Louis Félix Marie François Franchet d'Espèrey (25 May, 1856 – 3 July, 1942) was a French general during the First World War.
He was born in Monstaganen in what is today Algeria, the son of an officer of cavalry in the Chasseurs d'Afrique. He was educated at Saint-Cyr and graduated in 1876. He served in French Indochina, China (against the Boxer Rebellion in 1900) and Morocco before 1914.
In 1914, Franchet d'Esperey did well as an corps commander at the Battle of Charleroi , and as result he rose rapidly through the ranks during the war. By March 1916, Franchet d'Esperey was in command of the Eastern Army Group and by January 1917 the Northern Army Group. He was badly defeated by the Germans at the Battle of Chemin des Dames in May 1918. He was removed from the Western Front and appointed commander of the Allied armies at Salonika. During the war, he recieved the nickname "Desparate Frankie" from his fellow British ally.
Between September 15-29, 1918 Franchet d'Esperey staged an successful offensive in Macedonia that knocked Bulgaria out of the war. General Franchet d'Esperey followed up this victory by overrunning much of the Balkans and by the war's end, his troops had penetrated well into Hungary. Subsequently, Franchet d'Esperey directed operations against the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919.
He was made a marshal of France on February 19, 1921. He represented France at the coronation of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa on November 1 1930. He was elected to the French Academy on November 15, 1934. Franchet d'Esperey was an able, but not outstanding general. In terms of personality, he was vain, arrogant, and pompous. In terms of politics, Franchet d'Esperey was an ultra-nationalist Royalist and an anti-Semite whose loyalty to France outweighed his loyalty to the Bourbons. He died in Albi, France.
