Viscount Charles Eugène de Foucauld de Ponbriand (1858–1916) was a French army officer who became an explorer, scholar, monk, and missionary, achieving renown for his studies of Morocco and Tuareg culture. He was born in Strasbourg, France, on September 15, 1858, into an old French aristocratic family. Studies at a Jesuit school in Paris prepared him for the entrance examination of the Saint-Cyr military academy, where he was admitted in 1876. One of his classmates was Philippe Pétain, later to gain notoriety as commander of a French army at Verdun in World War I and a…