General Gallieni becomes military governor of Paris

On 26 August 1914 the French Minister of War, Adolphe Messimy, appointed General Joseph Gallieni military governor of Paris. It was one of Messimy’s last decisions as minister. The French armies were falling back after losing the Battle of the Frontiers, and the Germans were approaching the capital, whose fortifications had been neglected and whose garrison was weak.

A colonial veteran

Gallieni was born in 1849 at Saint-Béat in the Pyrenees. He graduated from the military academy of Saint-Cyr, fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 and was taken prisoner by the Germans. He spent most of his career in the colonies: in West Africa, in French Sudan, in Indochina, and in 1896–1905 as governor-general of Madagascar, where he bloodily suppressed the resistance of the local population and organised the colony’s administration. He was regarded as one of the ablest French generals. In 1911 he declined the post of chief of the general staff, which went to his former subordinate, Joseph Joffre. In April 1914 he retired on grounds of age, but remained the designated successor to Joffre should anything happen to the commander-in-chief.

The dispute over the defence of the capital

Messimy feared that Joffre, absorbed in the operations of the field armies, would leave no forces for the defence of Paris. Having received no satisfactory answer, he himself entrusted the defence of the city to Gallieni and demanded that the high command detach three corps for the capital. This provoked a conflict with Joffre, who did not want to give up any troops. That same day Messimy lost his post as minister and was succeeded by Alexandre Millerand.

Gallieni found the fortress in a poor state. He immediately set about digging trenches, building obstacles and preparing bridges for demolition. From 1 September he was subordinate to Joffre, and the newly formed 6th Army of General Michel Maunoury was placed under his orders. On 2 September the government left for Bordeaux, and the next day Gallieni announced to the inhabitants that he had received a mandate to defend Paris against the invader and would carry it out to the end.

Before the Battle of the Marne

At the beginning of September airmen and scouts of the Paris garrison noticed that the German 1st Army, instead of marching on Paris, had turned south-east, exposing its right flank. Gallieni urged Joffre to strike that flank. From this manoeuvre grew the First Battle of the Marne. During the battle Gallieni sent reinforcements from Paris to the front, some of them in requisitioned Paris taxis. The importance of these journeys for the outcome of the battle was moral rather than military, but the taxis of the Marne became one of the symbols of the war.

Gallieni’s role in the victory on the Marne is still a matter of dispute, and his relations with Joffre remained cool. In the autumn of 1915 he became Minister of War, but in March 1916, seriously ill, he resigned, and he died in May of that year. In 1921 he was posthumously made a Marshal of France. His memoirs of 1914 were also published in Polish under the title “Obrona Paryża” (“The Defence of Paris”).