Petain, Henri Philippe Benomi Omer Joseph.

Petain, Henri Philippe Benomi Omer Joseph, born, 24-04-1856, in Cauch-a-la-Tour, Calais.   one of five children of Omer-Venant Pétain, a farmer, and Clotilde Legrand, with four girls their only son. His father had previously lived in Paris, where he worked for photography pioneer Louis Daguerre, before returning to the family farm in Cauchy-à-la-Tour following the Revolution of 1848. One of his great-uncles, a Catholic priest, Father Abbe Lefebvre (1771–1866), served in the Grande Armée during the Napoleonic Wars.

Pétain’s mother died when he was 18 months old, and he was raised by relatives after his father remarried. He attended the Catholic boarding school of Saint-Bertin in the nearby town of Saint-Omer. In 1875, with the intention of preparing for the Saint-Cyr Military Academy, Pétain enrolled in the Dominican college of Albert-le-Grand in Arcueil

He joined the French Army in 1876 and spent many years as an infantry officer and an army instructor. After studying the Russo-Japanese War. Petain became convinced that the increased fire-power of modern weapons strongly favoured the defensive. Others in the French Army, for example, Ferdinand Foch, he died age 78, on 1929, 23-07-1951,

    believed the opposite to be true. On the outbreak of the First World War Petain was due to retire from the army. Instead he was promoted to brigadier and took part in the Artois Offensive. In 1915 Joseph Joffre,   he died age 79, in 1931, sent Petain to command the French troops at Verdun. Afterwards Petain was praised for his artillery-based defensive operations and his organisation of manpower resources, (see Did you know). After the disastrous Nivelle Offensive in the spring of 1917, the French Army suffered widespread mutinies on the Western Front. Petain replaced Robert Nivelle,   he died age 67, in 1924, as Commander-in-Chief. This was a popular choice as Petain, unlike Nivelle, had a reputation for having a deep concern for the lives of his soldiers. By improving the living conditions of the soldiers at the front and restricting the French Army to defensive operations, Petain gradually improved the morale of his troops. Considered to be too defensively minded, it was Ferdinand Foch, rather than Petain who was given the main role in the Allied offensive in the autumn of 1918. Promoted to Field Marshal two weeks after the Armistice, Petain remained active in French military affairs and served as War Minister in 1934. In 1940, aged 83, Petain agreed to head the Vichy government in occupied France.

  Petain fed to Switzerland after the Normandy landings but when he returned in April, 1945, he was arrested and charged with treason.  Fearing riots at the announcement of the sentence, Charles Andre de Gaulle ordered that Pétain be immediately transported on the former’s private aircraft to Fort du Portalet in the Pyrenees, where he remained from 15 August to 16-11-1945. The government later transferred him to the Fort de Pierre-Levée citadel on the Île d’Yeu, a small island off the French Atlantic coast.

Over the following years Pétain’s lawyers and many foreign governments and dignitaries, including Queen Mary  and the Duke of Windsor , appealed to successive French governments for Pétain’s release, but given the unstable state of Fourth Republic  politics no government was willing to risk unpopularity by releasing him. As early as June 1946 U.S. President Harry Truman  interceded in vain for his release, even offering to provide political asylum in the U.S. A similar offer was later made by the Spanish dictator General Franco  Petain was found guilty of and sentenced to death for aiding the German enemy. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

Pétain was a bachelor until his sixties, and known for his womanising. After World War I, Pétain married his former girlfriend, Eugénie Hardon (1877–1962) on 14-09-1920; they remained married until the end of Pétain’s life. After rejecting Pétain’s first marriage proposal, Hardon had married and divorced François de Hérain by 1914 when she was 35. At the opening of the Battle of Verdun in 1916, Pétain is said to have been fetched during the night from a Paris hotel by a staff officer who knew that he could be found with Eugénie Hardon. She had no children by Pétain but already had a son from her first marriage, Pierre de Hérain, whom Pétain strongly disliked.

Death and burial ground of Petain, Henri Philippe Benomi Omer Joseph.

    Henri-Philippe Petain died in prison, Île d’Yeu, Pays de la Loire, old age 95, on 23-07-1951. Philippe Pétain is buried on the cemetery Port Joinville, Iles de Jeu. In February 1973, Pétain’s coffin was stolen from the Île d’Yeu cemetery by extremists who demanded that President Georges Pompidou consent to his interment in the Douamont cemetery  among the war dead. Authorities retrieved the coffin a few days later, and Pétain was ceremoniously reburied with a Presidential wreath on his coffin, but on the Île d’Yeu as before.

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