Jacques Trolley de Prévaux

Jacques Marie Charles Trolley de Prévaux (2 April 1888 — 19 August 1944) was a French Navy officer and member of the Resistance. After a brilliant career in the Navy as a pioneer of the Aéronavale and having risen to the rank of captain, he fell out of favour with the Vichy Regime for his sympathies with the Resistance. He became a leader of an intelligence network focused on the Mediterranean, and was eventually betrayed and assassinated by the Nazis, along with his wife, Lotka Leitner. Both were posthumously and jointly made Compagnons in the Ordre de la Libération.

Biography

Youth and studies Jacques Trolley de Prévaux was born to an old family of nobility of the Robe, and with a modest fortune. The family was from Normandy and had been knighted by Henri III in 1586. Apart from a remote connection to Jean d'Arc, the elder brother of Joan of Arc, there was no military tradition in the family. From 1912 to 1913, he served on the cruiser Descartes, sailing the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. He was responsible for around 100 men.

Interwar period From November 1919, Trolley de Prévaux was given command of the Airship base at Montebourg in Manche. The couple would sire two children.

From 1926 to 1930, Prévaux served as naval attaché in Berlin, From 1934 to 1935, he headed Rochefort airbase. He then moved to Toulon to train at the Centre des hautes études navales and at the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale, until July 1937.

Around that time, he met Lotka Leitner, a young woman of Jewish and Polish heritage,

Promoted to Captain in August 1937, Prévaux was given command of the light cruiser Duguay-Trouin, in Toulon. Godfroy and British Admiral Cunningham reached an agreement to disarm the Force X without shedding blood. In contrast to a few officers, such as d'Estienne d'Orves, whom this incident drove to join Free France,

On 29 March 1944, the Gestapo arrested Leitner and Prévaux. They were brought to Baumettes and later to Montluc Prison in Lyon, where Prévaux was tortured. He refused to talk, taking the whole of the network activities as his personal responsibility.

Military career

Foreign honours

Distinguished Service Order (UK, 31 January 1943) Virtuti Militari (Poland, 19 April 1945)

Legacy

A street in Paris, in the 13th Arrondissement is named after Prévaux. An avenue of Toulon is named after Prévaux. A commemorative plaque was affixed at Colline Saint-Pierre in Toulon. Jacques de Prévaux is mentioned on the monument at Lavandou.

Aude de Prévaux

Aude de Prévaux, born to Prévaux and Leitner in June 1943, was taken by the family of General François Trolley de Prévaux after their assassination. François a brother of Jacques remained faithful to the Vichy Regime, kept Aude in ignorance of her birth parents until she was 23.

Aude de Prévaux wrote a book about her parents, Un Amour dans la tempête de l'histoire – Jacques et Lotka de Prévaux (Kiron – Éditions du Félin, 1999), which won the Maréchal Foch Prize of the Académie française (Bronze Medal) and the Prix Saint-Simon in 1999. She was the subject of the France 2 broadcast Prise directe, "Children of villains, children of heroes", by Béatrice Schönberg.

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