Marshal of France (Versailles, 13th February 1811 - Madrid, 23rd September 1888)

François Achille Bazaine was the son of Pierre Dominique and Marie Madeleine Josèphe, known as Mélanie Vasseur. He enlisted in the army in 1831, following his failure in the competition for entry to the Ecole Polytechnique. He served in the Foreign legion in Algeria and then, from 1835 to 1838, fought in Spain against the Carlists, before returning to Algeria where he was in charge of the district of Tlemcen. He became Colonel of the Legion in 1850. Bazaine distinguished himself during the Crimean War. His bravery earned him promotion to the rank of Division General. He commanded French troops during the Kinburln expedition in 1859, was wounded at Melgrano, and had a sizeable role in the Battle of Solferino, for which he would be promoted to the dignity of the Grand Cross of the Légion d'Honneur. A member of the contingent of legionnaires in Mexico from 1862 to 1867, he seized Puebla in 1863 and ended up replacing General Foyer at the head of the expeditionary corps. He forced the Mexican President, Benito Juárez, into exile. In recognition for his skills as commander, he rose to Marshal in 1864.

Widowed by the suicide of his wife, in 1865 he remarried a Mexican lady from a rich family close to the deposed president, who encouraged him to plot against Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg. Faced with American intervention, the French expeditionary corps was forced to withdraw; Bazaine would remain with his men until the evacuation to Vera Cruz was complete in 1867. Although on his return to France he was out of favour with Napoleon III, in 1869 his great popularity secured him the command of the Imperial Guard and in 1870 that of the third Army of the Rhine. The superiority in numbers of the German army, which was better equipped and trained, quickly overcame the Imperial Army. Following the defeat at Spicheren, Bazaine decided to maintain a strategic position. His colonial experience was, however, ineffectual. Indecisive and anxious, the Marshal let himself become surrounded in Metz (18th August) by Constantin von Alvensleben, who launched two corps of troops in an attack on the area, lasting two days. The requested reinforcements were slow to arrive. Torn between his duty to obey his hierarchy and constantly at variance with decisions linked to a power in which he no longer believed, and going along with the force that had come to "liberate France from herself", Bazaine decided to wait for Marshal Mac-Mahon's army from Châlons. Learning of the surrender of Napoleon III at Sedan (2nd September), he tried to act as mediator for France, wasting time in pursuit of this goal negotiating with Empress Eugénie, before finally being forced into an unconditional surrender on the 27th October 1870. The Germans took some 140,000 men prisoner from the Army of the Rhine.

In 1873, following the investigation of his case by Séré de Rivière, he was tried by a war council presided over by the Duke of Aumale, given a dishonourable discharge and sentenced to death. Pardoned by Mac-Mahon, who was then President of the Republic, he was sent to prison for twenty years on the island of Sainte-Marguerite, from where he escaped on the night of the 9th to 10th August 1874. He then went to Spain and settled in Madrid where he earned the respect of the government of Allfonse XII. He made the most of the last years of his life writing Épisodes de la guerre de 1870 et blocus de Metz (Events from the war of 1870 and the siege of Metz) (1883), a work justifying his standpoint.

King of Sardinia then of Italy (Turin, 14 March 1820 - Rome, 9 January 1878)

Victor Emmanuel's life mirrors developments in the Italian Peninsula through most of the 19th century. He was the son of Charles Albert and of Queen Theresa, the daughter of the Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany. Italy's two most prominent families, in other words, bequeathed him their combined influence. His marriage to Maria Adelaide of Austria bears witness to the weight that the Hapsburgs of Vienna had had since the days of Charles Quint. This alliance served him well when his father abdicated in his favour on 23 March 1849, while the war with Austria was raging. Victor Emmanuel was constrained to sign the Treaty of Milan on 6 August 1849, but remained true to his father's promises and to the dynasty's plans to build a unified and free Italian state. He preserved the Piedmont's constitutional status (the Proclamation of Moncalieri) in defiance of Austria's demands - even if doing so entailed consenting to Imperial troops occupying part of that region. He championed freedom, and was nicknamed the re galatuomo (gentleman king). He chose his advisors wisely. He appointed one of them, the Count of Cavour, Prime Minister in 1852.

His foreign-policy agenda involved cementing Italy's identity and its presence in the concert of nations. Sending General La Marmora to Crimea in 1855 earned Italy a seat in the Congress of Paris. The July 1858 interview at Plombières between the Count of Cavour and Napoleon III, and the ensuing January 1859 military agreement, earned him an ally in his ongoing conflict with Vienna and ushered in a new dynasty (Clotilde married Napoleon III's first cousin, prince Jerome). Victor Emmanuel excelled in Palestro (one of the 1859 war battles), won the battle of Solferino, entered Milan as a liberator and went on to unify Italy's armed forces in spite of Napoleon's defection (he had signed an armistice with Austria in Villafranca by then). Sardinian troops annexed Parma, Modena and the Romagnas in 1860. In exchange, Victor Emmanuel agreed to hand over Nice and Savoy to France in the 24 March 1860 Treaty of Turin.

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies fell to Garibaldi's "Thousand" expedition, which the Piedmont government secretly endorsed. Italy was unified from a military standpoint, and the Italian Senate acknowledged Victor Emmanuel as that country's king by 129 votes for and 2 against shortly thereafter.

He thus became Italy's constitutional king on 14 March 1861. His policy was one of moderation: he cooled the ardour of Garibaldi's partisans, moved to ease tension with the Holy See, and backed Cavour's work on the economic and diplomatic front. Napoleon III's mediation at the October 1865 Biarritz Interview allowed him to form an alliance with Bismarck's Prussia in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War. He then incorporated Venetia as a result of the Prague and Vienna treaties. The defeat of France - a difficult ally - in 1870 opened up an opportunity to occupy Rome that year, and to enter it on 2 July 1871. He spent his last years on the throne consolidating Italy and - especially - cementing the territory. That led him to conduct an "offensive" border occupation and control policy. Hostility to France's Third Republic materialised in the Alps, with the fortification of Tende in response to the Séré de Rivières system.

Pierre Marie Philippe Aristide Denfert-Rochereau was born on 11 January 1823 to a Protestant family from Jarnac in Saint-Maxent, in the department of Deux-Sèvres. After failing on his first attempt, he finally gained admission to the École Polytechnique in 1842 and opted for a career in the military in 1845, by his own admission due to his mediocre performance. Graduating first from the Ecole d'Application de l'Artillerie and Génie de Metz, the young lieutenant joined the 2nd regiment of the engineering division in Montpellier in 1847. Denfert-Rochereau participated in the conquest of Rome in 1849 before being promoted to captain and playing a role in the Crimean War, in particular in the siege of Sevastopol in 1855, where he was shot and wounded in his left leg. Repatriated to France, he taught fortification at the Ecole d'Application de Metz for five years before travelling to Algeria, where he supervised the construction of barracks, bridges and barrages.

Now a lieutenant-colonel, Denfert-Rochereau received the order from the engineer of Belfort. The officer set about developing the defences of the city, of which he would become governor in October 1870. Located south of Alsace, Belfort was an administrative centre of the administrative division, the sub-prefecture of the department of Haut-Rhin, while France was at war with the German armed forces allied with Prussia since July. From 3 November 1870, the region of Montbéliard was invaded by the powerful armies of the enemy and Denfert-Rochereau had to organise the resistance of Belfort, a fortified town blocking access to the Bourgogne. Under attack from more than forty thousand troops under the command of Werder, Denfert-Rochereau had only around fifteen thousand men, of whom just a quarter came from regular combat units. To warnings from the enemy to surrender the town, Denfert-Rochereau responded thus: "We know the scope of our responsibilities to France and the Republic, and we have decided to fulfill them". Refusing to allow the elderly, women and children to leave, the Prussian war machine used more than two hundred pieces of artillery from December 1870 and bombarded Belfort in the hope of bringing the siege to an end. Entrenched in a bunker of the tower of Bourgeois at the Brisach gate, Denfert-Rochereau refused to surrender despite the loss of life among his troops and the deterioration in the sanitation of the civilian population. Hostilities continued after the armistice of 28 January 1871, with Denfert-Rochereau refusing to surrender until 13 February, and only then on the express orders of the provisional government. After 103 days of fighting, the besieged, still twelve thousand strong, left Belfort before the Prussians, who paid them tribute. This heroic resistance saved the honour of a France wounded by the defeat of Napoléon III and Mac-Mahon in Sedan, as well as the surrender of Bazaine to Metz. It allowed Adolphe Thiers, the elected executive head of the French Republic by the National Assembly on 17 February, to secure from the victors the preservation of the administrative division of Belfort as part of France. The Treaty of Frankfurt signed on 18 May 1871 resulted in the cession of the rest of Alsace and part of Lorraine to Germany.
Elected the representative of Haut-Rhin in the National Assembly from 8 February, the hero of Belfort handed in his resignation once the preliminary peace treaties were signed. Named Commander of the Legion of Honour on 18 April 1871, Denfert-Rochereau was dismissed due to his known Republican beliefs and thus did not participate in the bloody repression of the village. Now a civilian, he was elected in three departments in the elections of 18 July 1871 and opted for Charente-Inférieure. In a National Assembly with a conservative monarchist majority, he sat with the Republican left. Re-elected in February 1876 in the VI arrondissement of Paris, he joined the Groupe de l'Union Républicaine des Gambettitstes and sided with opponents of General Mac-Mahon during the crisis of 16 May 1877. During his third term, he focussed more particularly on military issues and in particular demanded the reinstatement of the right to vote for the armed forces, who had been denied this right since 1872. He died in the palace of Versailles on 11 May 1878 and was given a state funeral. He is buried in Montbéliard.

Born in Albi May 20th 1815, Politechnician, engineer officer, General of the brigade in 1871.

1862 : he organises the fortified place of Nice.

1864-68 : he builds four forts in Metz.

1869 : he fortifies Langres.

1870 : he fortifies Lyon.

1871 : leads the Army engineers of the East; then he takes part in the operations against the Communards (insurgent soldiers of the Commune of Paris). To achieve this objective he besieged several fortifications. Later on he will have the task preparing the case of Marchal Bazaine's trial.

1872 : he is appointed Secretary of the defence Committee, created by the President of the Republic A. Thiers.

1874 : appointed chef of the army engineers department, he can apply his principles of fortification. Promoted general of the division, between 1874 and 1880 he built a fortified system from Dunkirk in Toulon which bears his name. The purpose of the system is to protect the mobilization and therefore force the potential invaders to go into a predetermined geographical gorge which defense support were expecting them.

1880 : in January ,at the age of 65 years he is replaced by his successor General Cosseron de Villenoisy, who completed his works.

General Sere de Rivieres based to Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris : Division 95, went 4; monument 59