Auguste Frederic Louis Viesse de Marmont

During the old mode

Wire of an officer member of the minor nobility, it adopts the principles of the French revolution. He learns mathematics with Dijon before entering to the artillery school where he meets Napoleon Bonaparte.

The French revolution

Second lieutenant of infantry at 15 years, artillery second lieutenant in 1792, captain with the Armed with Mainz, ordering artillery of the avant-garde Desaix. He collaborates in Toulon with Bonaparte. Knowledge is transformed into intimacy. Marmont becomes the Assistance-of-camp of the Bonaparte general, remains with him during its disgrace and accompanies it in Italy and Egypt.

It to him was given a saber of honor for its role with the Bataille of the bridge of Lodi. Chief of brigade in the Year V, ordering 4th half-brigade in Egypt, brought back in France by the general-in-chief.

In 1799, it turns over in Europe with its chief. It is named to advise State after the 18 brumaire in which it takes part and, a few months later, he is promoted with the command as a chief of artillery of the reserve army. He deploys the most clever resources to transport the material beyond the Col of the Large-Saint-Bernard. He organizes artillery for forwarding in Italy, which it orders with effectiveness with the Bataille Marengo.

Empire

For that it is made Major general. In 1804, he becomes large-officer of the Légion of honor but is very désappointé not to be reproduced on the list of the new marshals. Commander-in-chief of the French troops and Batavians in Batavian Republic, it directs a camp to Zeist, close to Utrecht. Near this camp, it makes build by its soldiers a commemorative pyramid, the “Marmontberg”. The town of Austerlitz will be founded with the site of the camp

In 1805, three divisions of the camp form the 2nd army corps (36 000 men approximately) with whom it takes part in the Bataille of Ulm. In 1806, it is named general-in-chief in Dalmatie, to free the French besieged in Raguse (Dubrovnik) by the Russians. During the five following years, he is civil and military governor of the Dalmatie, and the traces of its beneficial mode survive at the same time in great public works and the memory of the population.

In 1808, it is made duke of Raguse and, in 1809, being required by Napoleon to take share with the war of Austria, it goes on Vienna and takes part in the last operations of the countryside. Napoleon then does it marshal on the field of Bataille of Znaïm, and general governor of all the provinces of Illyrie.

In July 1810, Marmont succeeds in haste Masséna in the command of the French Army in the north of the Spain. The skill with which it makes operate its army there during this year is recognized. Its help with Ciudad Rodrigo with the autumn of 1811, in spite of the presence of the British army, is an exploit. Positioning before the Bataille of Salamanque is the best possible one. But Wellington, conquers its position during the battle and inflicts a severe defeat with the French, the July 22nd 1812, with the Bataille of Arapiles, Marmont itself being seriously wounded with the arm and to the right-sided, the command yields to Clauzel, which saves the army.

It returns to France to recover. In April 1813, it is hardly given when Napoleon, forgetting his resentment for the defeat, gives him a new command. It is useful in the battles of Lützen, Bautzen and Dresden in Germany, and during the countryside of 1814 until in the last battle before Paris, from which it withdraws its 20 000 men on the heights of the the Essonne.

There Marmont plays a political role which, undoubtedly precisely, is stigmatized like that with ungrateful and of a traitor. A secret convention is concluded, and the body of Marmont goes to the enemy. Of his title, one formed besides the word “ ragusade ” to mean treason.

The April 2nd, noise being spread that Napoleon, with the head of 170 000 men, walks on Paris, the combined sovereigns, frightened, decide to evacuate the capital. But the order of this movement is not dispatched, because Marmont concludes with the enemies from France a treaty in virtue of which the troops which it order must leave the Essonne and to withdraw itself by Versailles out of the theater of the hostilities. This action of Marmont consumes the ruin of the Empire.

Restoration

This action was never forgotten by its fellow-citizens.

With the Restoration of the Bourbons, the duke of Raguse is named captain of the Bodyguards, it goes to Ghent in 1814, as chief of the military household of Louis XVIII which creates it Pair France. He passes the Hundred Days to water of Aachen.

In 1817, it is sent on mission expeditionary to Lyon. It is in 1820 knight of the Holy Spirit and large officer of the Ordre of Saint-Louis.

In 1825, in the capacity as ambassador extraordinary it attends the crowning of the emperor Nicolas. It deals some time with the manufacture of the Beet sugar S and compromises its fortune there.

In 1830, it is named the July 28th, ordering military division, and has order to repress any opposition to the ordinances.

Itself opposed to the policy of the court it tries nevertheless to make its duty until it becomes obvious that its troops are not enough with the task. The dolphin orders its arrest then.

Marmont does not betray. It accompanies the king in exile and gives up his maréchalat.

Its desire to turn over to France was never carried out and he wandered in Central Europe and of the east, for finally settling with Vienna, where he is received by the government and curiously made tutor of the duke of Reichstadt, the young man who was Napoleon II.

He began a long voyage in Hungary, Transylvania, Russia, to Constantinople, in the minor Asia, the Syria and the Egypt; he visited then Rome, Naples and the Sicily.

With its death in 1852, it will be buried in its birthplace with the Châtillon-on-Seine with the Saint-Vorles cemetery. Its faithful first aide-de-camp (twice in Dalmatie, then at the time of the Restoration) the General Baron Claude Testot-Ferry will pronounce his funeral praise.

Books

Most of its last years were devoted to the drafting of its Mémoires , which must be read like a personal and nonobjective defense. They show Marmont as a turned sour man which considered his services like insufficiently rewarded and especially a man which liked too rather than a true friend or a trusty servant. Its strategy tended in truth to being pure virtuosity, and its tactics, although clear, appear ice-cold and old contrasts about it with those of the instinctive leaders, the generals combatants like Lannes and Davout, that the theorists scorn.

He wrote also Voyage in Hungary , etc (4 volumes, 1837); Voyage in Sicily (1838); Spirit of the military institutions (1845); Cesar ; Xenophon ; and Memories (8 volumes, published after its death 1856). See the long one and careful Holy-Beuve note by , Talks of Monday , vol. VI.

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