Michel Combes , born with Feurs (the Loire) in 1787, military French.

He began in the art of warfare with Austerlitz, and attended the majority of the battles of the Empire.

He was with Ulm, with Iéna, Eylau, Friedland, Bautzen, and the Mont Midsummer's Day.
In 1831, when the Romagna had risen against the the Holy See, to which it required reforms, impotent to reduce it by its own forces, the pope beseeched the support of the Austria, and, with its request, six thousand Austrians were introduced with Bologna, the January 28th 1832.

To stop the continuations of this species of invasion, the French cabinet solved to occupy Ancône. A vessel, Suffren , and two frigates, Artémise and the Victoire , reflect with the veil, of Toulon, the February 7th 1832, under the orders of the captain Welsh, and with two battalions of the 66e regiment, forts of 1.100 men, and ordered by the colonel Combes.

Naval division appeared the February 22nd for Ancône. The come night, the provisions are made for the unloading. Part of the troops goes down to ground at three o'clock in the morning, and goes on the city whose doors were closed.

The French precipitate in the city, divided in two columns, one directed by colonel Combes, the other by a major. The various stations occupied by the pontifical soldiers are disarmed, and at the point of the day all the city is with the capacity of the French.

Later colonel Combes was sent in Algérie, where it ordered the 47e line. He took part in almost all the businesses until the taken of Constantine.

The October 13rd 1837, at 7 o'clock in the morning, the attack of the place of Constantine was ordered. As soon as the first column, under the orders of the colonel of Lamoricière, exceeded the breach, colonel Combes springs to support it with the head of the second column. It arrives on the wall, at the moment when a terrible explosion bursts and devastates the rows of the attackers. He takes the command at once that the colonel of Moricière, wounded and private of the sight in the explosion, ceases exerting.

Mortally reached back-to-back into full in the chest, he refuses to leave the combat to go to be made bandage, and still continues to order his soldiers.

Colonel Combes had still the force to turn over almost only to the bivouac of his regiment, and a few minutes afterwards, it was lying on its funeral bed to be raised more. The piety of the soldiers for their chief raised in Constantine a tomb with colonel Combes. This monument, leant with a marabout, looked at the door Bad-el-Djédid and the breach.

The town of Feurs (the Loire) had decided that the statue of Combes would decorate the principal place, and the execution was entrusted by it to the chisel of Mr. Foyatier; it was inaugurated the October 16th 1839. This statue is set up in its birthplace; and under the base its heart was deposited by the order Of Louis-Philippe Ier, king of the French. A law of the March 18th 1840 granted to its widow a pension of 2.000 francs, as national reward.