Édouard de Castelnau

Noël Édouard, vicomte de Curières de Castelnau (; 24 December 1851 – 19 March 1944) was a French military officer and Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces during the First World War. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1919 for Aveyron and president of the Army Committee in the legislature, he then took the head of a confessional political movement, the Fédération Nationale Catholique. During the Second World War, he opposed Marshal Pétain and the Vichy regime and supported the French Resistance. For a long time controversial because of a Catholicism that was considered outrageous by his opponents, historians have moderated that portrait by emphasising his great loyalty to republican institutions and disputed in particular that he could have been reactionary or antisemitic.

Early life The son of Michel de Castelnau, mayor of Saint-Affrique, Noël Édouard Marie Joseph de Curières de Castelnau was born in Saint-Affrique, into an aristocratic family of the Rouergue. He was the third of five children. His elder brother, Léonce, was a politician of national importance, the president of the parliamentary group of the Action libérale in the National Assembly. His other brother, Clément, was director of the École des mines de Saint-Étienne.

Ruined by the French Revolution, his family had to share a house in Saint-Affrique with his mother's three uncles, the Abbés Barthe. They would have liked him to be a notary, but he wanted to be a naval officer. For reasons of age, he had to reorient himself towards the Army and became part of the 54th promotion of Saint-Cyr, Promotion du Rhin (1869-1871), from which he graduated as second lieutenant on 14 August 1870. He was appointed to the 31st Infantry Regiment ]