Étienne-Maurice Gérard

General Gérard (Portrait of Jacques Louis David )

Étienne-Maurice, comte Gérard (born April 4, 1773 in Damvillers , †  April 17, 1852 in Paris ) was a French general and statesman , peer and marshal of France .

biography

Gérard fought in 1794 as a volunteer in the Northern Army at Fleurus , became captain and adjutant of Bernadottes and served under him on the Rhine and in Italy . After the Peace of Campo Formio he accompanied Bernadotte to Vienna in 1798 , where he saved his life in a crowd, then took part in the last campaign in the Vendée and as a colonel in the battle of Austerlitz . As Général de brigade he took part in the campaign of 1806 and distinguished himself as Chief of Staff of the 9th Army Corps under Bernadotte in the battle of Wagram , then in Spain .

In the Russian campaign of 1812 he made a significant contribution to the capture of Smolensk , for which he was raised to count, led the division of the fallen General Gudin in the battle of Walutino (August 19) and covered the crossing on the Beresina with a division of the Ney Corps .

In 1813 he commanded a division of the 11th Army Corps under Jacques MacDonald . He had the greatest merit in the victory in the Battle of Bautzen , whereupon he was given command of the 11th Army Corps. Seriously wounded in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , towards the end of the year he took over the command of the reserve corps of Paris, which was made up of recruits, commanded the right wing at La Rothière and gained a significant advantage over an enemy corps at Montereau .

After Napoleon's abdication, he was commissioned to return the garrison of Hamburg ; then he received the General Inspection of the 5th Military Division .

After the return of the emperor in 1815, he was appointed peer and commanded a division in Grouchy's corps , fought at Ligny , received command of the 4th corps and on June 18, unsuccessfully urged Grouchy to intervene in the battle of Waterloo . In Wavre seriously wounded, he went to Brussels , from where he returned in 1817 to France.

Elected to the Chamber as a deputy in 1822, he joined the liberal opposition. After the July Revolution , Louis-Philippe appointed him Minister of War and Marshal. In October 1830 he resigned, but took over in August 1831 supreme command of the army, the Belgium against Holland rushed to help, the Dutch pushed in a 13-day campaign from Belgium and enforced on 24 December 1832 in the siege of Antwerp , the Handover of the stubbornly defended citadel .

In July 1834 he was reappointed to the War Ministry, but resigned on October 29th. In 1835 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor and in 1838 became Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard . Since he was now blind, he had to resign in 1842.

Étienne-Maurice Gérard died on April 17, 1852 in Paris and rests in the cemetery of Villers-Saint-Paul .

Awards and honors

• 1814: Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor (Grand Chancellor 1835)
• 1855: A statue is erected in Damvillers
• 1856: erection of a statue in Paris

His name is entered on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 14th column.

Memberships

In 1842 Gérard was introduced by Charles Henry Dessalines d'Orbigny as member number 251 of the Société cuviérienne .

literature

• Société Cuvierienne: Nouveaux membres admis dans la Société curvienne . In: Revue Zoologique par La Société Cuvierienne . tape 5 , 1842, pp. 68 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Société cuviérienne, p. 68.

predecessor	Office	successor
Louis-Auguste-Victor de Ghaisnes de Bourmont Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult	Minister of War of France July 31, 1830–17. November 1830 July 18, 1834-10. November 1834	Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult Simon Bernard