Nicolas-Joseph Beaurepaire

See also: Beaurepaire

Nicolas-Joseph Beaurepaire is a French officer born with Coulommiers, on January 7th 1740 and died in Verdun, on September 2nd 1792.

It engages in the army then royal in 1757 and becomes captain in 1786 before taking its retirement in Anjou in 1791.

Reprocess quite provisional since he is elected lieutenant-colonel of a battalion of the Mayenne-and-Loire in September of the same year. At the beginning of May 1792, it is sent with the regiment of Maine-et-Loire n°212 to Verdun. Beaurepaire would have lost by desertion the quarter from its men in way before arriving on June 2nd, he exerts then the command as a chief of the city and organizes defense there. August 29th 1792, the city is besieged by the Prussian opponent 60 000 men and 40 guns vis-a-vis the French; August 31st, the emissary of the Duc of Brunswick which directs the seat “summons Verdun to go”. September 2nd, Beaurepaire dies while leaving the council of the city has just voted rendering before the first reinforcements left Paris do not arrive two days more early.

The circumstances of its death remain badly known: when Verdun goes, its men carry his corpse with Holy-Menehould where the deputy Joseph Delaunay forging mill the legend of the suicide of Nicolas-Joseph Beaurepaire “in the presence of the loose public civils servant and perjuries”. The revolutionary theater and literature exploit the topic at once, of the ceremonies take place in Paris and one proposes the transfer of the skin to the the Pantheon which is voted but ever carried out fault of finding its body. But a possible version is that he was assassinated of a blow of gun for the same reason that for which he would have committed suicide.

The statue of Nicolas-Joseph Beaurepaire is present on the bridge of Verdun , one of the bridges of the town of Angers.

Distinctions

It belongs to the 558 officers to have his name engraved under the Triumphal arch of the Star.

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