Jean-Baptiste Eugène Estienne (7 November 1860 - 2 April 1936) was a general of artillery and a specialist in military engineering, one of the founders of modern French artillery and French military aviation; and the creator of the French tank arm.
He was born at Condé-en-Barrois in the Meuse valley. He is considered by many in France to be the Père des Chars (Father of the Tank).
Early career
Modern artillery
He was admitted to the École Polytechnique at the age of nineteen. He graduated, the 131th of his year, in 1882, the same year he won the first prize in the national mathematics competition. He would for the rest of his life be interested in mathematical and philosophical problems — but his real passion was Greek Antiquity. In 1883 he joined the professional army as a second lieutenant, from 1884 serving with the artillery. Studying ballistics, in 1890 he presented his first major work, Erreurs d'Observation, to the Académie des Sciences. This stimulated the introduction of modern indirect fire methods. Promoted to captain with the 1st Artillery Regiment in 1891, he began to develop telemetric instruments at the arsenal of Bourges to put his theories in practice. In 1902 he was made squadron commander with the 19th Artillery Regiment. But his real work was done as head of the workshop building precision instruments for the technical artillery section in Paris, and promoting the use of telephonic connections to enable the artillery to change fire targets quickly. This work didn't keep him from publishing a paper on Pascal's theorem in 1906. In 1907 he became head of the artillery school in Grenoble.
Military Aviation
At that time Estienne was already reputed one of the most competent and progressive officers in France, and one of the founders of modern artillery. When General Brun created the French aviation service at Reims in 1909, the logical candidate to command this new unit was Estienne. Since the main task of aircraft was seen as directing artillery fire, he seemed the best qualified man to solve the technological difficulties involved. So Estienne, now promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel, also became one of the founders of French military aviation. After establishing proper organisation, training and production of aircraft while developing communication methods, he commanded 5th Aviation Group at Lyon for a short time. But he was recalled to the arsenal of Vincennes to continue his technical work — though he couldn't resist founding a new artillery aviation section there.
First World War
At the outbreak of the First World War Estienne was made commander of the 22nd Artillery Regiment serving with the division of Philippe Pétain. Fighting at the Battle of Charleroi he shocked his German opponents by the precision of his artillery fire, well directed in close cooperation with aircraft. But even France's foremost artillery specialist had to admit his competence couldn't save the French infantry from being destroyed by machine gun fire. Always having advocated indirect fire methods, he now began to search for viable ways to provide close support fire by field guns. On 23 August he made his famous statement Messieurs, la victoire appartiendra dans cette guerre à celui des deux belligérants qui parviendra le premier à placer un canon de 75 sur une voiture capable de se mouvoir en tout terrain. As however such vehicles were lacking at the time, nothing more could be done. In the summer of 1915 he learned that Eugène Brillié of the Schneider company and Jules-Louis Bréton (then member of parliament) were developing a barbed wire-cutter on a tracked Holt chassis. He wrote several letters during the autumn of 1915 to Joseph Joffre at GQG (the French GHQ) with his ideas about using such tracked vehicles. These letters never got further than Joffre's staff and Estienne had to write a personal letter to Joffre on 1 December. He was invited to explain them further to Joffre's Deputy Chief of Staff, Janin, during a personal visit on 12 December. On 9 December he and Pétain first attended a demonstration of the Schneider chassis. He saw that unknown to him Schneider had been constructing an armoured tracked vehicle since May, and immediately understood the very existence of such a prototype, even though only partly finished, might well be a decisive argument for the creation of an armoured force. On 20 December he was proven right when an official plan was conceived to produce the Schneider CA. The same day he contacted Louis Renault to convince him to build light tanks, but the industrialist refused. During a personal visit to Joffre on 18 January 1916 he convinced the supreme commander that the plan was sound.
At first however Estienne himself was not personally involved in the development of the new tanks. He suggested some ideas that were duly taken notice of, but had no effect on the construction and production preparations. Two of his personal enemies, Undersecretary Jean-Louis Bréton (who resented that Estienne took over his project) and Colonel Rimailho (the co-inventor, with Deport and Ste Claire Deville,of the 75 mm field gun) cooperated to build the ill-fated St Chamond. Meanwhile Estienne was side-tracked in the summer of 1916 as head of recruiting. This was an important and responsible task with which he was nevertheless deeply unhappy, despite a promise in August of promotion to brigadier. On 16 July during a chance meeting Renault informed him that his company was developing a light tank (the later Renault FT-17), but Estienne was not in a position to make any promises. In August he and Bréton together traveled to London, trying to convince the British government to postpone the first use of tanks till the French tanks were ready. They failed, but this had a beneficial side-effect. After the use of the British Mark I on 15 September, the resulting tank euphoria accelerated developments and Estienne was appointed on 30 September as commander of the Artillerie Spéciale: the tank arm. On 17 October he was promoted to brigadier (Gėnėral de Brigade).
At that time there was neither personnel nor materiel. Estienne now spent many months trying to create the new force from scratch: first recruiting, then constructing training grounds, waiting till 1 December for the first Schneider CA to be delivered so training could begin in earnest. During these months he cooperated with Renault to develop the light Renault tank, and tried to sabotage efforts by General Mouret to mass-produce superheavy tanks (the later Char 2C), which threatened to swallow all available production capacity.
On 16 April 1917 he was forced by the new supreme commander Robert Nivelle to commit his force prematurely near Berry-au-Bac, leading to complete failure. The officer commanding the attack, Commandant Louis Bossut, was killed; a large monument there commemorates all the French tankers who died in WW I. This nearly led to the abolition of the tank force. Estienne was saved by the appointment of his friend Pétain as CinC. He now directed his mind to the conception of appropriate tactics. In his mind tanks were to be above all a new form of mobile artillery, capable of moving over the ravaged battlefield and breaking through enemy lines, without any traditional artillery support for the standard preliminary "softening up". Heavier tanks might be useful for this but a more efficient effort could be made by a "swarm" of lighter vehicles. Estienne paid little attention to exploitation.
In 1918 a large mass of Renault FT-17's was at last made available. This allowed the French to counterattack effectively for the first time since 1914. The FT-17 became the Char de la Victoire and the necessity for a strong tank force became firmly established.
Interbellum
Estienne remained head of the tank force, first still as Artillerie Spéciale, then as commander of the Chars when in 1920 all tanks were made part of the Infantry by law. He resigned as such in 1922 but then headed the technical section till 1933 and thus strongly influenced the development path of the French tanks, trying to turn it from light tanks to larger Chars de Bataille. He is therefore largely responsible for the production of the too expensive Char B1. As a reaction after 1933 the Infantry concentrated again on the too light R 35, leaving men of the middle ground like Colonel Charles de Gaulle without the materiel to equip strategically mobile armoured divisions.
Nevertheless today his reputation is unscathed and he is venerated as the Father of the Tanks. A street in Paris was named after him. In the past several military stations and posts also bore his name and the biggest tank museum in France and the world, the Musée des Blindés in Saumur, is called "Musée Général Estienne".