A Traitor’s Relation Redeemed
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
June 2008

Just over nine decades later, the Battle of Verdun remains a defining moment of the French national soul. Over a half-million Frenchmen would become casualties in the 10-month struggle to hold the ancient fortress town, with more than half of them killed in action. One of the first to fall also became one of France’s greatest wartime heroes, Lt. Col. Emile Driant of the Chasseurs a pied.

Driant began his military career as rather inconspicuous infantry lieutenant, graduating from the French military at St. Cyr in 1877, at age 22, and serving along the eastern frontier for several years before snagging a spot in the French expedition to Tunis in 1884. Then his career began to take off, winning first a posting on Gen. Georges Boulanger in Tunis and a few years later the hand of Boulanger’s daughter, Marcelle. As Boulanger rose, so did his son-in-law; the general became Minister of War in 1886 and young Driant received prime assignments studying practical applications for new machines of war like the bicycle and the balloon.

Driant leads by example, reinforcing his command post in the fall of 1915.

But Boulanger, known as “the man on the white horse” (even though his famous horse was actually black), would soon overreach. Receiving the public’s adulation after the 1886 conquest of Tonkin from the Chinese, in early 1887 he attempted to provoke Germany into war. The new premier quickly fired the headstrong war minister, who responded by running for parliament himself and easily winning a seat along with a whole slate of boulangiste candidates. A military dictatorship seemed in the offing, but when the moment came to seize power in January 1889 he hesitated and his support crumbled. By April he was a fugitive, and in 1891 he shot himself on the grave of his recently-deceased mistress.

As Boulanger went from strongman to punchline, so did his son-in-law’s career unravel. Scorned by the establishment and denied the prime postings that had once been his, he supported himself and his wife by penning patriotic juvenile adventure novels under a pseudonym. In 1899 he finally received a command, that of the 1st Chasseur Battalion, but no promotion beyond the grade of captain. In 1905 he finally resigned from the army, and in 1910 used boulangiste nostalgia to win a parliamentary seat for himself.

Driant as parliamentarian.

Intensely patriotic though highly reactionary, when war broke out he eagerly re-entered the army at his old rank but did not give up his seat in parliament, which he used to barrage the high command with criticisms over its deployments. In particular he hammered at Gen. Joseph Joffre’s removal of most of the heavy guns and crews from the older fortresses like Verdun. There Driant, now a lieutenant colonel, had been stationed in command of a pair of reservist battalions, the 56th and 59th chasseurs a pied. War Minister Joseph Gallieni agreed and told the high command to restore the fortress batteries, but Joffre ignored the soldier-politician’s complaints. Driant had his men madly digging trenches and improving the forts around the historic town, the last fortress to submit to the Prussians in 1871 and thus a potent political symbol (not to mention the site of the 843 A.D. treaty partitioning Charlemagne’s empire and thus creating the entity that would become France). But reinforcements were not to be had.

On 21 February 1916, the Germans began their assault on Verdun with a 21-hour bombardment. Over 2 million shells smashed into the town, its fortresses and trenchworks; probably half of the troops stationed there were killed. When the first German assault parties came forward, Driant and his “hunters” met them in the Bois des Caures, a wooded area north of the city. Fighting through the night of the 21st and for most of the 22nd, the chasseurs faced German pioneers and infantry assault parties amid the blasted trees. Slowly the Germans worked their way around Driant’s flanks, and late in the afternoon he ordered his battalions to withdraw from the wood. Overseeing the last of his platoons pulling back, he was hit and killed as the remaining chasseurs collapsed into the second line of trenches they had been digging for the last several weeks. A handful of troopers clustered around his body and attempted to bring him back to the French lines, but they were overwhelmed by the Germans and taken prisoner. The Germans buried Driant in the wood with full military honors, and sent word of his fate to his widow.

Driant still defends the Bois des Caures.

All company commanders had also been killed, and the 1,200 men of the two battalions reduced to 180. Verdun appeared lost, but the ferocious fight put up by the handful of Frenchmen gave pause to Crown Prince Wilhelm, the German army commander on the spot. Driant’s fanatical resistance proved to the prince that the French had not been sufficiently softened up; he ordered his assault teams to return to the German lines. The bombardment would resume for another day. On the 24th, the infantry assault was renewed, but by this time the French had had time to rush in several divisions’ worth of reinforcements. The French also occupied positions that would let them bring down enfilade fire on Germans trying to cross the Meuse River. Verdun would not be taken by an immediate assault.

Wilhelm later came to realize that he had allowed a handful of Frenchmen to prevent the city’s swift capture; but had he succeeded, his chief, Gen. Erick von Falkenhayn, would likely have been bitterly disappointed. The whole point of Fall Gericht had been to lure the French into a bloody battle of attrition, and this would be exactly the case until the following December. Driant would be only one of the first to fall, but his grave on the spot where he died is still a shrine to the French Army and his heroic sacrifice is commemorated every 21 February.

Driant’s two battalions are given elite status in our game of the Verdun campaign, William Sariego’s They Shall Not Pass. Despite their reservist origin, their fierce performance on the 21st and 22nd merits such a rating. The French player will need every one of his “hunter” battalions with their high morale.

This piece originally appeared in November 2006.

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