Jacques MacDonald
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Étienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre MacDonald, 1st Duke of Taranto (born November 17, 1765 in Sedan , Champagne , † September 24, 1840 in Beaulieu-sur-Loire , Loiret department ), was a French marshal of the Empire .
Life
Jacques MacDonald came from a Scottish family who fled to France with the Stuarts .
In the revolutionary army
In 1784 he served in the Irish Brigade . After several changes, u. a. to the Régiment d'infanterie de Royal Hesse-Darmstadt , he became a supporter of the republican party in the French Revolution and as a captain adjutant to Charles-François Dumouriez . In the battles at Jemappes (November 7, 1792) and Warwick (August 18, 1793) he did well as in others, so that he was promoted to Général de brigade . When the French Northern Army invaded the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium ) and the Republic of the Seven United Provinces in 1794, his troops fought a. a. against troops of the Duke of York . In January 1795 part of the avant-garde of the Pichegru corps he led managed to cross the frozen Wadden Sea at Den Helder despite enemy gunfire and to force the surrender of the Dutch fleet . This brought him in 1796 promotion to the Général de division .
Under the Directory
On July 11, 1798, he was given command of the French troops in Rome by the Directory . When General Karl Mack von Leiberich marched against Rome with 80,000 men from the Neapolitan army subsidized by English money , MacDonald withdrew from the city with his 6,000 men. Nevertheless, he defeated the Neapolitans at Porto Fermo and on December 5, 1798, when Mack attacked the French at Civita Castellana. As a result of the latter battle mutinies broke out in Mack's troops, so that he placed himself as a prisoner of war under the protection of the French.
On December 14, 1798, MacDonald was again ruler of Rome. At the beginning of 1799 he was given command of the troops that captured Naples, but was ordered to evacuate the country when the French troops elsewhere had to withdraw. In 1799 he rushed to meet Jean-Victor Moreau in northern Italy , but got involved in the two-day battle on the Trebbia , in which he was crushed by Alexander Wassiljewitsch Suvorov . As a result, all of Lombardy fell into the hands of the allies. MacDonald had to return to Paris injured.
Napoleon's rise
In Paris he was given command of the troops gathered at Versailles and was able to help Napoleon Bonaparte in the coup d'état on November 9, 1799 (18th Brumaire). He was briefly assigned to the Rhine Army commanded by Moreau. In 1800 he became commander in chief of the reserve army, which moved into the Valtellina via the Splügen . After the Treaty of Lunéville , he was envoy in Copenhagen from March 1801 to 1803 .
When he returned to France, he fell out of favor with Napoleon because he stood up for the arrested Jean-Victor Moreau and for Jean-Charles Pichegru . Not until 1809 was he called back into the army. In the war against Austria he was entrusted with the supreme command of the right wing of the viceroy Eugène in northern Italy. His troops advanced across the Piave , captured Ljubljana and occupied Graz at the end of May . On July 6th, his "Italian Army" contributed to the victory in the Battle of Wagram . Thereupon Napoléon appointed him Maréchal d'Empire and Duke of Taranto .
War in Spain and campaign in Russia
On April 24, 1810 MacDonald received the supreme command of the Augereau Corps in Catalonia and was able to beat the Spaniards at Cervera, Labisbal and Val. In 1812 he was recalled to the Russian campaign and was given command of the 10th Corps consisting of one French and two Prussian divisions, which formed the left wing. Advancing to Riga , he stayed there while the Grande Armée advanced on Moscow. After the Grande Armée had been defeated by the Russians and their remnants tried to escape in a disorderly flight to the west, its position in the Baltic Sea governorates had become untenable. As a result of the Tauroggen Convention concluded on December 31, 1812 between the Prussian General Yorck von Wartenburg and the Russian General Hans Karl von Diebitsch, the Prussian troops withdrew from the fight against Russia. MacDonald now commanded only 9,000 men.
In the wars of liberation
In the campaign of 1813 in Saxony, MacDonald commanded the 11th Corps. In May he fought in the Battle of Großgörschen and Bautzen , but was defeated by Blücher and Gneisenau in the Battle of the Katzbach on August 26th . After the defeat in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , he escaped swimming over the White Elster , in which Marshal Josef Anton Poniatowski drowned. On the further retreat to France MacDonald commanded the left wing against the pursuing Prussians under Blücher. On April 4, 1814, he arrived in Fontainebleau and was appointed by Napoléon - together with Michel Ney and Armand-Augustin-Louis Caulaincourt - as his plenipotentiary in negotiations with the Allies . MacDonald was one of those who advised Napoléon to abdicate, which he ultimately did for lack of support.
Role in restoration
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MacDonald submitted to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 . In gratitude he was appointed a member of the council of war, a knight of the Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis and a peer of France . When Napoléon returned from Elba in 1815, MacDonald was supposed to command the royal troops near Lyon to prevent the "usurper" from advancing further. But the citizens of Lyon shouted in the streets: “Long live the Emperor! Down with the nobles! Down with the priests! Death to the royalists! ”Thereupon MacDonald doubted that the units assigned to him would remain loyal to the king. Therefore he returned to Paris. With a unit that remained loyal, he accompanied Louis XVIII. when he fled over the Belgian border to Menen on the night of March 19-20, 1815 in view of Napoléon advancing on Paris . When he returned to Paris, he turned down Napoleon's offer to take command again. Instead, he enrolled in the lists of the National Guard as a simple grenadier .
After the Second Restoration , MacDonald was given command of the Loire Army. On July 2, 1815, he was appointed Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor and received other titles, including a. on October 5, 1815 that of a Minister of State.
After the July Revolution , MacDonald withdrew from public life, took his leave on August 23, 1831 and died on September 24, 1840 in Courcelles-le-Roy Castle near Beaulieu-sur-Loire. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
family
His son Alexandre Charles MacDonald , 2nd Duke of Taranto (born November 11, 1824), was Napoleon III's chamberlain from 1852 . and member of the Corps législatif (legislative body) and from 1869 senator. He died on April 6, 1881.
Awards
1809: Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor (Grand Chancellor 1815)
His name is entered on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 13th column.
literature
- Désiré Lacroix: The Marshals Napoleon I. Transferred and edited by Oskar Marschall von Bieberstein. Schmidt & Günther, Leipzig 1898.
- Carl Bleibtreu : Marshals, generals, soldiers of Napoleon I. 2nd edition. Schall, Berlin 1908; Reprint of this edition: VRZ-Verlag Zörb, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-931482-63-4 .
- Jürgen Sternberger: The marshals of Napoleon. Pro Business, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86805-172-8 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Jacques MacDonald in the catalog of the German National Library
Footnotes
- ↑ Heinz-Gerhard Haupt : From the French Revolution to the end of the July Monarchy (1789-1848) . In: Ernst Hinrichs (ed.): Little history of France . Reclam, Stuttgart, updated and supplemented edition 2006, ISBN 3-15-010596-X , pp. 255–310, here p. 284.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | MacDonald, Jacques |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | MacDonald, Étienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French general and Marshal of France |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 17, 1765 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sedan , Ardennes department |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 24, 1840 |
| Place of death | Beaulieu-sur-Loire , Loiret department |