George Ernest Jean Marie Boulanger was born in the town of Rennes, in Brittany, in 1837.[1] His father had been a lawyer, and was head of an insurance company.  He spent the latter days of his life at Ville-d’Avray, near Paris; and as he did not die till 1884, he lived to see his son a highly considered French officer, though he had not then given promise of being a popular hero and a world-famous man.  General Boulanger’s mother was named Griffith; she was a lady belonging apparently to the upper middle class in Wales.  She had a great admiration for George Washington, and the future French hero received one of his names from the American “father of his country.”  In his boyhood Boulanger was always called George; but when he came of age he preferred to call himself Ernest, which is the baptismal name by which he is generally known.

[Footnote 1:  Turner, Life of Boulanger.]

In 1851 his parents took him to England to the Great Exhibition.  He afterwards passed some months with his maternal relatives at Brighton, and was sent to school there; but he had such fierce quarrels with the English boys in defence of his nationality that the experiment of an English education did not answer.  At the age of seventeen he was admitted to the French military school at Saint-Cyr, and two years later was in Algeria, as a second lieutenant in a regiment of Turcos.  His experiences in Africa were of the kind usual in savage warfare; but he became a favorite with his men, whom he cared for throughout his career with much of that fatherly interest which distinguished the Russian hero, General Skobeleff.—­

When the war with Italy broke out, in 1859, Boulanger and his Turcos took part in it.  He was severely wounded in his first engagement, and lay long in the hospital, attended by his mother.  He received, however, three decorations for his conduct in this campaign, in which he was thrice wounded.  On the last occasion, as he lay in hospital, he received a visit of sympathy from the Empress Eugenie, then in the very zenith of her beauty and prosperity.

Boulanger’s next service was in Tonquin, where on one occasion he fought side by side with the Spaniards, and received a fourth decoration, that of Isabella the Catholic.

He was next assigned to home duty at Saint-Cyr; and when the terrible war of 1870 broke out, and all the cadets were drafted into the army as officers, he was made major of a regiment, which was at Mezieres, on the Belgian frontier, when MacMahon and the emperor surrendered at Sedan.  Boulanger and his command escaped with Vinoy’s troops from the disaster, and got back to Paris, where he kept his men in better order during the siege than any other officer.  They took part in the sortie made to join Chanzy’s Army of the Loire, in November, 1870, and in a skirmish with the Prussians he was again badly wounded.  When the Prussian army entered Paris on March 5, 1871, Boulanger and the regiment under his command had the unpleasant duty of guarding the streets along their line of march to insure them a safe passage.