Henri Mathias Berthelot
| Henri Berthelot | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
7 December 1861 Feurs, France |
| Died | 29 January 1931 (aged 69) Paris, France |
| Allegiance |
 France |
| Years of service | 1883-1926 |
| Rank | General |
| Commands held | French Military Mission in Romania Fifth Army (France) |
| Battles/wars |
World War I Hungarian–Romanian War |
| Awards |
Grand cross of the Légion d'honneur Croix de guerre 1914-1918 Honorary citizen of Romania |
Henri Mathias Berthelot (1861–1931) was a French general during World War I. He held an important staff position under Joseph Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, at the First Battle of the Marne, before later commanding a corps in the front line. In 1917 he helped to rebuild the Romanian Army following her disastrous defeat the previous autumn, then in summer 1918 he commanded French Fifth Army at the Second Battle of the Marne, with some British and Italian troops under his command. In the final days of the war he again returned to Romania, and then briefly commanded French intervention forces in southern Russia in the Russian Civil War.
In 1883, after graduating from the Saint-Cyr military academy, Berthelot was assigned to Algeria, and afterwards to Indochina.
In 1907, he was assigned to the French General Staff. During this period Berthelot worked together with General Joseph Joffre on the French war plan called Plan XVII.
At the outbreak of war in 1914 he was Joffre’s First Sub Chief of Staff (under Major-General (a French term - not a rank but equivalent to the English language title "chief of staff") Emile Belin). Berthelot was in charge of the Second (Intelligence) and Third (Operations) Bureaux; First Bureau (Personnel & Transport of Materiel) and the Direction de l’Arriere (lines of communication) reported to the Second Sub Chief of Staff (General Deprez, replaced in mid-August by Colonel Maurice Pelle, former military attache in Berlin).
The British Commander-in-Chief Sir John French visited GQG on 16 August as British troops were marching towards Belgium, and was impressed by Berthelot’s calm and confidence. Tuchman wrote that Berthelot was “quick and clever, (and) like his British opposite number General Wilson, was an inveterate optimist. He weighed over 230 pounds”. Berthelot discarded his uniform jacket to work in shirt and slippers in the August heat. Like Joffre, Berthelot underestimated German strength. He thought that a German thrust into Belgium would play into French hands by weakening their centre in the Ardennes, where Joffre planned to attack, and even then thought reports of German strength in Belgium greatly exaggerated (20 August).
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