of the German attack at Verdun (21 February). Rumours circulated in Paris that Joffre had ordered the abandonment of Verdun at the end of February 1916 when the Germans first attacked. Gallieni demanded to see all paperwork from the period, but Joffre had made no such order in writing, merely despatching de Castelnau to assess the situation. Gallieni launched an angry report at the Council of Ministers on 7 March—read in his usual precise way—criticising Joffre's conduct of operations over the last eighteen months and demanding ministerial control, then resigned. Gallieni was falsely suspected of wanting to launch a military takeover of the government. Poincare wrote that Gallieni was trying to force Joffre's resignation, although it is unclear whether he was specifically trying to do so. Briand knew that publication of the report would damage morale and might bring down the government. Gallieni was persuaded to remain in office until a replacement had been designated and approved. Rocques was appointed as his successor after it had been ensured that Joffre had no objections. This would be the last attempt to assert ministerial control over the army until Clemenceau became Prime Minister late in 1917. Later life The strain of high office having broken his already fragile health, Joseph Gallieni died in May 1916. Gallieni's Memoirs were published posthumously in 1920. He was posthumously made Marshal of France, in 1921. He was buried in Saint-Raphaël. Camp Gallieni in Kati was named after him. There is also a Camp Galieni in Abidjan that serves as the Ivorian Arms forces Headquarters Assessments Clayton describes him as a dry precise man, a secular republican (views which influenced his colonial policy) but one who kept aloof from politics. Herwig describes him as “formidable” and “France’s most distinguished soldier” whose “physical appearance alone commanded respect”: he was of straight bearing and always wore full dress uniform. By the time Gallieni complained about Joffre's handling of Verdun, there was already public debate, much of it politically motivated, about which of them had “won” the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. Churchill commends him for seeing the opportunity to outflank the German Army, using Manoury's Sixth Army, and for persuading the defeatist Joffre. "He is not thinking only of the local situation around Paris. He thinks for France and he behaves with the spontaneous confidence of genius in action.". In his memoirs Gallieni claimed credit for that