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2004
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Jean-Pierre Renaud, « Lyautey : une leçon de vie », Revue historique des Armées (documents), ID : 10.3406/rharm.2004.5594
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Lyautey : a lesson in life Described as a «Moroccan», as a «Magician », passionate about the Urbs Condita, seeing himself as a «solutionist», a «creator of life», Lyautey chose a motto for himself borrowed from the poet Shelley : «The soul's joy lies in action». For his contemporaries, and even more so following his death when his aura was transformed into myth, Lyautey was one of the greatest «socially aware» people of the time, a model for generations of military officers. However, it is less well known that whatever the period of his life (1873-93, or 1893-1903, or from 1903-34) this thirst for action, so striking and so explicit in the field, remained unsatisfied. The combustion point for his «immolated dream» was, without doubt, his defeat at the Ministry of War on 14 March 1917. Lyautey was a peerless organiser, ahead of his time for his thinking in Du Rôle Social de l'Officier, a work now more relevant than ever. But his sharp political shifts of course saw his destiny - a destiny he wished to be of national importance - end up short of both his ambition and his genius.