The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Galliéni, Joseph Simon

Born Apr. 24, 1849, in St. Béat, Haute-Garonne; died May 27, 1916, in Versailles. Marshal of France (title conferred posthumously, 1921).

After completing his studies at the military school at St. Cyr in 1870, Galliéni participated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Subsequently he held administrative posts in French colonies of Africa and Indochina. From 1896 to 1905, Galliéni served as governor-general in Madagascar and then commanded a corps in France. He retired from the military in 1913 but in August 1914 returned to active service and was appointed military governor of Paris. In September 1914, Galliéni proposed that a blow be struck at the flanks of the German armies from the direction of Paris. He organized the transfer of General J. Maunoury’s Sixth Army for an attack that played a significant role in the Battle of the Marne of 1914. From October 1915 to March 1916, Galliéni was minister of war.

References in periodicals archive

Joseph Gallieni, the military governor of Paris who concocted the plan, ordered the taxis to gather on a grassy esplanade in front of the gold-domed Invalides military museum, which honors war victims and is the burial site of Napoleon Bonaparte.

France hails taxi drivers in WWI ceremony

Two French colonial military figures enforced this process: Marshals Joseph Gallieni and Hubert Lyautey.

(6.) The "Report of General Gallieni on the situation in Madagascar," by General Joseph Gallieni and "The Colonial Role of the Army" by Lieutenant Colonel Hubert Lyautey, an enlightened plea for the creation of a colonial army, were both published in the same year, 1899.

Complex operations in Africa: operational culture training in the French military

CHARLES de Gaulle once said of Marshal Lyautey, one of France's greatest soldiers, "He is our only marshal with any balls on him; but it's a pity they're not always his own." Others might have said the same of Frederick the Great, Gordon of Khartoum, Lord Kitchener, Lawrence of Arabia, Lord Wavell, Alfred Redl, Joseph Gallieni, Ernst Rohm, Helmuth Moltke, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and Saladin.

Of Baths and Battlefields. (Books)

Lyautey's conception of colonial administration was his own, though it drew extensively on the ideals put into effect by General Joseph Gallieni in Indo China and Madagascar, and what he had read and seen for himself of British administration in Egypt and Africa.

A FRENCH MARSHAL IN MOROCCO

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