Louis Marie de Lescure

Louis-Marie Joseph, marquis de Lescure (13 October 1766 – 4 November 1793) was a French soldier and opponent of the French Revolution, the cousin of Henri de la Rochejaquelein.

He was born in Versailles and educated at the École Militaire, which he left at the age of sixteen. Lescure was in command of a company of cavalry in the Regiment de Royal-Picmont, but being opposed to the ideas of the Revolution, he emigrated in 1791, but soon returned, and, on the Journée du 10 août, 1792 took part in the defence of the Tuileries Palace against the mob of Paris. The day after, he was forced to leave the capital, and took refuge in the château of Clisson near Bressuire.

On the outbreak of the Revolt in the Vendée against the Republic, he was arrested and imprisoned with all his family, as one of the promoters of the rising. He was set at liberty by the Royalists, and became one of their leaders, fighting at Thouars, taking Fontenay-le-Comte and Saumur (May–June 1793), and, after an unsuccessful attack on Nantes, joining La Rochejaquelein, who was another famous Vendean leader.

Their peasant troops, opposed to the French Revolutionary Army General François Joseph Westermann, sustained various defeats, but finally gained a victory between Tiffauges and Cholet on 19 September 1793. The struggle was then concentrated around Châtillon, which was time after time taken and lost by the Republicans. Lescure was killed near the château of La Tremblaye between Ernée and Fougères.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.