The French poet and author Charles Pierre Péguy (1873-1914) was a fervent Roman Catholic, patriot, and social reformer. Through his writings and actions he influenced many Frenchmen who went to war in 1914.

Born into a working-class family in Orléans on Aug. 7, 1873, Charles Péguy was able, thanks to scholarships, to attend Lakanal, the celebrated lycée outside Paris, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, another celebrated academic institution. At the École Normale he studied under Henri Bergson, whose antirationalistic philosophy did much to confirm Péguy's mystic bent. Although Péguy wished to become a teacher, he failed the agrégation examination and then became a writer. His first work, Jeanne d'Arc, Domrémy, les Batailles, written in collaboration with Marcel Baudouin, revealed Péguy's socialist orientation and his Christian inspiration, both...