Étienne-François Le Tourneur

Etienne-François Letourneur

Étienne-François-Louis-Honoré Le Tourneur , called Le Tourneur de la Manche (born March 15, 1751 in Granville , † October 4, 1817 in Laken ) was a French military and politician during the Revolution and in the following consulate and empire .

Le Tourneur entered the Mézières Military Engineering School in 1768 and served first in various locations in northern France, then in Cherbourg . There he was chairman of the Jacobin Club and in 1791 sent to the National Assembly as a representative of the Manche department . In 1792 he was elected as a delegate of the department to the National Convention, where he was a member of the war committee. Although he was the trial against Louis XVI. was critical of it, he voted for his execution.

From 1793 Le Tourneur was temporarily entrusted with military tasks in southern France, which kept him away from Paris for long periods of time; u. a. he oversaw the reorganization of the French Mediterranean fleet in Toulon after the end of the fighting there with royalist domestic forces and their foreign allies.

Contemporary caricature on Le Tourneur's departure from the Board of Directors: the Republic shows him the door, his colleagues on the Board of Directors dance for joy.

From August to October 1795, Le Tourneur was a member of the welfare committee, which was about to be dissolved. After that he received a seat on the 1st Directory from November of that year as director for naval affairs (until May 1797). On June 9, 1797 he was given the rank of general and the post of inspector general of the artillery was transferred.

In March 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte appointed him prefect of the Loire-Inférieure (now Loire-Atlantique ) department , and in 1810 he was an advisor at the Cour des comptes . After the final end of Napoleonic rule, Le Tourneur went into exile - because of his support for the verdict against Louis XVI. he was considered a regicide in France during the Restoration period - and from 1816 he spent his twilight years in what is now Belgium .

literature

• Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 , Dupont: Paris, 1897–1913 digitized

Web links

• Information on Étienne-François Le Tourneur in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .