Franche-Comté, particularly damaged by the First War
As the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs reminds us, Franche-Comté entered the First World War prematurely. One day before Germany declared war on France, on August 2, 1914, Corporal Jules-André Peugeot was killed during a clash with a patrol of German horsemen, in Joncherey, near Belfort. He was the first French death of the Great War. The region was also, in a way, the first to announce the end of the conflict: in November 1918, it was a Franc-Comtois native of Beaucourt, Sergeant Pierre Sellier, who sounded the first cease with his bugle. -the fire announcing the armistice. Between these two episodes, the region was particularly scarred by the conflict. Franche-Comté is in fact part of the so-called “grande levees” zones, according to the historian Philippe Boulanger, that is to say regions which contributed, more than others, to compulsory military service throughout the duration of the war.
France
