He has been judged "one of the brilliant members of the French General Staff before 1914.
"[1] Educated at the École polytechnique, he worked in the history service of the army from 1900 to 1906.
He served in World War I, was made a général de brigade in 1917 and was killed that year in Serbia.
He translated Clausewitz's Der Feldzug von 1796 in Italien (1859) as Études sur la campagne de 1796-1797 en Italie (1889).
His best known work is Les transformations de la Guerre (Paris, 1911), translated as France and the Next War or as Transformations of War by L.H.R.