French General and President Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (1890–1970) was born on this day in Lille, France. As a child, he carried a fierce passion for reading and history, and an early, steadfast devotion to his country.

He once said, “France cannot be France without greatness.” A prominent leader and expert in military history and tactical planning, de Gaulle served as a World War I hero. By age 49, after the outbreak of World War II, he had become the youngest general in the French Army. “Character is the virtue of hard times,” he reflected.

Exiled in England following the German occupation of France, and with the support of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, de Gaulle kept the flame of the Free French resistance movement alive. His determination and radio broadcasts sustained hope, and he later headed his country’s provisional government from 1944 to 1946.

“A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless,” he said. Patriot and political force, he dedicated his life to resurrecting the glory of prewar France. “It was up to me to take responsibility for France.”

With a new constitution in place, he was elected President of the Fifth Republic in 1959, guiding a modern France through turbulence and transformation. “In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend,” he wrote. “What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?”

His words, “The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us,” invite us to look inward with the same courage he summoned on the world stage, to find, within ourselves, the quiet strength to rise and begin again.