Jean-Louis Georgelin, the French general who was placed in charge of rebuilding Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris after a devastating fire in 2019, has died. He was 74.

“The nation has lost one of its greatest soldiers,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement on Saturday. “France, one of its great servants. And Notre-Dame, the architect of its rebirth.”

General Georgelin, a former army chief of staff whom Mr. Macron had chosen to lead the restoration project, was hiking in the Pyrénées in southwestern France on Friday when an accident most likely occurred, according to French news reports.

The prosecutor’s office told the French news media that the police had found a body and formally identified it as the general’s, but the exact circumstances were not immediately clear.