Foch the Man | Page 5

the ancestral
home of the Foch family.

Whatever the relatives of Ferdinand may have thought of this as a
probability, it is certain that Ferdinand was well nurtured in the history
of Foix and especially in those phases of it that Froissart relates.
Froissart, the genial gossip who first courted the favor of kings and
princes and then was gently entreated by them so that his writing of
them might be to their renown, was on his way to Blois when he heard
of the magnificence of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix. Whereupon the
chronicler turned him about and jogged on his way to Foix. Gaston
Phoebus was not there, but at Orthez--150 miles west and north--and,
nothing daunted, to Orthez went Froissart, by way of Tarbes, traveling
in company with a knight named Espaing de Lyon, who was a graphic
and charmful raconteur thoroughly acquainted with the country through
which they were journeying. A fine, "that-reminds-me" gentleman was
Espaing, and every turn of the road brought to his mind some stirring
tale or doughty legend.
"Sainte Marie!" Froissart cried. "How pleasant are your tales, and how
much do they profit me while you relate them. They shall all be set
down in the history I am writing."
So they were! And of all Froissart's incomparable recitals, none are
more fascinating than those of the countryside Ferdinand Foch grew up
in.

II
BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of
an Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.
Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet animals.
There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the business
of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first that little
Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.

He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young. And
all his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.
A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but
certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.
Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it was
a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with
pleasure.
In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I
have found the following description of the crowds which flocked into
Tarbes on the days of the horse markets and races:
"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with
streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and
exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races of
the southern provinces and the mountains.
"There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of vigorous
proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about something
or other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.
"There are men of the Basque province--small, muscular and proud,
agile of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech
and childlike in deed.
"There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and
circumstance--educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern
warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of
experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their
Spanish neighbors.
"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength
under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored
faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of
primitiveness--vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a
little subnormal in expression.

"Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in a
pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues,
there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes itself,
each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners, speech,
which make them easily distinguishable one from another."
It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.
If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the
impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange
folk might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on
glowing page.
[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy.]
[Illustration: The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the
Military Academy.]
But that was not the way it served him.
I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think
of those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and
the crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to
the great days of his life that began in 1914--the days when his
comprehension of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them
and harmonize them