Arsène Lambert

Arsène Lambert (; 23 June 1834 – 11 January 1901) was a senior French general who achieved particular distinction in the French conquest of Senegal and, later, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

In January 1900 he was elected to the French senate, representing the Finistère département. His senatorial career was brief, however, since he died slightly less than a year later.

Biography Personal Arsène Mathurin Louis Marie Lambert was born at four in the morning His mother, born Joséphine Maillet, is identified as the owner of a piece of land at Saint-Joseph on the island département of Réunion, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. His father, Jean François Hervé Lambert , served as an army officer, and it was presumably as a result of the engineering skills he acquired in the army that he was subsequently appointed to a position as "conducteur des Ponts et Chaussées", involved in bridge and road construction and maintenance. He was promoted to the rank of Captain in 1862. He was involved in containing the riots that erupted at Saint-Denis in 1868. In 1869 he was promoted again, becoming a battalion commander. Almost immediately after that he became deputy chief of staff, assigned to General Élie de Vassoigne, with the 12th infantry regiment.

He managed to escape and reconnect with the French army. He was with the army that on 21 May 1871 entered Paris and regained control from the revolutionary communards who had taken over the city, in the chaos following the four month Prussian army siege, on 18 March 1871. Arsène Lambert succeeded in taking control of several strategically important locations including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, the parliament building ("Corps législatif (Second Empire)") and the Gare d'Orléans, which was the Paris rail terminus for trains to Tours. (The provisional French government had decamped to Tours in September/October 1870 during the first part of the Siege of Paris. In recognition of his contributions he was appointed an officer of the Legion of Honour, the award being announced on 10 June 1871. where he was given charge of an infantry brigade ("130e régiment d’infanterie de ligne"). Despite a developing arms race among the principal military powers of Europe and continuing colonising activity, both in Africa and further afield, on the home front the 1890s was essentially a decade of peace, coupled with social and economic progress. In 1896, by now aged 62, Arsène Lambert was released from active military service. Within the Legion of Honour his retirement was marked, on 22 June 1896, by a promotion to the rank of "Grand Officier". He was elected to the presidency of two veterans associations, the "Société nationale des vétérans de terre et de mer" and the "Union des sociétés régimentaires".

On 28 January 1900 Arsène Lambert was elected to the senate in succession to Corentin Halléguen, the previous senator for Finistère, who had died the previous year. He sat with the democratic left ("Gauche démocratique" group in the chamber. Slightly counter-intuitively, he nevertheless took a full part in discussions concerning the organisation of troops in the colonies, insisting that colonial defence was something that should be left to the Ministry for War. His enduring concern with matters military were also evident in a question he addressed to the newly installed minister for war concerning celebrations to mark the centenary of the death of Théophile Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne, a favourite soldier of Emperor Napoléon I.

Arsène Lambert died on 11 January 1901.