted by the strenuous workload to which he had been subjected throughout his career, which had not been helped by the injuries he had received in 1914, deeply affected by the death of his son Bernard, killed during the Indochina campaign and suffering from cancer, he died in Paris on the 11th January 1952, following an operation. He was posthumously promoted to the dignified position of Marshal of France at his funeral on the 15th January 1952. He is buried in his home village of Mouilleron-en-Pareds.

Henri Frenay was born in Lyon on 19 November 1905. His father was an officer, as both of his sons were going to be. Frenay belonged to the generation that celebrated France's victory in 1918 and harboured a fierce hatred for Germany. He attended the Saint-Cyr military academy from 1924 to 1926 before serving in metropolitan France between 1926 and 1929 and in Syria from 1929 to 1933, when he returned to France. In 1935 an event occurred that changed the course of Frenay's life: he met Berty Albrecht, an outstanding woman, a major figure in the feminist movement and a campaigner for human rights. She participated in welcoming Hitler's earliest exiles to France. Through her, Frenay became acquainted with another milieu, woke up to the Nazi threat and came to realise that it was much more than an extreme form of pan-Germanism. That is probably why he decided, after attending the War College, from 1937 to 1938, to study at the Institute of Germanic Studies in Strasbourg, where he could observe the Nazi doctrine up close and see how it was being applied in Germany. Frenay realised that confrontation was inevitable, and that it would be a clash of civilisations that would not be anything like the First World War.

Captain Frenay was assigned to Ingwiller when war broke out. He was captured but managed to escape. He rejected the armistice, and in July 1940 wrote a manifesto that was the first call for armed struggle. In December 1940 he was assigned to Vichy, where he briefly worked in the intelligence department. He resigned from the army in February 1941. Frenay went underground to focus completely on building and organising the Resistance that he had been dreaming of since the summer of 1940. Berty Albrecht came to live with him in Vichy and, later, Lyon. They were inseparable until she died in 1943. Frenay organised the earliest recruitments of people who, like him, rejected the armistice. He printed communiqués and, later, underground newspapers (Les Petites Ailes and Vérités) that showed a certain amount of trust in Pétain and a belief that Vichy might have been playing a double game. At the same time, he met Jean Moulin, who gathered information from him about the Resistance and reported it to de Gaulle in London. Then Frenay founded the National Liberation Movement (MLN) and, with help from Berty Albrecht, started putting out a newspaper called Vérités in September 1941. In November, he met the academic François de Menthon, who was head of the Liberté movement, which printed a newspaper with the same name. The MLN and Liberté merged, creating the Combat movement and an eponymous newspaper. It quickly became the occupied zone's biggest and best-organised movement. By 1942, the Vichy police was looking for Frenay. In the summer, 100,000 copies of Combat were printed. That swift growth occurred without any help from the French in London, whom Frenay view with much wariness. Combat did not declare its loyalty to de Gaulle and condemn Pétain's policies until March 1942. On the 1st of October, Frenay was in London to sign his allegiance to de Gaulle. Combat was able to grow and to finance its leadership with funds supplied by Jean Moulin.

Frenay was convinced that the Resistance had to have training in armed struggle and organised the secret army's first cells in the summer of 1942. In 1943, the United Resistance Movement (MUR), which brought together the southern zone's main movements - Combat, Libération and Franc-Tireur - was created under the impetus of Jean Moulin. Frenay was on the MUR executive board. However, the two men clashed with each other. Frenay's independence was strengthened by a legitimacy that owed nothing to no-one, and he chafed at London's financial and political control as well as the increasing bureaucratisation of the homeland Resistance. He created the biggest structured movement - the Secret Army - and the NAP (infiltration of the government) and favoured the MUR's creation, but opposed the reconstitution of political parties, which Moulin wanted to include on the National Resistance Council. For the sake of independence, he also criticised the idea of separating the political and the military. In addition, he was against the idea of a national uprising. General de Gaulle asked Frenay to join the French National Liberation Committee in Algiers. He became commissioner - in other words, minister - of prisoners, deportees and refugees, continuing to hold that post when the government moved to Paris after the Liberation. In that capacity he managed the huge problems posed by the return of French citizens scattered throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Twenty thousand came home in March 1945, 313,000 in April, 900,000 in May and 276,000 in June. In July, Minister Frenay considered the repatriation over. In November 1945, Frenay started a movement to create what was going to become the Fighting France Memorial at Mont Valérien before resigning from his post.

Frenay's deep disappointment at seeing the old political parties return to domestic squabbling prompted him to embrace the cause of European federalism. In his articles for Combat, Frenay wrote about his dream of a Europe reconciled with itself and with Germany. As president of the European Union of Federalists created in 1946, he did his utmost to convince governments to abandon the framework of the Nation-State, create a single European currency and build a European army. When General de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, Frenay realised that the dream was over. He completely dropped out of public life to write his Resistance memoirs. That very beautiful book, La Nuit (Night), finally came out in 1973. At the time of its publication, Frenay thought he discovered the underlying reasons for his rivalry with Jean Moulin. Until his death in 1988, guided more by resentment than by the quest for truth, he took every opportunity to accuse Moulin of being a "crypto-communist" who would have betrayed de Gaulle and the Resistance. That questionable combat was one too many. The collective memory will not forgive him for it.

Sentenced to death by the Germans in 1916 for espionage, the distribution of clandestine press and participation in the extraction of soldiers, Gabrielle Petit, “Gaby”, is an iconic figure in the history of the contribution of Belgian women during the First World War.

Gabrielle Aline Eugénie Marie Petit was born to working class parents in Tournai, Belgium. She was raised in a Catholic boarding school from the age of five following her mother's death. Gabrielle and her sister Hélène were placed with the Dames du Sacré Coeur, in Mons, abandoned by their father. The young girls were then collected by a cousin who sent them to live with the Soeurs de l’Enfant Jésus in Brugelette, where the two young girls finally found the intellectual and emotional fulfilment required. At 17, Gabrielle was ordered by her father to return home. The difficult living arrangement came to end after several months. The young women decided to move to Brussels where Hélène found work as a governess for a Mrs. Butin.

At the outbreak of war, Gabrielle Petit was 21 years old. She was engaged to a professional soldier, Maurice Gobert, who she’d met two years earlier. He was injured in Hofstade (near Liège). Captured by the Germans, he escaped and rejoined Gaby who then reached the front by joining the Red Cross in Molenbeeck-Saint-Jean. The couple, cut off from the Belgian army, were forced to hide in their attempt to cross the Dutch border.

When she returned to Belgium, she enlisted with the intelligence services. She was trained in England, in July 1915, and quickly made a name as an active spy. Now called Mrs. Legrand, she worked in the Ypres sector in Maubeuge, living among enemy troops, assuming many false identities, collecting information on the movements of German troops, strategic points, armament conditions and the rail network on behalf of the Allies. She was also responsible for distributing a clandestine newspaper (La Libre Belgique), assisted an underground mail service to captive soldiers and helping soldiers imprisoned behind German lines cross the Dutch border.

However, in autumn 1915 the German counter-espionage services stepped up their operations. Gabrielle Petit, who had already raised suspicions several months earlier, was placed under surveillance. She managed to escape from her pursuers a first time through the narrow streets of Molenbeek. Arrested in Hasselt, she escaped from the hostel where she was being detained. The vice tightened in December. The German secret services arrested and replaced the mailman in her network by a Dutch traitor who delivered the messages to the Kommandantur for over a month. Trusting no-one, Gaby left absolutely no clue that would allow anyone to identify the members of her team.

She was arrested on 20 January 1916 by police officer Goldschmidt and secretly detained for five days at the Kommandantur. Neither her interrogator nor a destructive search of her apartment unearthed any proof. The prisoner was then transferred to Saint-Gilles Prison in Brussels on 2 February. There, resisting harsh interrogations and conditions at the prison, she proved the innocence of the family of her landlady, Mrs Collet, and put in place a system for imprisoners to receive supplies and communications. She refused to betray her fellow agents despite offers of amnesty.

Gabrielle Petit was sentenced to death on 3 March 1916. On 8 March her sister made a plea for clemency, written by Mr. Marin, director of the Saint-Gilles Prison and backed by the Apolistic Nunciature and Legation of Spain, to the Kommandatur which refused to repeal its decision. On 1 April, the sentence was carried out by the firing squad in Schaarbeek. Her body is buried there at the execution field. Her story not attracting the notoriety of Louise de Brettignies or Edith Cavell, her execution remained unknown to the public until 1919 when she received her just honours at a national ceremony presided over by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, Cardinal Mercier and the Prime Minister Delacroix. On 27 May, her body was exhumed and displayed for two days in the Salle des Pas-Perdus of the municipal hall before being buried in the cemetery in the town of Schaarbeek. 

A statue was dedicated to her in Brussels and a square named after her in Tournai.

Edgar Faure was born in Béziers on 18 August 1908. His father was an army doctor, so the family moved often and Faure grew up all over France. He attended middle schools in Verdun and Narbonne and Janson de Sailly and Voltaire high schools in Paris, graduating at the age of 15. His inquiring mind led him to take an interest in many different things: he earned a law degree and graduated from the School of Eastern Languages with a diploma in Russian. When Faure was admitted to the Paris bar in 1929, he was the youngest lawyer in France. His passion for politics led to a brief flirtation with Action Française before he joined the radical-socialist movement. At the same time, Faure wrote and published several detective novels under the pen name Edgar Sanday. In 1931 he married Lucie Meyer, who founded the review La Nef with Raymond Aron.

In 1942, fearing the Vichy regime's exclusionary measures, Faure joined Louis Joxe and Pierre Mendès-France in Algiers, where he headed the legislative services of the presidency of the French Committee for National Liberation and, later, served as deputy secretary-general of the Provisional Government in Algiers in June and July 1944. Back in Paris after the Liberation, he worked with Pierre Mendès-France at the economy ministry. Faure resigned from that post to replace Paul Coste-Floret as the French counsel for the prosecution at the 1945 Nuremberg trials. Faure launched his political career in October 1945. He was the radical-socialist deputy of the Jura from 1946 to 1958, deputy of the Doubs from 1967 to 1980 and senator for the Doubs from 1981 until his death in 1988, president of the National Assembly from 1973 to 1978, Franche-Comté regional council president from 1974 to 1981 and from 1982 to 1988, Jura general council president from 1949 to 1967, mayor of Port-Lesney (Jura) from 1947 to 1970 and from 1983 to 1988, mayor of Pontarlier from 1971 to 1977, senator from the Jura, between 1959 and 1966, and chairman of the Franche-Comté and Territoire de Belfort Economic Expansion Committee in 1951 and of the Franche-Comté Regional Economic Development Committee from 1964 to 1973. At the same time, Faure wrote books, taught at Dijon Law School and held many ministerial posts. He was a two-time prime minister (1952, 1955-1956), minister of finances (1949-1951, 1953, 1958), justice (1951), foreign affairs (1955), agriculture (1966-1968), national education (1968-1969) and social affairs (1972-1973). He was also a representative at the Assembly of European Communities from 1979 to 1984.

Five points sum up Faure's action in government: reforming the economy, balancing the budget, building Europe, strengthening France's diplomatic standing in the world and conducting French colonial policy in North Africa. In budget matters, Faure wrote a draft resolution asking the government to foresee the possibility of having the Bank of France float bonds (15 January 1948), as well to balance the budget by attaching the Mayer economic recovery plan to the 1950 budget. In 1952, during his first term as prime minister, he formed a government, which the press dubbed "Ali Baba and the 40 thieves", that reformed nationalised companies, and had a law passed on 28 February 1952 setting up the sliding wage scale before resigning the next day when the Assembly refused to raise taxes. As Prime Minister Laniel's finance and economic affairs minister, on 4 February 1954 he put forward an 18-month expansion plan. In March 1955, during his second term as prime minister, Faure obtained special economic powers to deal with the Poujadists' protest movement.

In 1952 Faure campaigned for the European Defence Community (EDC) and managed to stay in the government despite the Assembly's objections to his ideas on France and Europe. In 1954 he ended France's war in Indochina and, although the EDC project had been dropped, promoted the idea, in Messina, of a European atomic community. As the world split up into two blocs, he wanted France to pursue an independent foreign policy and established diplomatic relations with the USSR and China. The issue of North Africa permeated Faure's terms as head of government and brought out his ambiguities and contradictions. In 1952, he stepped up France's military presence in Tunisia to quell the unrest there while at the same time talking about "internal autonomy". Then, he appointed François Mitterrand, a minister without portfolio, to propose a reform plan, which the French colonists rejected. In May 1955, Faure partially settled the conflict in North Africa by negotiating the Franco-Tunisian conventions, which granted Tunisia internal autonomy and freed Habib Bourguiba. In the same vein, after the Aix-les-Bains conference he formed a Council of the Throne in Morocco chaired by Mohammed V, who had returned from exile in November 1955. However, it was also under his leadership that the Algerian conflict degenerated. When the massacres in Constantine on 21 August 1955 sharpened the hostility between the communities, Faure responded by sending more troops and declaring a state of emergency. On 8 June 1978, Faure was elected to André François-Poncet's seat in the French Academy, where the Duke of Castries received him on 25 January 1979. He owed his election not to his long years of government service, but to his culture and Republican tradition. Faure wrote several books, including Pascal, le procès des Provinciales (Pascal, the Trial of the Provincials, 1931), Le Serpent et la Tortue (The Snake and the Turtle, 1957), La politique française du pétrole (French Oil Policy, 1961), La disgrâce de Turgot (Turgot's Disgrace, 1961), Pour un nouveau contrat social (For a New Social Contract, 1973), La banqueroute de Law (Law's Bankruptcy, 1977) and Mémoires (Memoirs, 1983-1984). As a man with a vision of history, after the Assembly of the provisional government passed law no. 46-936 on 7 May 1946, he proposed a bill (20 April 1948) to make 8 May a national holiday to commemorate the victory over Nazism in 1945 in order to fulfil the wishes of veterans' and deportees' organisations. As national education minister after the events of May 1968, he responded to student demands with the "Faure Law" on the orientation or higher education. The text, which appeared in the Journal Officiel on 13 November 1968, instituted the State's participation in universities.

Emile Antoine Bourdelle was born in Montauban on 30 October 1861 to Antoine Bourdelle, a cabinet-maker who would introduce him to working with materials at the age of thirteen, and a mother who would teach him the essential values of a simple and rustic lifestyle. The fauna statuette he created that adorns a mill caught the attention of two local personalities, Hyppolite Lacaze and Emile Pouvillon, who encouraged him to enrol in the course offered by the municipal art school then directed by Achille Bouis. In 1876, Bourdelle was granted a scholarship to study at the Beaux-Arts de Toulouse. He used the solitude of his years as a student to complete his first masterpieces: Les Trois Têtes d'Enfants, the portrait of Achille Bouis and the portrait of Emile Pouvillon. In 1884 he went to Paris, where he began working at the Falguière workshop at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1884, he set himself up in a modest workshop in Impasse du Maine. In 1885, the young sculptor sent the La Première Victoire d'Hannibal to the Salon des Artistes Français, for which he received a merit. Exhausted, the sculptor was hospitalised. After a period of convalescence in Montauban, Bourdelle, convinced of the futility of the teaching and prize he had been given, distanced himself from the Ecole before leaving in 1886, the year he created L'Amour Agonise.

In 1888, a recurring theme would appear in Bourdelle's work: the portrait of Beethoven. In 1891, the sculptor would exhibit his work at the exhibition of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts for the first time. Bourdelle would again find new masters, who rather would be companions for him: he visited the workshop of Dalou, in Impasse du Maine, and in 1893 would form a collaboration with Rodin at the Falguière workshop. In 1897, the city of Montauban commissioned him to create the Monument to the Defenders of 1870. In 1900, he founded with Rodin the Institut Rodin, a free school for training in sculpture. During this period he created among his growing list of requests Les Nuées, a relief to be placed on the stage of the Musée Grévin. Works such as Le Ménage Bourdelle, L'Ouragan and M. et Mme Bourdelle Par Temps d'Orage, bore witness to a particularly tumultuous domestic life. His circle of close friends consisted of Félicien Champsaur, Marie Bermond, Jean Moréas, Elie Faure and even Jules Dalou. 1902 was the year the artist became known to the wider public, when he inaugurated the monument to the dead of Montauban. In 1905, Bourdelle held his first exhibition at the gallery of the foundry owner Hébrard. That year, he exhibited a Pallas in marble at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He made a number of overseas trips which bore witness to the interest he had created outside his own country. In 1907, he visited Berlin and Geneva, while in 1908 he visited Poland as a member of a panel of judges for the erection of a monument to Chopin.

It was at this time that the sculptor began to mature, and he and Rodin went their separate ways. He began to teach in 1909, giving courses at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where his understudies included Giacometti and Germaine Richier. These years were also the most intense for the master in terms of production: in one night, he completed models for the façade of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées while at the same time working on the Dying Centaur, the Statue de Carpeaux and the monument to Auguste Quercy. In 1910, Bourdel completed his masterpiece: the Archer Heracles. This work was displayed at the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, with the Bust de Rodin. A year later, Bourdelle unveiled the plaster cast of Pénélope and completed the maquette of the monument to Mickiewicz. In 1913, the site of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées was completed. With its low-reliefs and friezes of subjects inspired by mythology, Bourdelle realised his ideal of structural art, an art form in which decor is subject to the laws of architecture. His research into the monumental continued with the order for the monument to Alvear, the most important he had ever received, followed in 1919 by those for the monuments of Montceau-les-Mines and Vierge for the offering to the hill of Niederbrück. Prior to his death, Bourdelle would create numerous other models but would not have time to complete these monuments (monuments to Daumier, Marshall Foch, etc.).

1914 was notable for success at the Venice Biennial and the presentation of the Dying Centaur to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. His success was soon confirmed: in 1919, the sculptor was appointed Officer of the Legion of Honour. His circle of acquaintances also began to feature new faces, such as André Suarès, Anatole France, Krishnamurti and Henri Bergson.

While continuing to exhibit at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, in 1920 Bourdelle established the Tuileries exhibition with Besnard and Perret. He exhibited the Naissance d'Aphrodite at the Tuileries exhibition, then at the International Decorative Arts Exhibition (Sapho, Masque de Bourdelle) in 1925, in Japan and the United States. The bronze statue of the Dying Centaur was shown at the Tuileries exhibition. The last years of Bourdelle's life were marked by his experimentation with polychromy. In 1926, he made his first polychrome sculpture models, the Reine de Saba and the Jeune Fille de la Roche-Posay. While La France was put on display at the Tuileries exhibition, the monument to Alvear was inaugurated in Buenos Aires. A year before his death, Bourdelle was triumphant: the first Bourdelle retrospective was proposed for the inauguration of the Palais des Beaux-Arts of Brussels (141 sculptures and 78 paintings and drawings). On 28 April 1929, the monument to Mickiewicz was inaugurated in the Place de l'Alma. Bourdelle died in Vésinet on October 1 at the home of his friend, the foundry owner Rudier.

Emile Bourdelle's talent has helped perpetuate numerous memorial sites: - in Montauban, Bourdelle fashioned the Monument aux Combattants et Défenseurs du Tarn-et-Garonne 1870-1871 and the Monument à la Mémoire des Combattants de 1914-1918; - the Victoire du Droit, at the Assemblée Nationale ; - the Archer Heracles at the Temple du Sport in Toulouse; - the Monument de la Pointe de Grave, to commemorate the entry of the United States in World War I in 1917 ; - the Monument aux Morts at the school of Saint-Cyr (Coëtquidan), a bronze initially erected in 1935 in Algiers; - the mould that was initially used in the creation of the bronze of the Monument des Forces Françaises Libres; - the Figures Hurlantes of the Monument de Capoulet-Junac (Ariège) ; - the stele of Trôo (Eure-et-Loir) ; - the monument of Montceau-les-Mines (Saône-et-Loire), one of the faces of which was named "Le Retour du Soldat".

A son of the provincial bourgeoisie, Jean Jaurès graduated first from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de la Rue d'Ulm in 1878 and received the third-highest mark in the examination for the recruitment of philosophy teachers in 1881. He then taught at Albi, before returning to Toulouse in 1882 to assume his role as senior lecturer in the faculty of arts. In 1885, he was elected the Republican member of parliament for Castres. It was defeat at the elections held four years later that led him to run for office in in the Toulouse municipal elections, this time as a socialist.

Opportunism

Jaurès was not always a socialist, less still a Marxist. When the Republic was permamently founded after a decade of equivocation about the regime (the Second Empire collapsed in 1870 and the Republic was proclaimed but the divided monarchists dominated the Chamber of Deputies), Jaurès was only twenty years old. He became involved in politics in 1885, becoming the MP for Tarn at 25. Thus, he was the spirtual heir to Jules Ferry and sat among the «opportunists», or socially moderate Republicans. He found the radicals of Clemenceau too restless and the Socialists violent and dangerous to the Republican order under construction.

He was not particularly interested in the fate of the working class, and put his by now mythical eloquence at the service of the first social laws of the regime (freedom for trade unions, protection of union representatives, the creation of workers' pension funds, etc.). A son of 1789, he believed in institutional and Republican reformism, in the alliance of workers and the bourgeoisie for the triumph of liberty, equality and fraternity. In 1889, the Republicans won the general election but lost the seat of Carmaux (Tarn). Baron Reille and the marquis of Solages (who were elected members of parliament for Castres-Mazamet and Carmaux, respectively), the owners of mines in Carmaux, used every means at their disposal and applied as much pressure as possible to defeat the Republican, who advocated state control over companies. He was a lecturer in Toulouse and defended 2 theses before running in the municipal elections (1890).

The great Carmaux strike

Jaurès was removed from the political life of the nation when the great Carmaux miners' strike began in 1892. The mayor-elect, Calvignac, a former miner, trade unionist and socialist, was dismissed by the marquis of Solages for failing to attend several meetings in order to fulfil his obligations as the elected leader of the municipal government. The workers went on strike to support the mayor, of whom they were proud. The French government sent in 1500 soldiers from the Army in the name of «freedom to work»; the Republic seemed to be taking the side of monarchist employers against the legitimate defence of the universal suffrage of the people of Carmaux. In France, this was another Panama Scandal. Jaurès would no longer support this Republic, which was showing its true colours, with its capitalist members of parliament and ministers for whom finance and industry took precedence over respect for the laws of the Republic. He engaged with the miners of Carmaux, from whom he learnt about class struggle and socialism. Having begun as a bourgeois intellectual and social Republican, he emerged from the Carmaux strike an apostle of socialism. Under pressure from Jaurès, the government ruled in the Solages-Calvignac dispute in favour of Calvignac. Solages resigned from parliament, while naturally Jaurès was appointed by the workers of the mine to represent them in the Chamber of Deputies. He was elected despite the votes of constituents in rural parts of the constituency, who did not want «sharers». From then on, Jaurès would engage in the ongoing and resolute defence of workers. In Albi, he was the inspiration for the famous workers' glass factory. In the wine-growing area of Languedoc, he would visit the «free winegrowers of Maraussan» who created the first cooperative cellar.

The Dreyfus affair

He also fought for the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus. At the time he opposed orthodox Marxists, including their leader, Jules Guesde, for whom Dreyfus was a bourgeois officer and therefore guilty. For Jaurès, the despondency at the misfortune and injustice suffered by Dreyfus removed class differences; Dreyfus was no longer a privileged member of society or exploiter, but a man who had suffered unfairly. He founded the newspaper L'Humanité in 1904 and in 1905, was one of the major protagonists in the fondation of the SFIO, which unified the various socialist parties in France.

Pacifism

Jaurès' pacifist position shortly before World War I made him very unpopular among nationalists, and he was assassinated at the Café du Croissant on rue Montmartre in Paris three days before the commencement of hostilities. The assassinatation achieved its objective, in that it allowed the left to rally together, including many socialists who had been hesitant, to the «Sacred Union». At the beginning of the «Great War», and in response to the massacre resulting from it, many French villages named roads and places in his honour, as a reminder that he was the fiercest opponent of such a conflict. A station on the Paris underground rail network also bears his name. The song by Jacques Brel, Jaurès (1977), recalls the point at which the politician became a mythical figure for the working classes. The French Socialist Party has paid tribute to him through its political foundation, the Fondation Jean-Jaurès. After four years and eight months in custody, his assassin, Raoul Villain, was acquitted on 29 March 1919.

Some quotes

«Courage is looking for and telling the truth, not living by the law of the triumphant lie and echoing unintelligent applause and fanatical booing.» (1903)

«I have never disassociated the Republic from the ideas of social justice, without which socialism is nothing more than words».(1887)

«A little internationalism distances one from one's country; a lot reduces it». [list]«Capitalism brings with it war just as clouds bring with them storms»

Jean Errard was a Protestant from Bar-le-Duc. After studying mathematics and geometry, he received training from Italian engineers at the service of the Duke of Lorraine, Charles III, where he was taken on in 1580. In 1583, the Duke gave him money to publish books (notably Le premier livre des instruments mathématiques mécaniques – First Book of Mechanical Mathematical Instruments). When his protector joined up with the Catholic League, Errard had to leave Lorraine in 1584 and took refuge in the Calvinist principality of Sedan, in the service of the La Marcks, Dukes of Bouillon, where he received the title of engineer of the Prince of Sedan. He continued work on the bastioned urban enclosure and then, in 1587, left for Jametz, as Sedan had decided to fortify the location’s defences. At the end of 1587, Charles III of Lorraine’s troops laid siege to Sedan, which capitulated on 24 July 1589. Jean Errard then took refuge there.

Errard made a reputation for himself with his long defence of Jametz (six months). The newly crowned King Henri IV heard of his exploits and called him into his service. He accompanied the sovereign on various campaigns to win back his kingdom, leading siege operations, building bastions and installing new fortifications.

He became a fortification engineer in Picardy and Île-de-France. Henri IV put him in charge of rehabilitating the defences at most of the fortresses. The King gave him the title of First Engineer, admitted him to the Royal Council and ennobled him in 1599. He built the citadels of Amiens and Verdun, modified the fortresses at Doullens in the Somme, Montreuil in the Pas-de-Calais, in Sedan and in Sisteron, where the front and side of the bastion form a right angle.

Jean Errard was the first to apply the principle of bastioned fortifications in France and to lay out their principles. His work earned him the title of "father of French fortifications”. His strategic thought was shaped by geometry: Errard used it to explain all the processes enabling him to lay out different polygons, whether regular or irregular, needed to fortify a site.

A major rule in his theoretical work lies in the fact that the defence of a site should depend more on infantry than on artillery, whose firepower at the time was not effective head-on.

His system comprised bastions, with room for two hundred infantrymen shooting head-on, and measuring some 70 metres wide. They had 30-metre-wide artillery batteries on each side – the principle behind his freestanding fortifications inspired Vauban.

His plans called for covert ways to defend the glacis (notion of "defilade"), as well as ravelins between the bastions to protect the curtain wall doors (notion of "flanking"). The main disadvantage of this defence system is that it presents bastions whose excessively sharp angular layout does not provide a full guarantee of safety for the besieged occupants.

Errard’s theoretical principles inspired the work of engineer Jean Sarrazin, Chevalier Deville (1595-1656), who refined the notion of flanking and divided up the covert ways, and Blaise Pagan (1607-1667), who inspired Vauban, promotor of the ravelin (evolved from of the barbican), for whom the bastion is the result of the broken, winding layout of the enclosure.

As an engineer, Jean Errard worked on hydraulic questions. In 1594, he designed a system for transforming the energy produced by a waterwheel using a shaft, eliminating the problems related to the ebb current. In 1600 he drew up plans for a chain control system for water pumps, later used by Arnold Deville.

Errard wrote “Premier Livre des instruments mathématiques et mécaniques”, released in Nancy in 1583, and “La Géométrie et pratique générale d'icelle” (Paris, 1594). He was also one of the first translators of Euclid and published “Les neufs premiers livres des Eléments d'Euclide traduits et commentez” in Paris in 1604 and 1605.

His greatest work is “La fortification démonstrée et réduicte en art”, whose first edition came out in Paris with a royal grant in 1600. The treatise’s success led to a second edition in 1604 and German editors released copies in Frankfurt in 1604, 1617 and 1622, as well as in Oppenheim in 1616 and 1617. His nephew, Alexis Errard, then undertook to reorganise the original edition based on his uncle’s notes and published a third edition in Paris in 1620.

Louise, the "Joan of Arc of the North", was the daughter of Julienne Mabille de Ponchevillle and Henri de Bettignies, an old Walloon noble family from Hainaut which established imperial and royal earthenware manufacturing in Tournai in the XVIII century. Her great-grandfather, Louis-Maximilien, opened a china shop at the "Moulin des Loups" in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux. Due to financial difficulties, Henri de Bettignies sold the business shortly before his daughter was born. Despite being penniless, the young girl was taught the values and given the education of her peers. She completed her secondary education in Valenciennes, finding in education an escape from her poverty and the death of her father in 1903. Following in the footsteps of her priest and sister, she then went to Carmel before using her intellectual abilities to become a housekeeper to English and German families, so as to learn their languages and discover Europe. In 1914, German troops invaded the north of France. In October, Louise, together with her sister, participated in the defence of Béthune, providing the besieged with fresh supplies.

During a visit to Saint-Omer in February 1915, the young woman was contacted by a French officer from the 2nd Bureau, who suggested to her that she serve her country as an intelligence agent. This proposition was again put to her shortly thereafter, but on behalf of the British intelligence service, by Major Kirke. After receiving the consent of her spiritual adviser, father Boulengé, who nicknamed her "Joan of Arc of the North", she put in place, in the Lille sector, and under the guidance of the duke of Charost, the bishop of Lille, the foundations for the future "Service Alice" or "Service Ramble". Travelling through Belgium and the Netherlands, the now Alice Dubois passed on information to Great Britain. From the spring of 1915, she was assisted in her duties by Roubaisienne Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte, alias Charlotte Lameron. Ms Vanhoutte, who had worked on the installation of ambulances since August 1914, used her status to procure information. She used her trips to Bouchaute-Gand-Roubaix, where she would pass on news to families of soldiers and deliver mail, to inform the English of troop movements and strategic locations. The Alice network had eighty people, and was so effective that information was collected and transmitted within twenty-four hours. It consisted of two divisions. The first kept an eye on the Belgian border and the movements of German troops. As such, it was made up of observers and couriers placed at strategic locations: level crossing-keepers, station masters and local members of the Resistance, such as Mr. Sion and Mr. Lenfant, the police commissioner of Tourcoing. The second division was made up of people who lived in the region of Lille, Frelingues, Hellemmes, Santes and Mouscron who could justify frequent movement to the occupying authorities. These people, who included Comboin a.k.a. José Biernan, Madeleine Basteins, Mrs. Semichon, Mrs. Paul Bernard, Mrs. de Vaugirard, Victor Viaene and Alphonse Verstapen, provided information on sensitive areas (artillery battery areas, storage areas, TSF posts, etc.) and occasionally served as couriers. The team was complemented by a chemical laboratory provided by Mr. and Mrs. Geyter which was used to reproduce maps, plans and photographs. Information gleaned was retranscribed on thin sheets of Japanese paper and transported to the Netherlands mainly by Louise de Bettignies and Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte, mainly on foot, between Gand and Bruxelles, then Beerse.

From May 1915, Alice Dubois worked sporadically with the 2nd Bureau of Commander Walner under the pseudonym Pauline. Through her actions, the Allies were able to wipe out two thousand pieces of artillery at the battles of Carency and Loos-en-Gohelle. In the summer of 1915, a new information network was put in place in the sector of Cambrai-Valenciennes, Saint-Quentin and Mézières. In autumn 1915, it provided information on preparations for an attack on Verdun. After creation and administration, Louise de Bettignies had to withstand a counter-offensive by the German intelligence services. Moreover, Alice and Charlotte felt they were being followed. After a meeting at Lion Belge (Brussels), Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte was arrested at the boarding house of the Adriatiques on 24 September 1915 and incarcerated at Saint-Gilles prison. The circumstances surrounding her arrest are vague. At first, Charlotte was asked, at the insistence of Messrs Lenfant and Sion, to return to Brussles to deliver a letter. She then missed the planned rendez-vous, but became aware of two postcards addressed to her at the boarding house. One was from Alice while the other, from a person called Alexandre, contained a message which read as follows: "Come as soon as possible, tonight or tommorow, around 8h to Lion Belge. Paper in hand; it is about Alice". The German police follow her, without success, in the streets of Brussels and ask her to identify Louise de Bettignies from a photograph. Louise, at that time in England, returned to France to direct operations.

She was arrested in Tournai on 20 October, as she attempted to cross the Franco-Belgian border using false identification documents. Her driver, Georges de Saever, suffered a similar fate. The German authorities then organised a confrontation and search and the Geyter residence. On the ground, British intelligence services, dependent on the information collected by the Alice network, continued their activities in the organisation of "La Dame Blanche", which was led by the Tendel women. Louise was reunited with her friend at Saint-Gilles prison from 26 October, where they communicated by tapping on the pipes. The sentence was handed down by judge Goldschmidt. During six months of questioning, Louise de Bettignies never wavered: "like a fox in its hole, she never showed signs of faltering, saying little and denying everything". Unable to establish with certainty the relationship between Louise de Bettignies and Alice Dubois, the Germans used stratagems to collect numerous pieces of information to support their case. It was in this way that Louise Letellier, a "compatriot" also apparently subject to questioning, ended up obtaining a confession from Louise de Bettignies and five letters. With the first phase of his plan complete, judge Goldschmidt used the information contained in the letters to try to convince Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte to betray her companion, but in vain. On 16 March 1916, the German war council based in Brussels, which included General Von Bissing and war advisor Stoëber, sentenced Louise de Bettignies to death for espionage without being able to prove that she was the head of the network. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, probably due to the notoriety of the de Bettignies family. Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte and Georges, initially sentenced to death, were given fifteen years' forced labour for treason during wartime by aiding espionage. This revision of the ruling was probably the result of the statement made by Louise de Bettignies to the judges hearing her case - the only time she spoke in German during the whole case - in which she acknowledged her role and sought mercy for her companions. From April 1916 onwards, the condemned prisoners served their sentences at Siebourg prison, near Cologne. On 20 April, Marshall Joffre granted Louise de Bettignies a mention in dispatches. At the end of January 1917, Louise de Bettignies was imprisoned for refusing to produce arms for the German army and having instigated an uprising by her fellow prisoners. Louise de Bettignies died on 17 September 1918 as a result of a complications during an operation on a pleural abscess. She was buried at Bocklemünd cemetery in Westfriedhof. Her body was rapatriated on 21 February 1920 on a gun carriage. On 16 March 1920, the Allies organised a tribute in Lille in which "Joan of Arc of the North" was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour, the Croix de Guerre 14-18 With Palm medal, the British military decoration for oustanding bravery and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Louise de Bettignies, a.k.a. Alice Dubois, is buried at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux cemetery. On 11 November 1927, on the initiative of Marshall Foch and General Weygand, a statue was inaugurated in Lille on Boulevard Carnot. In Notre-Dame de Lorette, a display cabinet houses the cross on the tombstone that marked the grave of Louise de Bettignies at Cologne cemetery, as well as the mention in dispatches.

Edith Cavell was born in 1865 in England. She was the daughter of an Anglican pastor. She studied first in Brussels then in Switzerland, and finally in Dresdes and Aix-la-Chapelle where she learnt German techniques in medicine and hygiene. Returning to England in 1895, she worked first as a governess, before obtaining her nursing qualification at the 'London Hospital' before returning in 1906 to work at the Institute of Surgery and directing the Berkendael medical institute in Brussels. In 1914, the Red Cross built a hospital in her establishment, which rapidly became a refuge for French, Belgian and English soldiers wishing to rejoin the front by passing through the Netherlands. Miss Cavell thus became an important link in this ?escape network? from the north of France to Holland via Belgium.

Her group's activity intensified with the retreat towards the Marne of the French and English forces. Wounded soldiers remained stranded in the field hospitals of Northern France and the Ardennes, whilst others lost contact with their units. The soldiers who managed to avoid attracting the attention of the German forces were taken care of by princess Marie de Croÿ at the château de Bellignies, before being taken to Edith Cavell from whom they received clothing and forged documents before rejoining their armies. This continued from November 1914 to July 1915, enabling two hundred people to escape the German occupied zone.

Eventually the ring was denounced and the sixty-six members of the underground network were arrested during the summer of 1915. The French spy Gaston Quien was accused of denouncing the network, but he was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Edith Cavell was arrested on the 15th of July, attempting to smuggle allied prisoners over the Dutch border, and she was incarcerated in Saint-Gilles prison. During her interrogation, she did not deny the facts: "I considered it my duty to do this for my country", she said; an attitude which would lead to her being accused of being a traitor and held responsible for the collapse of the Belgian intelligence service. Edith Cavell was imprisoned in solitary confinement. The German authorities pretended to yield to diplomatic pressure and allowed the lawyer Sadie Kirsten to defend her, however they did not allow him to speak to her or consult her case notes. The court hearing for the spying ring took place on the 7th September to the 8th October 1915, under the authority of general Ströbel. The case was highly publicised and was designed to serve as an example. The death penalty for conspiring with the enemy was therefore called for. On the 11th October 1915, Edith Cavell, the countess Jeanne de Belleville and Louise Thuliez, a schoolteacher, were condemned to death. The American legation secretary attempted to obtain a pardon for Edith Cavell, but his efforts were in vain. The sentence was carried out on the 12th October 1915, at seven O'clock in the morning.

Her co-conspirators were sentenced to forced labour for life. This execution provoked a storm of protest in England and the United States, just after the Lusitania had been torpedoed. Anti-German propaganda begun to circulate and volunteers started to sign up. After the war, on the 7th May 1919, the remains of Edith Cavell were repatriated to England. A ceremony was held in Westminster abbey. A column was erected in Trafalgar Square (London), near to the National Gallery in memory of this trans-national heroine. A bas-relief, destroyed in 1940, was also dedicated to her in the Museum of Jeu de Paume (Paris).

Born on the 28th September 1841 in Mouilleron-en-Pareds (Vendée), Georges Clémenceau, after a typical Vendeen childhood, followed in his father's footsteps to become a doctor, studying first in Nantes then in Paris in 1865. He had already begun to show a fledgling interest in politics in the Latin Quarter. At 24, he became a doctor of medicine and subsequently left for the United States to study the American Constitution. He stayed there for five years where he married. On returning to France, he participated in the Parisian uprising against the imperial regime. Elected mayor of Montmartre at thirty years old, followed by a post as deputy for the Seine region, he also held office as a Parisian city councillor, as president of the city council in 1875, and as deputy of the Var region in 1880.

The Tiger

Clémenceau, who was head of the extreme radical left from 1876, violently opposed the colonial politics of Jules Ferry and was responsible for the fall of several governments, hence his nickname of ?Tiger?. Defeated in the elections of 1893, he subsequently returned to his first love, writing, and in particular, journalism. He worked on various newspapers including the Aurore in which he was responsible for publishing the article ?J'accuse? written by Emile Zola in favour of Dreyfus.

Elected senator of the Var region in 1902, he was to become Minister for Interior Affairs followed by President of the City Council from 1906 to 1909. He created the Ministry for Work and passed laws on weekly rest days, the 10-hour working day(!), worker retirement?he also harshly repressed strike action, however. When he was voted out of office, he joined the opposition and founded a new newspaper: ''The Free Man'' which became ''The Chained Man'' in 1914 due to censorship.

The father of victory

On the 20th November 1917, Poincaré appointed him as President of the City Council once again. He took some unpopular measures, however he made himself popular by fighting in the trenches, cane in hand (at 76 years old!). He completely trusted Foch's judgement, against the advice of his deputies. After the Armistice, acting as Chairman of the Peace Conference, he showed himself to be unmoveable with Germany. He was never completely satisfied with the treaty however, finding fault within it. Clémenceau ran as candidate for the President of the Republic in 1920, but was beaten by Deschanel. He then retired to his little fisherman's house in Saint Vincent sur Jard in the Vendée, where he continued to write, voicing his dismay at the rearmament of Germany. He passed away on the 24th November 1929, at his home in rue Franklin in Paris.

(Turin, 10 August 1810-Turin, 6 June 1861)

Cavour, a liberal-minded Piedmontese political leader, was an architect of closer Franco-Italian ties and negotiated the Treaty of Turin, which attached Nice and Savoy to France on 24 March 1860. Camillo Benso, Count Cavour, descended from an old Catholic Piedmontese noble family on his father's side; his mother was a Swiss Calvinist. He started his career as an army corps of engineers officer, but his liberal opinions led him to resign in 1835 and he spent the next 20 years on his estate in Levi, turning his interest to his century's innovations: agricultural techniques, machines, the railroad and credit institutions. He founded the Agrarian Association in 1842 and published a study on railroads in Italy in 1846. Cavour's travels enabled him to hone his knowledge of politics and of the French language. In 1847 he founded the newspaper Il Risorgimento, where he campaigned to establish a constitutional monarchy.

In 1848, Cavour was elected to Piedmont's parliament as a conservative but anticlerical deputy and held various positions in the government, including minister of agriculture in 1850 and of finance in 1851. That is when he became a leading figure in Piedmont's politics. Cavour campaigned to expand Piedmont at Austria's expense. After Austria defeated Italy in the war of 1849 (Treaty of Milan, August 1849), he concluded that it was necessary to seek outside help to achieve Italian unity under Piedmont's authority. The count thought that Napoleon III's France would be the most reliable ally. He took advantage of the seat that the belligerent powers offered him at the April 1856 Congress of Paris after the Crimean War (a military rather than political and strategic presence) to raise the Italian issue and test the ambitions of French foreign policy. Cavour worked on bringing about closer economic and cultural ties between the two sides. One result of his efforts was that work on the Mont-Cenis tunnel began in 1857. Meanwhile, he was preparing for war against Austria, in particular by turning Alexandria into a fortress and creating the maritime arsenal in La Spezia.

Cavour was Italy's envoy at a seven-hour meeting with Napoleon III in Plombières in July 1858, when he negotiated the details of the Franco-Piedmontese alliance, including the conclusion of a military front against Austria (confirmed in January 1859), the creation of a confederated Italian state, Italy's handover of Nice and Savoy, and Prince Jerome Bonaparte's marriage to the daughter of Victor Emmanuel II, the king of Piedmont. He was personally involved in Italy's march towards freedom from the Austrian yoke and resigned from the Piedmontese parliament in July 1859 after the Franco-Austrian armistice of Villafranca. Victor Emmanuel II won the war and pursued his goal of unifying the peninsula by annexing the insurgent states of central Italy. Cavour was asked to join the government in January 1860, when he was put in charge of negotiating French ratification in return for the handover of Nice and Savoy by referendum (Treaty of Turin, 24 March 1860).

Cavour and Victor Emmanuel II backed Garibaldi's march on Rome in secret because of their concern for how France and Austria would react. After the Roman and Sardinian troops were crushed, the count established Piedmont's laws and administrative systems throughout Italy. On 14 March 1861 he witnessed his work's crowning achievement when Italy's first parliament elected Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont the king of Italy.

Clément Ader was the only son of François Ader, a carpenter. He had an inquisitive, inventive mind and took an interest in bird flight at a very young age. After the baccalaureate, he studied at the Institut Assiot in Toulouse, graduating in 1860. Ader joined the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Midi de la France railroad company in 1862 and worked there until 1866, when he started filing his first patents, in particular for the "rubber bicycle" in 1868. After 1873, Ader focused more of his attention more to aviation, building models, making many plans many drawings and trying to resolve the problems of manned flight: wing load, the propeller's effectiveness, etc. Meanwhile, he filed a patent for an invention that improved the telephone and invented the theatre-phone in 1881, enabling him to amass a comfortable fortune.

From 1885 to 1890, Ader worked on his prototype, Eole, a "winged device for aerial navigation called the Avion", which he patented on 19 April 1890 and experimented on 9 October of the same year on the grounds of the de Gretz-Armainvilliers château: the flight was 50 meters long. Ader continued his work in secret, improving the engine's performances. His goal was to build another aircraft, Avion 2, for which he signed a contract with the army. But high costs combined with military spending cuts in 1894 forced him to give up on the project.

Ader was able to finance his third prototype, Avion 3, which he finished in 1897 and tested in Satory on 12 and 14 October 1897; this time, the aircraft flew a distance of 300 meters. In 1902, however, Ader abandoned his aviation work because the army had withdrawn funding and he was unable to meet the costs alone. He retired to his Muret estate in 1905. The next year, when Santos Dumont took off in an aeroplane in Bagatelle, the French press hailed him as "the first Frenchman to fly", prompting Ader to leave retirement and bring his work to the public's attention. He published La première étape de l'aviation militaire (The First Step in Military Aviation) in 1907 and L'aviation militaire (Military Aviation) in 1909, in which he expounded his views on aircraft's role in future wars. His work's value and importance were recognised late in life, when he was named a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1922.

Vincent Auriol was one of the most important figures in contemporary French history. a Socialist movement leader, negotiator at the reparations conference with Germany in 1918, fierce foe of the Vichy regime and one of the Fourth Republic's "founding fathers". Vincent Jules Auriol was born into a farm family in Revel (Haute-Garonne). He earned the baccalaureate in Latin and Greek in 1902 and a law degree in 1905, the same year that he joined the socialist federation of Haute-Garonne. Then he earned a doctorate in political science and became a member of the Toulouse bar. He wrote for the newspaper La Dépêche du Midi, founded Le Midi Socialiste with Albert Bedouce, minister of parliament and mayor of Toulouse, and maintained a steady correspondence with Jean Jaurès and Jules Guesde. In June 1912 he married Michelle Accouturier and the couple had two children: Paul (1918-1992), who organised the Tarn Resistance, and Jacqueline (1912-2000), who in 1952 broke the world jet-plane speed record.

From May 1914 to May 1936, Auriol was the Socialist representative of the town of Muret at the National Assembly, where he specialised in economic and financial issues. From 1914 he was a member of the definitive accounts committee. During the peace conference after the First World War, Auriol advocated limiting Germany's debt and reparations to war-torn areas and cancelling all interallied debts. In December 1920, he was among the 12 Socialist members of parliament who followed Léon Blum and refused to join the Communist International. Auriol was elected mayor of Muret in May 1925, joined the finance committee, which he chaired from June 1924 to July 1926, and became general councillor of the Haute-Garonne for Carbonne canton three years later. His parliamentary activity included many bills and continuous opposition to the financial policies of the Poincaré, Herriot, Daladier, Doumergue, Tardieu and Laval governments.

In June 1936 Auriol joined Léon Blum's government as finance minister. He reformed monetary policy by devaluating the Poincaré franc and creating the floating franc. In 1937 he became justice minister in the Chautemps cabinet and, the following year, participated in the second Blum cabinet as minister without portfolio as the prime minister's chief of staff. After Germany defeated France in 1940, Auriol refused to vote for the delegation of full powers to Marshal Pétain on 10 July. Because of his opposition he was imprisoned in Pellevoisin and, later, Vals-les-bains, with Paul Raynaud, Georges Mandel and Marcel Dassault. Auriol was placed under house arrest in Muret between 1941 and 1942, joined the Resistance and reached Free France in Algiers in October 1943, when he became a member of the provisional consultative assembly at its first meeting. His wife, who had taken refuge in Lyon, helped to decipher coded messages from Allied headquarters. After the Liberation, Auriol represented France at the Bretton Woods conference because of his skills and position as chairman of the Constituent Assembly's foreign affairs committee. On 21 October 1945, Auriol was voted back into parliament as the representative of the Haute-Garonne. Later, he became mayor of Muret and general councillor again. He chaired the Socialists' parliamentary group and in November General de Gaulle asked him to join his cabinet as minister without portfolio in charge of relations wit the Assembly.

As chairman of the Constituent Assembly in January 1946, Auriol presided over the return of the National Assembly and the foundation of the Fourth Republic, which elected him as its head. He became president of the French Union on 16 January 1947. When Auriol's term ended in December 1953, he went back to local and family life. He travelled, wrote his memoirs and published two books, Hier, demain, le Journal du septennat (Yesterday, Tomorrow, the Journal of My Seven-Year Term) and Dix années d'administration socialiste (Ten Years of Socialist Administration). At a congress in Austria in December 1954, he was elected honorary president of the World Federation of Resistance Veterans and Medal Holders. He campaigned for General de Gaulle's return to power in May 1958 and became a member of the Constitutional Council in March 1959. Auriol was in total opposition with the secretary-general of the Socialist Party and resigned in February 1959. As an eminence grise of the Republic, he continued to participate in public life, above party quarrels. For his political and military commitment, Vincent Auriol received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and Grand Cross of the national orders of the 32 foreign states, the Rosette of the Resistance, the Cross of the Voluntary Resistance Fighter and honorary doctorate degrees from the universities of Columbia (New York), Laval (Québec), Oxford and Rio de Janeiro. Vincent Auriol died in Paris on 1st January 1966 in the aftermath of a broken hip suffered on his property in Labourdette.

Born in Argentina in 1900 to French parents, he moved to France following their accidental death. Already passionate about art and poetry, he went on to study at the Ecole Germain Pilon and later at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, in the Atelier Cormon. In the 1930s he moved to the Montparnasse district in Paris where he formed friendships with artists and writers such as Pierre-Albert Birot, André Derain, Jean Follain, Marie Laurencin and André Salmon. A realist painter of the French school, he painted and photographed figures, landscapes and still lifes.

The artist was particularly prolific during his five years in captivity in Stalag VII A in Moosburg, Bavaria. Sick and suffering from severe depression, he met the young sculptor Volti who helped him survive. In 1943, Volti returned to France with some of Alfred Gaspart’s drawings. That same year, his studio was bombed, destroying most of his artwork, but Gaspart's was saved and served as a testament to the panful years endured in the camps. In October 1944, under the pseudonym Timour, Alfred Gaspart was awarded first prize at the Concours de la Captivité organised by the YMCA in Geneva. Liberated in 1945, he became a recluse and never showed his work in public again despite persistent pleas from his friends and family and France’s National Federation of Prisoners of War. He continued to work away from the public eye. He died alone in 1993. The work accomplished by the artist is composed of 1,840 pieces (all techniques and sizes combined). The artworks are accompanied by diary entries (293 double-sided pages) that are a glimpse into how Alfred Gaspart lived, thought and suffered during his years in captivity. Correspondence between him and his sister Paule, his muse and his confidant, also provide a window into his life.

Margaretha Geertruida ZELLE was the only daughter of Adam Zelle and Antje van der Meulen. Her father, a rich milliner, lavished her with attention. The little girl, often mistaken for a Eurasian because of her dark skin, showed an early flair for invention and drama. The family "cocoon" was shattered in January 1889 when the Zelle Company went bankrupt. The family moved, Adam Zelle abandoned his children, and the couple separated on the 4th September 1890. The death of Mrs Zelle eight months later dispersed the siblings.

In November 1892, Margaretha began primary teacher training college in Leiden, where she was dismissed for having an affair with the headmaster. She then went to live with an uncle in La Hague. In March 1895 she replied to a classified advert posted by the captain of a royal army warship in the Indies: "Officer recently returned from the Indies seeks affectionate young woman for marriage". The officer, nineteen years her senior, was called Rodolphe MacLeod, alias John. He represented the father figure she had never had. They were married on the 11th July. On the 30th January 1897, whilst living in Amsterdam with one of Rodolphe's sisters, the pair had their first child, Norman John.
At the beginning of May 1897, the family left for Toempong (west of Java), in the Dutch Indies, where officer MacLeod was to take up his posting. The couple had a daughter there; Jeanne Louise nicknamed "Non". The young woman took an interest in Balinese dancing, and adopted the pseudonym of Mata Hari "Eye of the day" (name for the sun in Indonesian). Married life abroad was however proving difficult. Margaretha, intoxicated by the colonies, abandoned her family. The couple separated on grounds of adultery. Their son then died of poisoning. In 1900, after twenty-eight years of service, Rodolphe MacLeod left the army. In March 1902, the MacLeods returned to the Netherlands, and divorced five months later. In spite of the judgement made, Rodolphe refused his monthly visiting rights, and stole the child away from her mother's care.

In 1903, aged 26, the Dutchwoman went to Paris. Finding herself without employment, she returned to the Netherlands for a few months before embarking upon a career as an exotic dancer in the eternal city, in the character of a Javanese princess named "Lady MacLeod". She started working in the drawing room of Madame Kiréesky, then went on to other private drawing rooms, working under her Javanese pseudonym of "Mata Hari", finally finding herself invited by Mr Guimet, owner of a private theatre. Her performance on the evening of the 13th May 1905 as a totally naked Indian princess marked the start of her society life. She performed a variation of a "Hindu dance" in honour of the goddess Shiva, together with other artists. The show was a success and the actors were invited to perform before the great figures of the era: on the 18th August 1905 at the Paris Olympia, in January 1906 in Madrid; in Monte Carlo she played in the Roi de Lahore by Jules Massenet (1842-1912); in Berlin, the Hague, Vienna and Cairo. Her artistic talents were nevertheless fairly limited. Mata Hari was very probably the inventor of a type of choreography much-loved in the cabarets and by those for whom exoticism is synonymous with lasciviousness, and was more renowned for this than for performing Indian dances. Interviewed by journalists, the performer gave way to the actress: she liked to introduce her mother as an Indian princess, raised her father to the status of baron and added "I was born in Java, in the midst of tropical vegetation, and, since my earliest childhood, priests initiated me into the deep significance of these dances which form a real religion." This did not prevent her in 1907 however, from being outshined by other exotic dancers such as Colette, who was herself to be replaced by the Russian ballets soon after. Mata Hari, seeing her fame diminish, ended up moving in society circles, collecting benefactors, always on the lookout for new lovers.

When war was declared, Margaretha Zelle lived in Berlin with a former lover, Alfred Kiepert, a hussar, anxious to perform in the Metropolis. Her language skills made it possible for her to return to the Netherlands then to set up in Paris where, living at the Grand Hotel, she continued to make a living from her looks and charms. At the beginning of 1916, during a trip to Germany (Cologne, Frankfurt), Mata Hari, in debt due to her lavish lifestyle, was contacted by Cramer, a German Consul in The Hague. He offered to settle her debts, to give her 20,000 crowns in exchange for information on France. This is how she came to be agent H 21. Back in Paris in July, she entered into contacts with allied officers, and fell in love with a Russian army captain. When he was wounded, he was sent for treatment in Vittel. Mata Hari then began scheming to get the authorisation to go to his bedside. She entered into a relationship with captain Ladoux, officer of the French counterespionage. In exchange for this favour and a million francs (never paid), he offered her a mission to spy on the Kronprinz, one of her ex-lovers. The Frenchman distrusted her however: he had her followed throughout the whole mission. Her work complete, Mata Hari was then sent to Belgium in August, followed in November by Spain, the centre of the secret war, with no money or detailed instructions. The British secret services, thinking that they were dealing with the spy Klara Benedix, placed her under arrest at the port of Falmouth as she was travelling back to Holland in order to reach Germany, before subjecting her to hard interrogation. Captain Ladoux telegraphed his counterpart, Sir Basil Thomson, in order to clear up the confusion about her identity.

Once freed, Mata Hari returned to Madrid on 11th December 1916 for three weeks. She made contact with the military attaché of the German embassy, Arnold von Kalle, and provided the French services with a list of agents, a procedure written in invisible ink and a the name of a place of arrival in Morocco - this "harvest" of information was in fact to benefit the head of communications, Denvignes, who took credit for the work. In the meantime the British secret services intercepted and deciphered the telegrams sent by the German attaché in Berlin. They had mixed up the identities of agent H 21 and Mata Hari (due to a lack of vigilance on the part of the lieutenant von Kroon), thus supposedly proving that she was a double agent. One of the messages, concerning the accession to the Greek throne of the heir prince Georges mentions that "agent H-21 proved very useful". Another version of events claims that von Kalle, suspicious of Mata Hari, himself prompted the inquiry by sending these radio messages to Berlin in a code that could easily be deciphered by the Allies. Mata Hari returned to her lover in Paris in January 1917, in the hope of a reward and a new mission... She was arrested on 13th February at the hôtel Élysée Palace by Captain Bouchardon, the examining magistrate, "accused of spying and complicit intelligence with the enemy, in the aim of furthering their enterprises".

She was held in the women's prison of Saint-Lazarre. For four months, subjected to fourteen interrogations (from 23rd February to 21st June), Bouchardon ended up by concluding that she was H 21 - she denied having had relations with the head of German intelligence in Madrid, even if she admitted having received money from the German consul Cramer in the context of his society life. Carried away by his overriding chauvinism, Bouchardon did not take the services rendered by the accused into account - indeed, he disbelieved her: "feline, slippery, artificial, without scruples, without pity, she was a born spy", he wrote in his memoirs. The hearing, held in camera, started on the 24th July 1917, in front of the 3rd military council at the High Court in Paris. The Court was presided over by the lieutenant-colonel Somprou and the government commissioner, lieutenant Mornet - who was to declare several years after the hearing: "it was no big deal." Her lawyer, Master Clunet, a former lover, was a reputed expert in international law.

Besides Jules Cambon, Vadim Maslov, and the diplomat Henri de Marguérie who swore never having broached the subject of the military in her presence and guaranteed her integrity, none of her former lovers agreed to stand witness in her favour. The trial, as the interrogation, made no distinction between her society life, judged to be immoral, her suspicious cosmopolitanism, and her intelligence activities. They merely reflected French and Allied public opinion which was calling for guilty verdicts for all the deaths, mutinees and other war crimes. Meanwhile the press, maintaining the idea of an enemy plot in their reports, only served to further fuel the witchhunt for collaborators from both sides. Margueritte Francillard was the first French national shot for spying on the 10th January 1917. Mlle Dufays met the same end in March of the same year. The Mata Hari affair, in part due to the character's ambiguous behaviour, was just one more occasion to strengthen national unity - the British archives even show that she never gave the Germans any crucial information (Léon Schirmann).

At the end of the trial, the court found her guilty of collaboration with the enemy and sentenced her to death by firing squad - other women were also tried and sentenced for spying during the last years of the war: Augustine Josèphe, Susy Depsy, Régina Diano, etc. On the morning of the 15th October 1917, at 6h15, her pardon having been rejected by the President of the Republic Raymond Poincaré, Margaretha Zelle, who had recently converted to Protestantism, was driven by armoured car to the Vincennes firing range where soldiers and onlookers awaited her. Mata Hari refused to have her eyes covered. A cavalry officer delivered eleven bullets, the final one fatal: "her death reasserted the authority of a country bled dry by the bloody war of which the futility was becoming apparent" (J.M. Loubier). Her unclaimed body was donated to the medico-legal institute for research.

Son of François Queuille and Marie Masson de Saint-Félix, Henri was born into a bourgeois family in the provinces.

When his father, a chemist, died in 1895, the Queuilles moved to Tulle where the teenager attended the lycée starting in 1896. The young graduate studied medicine in Paris, where he made friends with Maurice Bedel and Georges Duhamel, before moving back to his home town in 1908. In 1910, he married Margueritte Gratadour de Sarrazin, with whom he had two children – Suzanne and Pierre. He rapidly rose in politics: member of the town council in 1912, mayor and general councillor of the Corrèze department the following year, and member of Parliament in 1914.

During the First World War, his service as a doctor with various ambulances on the Eastern Front earned him the Croix de Guerre 14-18.

A moderate member of the Radical Party, he entered the government of Alexandre Millerand in July 1920 as Undersecretary for Agriculture. Recognised by his peers, he held many ministerial portfolios (Agriculture, Health, Post, Public Works, Supplies), being appointed minister nineteen times between 1920 and 1940. He was the main driving force behind French agricultural policy between the wars (creation of rural engineering, creation and organisation of agricultural education, technical development of the countryside, etc.); he notably presided over the Fédération Nationale de la Mutualité et de la Coopération Agricole (National Federation of Reciprocity and Agricultural Cooperation).

He nationalised the railways and created the SNCF (French National Railway Company), and headed the Office National des Mutilés, Combattants, Victimes de Guerre et Pupilles de la Nation (1937). In 1939 he published Le Drame agricole: un aspect de la crise économique.

A staunch supporter of the Republic who worked with the Socialists, he became close with Edouard Herriot, but refused to vote to hand over full powers to Maréchal Philippe Pétain on 10 July 1940. He was then removed from his functions as mayor of Neuvic. His son Pierre’s membership in the Resistance made his contacts with Free France easier. Hettier de Boislambert convinced him to leave for the United Kingdom.

He reached London in April-May 1943, along with Astier de la Vigerie, Daniel Mayer and Jean-Pierre Levy, despite his distrust of de Gaulle. In May, he sent out a call to the French peasantry over the BBC, and was then appointed President of the landing commission in charge of developing the measures to be taken upon the Liberation of France. Two months later, the Vichy government issued a decree stripping Henri Queuille of his French nationality and his mandate as Senator. In August, he left for Algiers, where de Gaulle, bringing together the political parties, brought him into the Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN - French Committee of National Liberation) in November 1943. Queuille asked to be relieved of his functions in September 1944, when the government moved to Paris, to return to his political career. He was elected mayor in October 1945, then member of Parliament in the legislative elections of 1946.

The war memoirs written by this recipient of the Médaille de la Résistance were published in Journal 1939/1945.

Loyal to Edouard Herriot, he headed the government of the 4^th Republic between July 1948 and June 1954. He was President of the Council (Premier) three times, curbing social unrest, the rise of Gaullism and government instability, applying a policy people called “immobilism”; he did not hesitate when it came to using force (October-November 1948) and postponing elections. But this policy enabled the Republic to survive.

His foreign policy activities led to the signature of a Franco-Vietnamese agreement in March 1949, practically recognising the colony’s independence, made France a member of the Atlantic Alliance and implemented the Marshall Plan the following month.

Defeated in the legislative elections of 1958, Henri Queuille returned to life in local politics. He transformed his town into a leisure resort, set up an agricultural high school and a technical school. Pursuing work on his memoirs that he had started in 1944, he gathered archives, documents, eye-witness accounts and objects from the Second World War and the Resistance, thus comprising the main collection of the Museum that bears his name.