[1] The son of noted intellectual Ioannis Psycharis and grandson of liberal writer Ernest Renan,[2] Psichari was baptised into the Greek Orthodox faith.

[5] Psichari's parents argued much; his father was concerned that his children (he had a younger brother Michel and a sister Henriette) saw too little of him and knew only their mother and maternal grandfather.

Afterwards, Psichari spent several days staying in run-down parts of Paris undertaking manual work before he was discovered by his family and sent to the country to recuperate.

[8] Completing his compulsory military service as an enlisted soldier, Psichari found he enjoyed the discipline so much that he re-enlisted into the 51st Infantry Regiment in 1904, a move that outraged his friends.

Rising to the rank of sergeant but growing impatient with the life of a garrison soldier in the metropolitan army, he arranged a transfer to the Troupes coloniales as an artilleryman.

[11] A frequent speaker against Renan's "dilettantism, his antagonism to the Catholic Church [and] his opposition to the military system", Psichari was concerned that his popularity with French nationalists arose simply because he had diverged so strongly from his grandfather's views.

Trapped between the German forces and the Semois River, the French gunners fought to the last, firing off the remainder of their ammunition, disabling their guns and killing their limber horses before surrendering.

[3] A further work, Les voix qui crient dans le désert : souvenirs d'Afrique (Voices crying in the wilderness: memories of Africa), was published in 1920 with a foreword by General Charles Mangin.