François de Menthon

Count François de Menthon (8 January 1900 – 2 June 1984) was a French politician and professor of law.

Menthon was born in Montmirey-la-Ville in Jura. He was a son of an old noble family from Menthon-Saint-Bernard. He studied law in Dijon, where he joined Action catholique de la Jeunesse française (ACJF). He also studied in Paris. He was president of ACJF from 1927 to 1930, and was also the founder of the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (JOC, a Christian working youth movement). He became a professor of political economy at the University of Nancy. He and his wife Nicole had six sons.

He was mobilised at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, becoming a captain in the French Army. He was severely wounded and captured in June 1940. He spent three months in a hospital in Saint-Dié, but escaped and joined the French Resistance in Haute Savoie in September 1940.

Menthon received Jean Moulin several times at his family's seat at the Château de Menthon-Saint-Bernard. He founded the first resistance cell of the Liberté Resistance movement in Annecy in November 1940, and a second one in Lyons shortly afterwards. He also edited the Liberté underground newspaper, with the first two editions printed in Annecy and later ones in Marseilles. He was a leader in the Combat Resistance movement, created by the merger of Liberté with Henri Frenay's Mouvement de Libération Nationale towards the end of 1941. Menthon was captured returning from a meeting with Frenay, and interrogated at Baumettes prison in Marseilles, but he was released.

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