Background
Louis René Dartige de Fournet was born in Putanges, west of Paris, March 2, 1856.
Louis René Dartige de Fournet was born in Putanges, west of Paris, March 2, 1856.
He graduated from thé Naval College in 1874 at the head of his class and spent most of the next three decades in the Far East where he compiled a distinguished combat record.
Du Fournet spent the early months of World War I in North Africa, but 1915 brought him a succession of increasingly responsible sea commands. He took charge of the Third Squadron in the eastern Mediterranean in February, commanded French naval forces at the Dardanelles (May-October), and, in mid-October, replaced Admiral Boue de Lapeyrere as the ranking French naval officer in the Mediterranean.
By then, the French naval forces found their main task to be parrying the dangerous threat posed by the German submarine fleet. Du Fournet became the executor of Navy Minister Lacaze's policy of redeploying French combat ships to meet the new weapon. He champed with frustration at his inability to employ his battleships but obediently pared away at the crews of the large vessels to provide men for the fleet of small antisubmarine ships Lacaze ordered formed.
By late 1915 Lacaze and du Fournet had instituted a policy of escorting troop ships as well as patrolling the shipping lanes commonly used by merchant vessels. The need to guard the Strait of Otranto against an Austrian sortie and to support the deepening Allied commitment at Salonika meant leaving such areas as the western Mediterranean poorly guarded. By midsummer 1916, du Fournet's calls for additional patrol boats led Lacaze to reply that French resources for combating the submarine threat were now stretched to the limit. Thomazi suggests that du Fournet had by then become a partisan of well-escorted convoys to protect merchant traffic. Lacking an adequate number of suitable escorts, however, he had to content himself with attempts to patrol shipping lanes as closely as possible.
For du Fournet, Greek politics rather than German submarines emerged as the fatal challenge. In September 1916, Paris ordered him to delegate his other responsibilities in order to direct operations against the government of King Constantine. The monarch's increasingly evident pro-German policies threatened the rear of the Allied forces stationed near Salonika. Notwithstanding British and Russian objections, French naval demonstrations had become the common weapon with which to hold the Greeks to their wobbling neutrality.
But du Fournet found Constantine a dangerously unpredictable antagonist. Relying on the Greek king s assurances of goodwill and pledges to surrender large quantities of artillery to the Allies as proof of his benevolence, du Fournet landed a small expedition of British and French sailors and marines at Athens on December 1. They immediately came under fire from Greek royalist forces and were extricated only with difficulty. Du Fournet now swung to a belligerent extreme and prepared to bombard Athens. The befuddled admiral was prevented by Lacaze from thus alienating the entire Greek population, and the navy minister removed him from command in mid-December. The cashiered du Fournet found himself in involuntary retirement by the start of 1917.
For the remainder of the war du Fournet sought a new command, but his active service was over. He died in Perigeux, February 17, 1940.