On the 25th of October, 1415,
during the battle of Azincourt, Gallois de Fougières, provost of the
marshals, is killed in battle. His body, found near those of the
Constable of France, Charles d'Albret, and the Duke of Alençon, was
separated from the rest of his unfortunate companions and buried a
little over five and a half miles away in the abbey of Auchy-les-Moines,
currently known as Auchy-lès-Hesdin, in the department of
Pas-de-Calais.
The abbey of Auchy-lès-Hesdin today and in 1936.
In
1934, the gendarmerie captain Georges BENOIT-GUYOT began doing
ressearch on the history of his institution. After searching through the
municipal library of Besançon, he discovered the tomb's location thanks
to manuscripts gathered by the Chifflet family in the 17th century. In
this collection, he found an ancient copy of a document from 1415 that
came from the library of the dukes of Brabant in Brussels : it was
basically a death certificate on which was written :
(Loosely translated from Old French) « At the end, by the great door,
lie all in one grave the Lord of the Liergue d'Auvergne, Lord Jehan des
Quesnes, the Galet de Fouchières, provost of the marshals, and the young
Hollandes, son of the baillif of Rouen. »
The diggings :
In
1936, the Gendarmerie Nationale, in order to pay tribute to the one
they consider the first gendarme to be killed in the line of duty,
decided to exhume the remains of Gallois de Fougières to move him to the
hypogeum in the honour of the gendarmerie in Versailles.
The left of the entrance, the place where Gallois de Fougières and his unfortunate companions were buried.
The
commission charged with the exhumation, Commandant Eloy, Commandant
Léguillette, Mister de La Charie d'Hesdin, Colonel Lélu, Captains
Fonvielle and Pruvôt, and Doctor Lemaître.
The
first step of the dig revealed human bones nearly 5 feet deep. The
manuscript hadn't lied : there were the remains of four human
skeletons.
Captain
BENOIT-GUYOT was called. The location and arrangement was a perfect
match for the description within the manuscript. It was in fact the
final resting place of Gallois de Fougières. His body was easily
identified, resting next to young Hollandes who was an adolescent when
he was killed in battle with an axe to the head.
Number 3 marks the location of Gallois de Fougières' remains.
An
examination put him at more or less 60 years of age at the time of his
death. He was large of stature, lying on his back, facing upwards.
His remains were removed and the grave was closed again. A plaque was set to mark its location.
«
At the foot of this wall were buried in the year 1415, Gallois de
Fougières, provost of the marshals of France, the Lord of Liergue
d'Auergne, Lord Jehan des Quesnes, and the small Hollandes, son of the
bailiff of Rouen, killed in the battle of Azincourt. The remains of the
provost of the marshals, Gallois de Fougières, were separated from those
of his companions on the 12th of September 1936 to be placed in a crypt
beneath the national monument raised in Versailles to the memory of the
dead of the Gendarmerie. Glory to this Institution »
The transfer to Versailles :
The
transfer was originally to take place in spring of 1937 but the comitee
charged with building the monument to the Gendarmerie found itself
facing various administrative problems and the construction was delayed.
And then World War II happened.
The bones, placed in a wooden box, spent the war hidden under a stairway in the home of enterpreneur Mister Tiliette.
On
the 22nd of September, 1945, the transfer is finally made. The last
journey of the provost of the marshals, killed in the line of duty in
Azincourt, was marked with many religious and patriotic ceremonies.
Today,
Gallois de Fougières rests in peace under the bronze shield of the
monument in the honour of the Gendarmerie in Versailles. He is also now
registered in the golden book of the Gendarmerie Nationale. In the year
2002, his name is attributed the the 109th graduation company from the
Gendarmerie officers' school in Melun.
In Pas-de-Calais, his name was even attributed to a Gendarmerie barracks.
The hypogeum of the Gendarmerie Nationale.
The bronze shield beneath which lies Gallois de Fougières.
The Latin : "Not without permission"
The French : "Gallois de Fougières, provost of the marshals of France, killed at Azincourt 1415".
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