Marie-madeleine fourcade biography graphic organizer

French Resistance leader

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (11 August 1909 – 20 July 1989) was the leader of the French Resistance network "Alliance", under the code name "Hérisson" ("Hedgehog") after the arrest of its former leader, Georges Loustaunau-Lacau (“Navarre”), during the German military administration in occupied France during World War II.

Youth

Born Marie-Madeleine Bridou in Marseille, in Bouches-du-Rhône, she grew up and attended convent schools in Shanghai where her father had a position with the French Maritime service.^[1] She married young, with the future colonel Édouard Méric [fr].

They had two children, but the couple became estranged and she would not visit her children for years at a time.^[1] In 1936, Fourcade met and impressed the former French military intelligence officer Major Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, code name "Navarre".^[1]

Wartime resistance

Fourcade worked with Navarre on his ma