Jean Reynier
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Jean Louis Ebénézer Reynier (14 January 1771-27 February 1814) was a French Army general, that fought during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, eventually rising to the command of an army corps under Napoleon in the 1812 and 1813 campaigns.
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[edit] Revolution
Reynier joined the French army as a gunner in 1792 and fought at the Battle of Jemappes that year. He received promotion to general of brigade in January 1795. He was General Jean Moreau's chief-of-staff in 1796 and soon became a general of division. He went on Napoleon's Egyptian expedition in 1798 and commanded a division at the Battle of the Pyramids, the Siege of El Arish and the siege of Acre. Later, under the command of Jacques-Francois Menou he defended against the British counter-invasion of Egypt in 1801. His division was present but not engaged in the Battle of Alexandria. After returning to France, Reynier killed a fellow general in a duel and was under a cloud for a time.
[edit] Empire
Reynier fought with the army of Marshal André Masséna in the 1805 Italian theater. On November 24, his 2nd Division captured Prince Viktor Rohan's 4,400 Austrians at Castelfranco Veneto. In 1806, Reynier's 6,000 Frenchmen routed the 10,000-man army of the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples and Sicily at the Battle of Campo Tenese. This victory helped Napoleon to install his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of the newly-created Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples. Later that year, a British raiding force drubbed Reynier's command at the Battle of Maida in southern Italy. Reynier was later able to reassert French control of the area and served under King Joseph as his Minister of War and Marine.
During the Battle of Wagram in 1809, Reynier commanded the artillery on the Island of Lobau, helping to stop the attack of Klenau's Austrian right wing corps. He was sent to the Iberian Peninsula, where he commanded the II Corps under Masséna at the battles of Bussaco and Sabugal in Portugal and at the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro in Spain. In 1811, he became a Count of the Empire.
During the Russian campaign of 1812, Reynier led the VII Corps which was composed of Saxons. Together with an allied Austrian force under Schwarzenberg, he operated well to the south of the major fighting. After fighting inconclusive battles with the Russians at Gorodeczna and Wolkowysk, he retreated when he learned of the main army's disaster.
Leading the Saxon corps plus an attached French division, Reynier fought at the battles of Bautzen, Grossbeeren and Dennewitz in 1813. During the climactic Battle of Leipzig, his Saxon troops suddenly changed sides. Reynier was trapped and captured when a key bridge was blown up too quickly. He returned to France after a prisoner exchange in February 1814 but died two weeks later.
[edit] References
- Bowden, S. & Tarbox C., Armies on the Danube, Empire Games Press, 1980.
- Chandler, David, Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars, Macmillan, 1979.
- Chandler, David, The Campaigns of Napoleon, Macmillan, 1979.
- Horward, Donald (ed.), Pelet, Jacques, The French Campaign in Portugal 1810-1811, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1973.
- Smith, Digby, The Napoleonic Wars Data Book, Greenhill, 1998.
