MacMahon, Marshal M. E. P. M., Duc de Magenta (1808-93). Like so many other distinguished French soldiers, MacMahon was of Irish ancestry. Commissioned into the infantry from the academy at Saint-Cyr, he rose to fame in Algeria and commanded a division in the Crimea. In 1855 he stormed the Malakoff, one of the strongest parts of the defences of Sevastopol, laconically proclaiming ‘j'y suis, j'y reste’ (here I am, here I stay). In the Italian campaign of 1859 his corps took the village of Magenta (hence his ducal title) and fought hard at Solferino.
Governor-general of Algeria when the Franco-Prussian war broke out in 1870, he commanded the superb I Corps, composed of North African troops. Beaten at Wörth on 6 August he fell back on Châlons with the defeated right wing, reorganizing it, with reinforcements, as the Army of Châlons. Ordered eastwards to relieve Bazaine at Metz, he was trapped at Sedan, where his army was destroyed: he was wounded and captured.
In 1871 he organized the Versailles army which recaptured Paris from the Commune, though he was not responsible for its excesses. He replaced Thiers as president in 1873, largely because monarchists in the National Assembly thought him favourable to their cause. But a pretender visited him in 1874 and was deeply disappointed: he had hoped to find a constable of France, he remarked, but found only a village policeman. In difficulties with the radical left, he resigned after the republicans won the 1877 elections.
Like many of his comrades in arms MacMahon was formidably brave but had no grasp of the higher art of war. He was famously thick-headed, with the untranslatable punning nickname ‘Mac-bête’. The right word often eluded him: when visiting a flooded area he could think of nothing better to say than ‘que d'eau’ (what a lot of water).
— Richard Holmes
