< 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.

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.

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.