Paul Célestin Marie Joseph Venel (25 January 1864 – 25 March 1920) was a French army officer and colonial governor.

[2] Venel was in command of the 11th Colonial Infantry Division, part of the Corps expéditionnaire d'Orient, from August to November 1917, fighting in the Macedonian front.

His father Auguste was a local teacher who opted for France and moved to Seichamps, after the annexation of a part of his native province by Germany following the Franco-Prussian War.

[4] Assigned to the 1st Malagasy Tirailleur Regiment in Tamatave on 25 May 1898, he left the 8th Marine Infantry with a severe remark from the corps commander, chastising his work ethic.

Assigned to the area inhabited by the Bara in Ivohibe, he led a series of operations against the Tambavala in September 1899, a part of the pacification of French Madagascar.

[7] During his eighteen months of presence, he completed the organization of the méhariste units, which reestablished order in the Azbin and protected the subordinate population from looters.

Venel subdued the Tuareg nomads, abolished the slave trade, and oversaw the economic growth of sedentary populations, allowing for the extraction of salt from the Taoudenni and Kaouar mines.

He immediately benefited from a three-month convalescent leave in Lyon, from 11 October 1915 to 10 January 1916, because of the various illnesses he suffered from, especially malaria and diabetes.

[4] On 15 January, Venel was put in command of the 97th Infantry Division, a unit of four battalions which contributed to the defense of a difficult sector north of Arras.

[4] Hired on 16 March 1916 at Vaux-devant-Damloup and at the Dicourt Farm, he was withdrawn from the front on 3 April, before holding the sector of Flirey and Vargévaux Pond.

[4] Venel was appointed brigadier general on 1 October, when he took over the leadership of the 22nd Colonial Brigade (part of the Corps expéditionnaire d'Orient), created on the previous day in Toulouse, on 2 November, and landed in Thessaloniki in early December, before joining his men on the Battle of the Crna Bend.

During this delicate transfer of power, Venel’s role was to monitor monarchist elements in Thessaly, while other Allied contingents landed in Athens or occupied the Isthmus of Corinth.

In actuality, Venel's troops, like France, favored Belgrade, and the Greens, loyalists of the exiled King Nicholas, were disarmed.

On a one-month rest leave on 21 April 1919 in Vichy (extended by another month on 21 May), he was appointed deputy to 1st Maritime Prefect in Cherbourg on 18 June.

[4] On 23 August, the chief medical officer diagnosed pulmonary emphysema with "intermittent but very painful" asthma attacks and hypotension.

Venel withdrew to Nancy, where he was granted extensions of leave (lasting one month, effective 2 March 1920 "on an exceptional basis due to service rendered").

[4] Venel died a few days later from a heart condition at the Bon Secours hospital, Nancy, where he had been treated since January for chronic hypertensive nephritis, and where his right leg had just been amputated from the thigh down on 18 March after a dry gangrene coupled with arthritis caused complications with his femoral artery, in turn influenced by frostbite of the foot in 1917.

On 17 April 1925, the medical advisory commission found that the illness causing the death of general Venel was not contracted during service.