FRENCH ARMY

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 85, 10 April 1917, Page 7

FRENCH ARMY

PROMOTION FOR MARCHAND

'FOCH TO ASSIST WAR-CABINET.

(ADS. AND N.Z. CABLE ASSN. AND. REOTBR.)

PARIS, Bth April.

Brigadier-General Marchand has been promoted to the rank of General of Division,

General Foch remains on -active service without command, at the disposal of the

War Cabinet.

General Foch. was even before the war one of the best known of France's generals, on account of works on the Principles and Conduct of War, and on Manoeuvres, which rank as military classics, and he has proved himself as good a, commander in the field as in the study. When the war broke out he was a corps qpmmander, but Joffre knew* of his ability, and in September he was at the head of an army. Later he commanded a group of armies, Haig's among them. Foch had his great chance on the Marne and the Aisne. In the Marne battle he brought off, with the help of the weather and General D'Esperey, one of the greatest strokes of the war. On the night of Bth September, discovering that the capture of Montmirail by D'Esperey's sth Army had laid the right flank of Yon Buelow's army bare, he thrust the 9th French Army, of which he himself was in command, into the gapthus created between Yon Buelow and Yon Hausen. Yon Buelow was forced right back, for a while there was almost a panic in the German ranks, and though this passed, Foch's move was one of the principal factors in the victory of the Marne. Foch, like Joffre, Pau, and. Gallieni, comes from the South of France, and, like Joffre and Gallieni, he is a Pyrenean. He was born at the Bay of Biscay end of the Pyrenees, of stock which is partly aboriginal Basque, and he is 66 years old—the same age a3 de Castelnau and Dubail, and a, year older than Joffre.

Jean Bapfciste Marchand 1 first acquired fame through what is known, in history as the Fashoda incident. In. 1898, when he was a captain of the French Army, he led an expedition from the Congo, along the Uppei^ Übangi and through the Bahr-el-Ghazal province to Fashodaf on the River Nile. It was discovered there by the Sirdar, General -Kitchener. Marcband, who was now a major, had been attacked by the Dervishes, and had taken up a position, after retreating, on a peninsula that jutted out into the river, but which, with the floods, had become an island. In 1895 the British Government, through the Foreign Minister, hsd informed Franca that it would regard.the sending of an expedition into the Nile Valley as an unfriendly, act, and when the Sirdar found, Majxhand he invited him to retire. But the Frenchman refused to do this without the sanction of "his Government. Marchand had heard no news from France for eighteen months. The aSna promised Iliad not arrived, and lie. had very little ammunition left for his men, who were.Tj'imbuctoo natives, the finest black men in Africa. Four out of his Bine French colleagues had died, two of beri-beri, one eaten by a crocodile, and one by falling from a tree. When Marchand refused to move a British force was posted opposite him to cut off his communications with the mainland; and the mattei" was left to the diplomatists to settle. On sth November the French Government decided, in deference to the attitude of Great Britain> that he would have to retire.

Marchand entered the army in 1883, and gained his first commission three years,later. He did great, work in ths present war. In the heat of the Champagne fighting in October, 1914, the honour of an open assault was given to the French cokmial corps which were under his command. The correspondent of The

,Ti\nes in Paris had this to say about the leader, who in that great battle was wounded: —"Colonel Marchand was bidden iead his men, but he fell wounded at the-outset on the crest of a trench line, where lie had stood surrounded by his staff, a. cane in his hand, smoking his pipe, and encouraging the succeeding waves of men racing into the confusion of battle." ./For his wonderful example Marcliand was awarded the War Cross, an order of the day stating that -he had inspired his men with an unconquerable determination to follow l him anywhere. Later, General Marchand was wounded by a epßnter-of sheQ striking him in the spinal column. The^ President afterwards pinned on his breast the Grand Star of-the Legion of Honour. On 16th May, 1916, it was reported that he had been killed in action, but this was denied thenext day.