France
Théophile Delcassé
1852–1923 Foreign Minister, 1898–1905 and 1914–1915
Born at Pamiers on 1 March 1852, Théophile Delcassé began as a journalist for Gambetta's République française and entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1889. As foreign minister from June 1898 he ordered Captain Marchand to evacuate Fashoda and concluded the 1904 agreements with Britain known as the Entente Cordiale. On 6 June 1905, during the Moroccan crisis, his colleagues, fearing war with Germany, refused to back his defiant stance, and he resigned. Foreign minister again from 26 August 1914, he oversaw the pact by which Britain, Russia and France agreed in September not to make a separate peace. He resigned in October 1915, after Bulgaria entered the war against the Allies, and died at Nice in 1923.