Les Origines de l'armée française

Rare pre-first edition offprint of Charles de Gaulle's article Les Origines de l'armée française, published in issue 520 of the Revue d'Infanterie in January 1936. This 44-page text will be entirely reprinted two years later as the first chapter of his celebrated work La France et son armée, published by Plon in 1938. Our copy is enriched with an autograph inscription signed by the author "to M. Jean Auburtin": "With profound and faithful friendship. C. de Gaulle."

Blue wrappers slightly sunned at extremities, spine and upper joint rebacked, minor losses to spine, vertical crease probably from mailing, old creases to upper right corners, some ink stains on lower wrapper, old stamp affixed and partially torn on same wrapper.

"France was fashioned by the sword." 

Les Origines de l'armée française, 1936

Upon publication of Les Origines de l'armée française—a study De Gaulle had begun in the 1920s—the celebrated author chooses to present a copy to Jean Auburtin, a doctor of law he had met two years earlier in Émile Mayer's salon. It is largely through Auburtin that De Gaulle gains entry into political circles. Through this connection, he meets Paul Reynaud, Léon Blum, Camille Chautemps, Alexandre Millerand, Léo Lagrange, and Marcel Déat. Guy Deloeuvre notes that Jean Auburtin will claim in his later writings to have been De Gaulle's "principal political mentor" during the interwar period. Their budding friendship was also accompanied by a rich correspondence. In March 1936, a few weeks after this booklet's publication, Jean-Raymond Tournoux reports that it will be to Jean Auburtin that De Gaulle will write that the French state "should have acted with surprise, brutality, and speed" to counter German remilitarization of the Rhineland. The superb inscription in this copy thus attests to the "profound" friendship binding the two men in 1936, which enabled Lieutenant-Colonel de Gaulle to transition from military officer to political figure.

Rare pre-first edition enriched with a precious inscription from Charles de Gaulle to Jean Auburtin, the friend and "principal political mentor" of the future French general.