Nicolas d'Assas

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Nicolas d'Assas (1733-1760) was a captain of the French regiment of Auvergne, whose celebrity depends on a single act of defiance. Having entered a wood to reconnoitre it the night before the battle of Kloster Kampen in 1760, he was suddenly surrounded by the enemy English soldiers, and defied with bayonets at his breast to utter a cry of alarm; "Ho, Auvergne!" he exclaimed, and fell dead on the instant, pierced with bayonets, to the saving of his countrymen.

The Rue d'Assas in the sixth arrondissement of Paris is named after him: see [1] and [2].

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.