Flatters expedition

Paul Flatters
Flatters around 1880
Born	Paul-François-Xavier Flatters (1832-09-16)16 September 1832 Paris, France
Died	16 February 1881(1881-02-16) (aged 48) Bir el-Garama, Algeria
Nationality	French
Occupation	Soldier

Paul Flatters (16 September 1832 – 16 February 1881) was a French soldier who spent a long period as a military administrator in Algeria. He is known as leader of the Flatters expedition, an ill-fated attempt to explore the route of a proposed Trans-Saharan railway from Algeria to the Sudan. Almost all members of the expedition were massacred by hostile Tuaregs. The survivors resorted to eating grass and to cannibalism on the long retreat through the desert. After a brief outburst of public indignation the fiasco was forgotten.

Paul-François-Xavier Flatters was the son of Jean-Jacques Flatters (1786–1845) and Emilie Dircée Lebon. His father came from Westphalia to Paris to study sculpture and painting. He was a student of Jean-Antoine Houdon and Jacques-Louis David, and was second in the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1813. He served in the French army from February to July 1814 at the close of the First French Empire. During the Bourbon Restoration Jean-Jacques Flatters earned a living by making busts of famous people such as Goethe and Byron. Paul Flatters' maternal grandfather, Simon Lebon, joined the National Guard in 1792 during the French Revolution and served in the army until retiring as a colonel on half pay in December 1815. He married into a leading family of the Naples aristocracy in 1807. His daughter, Emile-Dircée Lebon married Jean-Jacques Flatters in 1830.

Paul Flatters was born in Paris on 16 September 1832. In 1845, when he was just thirteen, he lost his father. A patron and friend of the family, Baron Isidore Taylor, paid for his education in the Lycée de Laval in Laval, Mayenne. Paul's mother died in 1850. He was admitted to the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr in 1851. Flatters graduated from Saint-Cyr in October 1853, ranked 65th out of 230 students.