French generals

Count Antoine Hector Thésée Treuille de Beaulieu (7 May 1809 – 24 July 1885) was a French General of the 19th century, who developed the concept of rifled guns in the French Army. He studied the subject of rifling between 1840, particularly in the famous Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault, and 1852. Following a request by Napoleon III in 1854 to develop such a weapon, the de Beaulieu system was adopted by the French Army. It consisted in cutting six grooves inside the bore of a muzzle-loading cannon, and to use shells equipped with six lugs which would engage the grooves. This development was paralleled by that of the Armstrong gun in Great Britain (adopted in 1858 by the British Army).
About the same time he developed a pinfire falling-block breech-loading carbine (mousqueton) for the Cent-gardes Squadron which was a bit ahead of its time in using a metallic cartridge and is very unusual (for a single-shot weapon) in that it fires from an open bolt.These developments led to the introduction of the La Hitte system in 1858, a fully integrated system of muzzle-loading rifled guns. The Beaulieu 4-pounder rifled field-gun was adopted by the French Army in 1858, where it replaced the canon-obusier de 12, a smoothbore cannon using shells which was much less accurate and shorter-ranged.The Beaulieu rifled artillery was first used in Algeria, and then in the Franco-Austrian War in Italy in 1859.In 1842 he invented a prototype of the modern muzzle brake and had it tested in 1862.

François-Henry Laperrine (born Marie Joseph François Henry Laperrine d'Hautpoul, September 29, 1860 – March 5, 1920) was a French general who served during World War I.

Henri Alexis Joseph Vanwaetermeulen (14 July 1862 – 16 July 1918) was a French general of the First World War who began his career as a private soldier. Enlisting into a line regiment in 1883 Vanwaetermeulen was promoted to sergeant major within two years and received his commission within five. He transferred to the Troupes de marine and saw service in several French colonies. In Tonkin Vanwaetermeulen was mentioned in dispatches for leading assaults on two forts and received the Colonial Medal. He saw further service in Madagascar, Senegal and Mauritania, much of it under the command of Joseph Gallieni, and by the outbreak of the First World War was a lieutenant-colonel.
Soon after the start of the war Vanwaetermeulen was promoted to colonel and received command of a colonial regiment. He saw action in all the major French operations of 1914–16, was mentioned in dispatches at the Second Battle of Champagne and the Battle of the Somme and received the Croix de Guerre. Promoted to général de brigade by 1917 he was mortally wounded during French counter-attacks following the German spring offensive. He was posthumously appointed a commander of the Legion of Honour.

Michel Roquejeoffre (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl ʁɔkʒɔfʁ]; born 28 November 1933) is a retired French Army general. He commanded Operation Daguet, the French operations during the Gulf War. French forces, a part of the coalition forces, counted 18,000 soldiers and took a direct involvement in the battles with Iraqi forces, both on Kuwait and Iraqi territories.
Before that Roquejeoffre participated in the Algerian War and later missions in Chad, Lebanon and Cambodia. He entered Saint-Cyr in 1952. He retired in 1991.
Allied commander, U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. described Roquejeoffre in his memoirs as one of his most trusted confidants during the war. Roquejeoffre was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States for his services in the Gulf War.

Philippe Rondot (5 October 1936 – 31 December 2017) was a French general, formerly an important personality of the French intelligence. He worked for both the domestic intelligence DST and the foreign intelligence DGSE (traditionally rival services) and was an aide to several Defence Ministers.

Édouard-Jean Réquin (13 July 1879, in Rouen – 1953) was a French military officer.Through 1900 to 1911 he was part of an expedition to North Africa. Then in 1916-1918 a member of the General Staff of Marshals Joseph Joffre and Ferdinand Foch. It is at this time that a portrait of Réquin in military uniform was made by Kees van Dongen in 1916. From 1917-1918, as a Lieutenant Colonel, he was part of the French military delegation to Washington, D. C. In the summer of 1918 he promoted the French Army's policy of racial integration. American military officials were impressed by Réquin's depiction of the situation in the French Army where whites and blacks served side by side and were cared for in the same hospitals and by the same personnel; they had his report La Course de l'Amérique à la Victoire published in English as America's race to victory (1919). In 1919 he was a technical counsellor at Versailles Peace Conference, and later author of Projet de Traité d'Assistance Mutuelle (1924). From 1930 he was French Military Representative at the League of Nations, and 1930-1932 Chief of Cabinet of Ministry of War.
In 1938 he became a member of France's Supreme War Council, then In World War II he was a general, from 2 September 1939 to 6 July 1940 he commanded the 4th French Army against the German invasion of France.
In 1941 he retired, and in 1945 became President of the Société de la Légion d'Honneur. He published three further works: Combats pour l'Honneur, a study on General Louis Archinard in the Sudan, Archinard et le Soudan (both 1946) and his memoirs D'une guerre à l'autre 1919-1939 (1949).

Pierre-Alexis Ronarc'h (French: [pjɛʁ alɛksi ʁɔnaʁ(k)]) was a French sailor and admiral, born on 22 November 1865 in Quimper and died 1 April 1940 in Paris.He is notable for commanding the French Brigade de Fusiliers Marins at the Battle of the Yser in 1914 during the First World War. Between 1915 and 1919 he was in command of the naval forces between Nieuwpoort (Belgium) and Antifer (north of Le Havre), called the Zone des Armées du Nord (ZAN). Based in Dunkirk, his mission was to keep German Navy ships and submarines out of the Dover Channel, in close collaboration with the British Dover Patrol.
In May 1919, the ZAN was dissolved and Ronarc'h became Chief of Staff of the French Navy, a post he held until 1 February 1920, when he was replaced by Henri Salaun.

Henri Marescaux (12 September 1943 – 1 April 2021) was a French army general and Roman Catholic deacon.

Pierre Armand Gaston Billotte (8 March 1906 – 29 June 1992) was a French Army officer and politician. He was the son of General Gaston Billotte, who commanded parts of the French Army at the start of World War II. Pierre Billotte was himself notable for his combat actions during the Battle of France.

General Antoine Jules Joseph Huré (11 February 1873 – December 1949) was a French army officer and engineer noted for his service in Morocco. Huré joined the army as a volunteer in 1893 and after training at the École Polytechnique and École d'Application de l'Artillerie et du Génie he was commissioned into the 3rd Regiment of Engineers. He spent a number of years with his regiment and on staff appointments in France before transferring to Algeria first with the 19th Army Corps, and then the 15th Army Corps. In 1912 Huré transferred to the general staff in eastern Morocco and earned the Colonial Medal.
Huré was recalled to France at the start of the First World War and was shot in the chest whilst serving with the 1st Moroccan Infantry Division, being mentioned in dispatches for continuing with his duties despite his wound. He was posted back to Morocco in 1916 to become military commander of the Fes region. In January 1919 he took over command of French operations against the uprising led by Sidi Mhand n'Ifrutant in the Tafilalt after General Joseph-François Poeymirau was wounded. Huré suppressed the uprising within a month. In April 1919 he led a column to the relief of a French garrison at Aïn Médiouna which had put up a defence against a Moroccan force twenty times their number for four days during another uprising against French rule. Huré then launched further operations that stabilised the military situation in the area within the month. In July he was appointed commander of French troops in Southern Morocco.
Huré eventually reached the rank of général de division and became supreme commander of all French troops in Morocco. Under his supervision the country was finally pacified in 1934. He returned to France in 1935 to serve on the Supreme Council of War and was later made inspector general of engineers. He wrote two books on military history, including one on the pacification of Morocco that was published after his death. Huré was rewarded for his work by appointment as Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and as Commander of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite.