61 Facts About Hubert Lyautey

Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey was a French Army general and colonial administrator.

Hubert Lyautey was dubbed the French empire builder and in 1931 made the cover of Time.

Hubert Lyautey's father was a prosperous engineer and his grandfather a highly-decorated Napoleonic general.

Hubert Lyautey's mother was a Norman aristocrat, and Lyautey inherited many of her assumptions: monarchism, patriotism, Catholicism and the belief in the moral and political importance of the elite.

Hubert Lyautey attended lycee in Dijon, where he recalled he was fascinated with Rene Descartes' Discours de la Methode.

Hubert Lyautey attended the army training school in early 1876 and in December 1877 was made a lieutenant.

Hubert Lyautey served in the cavalry and was to make his career serving in the colonies, not in a more prestigious assignment in metropolitan France.

Hubert Lyautey helped crush the so-called piracy of the Black Flags rebellion along the Chinese border.

Hubert Lyautey then set up the colonial administration in Tonkin and then became head of the military office of the Government-General in Indochina.

From 1897 to 1902, Hubert Lyautey served in Madagascar, again under Gallieni.

Hubert Lyautey pacified northern and western Madagascar; administered a region of 200,000 inhabitants; began the construction of a new provincial capital at Ankazobe and a new roadway across the island; Hubert Lyautey encouraged the cultivation of rice, coffee, tobacco, grain, and cotton; and opened schools.

Hubert Lyautey believed that he did not crave power for its own sake.

Hubert Lyautey returned to France to command a cavalry regiment in 1902 before he was promoted to brigade general a year later, largely a result of the military skill and success which he had shown in Madagascar.

Later that year, Hubert Lyautey marched west and occupied Bechar, a clear breach of the 1840s treaties.

Hubert Lyautey met Isabelle Eberhardt in 1903 and employed her for intelligence missions.

Hubert Lyautey then occupied Oujda in eastern Morocco near the Algerian border.

On 14 October 1909 in Paris, Hubert Lyautey married Ines Fortoul, nee de Bourgoing, god daughter of former Empress Eugenie and president of the French Red Cross, who had just organized the Red Cross in Morocco.

Hubert Lyautey returned to France in 1910, and in January 1911, he took up command of a corps at Rennes.

In 1912 Hubert Lyautey was posted back to Morocco and relieved Fez, which was being besieged by 20,000 Moroccans.

On 27 July 1914, Resident-General Hubert Lyautey received a cable from Paris from the undersecretary of foreign affairs Abel Ferry.

Hubert Lyautey argued that Verdun and Morocco were part of the same war.

Hubert Lyautey disregarded advice to concentrate major forces in a few cities and took a personal risk by spreading them all over the country.

Hubert Lyautey insisted France would win the war and continued with the usual trade fairs and road and rail construction.

Hubert Lyautey wrote a journal article "On the Social Function of the Officer under Universal Military Service".

Hubert Lyautey was suspicious of republicanism and socialism, and believed in the social role of the Army in regenerating France.

Hubert Lyautey adopted and emulated Gallieni's policy of methodical expansion of pacified areas followed by social and economical development to bring about the end of resistance and the cooperation of former insurgents.

Hubert Lyautey's writings have had a significant influence on contemporary counterinsurgency theory through its adoption by David Galula.

Hubert Lyautey practiced a policy known as politique des races of dealing separately with each tribe to avoid any tribe from gaining too much influence within the colonial system.

Hubert Lyautey is considered to have been an apt colonial administrator.

Hubert Lyautey's governing style evolved into the Lyautey system of colonial rule.

The Hubert Lyautey system invested in pre-established local governing bodies and advocated for local control.

Hubert Lyautey advocated for finding a sub-group that had nationalistic tendencies but had a strong desire for local autonomy and then investing in the sub-group as political leaders.

Hubert Lyautey tried to balance blunt military force with other means of power and promoted a vision of a better future for the Moroccans under the French colonial administration.

Hubert Lyautey opposed proselytising of Christianity and the settlement of French migrants in Morocco, and quoted with approval Governor Lanessan of Indo-China "we must govern with the mandarin and not against the mandarin".

Hubert Lyautey briefly served as France's Minister of War for three months in 1917, which were clouded by the unsuccessful Nivelle Offensive and the French Army Mutinies.

Hubert Lyautey was apparently surprised to receive a telegram offering him the job and demanded and was given authority to issue orders to Nivelle and Sarrail ; Nivelle's predecessor Joffre had enjoyed much greater freedom from the War Minister and had had command over Salonika.

Prime Minister Aristide Briand, not going into detail about Joffre's removal, replied that Hubert Lyautey would be one of a War Committee of five members, controlling manufacturing, transport and supply, and thus giving him greater powers than his predecessors.

Hubert Lyautey had to spend a good deal of time touring units and learning about the Western front.

Hubert Lyautey was strongly disliked by the political left, and when Briand reconstructed his government in December 1916, Painleve declined to stay part as he was reluctant to be associated with him, although doubts about the replacement of Joffre by Nivelle rather than Philippe Petain played a role.

Hubert Lyautey was met with a fait accompli as Nivelle, whom he would not have chosen, had been appointed Commander-in-Chief by the acting War Minister Admiral Lacaze, whilst munitions under Albert Thomas were hived off into a separate ministry assisted by the industrialist Louis Loucheur as Under-Secretary of State.

Hubert Lyautey had hoped to rely on Joffre, Ferdinand Foch and de Castelnau, but the first soon resigned from his job as advisor, Foch had already been sacked as commander of Army Group North, de Castelnau was sent on a mission to Russia, and Hubert Lyautey was not permitted to revive the post of Chief of the Army General Staff.

Hubert Lyautey was hard of hearing and inclined to dominate conversation.

Hubert Lyautey wrote to the King's adviser Clive Wigram :.

Hubert Lyautey has no grasp whatever of the war as yet and I should doubt if he remains long where he is.

Hubert Lyautey attended the infamous Calais Conference on 27 February 1917, at which Lloyd George attempted to subordinate British forces in France to Nivelle.

On being shown Nivelle's plan, Hubert Lyautey declared that it was "a plan for "the Duchess of Gerolstein" ".

Hubert Lyautey contemplated trying to have Nivelle dismissed but backed down in the face of traditional republican hostility to military men with political aspirations.

Hubert Lyautey shared his concerns about Nivelle with Petain, commander of Army Group Centre, who would eventually replace him.

Hubert Lyautey refused to discuss military aviation even at a closed session of the French Chamber and at the subsequent open session declared that to discuss such matters even in closed session would be a security risk.

Hubert Lyautey resigned as Minister of War after being shouted down in the Chamber on 15 March 1917, and after several leading politicians declined the post of Minister of War, Aristide Briand's sixth cabinet fell four days later.

Hubert Lyautey caused the Institute for Advanced Moroccan Studies and the Sherifian Scientific Institute to be set up in the early 1920s.

Hubert Lyautey resigned in 1925, feeling slighted that Paris had appointed Philippe Petain to command 100,000 men to put down Abd-el-Krim's rebellion in the Rif Mountains.

Marshal Hubert Lyautey served as honorary president of the three French Scouting associations.

Hubert Lyautey was commissioner of the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, designed to encourage support for the empire in Metropolitan France.

Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and the USA contributed exhibitions on their overseas possessions, but not Britain, which despite repeated pleas by Hubert Lyautey cited the cost of its own exhibition of 1924.

The Palais de la Porte Doree in Bois de Vincennes housed part of the Colonial Exhibition of 1931; Hubert Lyautey's study is preserved as part of the foyer.

Hubert Lyautey admired Italian leader Benito Mussolini, and was associated with the far right Croix de Feu.

Hubert Lyautey would have liked to have been a national saviour; he was disappointed to have played only a minor role in France's political life and in the First World War.

Hubert Lyautey's ashes were brought back to Morocco, where they lay in state in a mausoleum in the Chellah, at Rabat.

The actual evidence for Hubert Lyautey being a homosexual is primarily circumstantial, but it was widely regarded as an open secret at the time, one which some historians claim Hubert Lyautey did not take any effort to hide.

Hubert Lyautey is said to be a distant cousin of Holmes.