The Chief of the Staff of the French Army (French: Chef d'État-Major de l'Armée de Terre, CEMAT) is the professional head of the French Army. The current Chief of Staff of the French Army has been General Bertrand Ract-Madoux since September, 1st 2011. The CEMAT title has been in use since 1962; prior to that the position for the general in charge of France's land forces was referred to as Chef d'État-Major de l'Armée. The modern form of a general staff for the French Army emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with Louis Alexandre Berthier being Chief-of-Staff for the Grand État-Major Général (Army General Headquarters) of Napoleon's Grand Armée.
Famous quotes containing the words chief of, chief, staff, french and/or army:
“Your real statesman is first of all, and chief of all, a great human being, with an eye for all the great fields on which men like himself struggle, with unflagging, pathetic hope, toward better things.... He is a guide, a counselor, a mentor, a servant, a friend of mankind.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“But chief to heedless flies the window proves
A constant death; where gloomily retired,
The villain spider lives, cunning and fierce,
Mixture abhorred! Amid a mangled heap
Of carcases in eager watch he sits,
O’erlooking all his waving snares around.”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)
“Each one threw down his staff, and they became snakes; but Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 7:12.
“To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”
—Marilyn French (20th century)
“Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easily born; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)