He was born at Lesneven (Finistère), in Brittany of a family which settled in the region, after the Prussian invasion of Alsace during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War.

In 1918, he participated in the development of General Louis Franchet d'Espèrey's Vardar Offensive against German and Bulgarian forces which would lead to Allied victory and the signing of the Armistice of Mudros in October 1918.

He participated in the negotiations for the cession of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, then part of French Syria, to Turkey.

He was one of the signatories of the anti-Semitic law on the status of Jews of 3 October 1940 (excluding nine Jewish generals from the army) together with Philippe Pétain, Pierre Laval, Raphaël Alibert, Marcel Peyrouton, Paul Baudouin, Yves Bouthillier, and François Darlan.

[3] He had been on an inspection tour in North Africa and tried to land at Vichy Airport in bad visibility, and with obsolete radio equipment.