
Emile Driant (11 September 1855-22 February 1916) was a French Army Lieutenant-Colonel and Popular Liberal Action member of the Chamber of Deputies who was killed in action at the Battle of Verdun during World War I.
Biography[]
Emile Driant was born in Neufchatel-sur-Aisne, Picardy, France on 11 September 1855, and he graduated from Saint-Cyr and became a French Army officer in 1877. In 1888, Driant married the daughter of Georges Ernest Boulanger, and he served as an instructor at Saint-Cyr from 1892 to 1896 and as a hussar battalion commander from 1899 to 1905. He was blocked from promotion because of his controversial father-in-law and for his strong nationalist and Catholic sentiments, and he retired from the military to enter journalism and politics, being elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Nancy in 1910 as a member of Popular Liberal Action. With the outbreak of World War I, Driant was recalled to the Army as a captain, and, while still serving in the Chamber, he was made a Lieutenant-Colonel. Driant unsuccessfully attempted to convince War Minister Joseph Gallieni and commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre to improve Verdun's defenses in the case of a German attack, and Driant was killed in action while leading the withdrawal from the Bois des Caures during the Battle of Verdun on 22 February 1916. The Germans wrote to his widow in Switzerland to assure him that he had been accorded full military honors.