19th-century French military personnel

Henri Philippe Bénoni Omer Joseph Pétain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), commonly known as Philippe Pétain (, French: [filip petɛ̃]) or Marshal Pétain (French: Maréchal Pétain), was a general who commanded the French Army in World War I and became the head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II.
Pétain was admitted to the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1873 and pursued a career in the military, achieving the rank of colonel by the outbreak of World War I. He led the French Army to victory at the nine-month-long Battle of Verdun, for which he was called "the Lion of Verdun" (French: le lion de Verdun). After the failed Nivelle Offensive and subsequent mutinies, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief and succeeded in restoring control. Pétain remained in command for the rest of the war and emerged as a national hero. During the interwar period he was head of the peacetime French Army, commanded joint Franco-Spanish operations during the Rif War and served twice as a government minister. During this time he was known as le vieux Maréchal ("the Old Marshal").
On 17 June 1940, with the imminent Fall of France and the government desire for an armistice, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned, recommending to President Albert Lebrun that he appoint Pétain in his place, which he did that day, while the government was at Bordeaux. The government then resolved to sign armistice agreements with Germany and Italy. The entire government subsequently moved briefly to Clermont-Ferrand, then to the town of Vichy in central France. It voted to transform the French Third Republic into the French State, better known as Vichy France, an authoritarian puppet regime that was allowed to govern the southeast of France and which collaborated with the Axis powers. After Germany and Italy occupied all of France in November 1942, Pétain's government worked closely with the Nazi German military administration.
After the war, Pétain was tried and convicted for treason. He was originally sentenced to death, but due to his age and World War I service his sentence was commuted to life in prison. His journey from military obscurity, to hero of France during World War I, to collaborationist ruler during World War II, led his successor Charles de Gaulle to declare that Pétain's life was "successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre".
Pétain, who was 84 years old when he became Prime Minister and later Chief of State, remains both the oldest person to become the head of government and the oldest person to become the head of state of France.

Ernest Jean Philippe Fauque de Jonquières (born Carpentras, France 3 July 1820; died Mousans-Sartoux, France 12 August 1901) was a French mathematician and naval officer who made several contributions in geometry.
Jonquières attended the naval school at Brest, and later joined the French Navy. in 1841 he became a lieutenant, and from 1849 to 1850 he served on the staff of the Admiral in Paris. During this time, Jonquières became a close associate of Michel Chasles, whose works he had studied. During his subsequent time at sea, he continued his mathematical studies, and won a part of the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences in 1862.
In 1865, Jonquières became a captain and was sent to Saigon to organize a French agricultural and industrial exhibition. He played an important role in the development of current Vietnam as a French colony. Later, he was head of the local naval depot and its maps and plans. In 1874, Jonquières was made Vice-Admiral. He retired in 1885.

François Rochebrune (Polish: Franciszek Rochebrune) (born 1 June or 1 January 1830, died 19 November 1870 (some sources state 1871)) was a French soldier who served in the French Zouaves during the Crimean War. He then lived in Poland for two years as a tutor. He returned to the French Zouaves for five years, serving as a sergeant in China. He then returned to live in Poland once again in 1862. When the Polish rebellion against Russian rule began in January 1863, he formed and led a Polish rebel unit called the Zouaves of Death. Within months, he had been promoted to general. After the collapse of the uprising, he returned to France, where his exploits in Poland earned him the rank of captain in the French army. He was promoted to colonel for the Franco-Prussian War, and was killed by a sniper at the Battle of Montretout at the age of forty.

Ernest Marc Louis de Gonzague Doudart de Lagrée (French pronunciation: [ɛʁnɛst dudaʁ də laɡʁe]; March 31, 1823 – March 12, 1868) was the leader of the French Mekong Expedition of 1866-1868.He was born in Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze near Grenoble, France, and graduated from the École Polytechnique. He joined the navy and served in the Crimean War, then took up a post in Indochina in the hope that the climate would help his chronically ulcerated throat. It did not, and throughout the Mekong expedition he was often in severe pain.
The expedition left Saigon on June 5, 1866. In addition to his ulcers, Doudart de Lagrée suffered from fever, amoebic dysentery and infected wounds caused by leeches, as the expeditioners had to walk barefoot once they had worn out their supply of shoes. By the time the expedition reached Dongchuan, in Yunnan, China, he was too sick to be moved, and his second-in-command Francis Garnier took command. Garnier led the expedition to Dali, leaving Doudart de Lagrée in the care of the doctor. He died from an abscess on his liver. The doctor removed his heart to return it to France, while Doudart de Lagrée was buried in Dongchuan.
Ernest Doudart de Lagrée was also an entomologist. Insect collections made by him in Africa are conserved in Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris.

Henri Laurent Rivière (1827–1883) was a French naval officer and a writer who is chiefly remembered today for advancing the French conquest of Tonkin (northern Vietnam) in the 1880s. Rivière's seizure of the citadel of Hanoi in April 1882 inaugurated a period of undeclared hostilities between France and Dai Nam (as Vietnam was known then) that culminated one year later in the Tonkin campaign (1883–1886).

Alphonse Joseph Georges (15 August 1875 – 24 April 1951) was a French army officer. He was commander in chief of the North East Front in 1939 and 1940. Opposing the plan by supreme commander Maurice Gamelin to move the best Allied forces into the Low Countries, he was overruled. Georges tried to allow as much initiative to his subordinates as possible to improve operational flexibility.