killed in an air crash in Algeria in 1947. Early life Philippe François Marie de Hauteclocque was born on 22 November 1902 at Belloy-Saint-Léonard in the department of Somme, France. He was the fifth of six children of Adrien de Hauteclocque, comte de Hauteclocque (1864–1945), and Marie-Thérèse van der Cruisse de Waziers (1870–1956). Philippe was named in honour of an ancestor killed by Croatian soldiers in service of Habsburg monarchy during Thirty Years' War in 1635. Hauteclocque came from an old line of country nobility. His direct ancestors had served in the Fifth Crusade against Egypt, and again in the Eighth Crusade of Saint Louis against Tunisia in 1270. They had also fought at the Battle of Saint-Omer in 1340 and the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. The family managed to survive the French Revolution. Three members of the family served in Napoleon's Grande Armée and a fourth, who suffered from weak health, served in the supply train. The third son, Constantin, who had served in Napoleon's Russian Campaign, was created a chevalier by King Louis XVIII, and a Papal count by Pope Pius IX in 1857. Constantin had two sons. The older, Alfred François Marie (1822–1902), died childless. The younger, Gustave François Marie Joseph (1829–1914), became a noted Egyptologist. Gustave, in turn, had three sons. The first, Henry (1862–1914), and third, Wallerand (1866–1914), became officers in the French Army, serving during the colonial campaigns, including fighting Samory in the Sudan. Both were killed in the early fighting of the First World War. The second son was Adrien, who enlisted in August 1914 as a trooper in the , the regiment in which his son Guy was a cornet. Adrien was later commissioned, and was twice awarded the Croix de Guerre for gallantry. He survived the war, and inherited the family title and estate in Belloy-Saint-Léonard. Early military career Philippe de Hauteclocque was homeschooled until he was 13, when he was sent to L'école de la Providence, a Jesuit school in Amiens. In 1920, at the age of 17, he went to Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève, known as Ginette, a preparatory school in Versailles. He then entered the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, the French military academy. Each class has a name; his was Metz et Strasbourg after towns in Alsace and Lorraine returned to France by the Treaty of Versailles. He graduated on 1 October 1924, and was commissioned as