People

[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).

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

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

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.

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-François (October 22, 1781 – June 4, 1789);
Louis-Charles (March 27, 1785 – 1795);
Sophie-Beatrix (July 9, 1786 – June 19, 1787).