Foch the Man | Page 6

with one another, meant almost as much to the
world as his military genius.
Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many
centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left. The old
castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned
warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth. The old
palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's
father had his office.
There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but
very dear to the people of Tarbes nevertheless.

Ferdinand and his brothers and sister were very piously reared, and at
an early age learned to love the church and to seek it for exaltation and
consolation.
Later on in these chapters we shall see that phase of a little French
boy's training in its due relation to a maréchal of France, directing the
greatest army the world has ever seen.
The college of Tarbes, where Ferdinand began his school days, was in a
venerable building over whose portal there was, in Latin, an inscription
recording the builder's prayer:
"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
Ferdinand was a hard student, serious beyond his years, but not
conspicuous except for his earnestness and diligence.
When he was twelve years old, his fervor for Napoleon led him to read
Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the Empire." And about this time
his professor of mathematics remarked of him that "he has the stuff of a
polytechnician."
The vacations of the Foch children were passed at the home of their
paternal grandparents in Valentine, a large village about two miles from
the town of St. Gaudens in the foothills of the Pyrénées. There they had
the country pleasures of children of good circumstances, in a big,
substantial house and a vicinity rich in tranquil beauty and outdoor
opportunities. And there, as in the children's own home at Tarbes, one
was ashamed not to be a very excellent child, and, so, worthy to be
descended from a chevalier of the great Napoleon.
In the mid-sixties the family moved from Tarbes to Rodez--almost two
hundred miles northeast of their old locality in which both parents had
been born and where their ancestors had long lived.
It was quite an uprooting--due to the father's appointment as paymaster
of the treasury at Rodez--and took the Foch family into an atmosphere

very different from that of their old Gascon home, but one which also
helped to vivify that history which was Ferdinand's passion.
There Ferdinand continued his studies, as also at Saint-Étienne, near
Lyons, whither the family moved in 1867 when the father was
appointed tax collector there.
And in 1869 he was sent to Metz, to the Jesuit College of Saint
Clément, to which students flocked from all parts of Europe.
He had been there a year and had been given, by unanimous vote of his
fellow students, the grand prize for scholarly qualities, when the
Franco-Prussian war began.
Immediately Ferdinand Foch enlisted for the duration of the war.

III
A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
There is nothing to record of Ferdinand Foch's first soldiering except
that from the dépôt of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, in his home city
of Saint-Étienne, he was sent to Chalon-sur-Saône, and there was
discharged in January, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris.
He did not distinguish himself in any way. He was just one of a
multitude of youths who rushed to the colors when France called, and
did what they could in a time of sad confusion, when a weak
government had paralyzed the effectiveness of the army--of the nation!
Whatever blows Ferdinand Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in
helping to avert France's catastrophe. But he was like hundreds of
thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the
anguish he suffered because of what he could not do to save France
from humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has
contributed to the glory of new France.

At the time when his Fall term should have been beginning at Saint
Clément's College, Metz was under siege by the German army, and its
garrison and inhabitants were suffering horribly from hunger and
disease; Paris was surrounded; the German headquarters were at
Versailles; and the imperial standards so dear to young Foch because of
the great Napoleon were forever lowered when the white flag was
hoisted at Sedan and an Emperor with a whole army passed into
captivity.
How much the young soldier-student of the Saône comprehended then
of the needlessness of the shame and surrender of those inglorious days
we do not know. He cannot have been sufficiently