People

Marcel Marceau

[img_assist|nid=12957|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=132|height=324]Early life and training

Marcel Marceau was born in Strasbourg, France. At 16, his Jewish family was forced to flee their home when France entered the Second World War. He later joined Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces and, because of his excellent English, worked as a liaison officer with General Patton's army. His father, a kosher butcher, was arrested by the Gestapo and murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. He was married three times and has four children. (He is unrelated to actress Sophie Marceau).

Jules Verne

(February 8, 1828—March 24, 1905) was a French author and a pioneer of the science fiction genre. Verne was noted for writing about space, air, and underwater travel long before they were possible.

Early years

Napoleon I of France

Napoléon Bonaparte (August 15, 1769 – May 5, 1821) functioned as effective ruler of France beginning in 1799 and as emperor of France as Napoléon I from May 18, 1804 to April 6, 1814; he also conquered and ruled over much of western and central Europe. He was the first ruler of the Bonaparte dynasty. Napoleon was one of the so-called “enlightened monarchs”.

Early years and rise in the military

Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel (April 8, 1929 – October 9, 1978) was a Belgian author-composer with such a strong power of expression in his lyrics that he has been considered a poet as well. He also had some minor activity as an actor and director. He was born in Schaerbeek, Belgium, a small city north of Brussels.

Charles de Gaulle

General Charles-André-Joseph-Marie de Gaulle (November 22, 1890 – November 9, 1970) was a French soldier and politician. He was the leader of the Free French Forces in World War II and head of the provisional government in 1944-46. Called to form a government in 1958, he inspired a new constitution1 and was the Fifth Republic’s first president from 1958 to 1969.

General Charles de Gaulle of France

Table of contents [showhide] 
1 1912-1940: Military career

2 1940-1945: The Free French Forces

3 1946-1958: The desert crossing

4 1958: The collapse of the Fourth Republic

5 1958-1969 The Fifth Republic

6 1969 The retirement

7 Retrospect

8 Footnote

9 Works

Stendhal

Marie-Henri Beyle (January 23, 1783 – March 23, 1842), better known as Stendhal, was a 19th century French writer.

Born in Grenoble, France, he had a miserable childhood in stifling provincial France but blossomed in the military and theatrical worlds of the First French Empire. He travelled extensively in Germany and visited Russia (as part of Napoleon’s army), but formed a particular attachment to Italy, where he spent much of the remainder of his career, serving as French consul and writing.

Jules Dumont D'Urville

Jules Dumont d’Urville (May 23, 1790 – May 8, 1842) was a French explorer.

Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville was born in Condé-sur-Noireau, Basse-Normandie, France, was a French Rear Admiral and explorer of the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica.

Napoleon III

Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (April 20, 1808 – January 9, 1873) was the son of King Louis Bonaparte and Queen Hortense de Beauharnais; both monarchs of the Kingdom of Holland.

He was elected President (1848-1852) of the Second Republic of France and subsequently Emperor (1852-1870), reigning as Napoleon III (Second French Empire). In a situation that resembles the case of Louis XVIII of France, the numbering of Napoleon’s reign assumes the existence of a legitimate Napoleon II of France who never actually ruled.

Louis XVI

Louis XVI of France (August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793) succeeded his grandfather (Louis XV of France) as King of France on May 10, 1774; he was crowned on June 11, 1775. His father, the dauphin, had died in 1765.

On May 16, 1770 he married Marie Antoinette, daughter of Francis I of Austria and Empress Maria Theresa , a Habsburg. They had four children:

Marie-Therese Charlotte (December 20, 1778 – October 1851);
Louis-Joseph-Xavier-Fran̤ois (October 22, 1781 РJune 4, 1789);
Louis-Charles (March 27, 1785 – 1795);
Sophie-Beatrix (July 9, 1786 – June 19, 1787).

Emile Zola

Émile Zola (April 2, 1840 – September 29, 1902) was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.