Emmanuel Macron, the French president, made an unexpected start to his week-long commemoration of the centenary of the First World War by visiting the site of one of the country’s worst military disasters.
Mr Macron chose to kick off a 14-stop tour of towns, cities and battlefield sites around northeast France by travelling to Morhange, where 40,000 French lost their lives against the Germans in the space of just three days between August 20 and 22, 1914, at the start of the war.
He is the first French president to make an official stop to commemorate the battle since Charles de Gaulle passed through in 1961.
In a sombre morning ceremony, Mr Macron attended a ceremony at a monument dedicated to “the soldiers who fell gloriously” at the start of the war in August 1914. “100 years later, their sacrifice obliges us to defend peace,” read the commemorative plaque.
Dominique Gervasi, a local historian, blamed the crushing defeat on the fact that the French were forced to wear bright red trousers, making them easy targets, and on “the unpreparedness of the generals, many of whom were fired afterwards”.
The battle was a “disaster”, conceded France’s chief of the defence staff, General François Lecointre.
But Joseph Zimet, head of the French First World War “centenary mission”, said: “We are not commemorating a defeat, we are paying tribute to the forgotten dead.”
The French president is due to visit Verdun on Tuesday and the Somme on Friday, where he will be joined by Theresa May.
They will visit the Thiepval Memorial, which commemorates more than 72,000 men from the British and South African forces who were reported missing in the Somme before 20 March 1918.
Mr Macron’s British great-grandfather, George William Robertson, was decorated for bravery at the Somme.
The following day the president will meet up with Angela Merkel for a ceremony in Compiègne forest where the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
The week-long centenary tour, the longest since his election last year, is also being seen as a highly political attempt to reconnect with provincial France and will include trips to a car factory, an old people’s home and a seminar on investing in France.
Facing record low popularity ratings, the president is fighting accusations he is the president of rich Parisians.
He has been on the back foot since a rural female motorist this weekend launched a Facebook diatribe against price hikes on diesel, which the government wants to place on a par with petrol.
Jacline Mouraud said that motorists were being “hunted down” and that the cost of driving to work was now almost on a par with her takings. The angry outburst has been viewed five million times and a day of protest blocking French roads is planned for November 17.
Mr Macron hit back on Monday saying he intended to push on with fuel hikes in the name of energy transition and the fight against air pollution.
Analysts say the president clearly hopes the centenary remembrance trip will boost his party’s chances in the European elections in May.
This weekend, an IFOP poll suggested his centrist La République en Marche party was for the first time trailing Marine Le Pen’s far-Right National Rally, which has a one-point lead in voting intentions for the European elections.
Populist nationalists, such as Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister, or Ms Le Pen, threaten to drag Europe back into armed conflict, he has warned.
On Sunday French officials are expecting about 80 world leaders, including Donald Trump, the US president, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, for a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe.