Galliffet, Gaston Alexandre Auguste, marquis de

Galliffet, Gaston Alexandre Auguste, marquis de

(gästôN` älĕksäN`drə ōgüst` märkē` də gälēfā`), 1830–1909, French general. He served in the Crimean War, in colonial campaigns, in the Mexican expedition, and in the Franco-Prussian War. His cruel suppression of the Commune of ParisCommune of Paris,
insurrectionary governments in Paris formed during (1792) the French Revolution and at the end (1871) of the Franco-Prussian War. In the French Revolution, the Revolutionary commune, representing urban workers, tradespeople, and radical bourgeois, engineered
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 in 1871 won him a reputation as a strong man and the enduring enmity of the political left. He later reorganized the French cavalry. As minister of war (1899–1900) in the crucial period of the Dreyfus AffairDreyfus Affair
, the controversy that occurred with the treason conviction (1894) of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935), a French artillery officer and graduate of the French military academy.
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, Galliffet restored peace and order in the army.