height, slender, and of soldierly appearance; his moustache was white, his hair, also white, scanty and short, his complexion ruddy, his deep-set blue eyes were at the same time stern and gentle, his countenance open. His horsemanlike figure, from being continually submitted to the demands of deportment, the training of his profession, and a strong will, betrayed something spontaneous and jerky in its movements; in this there was at times a certain awkwardness.

His Irish

He perhaps derived from his foreign Origin origin the awkwardness of a big fellow who has become a great personage: the MacMahons were Irish. Settled in France from the time of James II, they had demanded naturalisation in 1749, not without having secured the verification of their claims to nobility by a decree of Council and royal letters patent.1

The Mac

France

The ancestor who had obtained these Mahons in letters in 1750, Jean Baptiste de MacMahon, born at Limerick in 1715, was only a physician at Autun, but a fortunate marriage with the young widow of one of his patients, Charlotte le Belin d'Eguilly, made of a poor man a rich one, and a nobleman of a physician. He had two sons, Charles Laure, Marquis of MacMahon, Major-General in 1814, member of the Chamber of Peers in 1827, knight of the order of St. Louis, a personal friend of Charles X, and Maurice François, Comte de Charnay, afterwards Comte de MacMahon, a Lieutenant-General, and Commander of the order of St. Louis. The

1 Annuaires de la Noblesse, 1857, p. 187, et 1868 p. 76; v. Dr. Cabanès, le Cabinet secret de l'histoire, Ire série.

1

latter married in 1792 Mlle. Pélagie Riquet de Caraman, daughter of a Major-General in the royal armies, and niece to Marshal de Broglie.1

the

Maurice de MacMahon had eighteen children sixth, Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de MacMahon, the future Marshal, was born on June 13, 1808. "With my family traditions, and the feelings towards the Royal Family, in which I had been brought up," says the Marshal himself, in his unpublished Memoirs, "I could not be anything but a Legitimist." As he used often to repeat, with the unaffected charm which was a feature in his character, MacMahon was a younger son.

Educated in the Seminary school at Autun, he was admitted to Saint-Cyr at seventeen. He passed out thirteenth in 1827, was gazetted sub-lieutenant, and entered the Staff College. In 1830, his course being finished, he took part in the Algerian expedition as aide-de-camp to General Achard.

The

Algeria was the training field of all Algerian the soldiers of that generation. In AlCampaigns geria an army small in numbers, but composed of picked men, subjected to the constraint of military duty and daily peril, was bound to create for itself ideals, habits of mind, and customs singularly different from those of the time and of the nation. There the tradition of the First Empire was still a living one; most of the leading officers had made their first campaigns under the Emperor. This new and strange country, com

1 Information gathered from the archives of the family rectifying Pol de Courcy, Les MacMahon, extrait de la Revue de Bretagne et de Vendée. See also, Les Mémoires du comte de Vaublanc, Paris, 1897 (p. 43).

bining the attractions of conquest and danger with the surprises of the unknown, set imaginations aflame; but the difficulties of the daily task sobered them. The conditions were not those of regular hostilities, but of guerilla warfare: the enemy was not an army, but a whole race. Gallantry, quick sight, spirit, endurance, versatility, were indispensable qualities. Surprises, raids rapidly conceived and quickly executed, the storming of redoubts and zereebas, bloody charges or assaults with drawn sabre or fixed bayonets, a perpetual look-out, ample scope for successful initiative, a constant strain of mind and body, without much intellectual effort-such were the conditions of this hand to hand struggle during which victory, so painfully purchased, was to carry off or bring into being so many heroes.

Of these heroes MacMahon was the type. Unequalled in courage, endowed with calm and perfectly balanced daring, he was always in the first rank, and ever ready when it was necessary to act and win win at the decisive moment. He received the Cross at the age of twenty-two, for his conduct in the affair at Mouzaïa. At Blidah, he plunged alone through the whole Arab army, in order to carry an order, and only escaped pursuit by jumping his horse over a ravine: the horse fell on the other side with both legs broken.

When the first news of the events of July 1830 reached Algeria, young Captain de MacMahon sent in his resignation; but sense of military duty prevailed, and he withdrew his decision.1 After

1

"Having been able in 1830 to remain in the Algerian army,

being present at the siege of Antwerp in 1832, he returned to Algeria, where he remained twenty years, taking part in every important battle. He was wounded in the chest at the terrible second siege of Constantine in 1837. When the light cavalry were organized, in 1840, he was put in command of the 10th battalion. A Colonel in 1845, he became General in 1848, and commanded the Tlemcen subdivision; in 1852, he was promoted to a division. We hear of him everywhere from South Oran to Biskra.

"All he asks is to be where there is fighting," wrote Marshal Vaillant to General Pélissier. On the other hand, the sagacious Bugeaud had some time previously described him as follows: "I only know MacMahon very slightly. I believe him to be an excellent officer in war, very soldierly, very firm; but I do not think that he has the intellectual grasp necessary for the government of Europeans and Arabs." 1

The Cri

When the Crimean war broke out, Saintmean War Arnaud asked for him "as a perfect active service officer." Marshal Vaillant recommended him to the Commander-in-chief with the fine testimonial which has just been quoted, and Pélissier, who had taken his measure at a glance, wrote to Marshal Vaillant: "With General de MacMahon I shall be able to attempt a certain thing which, frankly,

I had been very fortunate. I then consented, at the sacrifice of my personal feelings, to serve my country under the different Governments which succeeded each other." -Mémoires inédits.

1 X. de Préville, Un glorieux Soldat, le Maréchal de MacMahon, p. 165.

I should consider too dangerous to-day." This certain thing was the taking of the Malakoff.1

It is well known how, on the 8th of September, 1855, he directed the attack upon the Malakoff tower; how, when the whole of the besieging army was giving way before the desperate resistance of the besieged, he held firm, in the middle of his decimated troops, assailed in their turn by the whole of the Russian forces! Warned that the tower was undermined and about to fall, the General in Chief sent an officer to MacMahon to advise him to yield and to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. We know the famous phrase with which he replied: "Here I am, and here I stay."

"J'y Suis,

"I

Questioned later as to the authenticity J'y Reste!" of these words, he said that he had simply indicated his determination not to retire. do not think," he added, with perfect modesty, that I gave my thought that epigrammatic form, J'y suis, j'y reste. I am not given to phrases." "

2

After the Crimean war, he returned to France covered with glory. Appointed a member of the Senate on the 24th of June, 1856, he spoke in February, 1858, against the law of public safety proposed in consequence of the Orsini outrage. He spoke simply, clearly, without hesitation, and with

1 C. Rousset, La guerre de Crimée, vol. ii., p. 336.

2 See an article published by M. Germain Bapst in the Eigaro Oct. 18, 1893 (supplement), analysing a circumstantial account of the assault on Malakoff tower drawn up by General de MacMahon on his return to France. See also a letter from Sir Michael Biddulph, an eye-witness, published by the Eclair Jan. 21, 1902.