Henri de Gaulle

Henri de Gaulle (22 November 1848 - 3 May 1932) was a French civil servant and later a schoolteacher. He was the father of Charles de Gaulle, a general of the French army and President of France.

De Gaulle was born in Paris, the son of Joséphine (née Maillot) and Julien Philippe de Gaulle. His father was a graduate of the École Nationale des Chartes. He himself was a volunteer in the Franco-Prussian War; his men chose him as their second lieutenant on several occasions.

A civil servant in the interior ministry for fifteen years, in 1884 he resigned his post to protest against the anti-clerical policies of the Third Republic.

On 2 August 1886, de Gaulle married his second cousin, Jeanne Maillot (28 April 1860, Lille - 16 July 1940, Sainte-Addresse), with whom he had a daughter and four sons (see de Gaulle family).

A "monarchist in feeling and a republican in thought" (monarchiste de regret et républicain de raison), as he liked to call himself, Henri de Gaulle began working at a Jesuit high school in Paris, teaching French, Latin and Ancient Greek. Among his students were his four sons, as well as Georges Bernanos and the future marshals Philippe Leclerc and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. He was nicknamed PDG (père de Gaulle - "Father de Gaulle"), but was respected and esteemed for the quality of his teaching.

He retired with his wife to Sainte-Addresse, close to Le Havre, at the home of their daughter Marie-Agnès Cailliau. There, he helped his son Charles de Gaulle refine his first military fortifications.

He died at Sainte-Adresse, on 3 May 1932, and is buried there with his wife.