THE AVENUE FOCH 14 JULY PARADE, A MAJOR FIRST
Organised since 1880, the National Day military parade has taken place at various venues: initially at the Longchamp racecourse, later at the Vincennes racecourse, at the École Militaire, between Les Invalides and La Concorde, and even between République and Bastille in 1979.
The first parade on the Champs-Élysées was held in 1919, with the three Marshals of France from the war that had ended eight months earlier (Joffre, Foch and Pétain) parading on horseback. Since 1981, the parade has not moved from the "most beautiful avenue in the world", except in 2024, when it will be used for the Olympic Games.
The choice of Avenue Foch is easily explained: also starting from Place Charles-de-Gaulle, where the Arc de Triomphe stands, a military symbol par excellence, it is the widest thoroughfare in Paris at 120 metres. Incidentally, this choice highlights the figure of a major wartime leader, Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929) of France, the United Kingdom and Poland.
A BRILLIANT STRATEGIST AND STAFF OFFICER
Born in Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées), Foch was the son of a tax collector named Napoléon and a mother who was the daughter of a soldier of the Revolution and the Empire. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, he enlisted in the 4th Infantry Regiment, but did not fight. The following year, he entered the École polytechnique and then chose the École d'application de l'artillerie on graduating in 1873.
From 1885 to 1887, Captain Foch was a student at the École supérieure de guerre, from which he graduated with the following assessment: "Valuable - active in body and mind - keen intellect - military spirit. Very good, a personality". He served at the École de guerre on several occasions during his career, alternating between staff and regimental posts: in 1895, as a squadron leader, he was an assistant professor and taught military history, strategy and general tactics, before taking over as head of the course the following year, until 1901.
In his "Principles of War", published in 1903 to summarise his teaching, he listed four of them: "Principle of the economy of forces - Principle of freedom of action - Principle of the free disposal of forces - Principle of safety, etc.". This "etc." shows the need to adapt to circumstances.
Brigadier General in 1907, he headed the École de guerre from 1908 to 1911. Maxime Weygand (Major General of the Allied Armies under his command in 1918 and later Generalissimo in 1940) wrote in a 1958 article that Foch's time at the school was "exceptionally brilliant".
Weygand summed up his approach as follows: "General Foch never stops to refute opinions or assessments contrary to his own, however unfair or virulent they may be. That would be a waste of time. In the serenity of his conscience, he simply countered them with the confident reasons of a leader who had conquered his mastery and knew where he wanted to go. We insist on this, having seen, during the war, that this method of discussion, which was natural to him, was convincing and effective. It would serve him well in 1918.
DIFFICULT FIRST YEARS OF WAR
When the First World War broke out on 28 July 1914, Foch was a corps general at the head of the 20e corps based in Nancy. The first years of the conflict were no easier for him than for the rest of the French army. On 19 and 20 August, the Battle of Morhange, where he served under General Édouard de Castelnau, head of the 2e was a bitter French defeat.
After the war, a controversy arose: Had Foch disobeyed Castelnau, precipitating the defeat? The Marshal claimed that he had not received the withdrawal order from his superior in time. Castelnau, who officially remained silent, considered it absurd that an order could have gone astray... Today, most historians consider that Foch disobeyed.
At the end of August, he was promoted to head the 9e This led to him being appointed deputy to General Joseph Joffre, commander of the northern zone. But in December 1916, after the murderous battles of Artois and the Somme, Foch was relieved of his command of the Army Group North: the government judged his taste for the "all-out offensive" responsible for heavy losses for meagre strategic gains.
In May 1917, he became Chief of the General Staff under the Commander-in-Chief of the French Armies, General Philippe Pétain. At the end of the year, he was sent to the Italian front to restore the situation after the disastrous Allied defeat at Caporetto. French and British units joined the Italian armies, strengthening their cohesion against the German-Austrian enemy.
THE INSTRUMENT OF ALLIED UNITY
On 26 March 1918, Ferdinand Foch was put in charge of coordinating the French, British and Belgian armies on the Western Front, to the detriment of Pétain. After the conflict, the President of the Council and Minister for War, Georges Clemenceau, who returned to power at the end of 1917, justified this choice as follows: "I said to myself: let's try Foch! At least we'll die with rifles in our hands! I left behind Pétain, a sensible man full of reason, and adopted Foch, a madman. It was the madman who got us out of there! The spirited Foch replaced the shy Pétain.
On 14 April 1918, he was appointed Generalissimo of the Allied armies in France and then, on 2 May, placed by the Allied governments at the head of the entire Western Front, from the North Sea to the Adriatic: he was thus in charge of the French, American, Italian, Belgian, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand armies. But Pétain was still reluctant to carry out his directives; on 22 June, the government forced him to obey Foch.
What followed was a succession of setbacks for the enemy powers. On 7 August, Foch was elevated to the rank of Marshal of France, the only person to have done so while in a position of command. Finally, on 11 November, he chaired the allied delegation that received the German capitulation at Rethondes. Six days later, a law paid tribute to him by name, as well as to Clemenceau (nicknamed "the Father of Victory").
At his side throughout the war, General Weygand praised his "implacable resolution": "Faced with the enemy, the thinker proved to be an outstanding man of action, implementing with "implacable" resolution the principles and military virtues that he had made the basis of his teaching. Through his actions, the master embodied the ideal of the leader, as he had once described it to his disciples: "When the time comes for decisions to be taken, sacrifices to be made, where are the workers for these perilous undertakings to be found, if not in superior natures, eager for responsibility, deeply imbued with the will to win". Brought into command of the Allied armies after a serious setback, he led them to victory after eight months of bitter fighting.
In the midst of the Second World War, Charles de Gaulle wanted to send the Americans a message on the occasion of Bastille Day.e anniversary of the death of Foch (who died on 20 March 1929). Paying tribute to "the man who had the great honour of being appointed by the governments of the Freedom Party as Commander-in-Chief of their armies", the leader of Free France emphasised: "The great memory of Marshal Foch reminds us today, at the very heart of this war, of an elementary condition for success. This condition is unity of effort.
