(Saint-Rémy-en-Provence, 1604-Paris, 1665) 

Blaise François Pagan, a French army engineer and Vauban's teacher, founded France's first fortification school with Errard de Bar-le-Duc and Antoine Deville. He wrote L'Art de la fortification, where he incorporated the bastion into the fortification's ground plan. Blaise François, Comte de Pagan, was born in Saint-Rémy-en-Provence, near Avignon.

His family, of Neapolitan origin, was a branch of the house of Luynes. At a very young age he entered into the service of Louis XIII as an army engineer. The young nobleman participated in the siege of Caen and the battle of Ponts-de-Cé in 1620, the sieges of Saint-Jean-d'Angély and Clérac in 1621 and, in 1622, the capture of Navarreins and Montauban, where he lost his left eye. In 1623 he was an engineering officer during the siege of Nancy. Pagan won fame during the 1629 siege of Suse when he led French troops across the barricades surrounding the town. During the Thirty Years War he worked with Deville at the sieges of Corbie, Landrecies and Hesdin. Pagan also participated in the sieges of La Rochelle and served in Italy, Picardy and Flanders.

Pagan went blind in 1642. He was promoted to maréchal-de-camp, but abandoned his military career and spent his retirement studying mathematics, history, geography, astronomy and the art of fortification. In his Treatise on Fortifications (1645), Pagan described where to locate the most exposed bastions' salients in order to adapt them better to the terrain. Building fortification works outside the walls, he argued, would help space out deep defence and slow down an attack on the main fort. The bastions' flanks are perpendicular to the line of defence to obtain perfect reciprocal flanking. From that point of view he differed from Deville, who maintained that bastions were just added, isolated forward works later connected to the fort. Heavy artillery would ensure defence. He recommended up to 30 cannons per bastion on three levels. The outside included a covered walkway with a small parade ground on the counterscarp (principle of active defence). He advised using the space between the couvre-faces and main wall for the surrounding villages' residents to camp in. His ideas remained theoretical until Vauban incorporated them into his first defence system.

Pagan was also an astronomer and conceived a theory of the planets. He presented his work in Théorèmes des planètes (1657), Les Tables astronomiques (1658) and Astrologie naturelle (1659). A mathematician as well, he wrote Théorèmes géométriques in 1651. His other writings include Relation de la rivière des Amazones (1658) and Œuvres posthumes (1669). In 1652 Pagan was sentenced to eight years in the Bastille for "boasting that he would make the King die by magic". He spent the rest of his life there, forgotten by the king and Cardinal Mazarin. "I am a sick, old man of 78 years..." he wrote in his last letter, dated 28 November 1665. "One day Your Excellency... will learn that I was found phtisical and frozen to death; in this weather I have no fire in my room, and what's more I am barely dressed. I beseech Your Excellency to remember that I have been here 13 years and 12 days, and to beg the King our lord, for the love of God, to give me liberty so that I may go home."

Wilhelm II, the son of Emperor Frederick and Empress Victoria, the grandson of Wilhelm I of Hohenzollern on his father's side and Queen Victoria of England on his mother's, was born in Potsdam on the 27th January 1859. After studying at the secondary school in Kassel, he took a two year course at the university of Bonn and began his military training in the Guards. He was made Lieutenant in the 1st regiment of Foot Guards in 1877 and Captain in 1880, Commander of the Guard's Hussars in 1881 and then of the 1st battalion of the 1st regiment of Foot Guards in 1883. He was promoted to Colonel, in charge of the hussars, in 1885 and appointed General in 1888. In the meantime, in 1881 he married Princess Augusta-Victoria, the daughter of Frederick Augustus of Schleswig-Holstein. In May 1844, he travelled to Russia to consolidate the alliance of the three Emperors (Germany, Austria and Hungary) in accordance with Chancellor Bismarck's orders. Crowned king of Prussia and Emperor of Germany on the 15th June 1888, following the three month reign of Frederick III, it was his intention to begin to exercise real political power. However, his involvement fluctuated wildly, depending on the state of his mental health.

His differences of opinion with Bismarck, most notably regarding social matters, relations with Russia and colonial policies became more frequent and, in 1890, the latter resigned. To replace him, Wilhelm II appointed Leo von Caprivi who would be succeeded in 1894 by Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, in 1900 by Prince Bernhard von Bülow and in 1909 by Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. Responsible for the development of the military power and wealth of the German Empire, he embarked on a policy of commercial, colonial and maritime expansion. Germany witnessed great rapid economic development, gradually becoming the top industrial power in Europe. The impact on a social level was manifold but tensions were no less frequent. The social democrats continued to gain ground, securing the greatest representation in the Reichstag in 1912. On a domestic level, however, the country was also up against its minority groups: the Polish in Posen, the Danish in Schleswig and those from the Alsace and Lorraine region who refused to accept the policy of Germanisation. In Europe, Germany's growth as well as its foreign policy caused worry. Competition to seek out commercial opportunities, interventions in the Near East and the Balkan countries were just some of the subjects of disagreement, especially as the Emperor kept changing his position, first siding with one and then another of the other four great European powers (Great Britain, France, Austro-Hungary and Russia). He did not renew the mutual assistance treaty with Russia in 1890, concentrating his efforts on strengthening the Triple Alliance (Triplice) between Germany, Austria and Italy, which was renewed in 1892, 1902 and 1912, but not without a few attempts at bridge-building with Great Britain and France (who signed the treaty of Entente cordiale between themselves in 1904) and with Russia herself. However, Anglo-German relations continued to deteriorate. The defensive with Russia (the 1905 treaty of Björkö) was a failure. Similarly, the attempt at reconciliation with France following the Agadir affair (1911) did not succeed. Germany became increasingly diplomatically isolated. Wilhelm II stepped up the reinforcement of his army and navy.

As Commander in Chief of the armies during the conflict that broke out in 1914, he retained the power to make appointments to the highest positions, as well as his role of coordination and arbitration between politicians and the military. However, he had to hand over the management of operations to Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who had become very popular following the success at Tannenberg and the Mazures lakes in August and September 1914 and who were appointed in charge of the High Command in the summer of 1916. Confronted with German defeat and the revolutionary troubles of November 1918, the emperor abdicated on the 9th. He took refuge in the Netherlands, who refused the extradition request from the Allies seeking to apply sanctions against him as prescribed by the treaty of Versailles. He then devoted himself to writing and in 1922 and 1927 published his memoirs: Ereignisse und Gestalten, 1878-1918 and Aus meinem Leben, 1859-1888. He died in Doorn, in 1941.

Adolphe Thiers, historian and statesman, was symbolic of the emerging Third Republic, the "executioner of the Commune" and founder of the Republic. Marie-Louis-Joseph-Adolphe Thiers was born in Marseille into a middle-class family. Helped by the extravagance of his father, the young Adolphe had a brilliant education by means of a scholarship. After studying law in Aix-en-Provence, he settled in Paris in 1821, where he moved in liberal society, embarking on a career as a journalist at Le Constitutionnel, before founding Le National on the 3rd January 1830 with Auguste Mignet and Armand Carrel, opposing through their articles the sovereignty of Charles X. In 1824, with his friend Auguste Mignet, he began a historical account of the Revolution of 1789. Thiers then devoted himself to Napoleon and was the first to provide a complete account, albeit partisan, of his career in his History of the Consulate and the Empire, published between 1845 and 1862 - in addition, in 1936 and 1940, he requested the return of Napoleon's ashes. His works earned his election to the French Academy in December 1834. Politically, Thiers was a "liberal", a man of progress, with a belief in the principle of national sovereignty, expressed through free elections and through representatives controlling the executive.

He played an active role in the July revolution in organising the resistance of those journalists threatened by the "Four Orders" (laws aimed at "muzzling" the press), going so far as to support Louis-Philippe when he came to power. The latter called him into his government as Under-Secretary of State for Finance, Minister of the Interior and then Minister of Agriculture and Trade. He was thus in permanent opposition with legitimists, republicans and the supporters of Bonaparte. During the Second Republic (1848-1851) Thiers worked with a regime that he was to consider "disappointing", as it was too conservative. As a member of parliament, Thiers laid down Proudhon's socialist theses, writing at the time a short treaty for the general public on Property, supporting the Falloux law and the Rome expedition. He was even to go so far as to support the candidate Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte during the presidential elections, but was to oppose the coup d'état of the 2nd December 1851, a stance that was to see him exiled to England, Italy and then Switzerland. Thiers therefore disappeared from the political scene in Napoleon the Third's 's first year in power. He returned to politics to oppose the left under the liberal Empire (1860-1870). "Thiers, who was even classed as an "Orléanist" because of his past from 1830-48, was, in fact, the leader of the handful of royalists who remained faithful to liberalism." (M. Aguhlon). He accepted the Crimean expedition but remained very critical of Napoleon the Third's foreign policy, which he considered too liberal and unsuitable for the Italian peninsula and Germany; he demanded the liquidation of the Mexican expedition.

On the fall of the Second Empire Thiers, who had been elected in the previous Empire elections in 1869, participated in the Government of National Defence, which he ended up managing, having actively contributed since the 10th September 1870 in peace preparations: the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jules Favre, asked him in the name of the government to moderate the offensive policies of the European powers, in particular the ambitions of Bismarck - so, from 1873 until 1875 Thiers carried out a lengthy tour of all the European capitals. Following the signing of the armistice on the 28th January 1871, Thiers was elected head of the new government in the elections of the 8th February 1871. As head of the executive power, he brought the communard movement to an end in a bloodbath in the spring of 1871; he was known as the "executioner of the Commune". The suppression of the Parisian uprising, the "Federates" movement, was led by Thiers with an army of "men of Versailles", the government having then established itself in Versailles. He was at the head of the 63,500 men, reinforced by the 130,000 liberated French prisoners of war and supported by Bismarck, who, between March and June 1871, besieged Paris and the neighbouring villages. The fighting would account for around thirty thousand dead from the ranks of the Federates. Up until 1874, four emergency courts passed judgement on the "Communards": 13,804 sentences were pronounced, including several for the labour camps of Guyana and New Caledonia - there would be no amnesty until July 1880. On the 24th May 1873, the parliamentary right, who had brought him to power, but were hostile to the republican orientation that Thiers gave to the Government, secured his resignation and replaced him with Mac Mahon. Adolphe Thiers died on the 3rd September 1877. Despite the refusal of his family to hold a state funeral, a funeral cortège with 384 wreaths, followed by Gambetta and Hugo, was to turn the final journey of this multi-faceted statesman into a national affair.

Sources: AGUHLON (Maurice), "Adolphe Thiers", in: Célébrations nationales 1997, Paris, Direction des Archives de France. MOURRE (Michel), Dictionnaire encyclopédique d'histoire, Paris, Bordas, 1996 (1978).

(2 January 1897: Cayenne, French Guyana - 7 November 1991: Paris) The grandson of a slave, Gaston Monnerville was born in Cayenne in 1897. A brilliant pupil, in 1912 he won a national scholarship to complete his secondary education at the Pierre de Fermat (Hôtel Bernuy) high school in Toulouse, before enrolling to study the Arts and Law at Toulouse university. In 1921, he became a doctor of law following a viva on a thesis on "Improvement without reason" which was sponsored by the ministry of public education and awarded a prize. That same year he was a successful candidate in the competitive examination for Secretaries to the Judicial Conference, receiving the "Alexandre Fourtanier" Gold medal which is awarded to one of the best secretaries, before leaving Toulouse to register at the Bar in Paris. He was soon to work for the office of the famous lawyer and statesman, César Campinchi, with whom he would be the main partner for eight years.

In 1923, Gaston Monnerville was a successful candidate in the competitive examination for Secretaries to the Conference of Advocates, at the Court of Appeal in Paris. In 1927, he was elected president of the Union of young lawyers, distinguishing himself in several important trials such as the "Galmot" affair in 1931. Fourteen Guyanese, accused after the riot in 1928 resulting from electoral fraud and the suspicious death of MP Jean Galmot, appeared before the court of assizes in Nantes. Along with Fourny, Zevaes, and Henri Torres, Monnerville was responsible for defending them. His pleading had a profound effect on the jury, who voted for their acquittal. This sensational trial signalled his political debut. He stood in Guyana against the outgoing MP, Eugène Lautier, and was elected in the first ballot in 1932 - he was to be re-elected in 1936, having been elected mayor of Cayenne in 1935. Twice under-secretary of State in the Colonies in 1937 and 1938, his experience of international and overseas matters led to his selection as a member of the French delegation to the Pacific Conference, known as the "Conference of the Nine Nations" which was held in Brussels in 1937, at the moment of Japan's attack on China. In 1939, Gaston Monnerville was a member of parliament over forty years of age. According to the Nation's wartime legislation, he was too old to be mobilised. With four of his colleagues, he had a government decree drawn up and signed by Daladier, which allowed an exception and he immediately enlisted in the Marines. He served as an "officer of justice", on the battleship "La Provence", writing of his experiences in the ship's log.
Monnerville was demobilised one week after the vote in Vichy granting full powers to Marshall Pétain on 10 July 1940. On 17 July 1940, he went to Vichy to protest against the Armistice and the status inflicted on overseas citizens by Pétain's government. In the winter of 1940-1941, he campaigned in the "Combat" resistance movement, defending those imprisoned for offences related to their opinions or ethnic backgrounds. Under the pseudonym of "Commandant Saint-Just", he was a member of the maquis (resistance fighters) of the Auvergne (Commander Cheval's group) from October 1942 until October 1944. He was in charge of administration at the Cheylade hospital from June to August 1944 and then recruited by the FFI, taking part in the "Bec d'Allier" operation between 7 and 10 September 1944. The War Cross 1939-1945, the Rosette of the Résistance and the Légion d'Honneur for his military achievements all bear witness to his courage and patriotism. In November 1944, he was appointed by the Resistance of Metropolitan France to sit on the provisional consultative Assembly, where he presided at the "French Overseas Commission" and, representing the nations of the French Union, had the honour of celebrating the Allied victory at the solemn session on 12 May 1945. During this session, he also made a speech in tribute to soldiers from the overseas territories.
In 1945, the temporary Government of the Republic called President Monnerville to lead the commission with the task of drawing up the future political statute for overseas territories. This commission laid down the constitutional framework for the French Union. On 21 October 1945, he was elected for a third time as MP for Guyana at the Constituent Assembly and his mandate was renewed on 2 June the following year at the second National Constituent Assembly. On 15 December 1946, he was appointed vice president of the Guyanese Assembly. In March 1947, he was elected president of the Council of the Republic and re-elected in January 1948. In November 1948 he was elected senator of the Lot, became mayor of Saint-Céré (Lot) from 1964 to 1971 and then president of the permanent Council of the Republic, replaced by the Senate, over which he was to preside for twenty-two years. From March 1974 until March 1983, he sat on the Constitutional Council. Gaston Monnerville was an important overseas statesman: after having been appointed delegate for France in 1937 at the Pacific Conference and then in January 1946 at the United Nations Assembly, he represented France in Latin America in 1957 and in Haiti in 1980, on the bicentenary of its capital, Port-au-Prince. Gaston Monnerville was also a man of letters: in May 1968 he published a work on Georges Clemenceau and then devoted himself to writing his memoirs, Témoignages, De la France équinoxiale au Palais du Luxembourg (Accounts, from equinoctial France to the Palace of Luxembourg) (1975), and Vingt-deux ans de présidence (Twenty-two years of presidency) (1980).

Léon Gambetta was born on the 2nd April 1838 in Cahors, the adopted town of his Genoan father Joseph, and Marie Madeleine Orasie Massabie, the daughter of a pharmacist from Molières, a town in the Tarn-et-Garonne region. Whilst still very young, Léon stood out because of his intelligence and tremendous memory. He became a boarder at the lower seminary of Montfaucon before completing his schooling at Cahors grammar school. A candidate in the national education competition, he won the French dissertation prize and then obtained an Arts Baccalaureate in 1856, aged 17. To the great displeasure of his father who wanted him to take over his business, the young man, who was a talented speaker, left for Paris in January 1857 and enrolled in law school to follow a career as a lawyer. He requested and was granted French nationality on the 29th October 1859. He had his vive voce for his law degree on the 19th January the following year and took his oath on the 8th June 1861. His first defence cases set him against parliamentary opposition groups from the "left" (the Republicans). The Baudin subscription affair (1851) made him famous in 1868. This case was brought by the Imperial government against newspapers advocating a subscription with a view to building a monument in memory of this elected representative, who was killed on the 3rd December on the streets of Faubourg Saint-Antoine fighting for the people.

The young lawyer took the opportunity to make a closing speech criticising the regime of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. In January 1870, as member of parliament for the district of Marseille, he stood against the government of Emile Ollivier whose support for Napoléon III was perceived as treachery by the Republicans. However, Gambetta called for national unity and passed a bill for military funding on the eve of war. During the night of the 3rd to the 4th September, Léon Gambetta, after having attempted in vain to appease the revolutionary situation arising from the announcement of the capitulation of Sedan, announced the fall of the Empire in the Bourbon Palace, which had been invaded by the mob. In the Town hall, he witnessed the declaration of the Government for the national defence, with which he became associated alongside Jules Simon and Ernest Picard. On his own initiative he settled in to the ministry of the interior and ordered the dismissal of the prefects of the Empire. At the same time he organised the capital's defences. On the 7th September in a besieged Paris, Léon Gambetta appeared like somebody heaven-sent. Opposite a government that was overwhelmed by the situation, he led the national defence in the provinces. Gambetta was the embodiment of resistance against the Prussian occupier. He took off in a balloon to join the Tours delegation via Montdidier, Amiens and Rouen, adding the war department to his portfolio, setting up new armies, supervising the training and provision of troops, building factories, increasing official visits, with briefings and speeches calling to "prolong the war until extermination". At the same time the capital was subject to a siege by the imperialists: the city was bombarded and the population starved. Adolphe Thiers ended up commissioning (22nd January 1871) Jules Favre, the minister for overseas affairs, to approach Bismarck in order to agree an armistice. Gambetta distanced himself from the political scene and negotiations because of a decree that he signed in Bordeaux making Empire assembly members of ineligible. He resigned on the 6th February.

Gambetta was elected on nine lists during the general elections of the 8th February 1871: in the East, Paris, Marseille and Algeria. He chose the Lower Rhine. He voted against the peace agreement and expressed his intention to recover the lost provinces. Returning from his retreat in Saint-Sébastien and having lost his seat in parliament on the 2nd July, he campaigned in the Bouches-du-Rhône and Seine regions. As MP for the Seine, Gambetta formed an extreme left parliamentary party "the Republican Union", founded a newspaper, La République française, increasing his speeches in the provinces, during which he castigated the conservative policy of the National Assembly and displayed militant anticlericalism. In the commotion of the restored republican sovereignty, he took part in the debates that gave rise to constitutional laws and contributed to the passing of the Walloon amendment on the 28th January 1875. Léon Gambetta then concentrated on promoting the new regime during the electoral ballot campaign of January and February 1876. In Bordeaux (13th February), he outlined the reforms necessary: the separation of the Church from the State, the creation of income tax, the reestablishment of the right to meetings and associations, a measure that he overturned at "opportune" moments for fear of upsetting the rural electorate, who were the demographical majority. The ballot of the 20th February sanctioned his work. Gambetta was elected in several districts and opted for Belleville. Marshal de Mac-Mahon, however, did not call him into his ministry. He preferred figures who were further "to the right". Gambetta took advantage of the crisis that arose from the constitution of the de Broglie ministry to unite the Republican vote and cause the dissolution of the Chamber - it was to be his only victory in his unsuccessful attempt to unite the parties to the left.
A tactician and orator of the highest order, Gambetta made the summer electoral campaign his own, before pronouncing in his speech in Lille (15th August) directed at the President of the Republic, the phrase "accept or resign", a remark that would earn him a conviction of three months in prison, a sentence that he would not serve. Having acceded to "republican sainthood", he preferred however to promote Jules Grévy on the 3rd September to the position of head of State and remain in the background. Political crises followed: Gambetta stood against Marshal de Mac-Mahon with vehemence. He ended up securing his resignation, the latter having refused to sign the decree to lay off ten generals of the army corps (20th January 1879). Refusing once more to head the regime, Gambetta let Jules Grévy succeed Mac-Mahon and contented himself with the presidency of the chamber (31st January 1879). From a symbolic role which he carried out elegantly, Gambetta, who in the eyes of President Grévy no longer represented a political obstacle, rose to the presidency of the council on the 10th November 1881. He thus finally believed it possible to turn France into a stable and peaceful country, reunited around the republican way of thinking. The new head of State tried to establish a large ministry, uniting all of the important figures from the "left". Jules Ferry, Léon Say, Henri Brisson and Charles de Freycinet and the heads of various movements all refused the offer. His government had barely been formed (on the 14th January 1882) when it was toppled after 74 days, following a legislative bill on the ways of appointing senators and electing representatives to the chamber. Freycinet succeeded him, surrounded by those very people who had refused to give him their support.

Léon Gambetta then withdrew from politics. He settled in the Nice area, no longer taking part in debates except for the one on the 18th July 1882 requesting that French presence be maintained in Egypt. Retired to les Jardies (Ville-d'Avray), with his companion Léonie Léon, Gambetta was the victim of a fire arm accident that confined him to bed for the whole of November. This inactivity was fatal for him. He died on the 31st December 1882 following an intestinal infection and appendicitis that was not operated upon. A republican hero, the founding "father" of the Third Republic, Léon Gambetta was an incontrovertible key figure in "helping to understand that a regime that was initially modern and popular, that of Napoléon III, could be replaced by a republic that added to these same qualities, the quality of deep liberalism" (M. Aghulon). His state funeral was held on the 6th January 1883. Monuments were erected to him throughout France: in Bordeaux (25th April 1905), Nice (25th April 1909), etc. The one erected in the Tuileries gardens would disappear under the German occupation.

Son of Antoine Georges François (15 March 1769 - 19 July 1832) and of Julie Verdier de la Coste, François, Ernest Chabaud-Latour was born in Nîmes on 25 January 1804.
He graduated in seventh place from Ecole Polytechnique in 1820 and opted for Engineering. In 1829 he briefly took part, alongside the Russian army, in the siege of the fortified places of Danube, and was then called to Paris to serve in Polignac's ministry.

In 1830 he volunteered to leave for Algiers and was later decorated following the bombing of Fort de l'Empereur and the occupation of Blida.

Appointed Officer of Honour of the Duke of Orléans, a role he performed until the Prince's death in 1842, he took part in the campaign of Belgium and the taking of Antwerp. Chabaud-Latour also followed the Duke of Orléans during the Algeria campaigns (1837, 1839, 1840) and took part in events in Sig, Habra, Mascara, and then, in 1839, in the battle of Portes de Fer, which earned him the Officer's Cross of the Legion of Honour and, in 1840, in the combats of Medea, El-Affroun, Col de Mouzaïa and Bois des Oliviers.

In 1840, when the issue of fortifications for Paris was raised, he recommended, in his preliminary project, the construction of a continuous fortified wall and a ring of forts to protect the population from the rigours of a siege.

As deputy of the Gard (1837 to 1848, Guizot ministry) he was able to defend his project in front of Parliament.

As head of engineering, he personally took care of the Eastern sector of the Paris wall and supervised work until 1846.

He was promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1842 and became the aide-de-camp for the Count of Paris when the Duke of Orléans died. In 1846 he was made a Colonel and left to command the 3rd engineering regiment in Arras. In February 1848 he was still loyal to the Orléans family, to the point of offering to resign following the king's abdication. Placed on non-active status for a few weeks, he was called to the Amiens engineering department and then, following the coup d'état on 2 December 1851, he returned to his duties in Grenoble.

He was commander-in-chief of engineering in Algeria in 1852, where he remained for five years, taking part in the Babors expedition in 1853, the Beni-Iuya expedition in 1854, the Guetchoula expedition in 1855 and the Grande-Kabylie expedition in 1857. A talented planner, he built the Tizi-Ouzou to Souk-el-Arba road in 16 days and he had Fort-Napoléon built in four months, in the centre of the Béni Raten tribe. He also managed the building of dams on rivers and created several villages.

Brigadier General on 30 April 1853, Chabaud-Latour was promoted to Division General after the campaigns of 1857 and 1858, date of his return to Paris. He was called to the fortifications committee, to the general inspectorate of fortified places, engineering regiments and Ecole polytechnique, and to the advisory committee on Algerian affairs. During the war in Italy, he commanded the engineering corps posted on the Eastern frontier for observation duties. He became Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1861, president of the fortifications committee in 1864, and then reserve cadre on 25 January 1869.

Called back to activity in 1870, Chabaud-Latour was put in charge of engineering of the Paris defence system and took over chairmanship of the fortifications committee. He renovated the capital's fortified camp so that it could only be bombed on its left bank from the unfinished redoubts of Châtillon and Montretout.

His son, Arthur Henri Alphonse (1839-1910), from his marriage with Hélène Mathilde Périer, a graduate of St Cyr, proved himself during battles of the Loire and received the Legion of Honour for his exemplary behaviour. Lissagaray wrote the following: "This Paris, for which Hoche, Marceau, Kleber would have been neither too young, nor too faithful, nor too pure, had for generals the residue of the Empire and Orleanism, Vinoy of December, Ducrot, Luzanne, Leflô, and a fossil like Chabaud-Latour."

The wall, commonly called the Thiers wall, measured 35 kilometres long (its line corresponds to the current ring road) and had 94 bastions, 17 doors and 8 sally-ports.  In some parts, the base was made of 40 centimetres of concrete. The exterior pavement, like the side walls, was made of millstone and a succession of rubble bonded by hydraulic mortar. Appointed Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour for this, he was kept in activity with no age limit.

He was elected deputy of the Gard in February at the National Assembly – on the centre right – and chaired the army commission in charge of writing the 1872 military law. He was also rapporteur for the draft project on new forts to be built around Paris and was Vice-President of the Assembly several times. Chabaud-Latour was a member of the defence committee and put his talent to organising the new Eastern border.

An eminent character of the State, he was appointed in 1873 to judge Marshal Bazaine, accused of contributing to the defeat of France during the war between France and Germany in 1870.

Called on 20 July 1874 by Marshal de Mac-Mahon to Home Affairs duties until 10 March 1875, he supported the Duke of Broglie, in full debate concerning the  seven-year plan. He failed in the Senate elections on 30 January 1876 but was appointed irremovable senator on 10 November in the following year.

He died in Paris on 10 June 1885 after falling down the stairs in the Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'Ouest, of which he was administrator.
 

Émile Gilioli was one of the foremost figures of lyrical abstraction in 1950s French sculpture, alongside Brancusi and Arp. He designed the Resistance Memorial on the Glières plateau (Haute-Savoie).

Gilioli was born on 10 June 1911 in Paris, into a family of Italian shoemakers living on the banks of Canal Saint-Martin. He learned the blacksmith’s trade as a child, during holidays spent at the paternal family home near Mantua.

At the end of the First World War, the Gilioli family moved closer to Italy, setting up home in Nice. The young Émile worked in the family business and at the same time took classes in the town’s decorative arts school. In 1928, he was apprenticed to a sculptor, for whom he worked for two years before winning a scholarship for the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He frequented Jean Boucher’s workshop where, like many artists of his generation, he was influenced by the work of Charles Malfray.

Drafted in 1939, he was sent to Grenoble, where he stayed until Liberation. There, he made friends with Andry-Fracy, curator of the museum from 1919 to 1949, who passed on his interest for cubism and introduced him to the painter Closon, a pioneer of French abstraction. It was in Grenoble that he had his first solo exhibition, at Gallery Laforge in 1945.

Returning to Paris, he ran the new abstract School of Paris with Poliakoff and Deyrolle, and exhibited work at Gallery Breteau in 1946. He went on to take part in most French and foreign art events, including the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1947, frequently shows at the Salon de Mai, and the Salon de la Jeune Sculpture. The Palais Galliera featured an exhibition of his work in 1968. The same year, he set out his concept of art in La Sculpture (published by Robert Morel).

The simplicity of his art, in which form and material are mutually dependent, inspired by Archaic Greece, Ancient Egyptian statuary and Cubism, earned him many public commissions, particularly in the department of Isère, where he designed the Voreppe Memorial in 1946, the Memorial to the Deportees of Grenoble in 1950, the Chapelle-en-Vercors monument in 1951, the recumbent statue of Vassieux-en-Vercors in 1952, and the Resistance Memorial on the Glières plateau in 1973.

An insatiable worker, Gilioli created Prière et Force, a concrete sculpture which he worked on from 1959 to 1963, La Mendiante (1962), Apparition de la Vierge à Bernadette (1964) and a fountain for Grenoble town hall (1968). His bronze works include his Compositions and Formes, Cadran Solaire, Soleil sur la Montagne, Histoire Crétoise, Divinité and Tête Siennoise. Working with marble, he sculpted Abstraction, L’Homme Oiseau, Chloe, Tabernacle and Forme Abstraite.

His gouache and watercolour paintings reveal a Composition for the Glières monument, from the series Compositions. Also worthy of note are Composition Bleu, Rouge et Noir (collage), Vitesse (steel), Composition Transparente (mesh) and Portrait de Femme (charcoal).

The works of Émile Gilioli are exhibited all over the world, most notably at the: Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, Tate Gallery in London, Musée de Sculpture de Plaen Air de Middelheim in Antwerp, Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Bezabel Museum in Jerusalem, Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture in Grenoble, Fine Arts Museum in Ostend, Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art in Luxembourg, Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris, Musée de Sculpture de la Ville de Paris, Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dunkirk, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, Museo dei Bozzetti in Pietrasanta, Kunsthaus in Zurich and Musée Fabre in Montpellier.

One of his workshops, his “attic”, in a building bought by the municipality of Saint Martin de la Cluze in 1997, has remained untouched since his death and is today open to the public.

Sources: Benezit E., Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, vol. 6, 1999; and Ragon M., in: Nouveau dictionnaire de la sculpture moderne, Paris, Hazan, 1970.

To visit

Atelier Gilioli - museum and library 38650 Saint Martin de la Cluze Tel: +33(0)4 38 92 00 96

Find out more on the website Sculpture1940.com

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.

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".