General Jean-Louis Georgelin, former Army Chief of Staff and head of the Notre-Dame Cathedral restoration project in Paris, died aged 74 on Friday evening while hiking in the Pyrénées, the Foix public prosecutor's office told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Saturday, August 20.
"The PGHM (peloton de gendarmerie de haute-montagne) intervened on the slopes of Mont-Valier (...) and discovered the corpse of a man who has been formally identified as General Georgelin", a representative of the public prosecutor's office said, adding that it was presumed to be an accident.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday that, with the death of General Georgelin, France had lost "one of its great servants" and Notre-Dame "the master builder of its rebirth."
"With the death of General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the nation has lost one of its great soldiers. France, one of its great servants. And Notre-Dame, the master builder of its rebirth", wrote Macron in a brief message on the X network (formerly Twitter).
The PGHM was alerted by the keeper of the Estagnous hikers' refuge (2,246 m altitude), below Mont-Valier, who informed them that a hiker had not returned, the public prosecutor's office said, adding that the general was hiking alone, according to the initial elements of the investigation.
Alerted at around 8 pm, the peloton flew to the scene by helicopter from the Pamiers Gendarmerie Air Section and confirmed the general had died, according to the Gendarmerie.
Jean-Louis Georgelin, a five-star general born on August 30, 1948 in Aspet, Haute-Garonne in southwestern France, was a Saint-Cyr alumnus and head of Jacques Chirac's private staff in 2002, before being promoted to army general in 2003.
Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces (Cema) from 2006 to 2010, he oversaw operations in Côte d'Ivoire, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Lebanon. Macron chose him in 2020 to orchestrate the reconstruction of Notre-Dame Cathedral, to drive forward this extremely complex project with determination.