Portal:Military history of France/Selected biography/Archive
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Louis Nicolas d'Avout (May 10, 1770 – June 1, 1823), better known as Davout, duc d'Auerstaedt, prince d'Eckmühl, was a marshal of France during the Napoleonic Era. Because of his prodigious talent for war, he was also known as the "Iron Marshal". By 1815, he was the only Napoleonic Marshal not to have been defeated in battle.
Davout was born at Annoux (Yonne), and joined the French army as a sub-lieutenant in 1788. On the outbreak of the French Revolution, he embraced its principles. He was chef de bataillon in a volunteer corps in the campaign of 1792, and distinguished himself at the Battle of Neerwinden the following spring. He had just been promoted to general of brigade when he was removed from the active list because of his noble birth. He nevertheless served in the campaigns of 1794-1797 on the Rhine, and accompanied Desaix in the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, often referred to as Turenne (September 11, 1611 – July 27, 1675) achieved military fame and became a Marshal of France. He was the most illustrious member of the La Tour d'Auvergne family.
The second son of Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, duc de Bouillon, sovereign prince of Sedan, by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of William the Silent, prince of Orange, he was born at Sedan. He received a Huguenot education and the usual training of a young noble of the time, but physical infirmity, and particularly an impediment of speech (which he never lost), hampered his progress, though he showed a marked partiality for history and geography, and especial admiration of the exploits of Alexander the Great and Caesar. After his father's death in 1623, he devoted himself to bodily exercises and in a great measure overcame his natural weakness. At the age of fourteen he went to learn war in the camp of his uncle, Maurice of Nassau the Stadtholder, and began his military career (as a private soldier in that prince's bodyguard) in the Dutch War of Independence.
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Joan of Arc, also known as Jeanne d'Arc was a national heroine of France and is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. She asserted that she had visions from God which told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the light regard of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.
The renewed French confidence outlasted her own brief career. She refused to leave the field when she was wounded during an attempt to recapture Paris that autumn. Hampered by court intrigues, she led only minor companies from then onward and fell prisoner at a skirmish near Compiègne the following spring. A politically motivated trial convicted her of heresy. The English regent John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford had her burnt at the stake in Rouen.
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Gaston de Foix, Duc de Nemours (1489–1512) was a French military commander noted mostly for his brilliant six-month campaign from 1511 to 1512 during the War of the League of Cambrai. He was a nephew of Louis XII of France.
In 1511, Gaston arrived in Italy as a new commander at the age of 21. His presence and energy shifted the conflict into much higher levels of activity. French forces had captured Bologna on May 13, 1511 and were under siege from a combined Papal-Spanish army commanded by Ramón de Cardona, the Viceroy of Naples. Gaston marched his army to Bologna and scattered the armies of the Holy League. He then went north and defeated the Venetians at Brescia, which the French later captured (February 1512) after a furious assault.
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Ferdinand Foch OM GCB (October 2, 1851 – March 20, 1929) was a French soldier, military educator and author. He served as general in the French Army during World War I and made Marshal of France in its final year, 1918.
He was chosen as supreme commander of the allied armies during World War I, on March 26, 1918, five days after the start of the Spring Offensive, the final attempt by Germany to win the war. He served until November 11, 1918, when he accepted the German Surrender.
He advocated harsh peace terms that would make Germany unable to ever pose a threat to France again. His word after the Treaty of Versailles, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years”, would prove prophetic.
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The Duke of Berwick (August 21, 1670 – June 12, 1734) was a French military leader, illegitimate son of King James II of England and VII of Scotland by Arabella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough. In 1695 he married Honora Burke, the widow of Patrick Sarsfield, who died in 1698. His second marriage, with Anne Bulkeley, took place in 1700.
As a soldier, Berwick was highly esteemed for his courage, abilities and integrity. As a result of distinguished service in the War of the Spanish Succession, he became a French subject and was appointed a Marshal of France after his successful expedition against Nice in 1706. On the April 25, 1707, Berwick won the great and decisive victory of Almanza, where an Englishman at the head of a French army defeated Ruvigny, a Frenchman at the head of an English army. After Almanza, Berwick was created Duc de Fitz-James in the peerage of France by Louis XIV, and Duque de Liria y Xérica and lieutenant of Aragon by Philip V of Spain. The last great event of the War of the Spanish Succession was the storming of Barcelona by Berwick, after a long siege, on September 11, 1714.
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Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (November 22, 1902 - November 28, 1947), was a French general in the Second World War.
Leclerc was born in Belloy-Saint-Léonard, Somme, France, the son of Adrien, Count of Hauteclocque (1864-1945) and of Marie-Thérèse van der Cruisse de Waziers (1870-1956). and in his youth, spent his holidays in the fishing village of Audresselles, Pas-de-Calais. He attended the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, graduating in 1924, and entered the French Army; he attained the rank of captain in 1937, brigadier-general in August 1941, and major-general in 1943.
During World War II, he joined the Free French forces upon the Fall of France and made his way to London. Charles de Gaulle upon meeting him promoted him from Captain to Major (commandant) and ordered him to French Equatorial Africa as Governor of French Cameroon from August 29, 1940 to November 12, 1940. He commanded the column which attacked Axis forces from Chad, and having marched his troops across West Africa distinguished himself in Tunisia.
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Charles Pichegru (February 16, 1761—April 15, 1804) was a French general and political figure of the French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars.
Born at Arbois (or, according to Charles Nodier, at Les Planches, near Lons-le-Saulnier), he was the son of a peasant. The friars of Arbois were entrusted with his education, and sent him to the military school of Brienne-le-Château. In 1783 he entered the 1st regiment of artillery, where he rapidly rose to the rank of Adjutant-Second Lieutenant, and briefly served in the American Revolutionary War.
When the Revolution erupted in 1789, he became leader of the Jacobin Club in Besançon, and, when a regiment of volunteers of the départment of the Gard marched through the city, he was elected Lieutenant Colonel.
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Bertrand du Guesclin (c. 1320 – 13 July 1380) was a French-Breton knight and military commander during the Hundred Years' War. He was Constable of France from 1370 until his death. His strategy of wearing down the English while avoiding major battles allowed the French to recapture most of what they had lost earlier in the war.
Bertrand du Guesclin was born in Broons, near Dinan, in Bretagne. His family was of minor Breton nobility, the lords of Broon. He initially served Charles of Blois in the Breton War of Succession (1341-1364). Charles was supported by the French crown, while his rival was allied with England. In 1356-1357, Du Guesclin held Rennes against English attack. He entered the service of Charles V when he became King of France in 1364. He won the victory of Cocherel over the forces of King Charles II of Navarre. The victory forced Charles II into a new peace with the French king.
On September 29, 1364, at the Battle of Auray, du Guesclin and Charles of Blois were heavily defeated by John V, Duke of Brittany and the English forces under Sir John Chandos. Charles was killed in action, ending the Blois pretensions in Brittany.
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Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez (July 17, 1729 - December 8, 1788) was a French admiral, the third son of the marquis de Saint Tropez, head of a family of nobles of Provence which claimed to have emigrated from Lucca in the 14th century. He was born in the Château de Saint Canat, near Aix-en-Provence in the present département of Bouches-du-Rhône. He was most famous for his campaign in the Indian Ocean, in which he successfully contended for supremacy against the established British power there, led by Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes.
The French navy and the Order of Malta (where he received the title Bailli de Suffren) offered the usual careers for the younger sons of noble families of the south of France who did not elect to go into the Church. The connection between the Order and the old French royal navy was close. Pierre André de Suffren was destined by his parents to belong to both. He entered the close and aristocratic corps of French naval officers as a "garde de la marine"--cadet or midshipman, in October 1743, in the Solide, one of the line of battleships which took part in the confused engagement off Toulon in 1744.
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