Jean-Baptiste Eugène Estienne (7 November 1860 in Condé-en- Barrois, France - April 2, 1936 in Paris) was a French gunner and military engineer. He had an important influence in France in the development of modern artillery and military aviation. He remains best known as the man who created an armored weapon in France, which earned him the nickname "Father of Tanks" which he called "assault artillery", during the First World War.
Youth and early career
Very early on, he showed a good disposition for mathematics, carrying out brilliant studies at the college of Saint-Dizier, then at the high school of Bar-le-Duc. At the age of 19, he was admitted to the École Polytechnique, from which he graduated 131st in 1882, the year in which he also won first prize in a national mathematics competition. He is interested in mathematics and philosophy, but is especially passionate about Greek antiquity.
In 1883, he chose the artillery on leaving Polytechnique, and entered as a second lieutenant at the school of application of the weapon in Fontainebleau. He was assigned to a unit in Vannes the following year. In addition to his professional activity, he studied ballistics, and published his first book, Errors of Observation, which he presented to the Academy of Sciences. He advocates indirect artillery fire.
Promoted to captain in the 1st Artillery Regiment in 1891, he began to develop, at the Bourges workshop, telemetric instruments that would allow him to put his theories into practice, such as the pointing goniometer. In 1895 he published a second book, L’Art de conjecture’.
In 1902, he was transferred to the 19th Artillery Regiment as a squadron leader, but above all continued his theoretical work in the Paris artillery section. He developed various precision instruments, such as the phonetic rangefinder, and campaigned for the use of the telephone to transmit firing corrections from the batteries. This active work in the military technical field did not prevent him, however, from publishing in 1906 a study on Pascal's theorem. In 1907, he became director of the artillery school in Grenoble, where he published Les Forces morales à la guerre.
Pioneer of military aviation
He had the reputation of being one of the most brilliant progressive officers and, in 1909, General Brun entrusted him with the command of the military aviation service, which was being created in Reims. It develops techniques and tactics for the use of observation aviation. He then commanded the 5th Aviation Group in Lyon, but was quickly recalled to continue his work in Vincennes, where he nevertheless could not resist the urge to found an artillery aviation section.
When the First World War broke out, Estienne was appointed commander of the 22nd Artillery Regiment, which was part of General Pétain's division. At the Battle of Charleroi, the artillery, which he masterfully led and which employed adjustment by aviation, impressed the German troops. However, this did not prevent the infantry from being decimated by machine-gun fire, so much so that on August 23 he declared:"Gentlemen, victory in this war will belong to the one of the two belligerents who will be the first to place a 75 gun on a car able to move in all terrain. »
Special artillery
During the summer of 1915, he learned that Eugene Brillié, an engineer with Schneider, and Jules-Louis Breton, then a member of parliament, had begun the development of a vehicle intended to clear a path through barbed wire, based on the chassis of the Holt crawler tractor. He decides to contact Joffre to explain his ideas on the use of such a vehicle. After several unanswered letters, he ended up sending him a personal letter on December 1, which enabled him to meet Joffre's deputy chief of staff, Janin, on December 12. Meanwhile, on the 9th, he attended the demonstration of the Schneider chassis with Pétain:he understood that the very existence of this unfinished prototype would allow the creation of an armored force. And indeed, on the 20th, the decision to produce the Schneider CA1 tank was adopted. That same day, Estienne met Louis Renault, to convince him to produce a light tank, but the latter initially refused.
On February 2, 1916, he entrusted two Holt tractors, a small workshop and ten men to Second Lieutenant Fouché, and gave him 15 days to build a machine capable of crossing a trench one meter fifty wide and crushing a network barbed wire. On the 17th, the machine was ready and tested in Vincennes and, the same evening, the Schneider company decided to build 400 of these machines, which would become the Schneider CA1. On July 16, Louis Renault announced to him that he had reconsidered his decision and that his company was developing a light tank. In August, Estienne traveled to London with Jules-Louis Breton to try to convince the British not to use their tanks until those of the French were ready. But their mission fails and the British army engages, from September 15, Mark I tanks.
If the surprise effect is lost for unconvincing results, the use of British tanks triggers a euphoria that accelerates the development of French armored forces. On September 30, Colonel Estienne was appointed director of special artillery. He received his brigadier general stars on October 17. He set up the base camp of the new weapon in the clearing of Champelieu, in the forest of Compiègne and gave it its first regulations and traditions, derived from that of the artillery. On November 27, he addressed to the General Headquarters a request for 1,000 light machine-gun tanks which could be built by Renault. Due to the opposition of General Mouret, inspector of the automotive service, the order was canceled by the Minister of Armaments and General Estienne had to intervene again to save it. He succeeded in having the purchase of 150 tanks accepted on February 22, 1917.
On April 1, the special artillery received 208 Schneiders, including 34 unusable, and 48 Saint Chamond. The new Commander-in-Chief Robert Nivelle demanded the commitment of special artillery, in support of the Fifth Army near Berry-au-Bac, on April 16 despite the opposition of Estienne who considered that the action was premature. The facts will prove him right. The attack was a failure, with many losses among the tank crews, including Commander Louis Bossut, who commanded one of the two groups involved. This first unfortunate engagement risks causing the dissolution of the special artillery, but the replacement of Nivelle by Pétain saves Estienne's work.
The future of special artillery is now assured. The equipment is ordered en masse, and many special artillery groups, then light tank regiments, are born. In June 1917, the industry received manufacturing orders for 150 2C heavy tanks, 600 medium tanks and no less than 3,500 FT-17 light tanks. During the war, no less than 17 groups of Schneider CA1 and twelve of Saint Chamond, all with fifteen tanks, and three regiments of light tanks, whose action proved to be decisive in the victory of the Allied forces, were created. On August 2, 1918, General Estienne was made Commander of the Legion of Honor, with the following citation by Pétain:"A general officer of exceptional intelligence and valor, who through the accuracy and fertility of his ideas, the enthusiasm and the faith with which he knew how to defend them and make them triumph, rendered the most eminent services to the common cause. »
Estienne was elevated to the rank of general of division on December 23, 1918. In 1919, he became senior commander of the fortified group of the Alpes-Maritimes and commander of the Nice subdivision.
His last post of activity was that of combat tank inspector. He thus remains at the head of the special artillery, which became the subdivision of combat tanks when it was attached to the infantry in 1920. Admitted to retirement on November 7, 1922, he however took the head of the general direction of the studies of tanks, which has just been created. He held two successive conferences, one before the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts on February 15, 1920, then in Brussels before King Albert I, where he developed a rather prophetic vision of the future of tanks:"Imagine, Gentlemen, to the formidable strategic and tactical advantage which would be gained over the heavy armies of the most recent past by a hundred thousand men capable of covering eighty kilometers in a single night with arms and baggage in one direction and at any time. All that would be needed for this was eight thousand lorries or automobile tractors and four thousand caterpillar tanks manned by a shock troop of twenty thousand men. »
He ended up retiring to the Côte d'Azur in Nice in 1933, devoting himself, among other things, to tank veterans' associations. In 1934, he received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor.
Died on April 2, 1936 at the Val-de-Grâce hospital, he is buried in the Cimiez cemetery in Nice.