Description: [SIGNED DOCUMENT - FRENCH GENERAL XIX/XXth - 1870 - WW1 - WW2]-Very Rare Document Sign 1 sheetReceived from Mr Calary de Lamazière, MP, the sum of 5 francs, for the defense group for large families1920Raoul Calary de Lamazière1879-1932 MP Politician Raoul Calary de Lamazière is a French politician born May 10, 1879 in Paris and died on January 30, 1932 in a car accident in La Closure, hamlet of Chuisnes (Eure-et-Loir), transported to Chartres, where he died.BiographyRaoul Calary de Lamazière was born into a French bourgeoisie family. He is the father of Simonne Calary de Lamazière, wife of Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.After a baccalaureate in literature, he attended the Paris Law Faculty and the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (in the diplomatic section). He became a doctor of law, through his thesis, presented in 1905, The capitulations in Bulgaria. He was a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal in 1899.He was a municipal councilor for Villeloin-Coulangé (Indre-et-Loire) in 1919 and was elected deputy for the Seine from 1919 to 1924, registered with the Democratic Republican Left group. He writes numerous articles for literary magazines.General Edouard de CASTELNAU1851-1944Edward of Castelnau Infantry Army GeneralYears of Service 1870-1919Command 13th Infantry Division2nd ArmyCentral Army GroupEastern Army GroupConflicts Franco-German War of 1870First World WarSecond World War (aid for the Resistance)Feats of arms Battle of the Charmes GapBattle of Grand-CouronnéBattle of VerdunDistinctions Grand Cross of the Legion of HonorMilitary medalWar Cross 1914-1918Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (Flag: United Kingdom)Tributes: 198th promotion of the Saint-Cyr Special Military School (2011 – 2014) known as “Promotion of Castelnau”Other functions Member of Parliament for Aveyron (1919-1924) ERDElected to the InstituteÉdouard de Castelnau, born December 24, 1851 in Saint-Affrique (Aveyron) and died Mars 19, 1944 in Montastruc-la-Conseillère (Haute-Garonne), is a French army general, army group commander and chief of staff of the armies during the First World War. Elected deputy in 1919, president of the Army Commission during the legislature, he then took the head of a confessional political movement, the National Catholic Federation. During the Second World War, opposed to Marshal Pétain and the Vichy regime, he supported the Resistance. Long controversial due to a Catholicism considered outrageous by his adversaries, historians have very significantly moderated this portrait by emphasizing his great loyalty to republican institutions, contesting in particular that he could have been reactionary. An impressive career!!An extraordinary destiny...BiographyBefore the Great WarSon of Michel de Castelnau, mayor of Saint-Affrique, Noël Édouard Marie Joseph de Curières de Castelnau was born in Saint-Affrique, into a family of the nobility of Rouergue. He is the third of five children. His older brother, Léonce, is a politician of national stature, president of the Liberal Action parliamentary group in the National Assembly. His other brother Clément is director of the Saint-Étienne School of Mines.Ruined by the Revolution, her family had to share a house in Saint-Affrique with her mother's three uncles, the Barthe abbots. They would like him to be a notary but he wants to be a naval officer. For reasons of age, he must reorient himself towards the army and is part of the 54th promotion of Saint-Cyr, the promotion of the Rhine (1869 – 1871), modified after the war in promotion of August 14, 1870, from which he graduated second lieutenant on August 14, 1870. He was appointed to the 31st infantry regiment and participated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. in the Army of the Loire.After the war, he served as lieutenant then captain in various regiments before joining the War School in 1879. Assigned to the Army General Staff in Paris in 1893, he headed the first office in 1897. He experienced a first delay in his career when he was implicated by the polemicist Urbain Gohier who, in an article in L'Aurore, reveals that he is the descendant of an emigrant who fought in the army of the Prince of Condé during the Revolution. In 1900, he was the target of the new Minister of War, General André, who wanted to dismiss him from the army because of his aristocratic origins and his Catholicism. According to him, Castelnau does not have the republican profile that he wishes to impose in the army. The Chief of Staff, General Delanne, opposes this decision. He appointed Castelnau to command the 37th infantry regiment of Nancy then resigned which leads to a questioning of the government in the House and the Senate. The minister takes revenge by keeping Castelnau in this position for five years, double the usual duration. in this type of command. He also ensures that he is not promoted to general despite his record of service butaffair of the files will relaunch his career. General André was forced to resign and, a few months later, on Mars 25, 1906, At the request of Paul Doumer, Castelnau was promoted to brigadier general. He successively commanded a brigade in Sedan, then in Soissons. On December 21, 1909, he became a division general, which put him for the first time under the orders of General Joffre. The latter in fact commands the army corps on which the 13th division of Chaumont depends, which Castelnau inherits. The two men get to know each other. Also, when Joffre was appointed head of the French army on July 28, 1911, he insisted on having Castelnau at his side. He takes the title of first sous chef staff. He will be mainly responsible for designing a new plan for the mobilization and concentration of French armies in the event of war: plan XVII. In 1912, he was confirmed in his functions by becoming chief of staff, replacing General Dubail. By decree of October 30, 1913, he was then appointed to the Superior War Council, which designated him to take command of the 2nd French Army in the event of conflict. During 1913, Castelnau found himself widely exposed to the violent debate which accompanied the Three Years Law. Indeed, during the development of Plan XVII, it quickly became obvious that it was necessary to increase military personnel from peacetime. Only an extension of one additional year of military service can achieve this, but nearly two thirds of radical and socialist deputies are fiercely against the prospect of a three-year service. Led by Jean Jaurès, the opposition to this bill quickly took a passionate turn. Castelnau, considered the inspiration for the text, became the bane of opponents, especially since the text was finally voted on on July 19, 1913. Resentment towards Castelnau on the part of the movement radical-socialist continued until the end of his life. Georges Clemenceau, although in favor of the three-year law, immortalized this antagonism by giving Castelnau nicknames such as “the booted Capuchin” or “the General of the Jesuitière” which have passed down to posterity.The Great WarWhen war was declared, he joined his army being mobilized in Nancy. On August 15, 1914, the five French armies went on the offensive against the Germans who were carrying out a large outflanking movement through Belgium. Castelnau faces the army of Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria which awaits him on positions prepared in advance at Morhange. While the General Headquarters (GQG) claims that the Germans are in retreat and that there are only rearguards in front of it, Castelnau suddenly came up against considerable forces strongly supported by heavy artillery.The 2nd French Army, composed in particular of the 15th, 16th, 20th Army Corps and the 2nd Reserve Division Group (2nd GDR commanded by General Léon Durand), suffered heavy losses and had to retreat to Nancy. Fortunately, Castelnau managed to reform his army which he could then launch into a flanking maneuver which would inflict a heavy defeat on the Germans who were pursuing him. This is the battle of the Trouée de Charmes (August 24-27). It thus prevented the French armies retreating towards Paris from being turned to the right and made the Battle of the Marne possible. At the time when the other armies achieved victory at the Marne, Castelnau blocked a new German offensive targeting Nancy: it was the Battle of Grand-Couronné (September 4-13). This earned him the nickname “Nancy’s savior”.Édouard de Castelnau was promoted, on September 18, 1914, to grand officer of the Legion of Honor. Joffre then withdraws him from the Lorraine front and entrusts him with the mission of extending the left flank of the French armies north of the Oise, striving to outflank the German right wing. This is the start of the race to the sea, which Castelnau begins and leads to Arras. This maneuver is then continued until reaching the shore of the North Sea by the British Expeditionary Force, the Belgian Army and several corps of the French Army under the command of General Foch. In Picardy, Castelnau distinguished itself by resisting a German offensive commanded by General von Kluck in the Roye region. This earned him after the war this appreciation of his former adversary: “The French adversary towards whom our sympathies instinctively went, because of his great military talent and his chivalry, is General de Castelnau. And I wish he knew that.”From November 1914, in Belgium and France, the fighting took the form of trench warfare. Implementing new tactical principles, notably by launching his infantry under the protection of a rolling artillery barrage, Castelnau won a victory at Quesnoy-en Santerre. From the beginning of 1915, he recommended adopting a defensive attitude on the French front while waiting to have enough heavy artillery to break through the German defenses and, in the meantime, launching a major offensive in the Balkans. His idea received the support of President Poincaré and Aristide Briand, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, but Joffre and the GQG opposed it.In June 1915, he was placed at the head of Army Group Center and directed the Champagne offensive. of September 25, 1915: in a few days he took 25,000 prisoners, took 125 cannons but, disrupted by continuous rain, this offensive did not lead to a strategic victory. Following this feat of arms, he was elevated to the dignity of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor on October 8, 1915 and, two months later, on December 11, 1915, he was named Chief of General Staff of the French Armies, a position he held throughout 1916. In this function, he assisted Generalissimo Joffre. He made a decisive contribution to the battle of Verdun. Unlike a majority of GHQ officers who do not believe in a German offensive there, he fears it. He then intervened to strengthen the city's defenses and put the 20th Army Corps at Bar-le-Duc on alert to be able to engage it as reinforcement in the event of a German attack. This began on February 21, 1916. While after three days of fighting, the French defenses were giving way, Castelnau went to Verdun and took the crucial decisions that would enable resistance. He appoints General Pétain and reorganizes the local command. Throughout the nine months that the battle lasted, he intervened during the most critical episodes. After six weeks of fighting, he decided to appoint General Nivelle, General Pétain taking command of the Central Army Group (GAC). Finally, it was he who ordered the final offensive in November 1916, against the advice of the officers around Joffre, transforming this long battle into a French victory.In December 1916, Joffre was replaced as commander-in-chief of the armies. General Robert Nivelle was chosen to succeed him, Joffre being elevated to the dignity of Marshal of France. The post of Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces was abolished and Castelnau was appointed to command the Eastern Army Group. However, this sector of the front where its units operate is the least active. On June 25, 1917, he received the military medal. In the spring of 1918, taking advantage of the Russian withdrawal from the conflict after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Germans brought all of their forces back to France and Belgium then launched a series of major offensives which were on the verge of making them victorious. The armies commanded by Castelnau did not play a leading role during this period. On the other hand, while the Franco-British troops, reinforced by the American contingent, regained the initiative during the summer, he was designated to prepare a decisive maneuver in Lorraine. In this sector, the weakness of the German system suggests a major success likely to accelerate the end of the war. With two days left, Castelnau will not experience another victory. The armistice of November 11 suspends its attack when it would have probably led deep into Germany. Despite the additional losses that this would have caused - "I know only too well the bitterness of the tears shed on the graves," he wrote to his family, thinking of his three sons Gérald, Xavier and Hugues who were killed during this war » — Castelnau thinks that the allies should not have signed the armistice prematurely.Post-warHe made a solemn entry into Colmar on November 22, 1918 during the celebrations of the liberation of the city. On this occasion, the press around the world announced his elevation to marshalship but the government refused. Yet public opinion demands it as evidenced by the ovation he receives July 14, 1919 when he parades on the Champs Élysées. As he passes, the crowd begins to chant “Marshal!” Marshal! » demanding that he be raised to marshal as Joffre, Foch and Pétain had been. Like the other great military leaders of the Great War, he was the subject of numerous honors. In Lyon, the mayor of the city Édouard Herriot, although very anticlerical, welcomed him with a speech of rare emphasis; he adds “Your victory, your unique victory of the Grand Couronné will become classic like that of old at Thermopylae” “I compare you to this great leader, Turenne, whose figure shines in our History as one of the noblest, the simplest , of the purest of our race and our time.”He entered Parliament in 1919 as a deputy for Aveyron with the blue horizon wave, within the majority Republican party, the Republican Federation, classified on the right. He was elected chairman of the Army Commission. In this role, he marked the legislature by having a duration of military service of eighteen months adopted on April 23, 1923. It is undoubtedly his active participation to political life which prompted the government of Aristide Briand and the Minister of War, Louis Barthou, to exclude him from the new list of marshals which was announced on February 19, 1921. Indeed, in the eyes of many parliamentarians, including Léon Blum, Castelnau asserts himself a little more every day as a national leader. This eviction triggers a questioning of the government in the Assembly. Despite a strong movement in public opinion as evidenced by the poll carried out by the daily Le Journal in favor of his appointment, Castelnau will never be made marshal. Clemenceau himself was surprised: “I would have been neither surprised nor upset to see the name of General de Castelnau among the six marshals of France. It is regrettable that we have forgotten him and it is to us and not to him that this forgetting does the greatest harm.”In the 1924 elections which marked the victory of the Left Cartel, he was beaten by the mathematician Emile Borel. He then wants to move away from public life. But, faced with the resurgence of an anticlerical policy implemented by the new president of the Council, Édouard Herriot, he then launched the idea of a vast national federation of various Catholic movements. The National Catholic Federation (FNC) was born. It had up to two million members. At its head, he bends the power in place, which is forced to abandon its entire anticlerical program (denunciation of the Alsatian concordat, closure of the embassy in the Vatican, expulsion of religious congregations, suppression of free schools, etc.) in front of the major demonstrations that Castelnau organizes throughout France. This earned him the hatred of some of the radical-socialist movement and of being caricatured as a reactionary and royalist character. He is criticized, for example, for his short-lived presidency of the League of Patriots between 1924 and 1926, even though this movement had long since lost any anti-parliamentary character and, under the presidency of Castelnau, it maintained a strictly apolitical attitude. It was not until the dawn of the 21st century that contemporary historians such as René Rémond corrected this image and described him as a moderate right-wing republican. and social ideas ahead of its time. This duality is expressed in particular during the Popular Front. A man of the right, Castelnau spoke out against the factory occupations which marked the beginnings of the Blum government and preached unity against communism while a few weeks earlier, he did not hesitate to support much of his social program.In 1919, he was elected maintainer of the Toulouse Floral Games. Very attached to this region where he owns a family property, he was more and more frequent at the sessions, particularly in the last years of his life. He is also a member of the Institute and a founding member of the mutual aid association of the French nobility. Thanks to his collaboration with Madame de Sainte-Marie, a bourgeois from Parisian society, on September 22, 1928 he founded the La Familiale Mutual Aid Society. They are both eager to help sick and hospitalized people. The statutes are filed with the services of the Paris Prefecture. This “mutual aid” society (the mutual designation did not exist at this period) later gave birth to the Mutuelle famille d’Île-de-France (MFIF).Castelnau, committed editorialistFrom December 1919, Castelnau became one of the editorialists for the Parisian daily L'Écho de Paris. With a circulation of 200,000 copies, this newspaper goes beyond just the Catholic audience to reach conservative opinion as a whole. Castelnau revealed himself to be pugnacious, particularly against the anticlerical left. He also uses it to support the action of the National Catholic Federation against the government of Édouard Herriot, whose fall he hailed by titling his editorial: “The cartel of fraudsters has lived.” It is in this daily that Castelnau published his article in favor of Social Insurance in which he invites business leaders to put themselves at the service of “their brothers”, the workers. The theme of national defense is also part of his interventions, which leads him to respond to Louis-Alfred Pagès of L'Ouest-Éclair, whom he criticizes for his implicit support for German demands for adjustments to the Treaty of Versailles. The affair leads L'Ouest-Éclair, keen to spare a personality as prominent as General de Castelnau, to make honorable amends. Finally, L'Écho de Paris provided him in 1936 with the opportunity to attack the Spanish republican government at the start of the civil war. Under the title “Frente Popular, Frente Crapular”, Castelnau is outraged at the massacre of thousands of Spanish clergy and denounces the Comintern's progressive infiltration of the main ministries.In 1924, he founded the weekly La France Catholique which served as his platform within Catholicism. and some of his texts are taken up by the national press. Gradually, a divide appears regarding the international situation between La France Catholique which defends a conservative line and clearly more progressive press organs, such as the newspapers of Francisque Gay, L'Aube and La vie catholique. as well as the magazine Esprit by Emmanuel Mounier. The political scientist René Rémond was the first historian to look at the clashes which tore French Catholics between the wars over the questions of nationalism and pacifism. In April 1931, La Croix published an article entitled “Catholics want peace”. This text inspired by the pontifical initiative contained in the encyclical Ubi arcano Dei consilio triggers a passionate debate which soon takes the form of a confrontation between certain leaders of the Catholic Association of French Youth (ACJF) and General de Castelnau . Beyond the divergence of doctrine, there is also a generational conflict between a man who is over 80 years old and his opponents much younger. They criticize him for not taking into account papal instructions in favor of peace and accuse him of nationalism. Criticisms quickly take a personal turn. Francisque Gay in La Vie catholique and in L'Aube calls into question his military past. The Sept magazine followed suit. As for Emmanuel Mounier, he went so far as to launch the terrible apostrophe in the Esprit magazine: "General, three sons, isn't that enough?" which forced the magazine to apologize in the following issue because of the emotion raised. Castelnau responds to them in often outrageous terms, denouncing a form of naivety among these young Catholics at a time when the inexorable rise of totalitarian regimes in Italy and then in Germany should on the contrary require greater vigilance, as shown by the remilitarization of the Rhineland by Hitler in Mars 1936. However, the magazines Sept and Esprit remain attached to pacifism until the Munich crisis and intellectuals such as Pierre-Henri Simon continued to present the general as a warmonger and a Maurassian which Castelnau defends in the Écho de Paris of December 26, 1936.If he received the support of many Catholics throughout these years when these clashes lasted and a majority of the episcopal hierarchy, many on the other hand reproach him for using public polemics to assert widely shared views. As noted by his friend, General Tournès who joined him at the FNC: “On many occasions, it would have been enough for him to show a little skill which he certainly did not lack, even more simply to remain silent and he would have avoided the unfair judgments made against him , even disgraces. Such an attitude was impossible for him: he had to loudly affirm what he held to be true.” These unjust judgments will continue long after his death, maintained not only by authors of anticlerical sensibility, but also within the Catholic world by newspapers such as La Croix or by former leaders of the ACJF.During World War IIIn June 1940, as soon as the armistice was announced, he distanced himself from all those who joined the Vichy regime. He resigned from his position as president of the FNC and was very critical of the Catholic hierarchy, too close to Pétain in his opinion. We have all of his private correspondence from the time which allows us to follow and precisely date his thoughts. He encourages his two grandsons of fighting age, Urbain de la Croix and Gérald de Castelnau, to join Free France. The first was killed on Mars 31, 1945 while crossing the Rhine, the second was seriously injured on October 16, 1944 during the French Campaign. Although very old, he actively supports the Resistance and does not hesitate to hide weapons for Colonel Pélissier's Secret Army (AS) network.He died at the Château de Lasserre in Montastruc-la-Conseillère on Mars 18, 1944 and was buried on Mars 21 in the family vault in Montastruc. During the burial ceremony, the Bishop of Toulouse, Mgr Saliège, although very disabled, was carried into the church to be able to honor the memory of Castelnau to whom he was very close. These are his last words which close the ceremony: “General de Castelnau was for us a support, a pride, a flag”.Judgments passed on CastelnauLike all the great military leaders of the Great War, Castelnau had his supporters and his detractors. The judgment of current historians who describe him as one of the most brilliant and accomplished (if not the most) general officers of his generation join that of many of his peers. General Pellé, major general at the GQG, wrote in July 1915: “General de Castelnau has seen a lot in his career and worked a lot; he knows war. He sees quickly and accurately. His battle preparations are admirable: they are pushed into detail and leave as little as possible to chance”In his memoirs, Major General Harbord, of the American Expeditionary Force, recounts: "He was General de Castelnau, whom many considered the best French general, but a royalist and Catholic, therefore suspicious. Americans were very fond of Castelnau, in part because of his aversion to long speeches. Good old Castelnau limited his remarks to raising his glass and wishing that we can soon water our horses together in the Rhine.”Twice, the Ministers of War wanted to bring him to supreme command to replace Joffre. It was first of all Galliéni, but he died suddenly on May 27, 1916 before being able to impose this choice. A few months later, when he took office at the Ministry of War in January 1917, the future Marshal Lyautey was surprised: “In a few hours, he [Castelnau] taught me everything I know about the current war and how to drive it. He is much stronger than all of us. Why wasn't he chosen to lead the war? ".Marshals Joffre and Foch will be much more critical. In their memoirs, they will not hesitate to insinuate that Castelnau had in certain circumstances lacked determination. Joffre claims to have prevented Castelnau from abandoning Nancy during the Battle of Grand Couronné by telephoning him to cancel a withdrawal order. In turn, regarding the Battle of Arras during the race to the sea in October 1914, Foch assures that Castelnau was preparing to carry out a retreat which would have resulted in the capture of the entire 10th French Army. What Joffre confirms in his memoirs by writing: “General de Castelnau showed, once again that his tenacity and his will were not up to the level of intelligence that I liked to recognize in him”However, no historical document allows us to validate the comments of these two men who did not maintain very cordial relations with Castelnau. Other officers will also be critical: those who formed the entourage of Joffre and Foch. In the diary of one of them, the future general Buat, we find numerous negative comments about Castelnau who is alternately described as a “catastrophar” or a “frightened old man”. These judgments illustrate the doctrinal opposition which existed between these supporters of the all-out offensive on the Western Front regardless of its human cost and Castelnau. He was in favor of remaining on the defensive in Belgium and France in order to limit losses and taking the war to the Balkans to take advantage of Austria's weakness. Castelnau has always refused to argue with the two marshals or with their entourages. He simply mentioned that only the opening of the archives — not available at that time — would make it possible to establish the truth. In a close study relating to these episodes, Benoît Chenu apparently found numerous documents establishing that the writings of Joffre and Foch about him are questionable. As for the comments emanating from the officers around them, they above all noted the logical disagreement that could exist between men with very different profiles.Proximity with his menAs recognized by General Gamelin, then commander and chief of staff of General Joffre, he was very popular throughout the army. This popularity had followed her to GHQ despite the hostility of those who had been nicknamed "young Turks" and who formed Joffre's entourage. According to Jean de Pierrefeu: "Immediately, he was adored by the disinterested elements at GHQ." Unlike many generals of this war, Castelnau is often in contact with the soldiers. He frequently went into the trenches saying, “I’m going to the shells.” He also visits aid stations and hospitals. During one of his visits, discovering by chance a dark room in which the seriously wounded were piled up and dying, he exploded: “I do not allow my soldiers to die like dogs; so give them the sweetness of dying in beds and feeling cared for and surrounded in their last moments”He considers himself responsible for the losses and thinks that his first duty is to limit them. Also, throughout the war, he will fiercely pursue any demonstration of hubris and unnecessary heroism. He formally prohibits what he calls “shooting” and prohibits the coup de main that officers sometimes order for unfounded reasons. In his book, Shot for example, André Bach cites Castelnau as one of the least repressive generals of this war.Castelnau and the Verdun memorialWhile during the war, the decisive role of General de Castelnau in the Battle of Verdun was recognized by everyone, including the Germans who qualified him with the title "the savior of Verdun", this contribution was deliberately hidden after the war by the supporters of Marshals Joffre and Pétain who rewrite history in favor of their champions. The character of General de Castelnau then disappears from the memorial of this battle. It was not until the Centenary period that historians corrected these hagiographies and reestablished the essential role of Castelnau. In particular, Jean-Yves Le Naour wrote an article in 2016 in which he specified: “The situation which was restored at the last minute on February 26 owes nothing to his presence or his orders [that of Pétain] but to the sacrifice of the poilus, on the one hand, and on the instructions of General de Castelnau, on the other […] Pétain is summoned to the General Headquarters (GQG) of Chantilly for February 25 at 8 hours in the morning: this means that he will not be able to go to Verdun before the end of the day. But time is running out. [The evening before, the 24th] General de Castelnau, Joffre's deputy, could no longer hold still. The situation is serious and the hours are decisive. Also, he had Joffre wake up around 11 p.m. and obtained authorization to go to Verdun to assess the situation and make the necessary decisions. During the night, by telephone, and in the morning of the 25th, at Dugny - headquarters of General Herr, the commander of the fortified region -, Castelnau multiplied the orders: he brought forward the 20th corps, which had arrived as reinforcement, but that the We did not allow them to pass to the right bank, because the situation seemed lost. It is objected to him that, if the army corps ever crosses the Meuse, it risks being caught in the trap. It will be enough for the Germans to bomb the bridges to prevent it from retreating and annihilate it. Castelnau does not care and caps the local command to push the 20th corps forward. At the end of the day, reinforcements finally reached the defenders of Verdun, exhausted by five days and four nights of combat. On February 26, the German offensive was stopped. Without this energetic intervention from Castelnau, the fall of the right bank of the Meuse - for which both the local command and the GHQ had already mourned - was inevitable. Castelnau, as number two in the French armies at the time, repeatedly bypassed the chain of command during this battle, imposing the troop movements he planned.Never after the war, General de Castelnau will speak out against these diversions made for the benefit of the legend of Joffre or Pétain. No doubt he placed much more value on this testimony that he received from Jean Tocaben, JEUNE officer who fought at Verdun and who published in 1931 a book of memories prefaced by André Tardieu. This work contains a real-life page which clearly demonstrates the image that General de Castelnau enjoyed in the troops, among the soldiers at the front: “We were going up to Verdun. We floundered in the puddles of the road, a pitiful herd. A horned car behind us, a staff car, obviously, a tightly closed limousine where some dashing office officer will throw the insult of packs of mud in our faces... Now an unusual thing happened: the car, instead of speeding along, splashing us, was slow to overtake us... Behind me, instead of the soft trampling of the horde, I suddenly perceived the beginnings of a cadence. So what was there? As I turned my head, the car arrived near me, driving with unexpected slowness, and, in this car, there was, standing, leaning towards the open door, a general, his hand to the right of the gold-leafed kepi, and above all, the pitying face, his eyes bearing on us a look of infinite sadness! It was the supreme leader after Joffre, Castelnau, the general with three dead sons, fighters like us, who, with all his soul, greeted us... I understood why my men, of their own accord, corrected their pace and marked time”QuotesMany of the quotes attributed to Castelnau are apocryphal. On the other hand, there are some which are attested by irrefutable documents.“Forward, everywhere, hard!” » on August 25, 1914 at the battle of the Trouée de Charmes.Colonel Charles Repington, war correspondent, reported in the Times after his visit to Verdun the words of General de Castelnau: "Rather than submit to German slavery, the French race all of them will perish on the battlefield.”In his tribute to the Army for the newspaper L'Écho de Paris on July 14, 1919, Castelnau writes: “The French infantry triumphed over this infernal unleashing of fury and horror which surpassed everything that human imagination could ever conceive.”Castelnau's declaration of candidacy for the legislative elections of 1919: “I find this the most effective way of paying off the imperishable debt that we, the leaders, have contracted towards those whom we had the honor of commanding. We demanded so much from our men during the war, they gave us so much, that for the safeguarding and improvement of their interests we must work with invariable constancy.”His opinion about Pétain and Vichy during the summer of 1940: “More than ever, the armistice appears to me to be ignominious; I can only explain this act by the profound intellectual and moral failure of Pétain, Weygand and Co. […] Bazaine was brought before a war council for a crime ten times less painful as Pétain should be. In this one, senile pride when “he donates his person to France”, defeatism, intellectual weakness compete with cowardice” […] The marshal’s government is terrible in his mentality. The path he leads us to will be that of catastrophe.”In 1942, to a priest who came to bring him a message from Cardinal Gerlier asking him to moderate his criticism of the marshal, Castelnau replied: “So your cardinal has a tongue? I thought he had worn her out licking Pétain’s ass.”FamilyMarried to Marie Barthe (1858-1927). Three of his sons, Gérald (1879-1914), Xavier (1893-1914) and Hugues (1895-1915) were killed during the Great War. During the Second World War, his grandson Urbain de la Croix (1919-1945) and his great-nephews Jean de Castelnau (1913-1944) and Noël de Mauroy (1924-1944), also fall on the field of honor.He is the great-grandfather of the French lawyer Régis de Castelnau.Military careerRanks03/25/1906: brigadier general12/21/1909: major general07/12/1912: rank and prerogatives of army corps commander12/19/1916: major general kept in active service without age limitrank of army commander and designation of army general maintained in active service without age limit 1 sheet of cream paper,typewritten text with handwritten mention of the name of the donor and autograph signature of the general, president of the group, at the bottom of the sheet approximately 21.5x13cm Dated 1920 - [Provenance from Georges or Louis Boulay]- Good general condition,folds, minor tears on the edges, light foxing or various frictions cf. visuals...-Very Very Rare Document! As always, combined shipping costs in case of multiple purchases... The situation is serious and the hours are decisive. Also, he had Joffre wake up around 11 p.m. and obtained authorization to go to Verdun to assess the situation and make the necessary decisions. During the night, by telephone, and in the morning of the 25th, at Dugny - headquarters of General Herr, the commander of the fortified region -, Castelnau multiplied the orders: he brought forward the 20th corps, which had arrived as reinforcement, but that the We did not allow them to pass to the right bank, because the situation seemed lost. It is objected to him that, if the army corps ever crosses the Meuse, it risks being caught in the trap. It will be enough for the Germans to bomb the bridges to prevent it from retreating and annihilate it. Castelnau does not care and caps the local comma
Price: 185.85 USD
Location: Fontenay sous Bois
End Time: 2024-12-11T23:19:07.000Z
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subject: Music
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