Armand de Caulaincourt

Armand Caulaincourt, duc de Vicence

Armand Augustin Louis, Marquis de Caulaincourt , Duke of Vicenza, (born December 9, 1773 in Caulaincourt ( Département Aisne ), † February 19, 1827 in Paris ) was a French general and statesman.

Life

At the age of 15, Caulaincourt joined the army in 1788. Despite his nobility, Caulaincourt advanced to Capitaine during the French Revolution and became a General Staff officer in 1792 . During the reign of terror , however, he was arrested and imprisoned as a suspicious nobleman . After his release, he served three years as a grenadier and mounted hunter and accompanied General Jean-Baptiste Annibal Aubert du Bayet as an adjutant to the Sublime Porte ( Constantinople ). From there Caulaincourt served a Turkish ambassador as adjutant to Paris . His military career later led him from chief d'escadron to colonel and commander of a carbine regiment, at whose head he distinguished himself in the 1800 campaign .

In 1801, after the accession to the throne of Tsar Alexander I , Caulaincourt was sent as a diplomat to the Russian court in Saint Petersburg to clarify France's peaceful intentions. On his return he was promoted to the position of third adjutant of the first consul and to the general de brigade . After Napoleon's coronation as emperor on December 2, 1804, Caulaincourt was promoted to Général de division at the beginning of 1805 and he was ennobled as Duke of Vicenza .

As Napoleon's grand stable master and personal adjutant, Caulaincourt was almost constantly in his immediate vicinity. In 1807 he was appointed envoy in St. Petersburg, but at his request he was transferred back to the army in 1811. He took part in the Russian campaign in 1812 and was Napoleon's companion on his spectacular escape back to Paris in just 13 days.

In 1813 Caulaincourt was entrusted with the diplomatic and political correspondence and was instrumental in the armistice at Poischwitz . He took part in the Peace Congress in Prague and in 1814 as Foreign Minister at the Congress of Châtillon . He represented Napoleon's interests to the end and it was thanks to him that at least Elba stayed with him. The Bourbons therefore forced him to leave Paris.

During the Hundred Days Caulaincourt again acted as foreign minister and as such was appointed peer of France . He took part in secret deliberations of the Chamber on the second abdication of Emperor Napoleon and was also a member of the government commission. After the second entry of Louis XVIII. Caulaincourt was put on the proscription list, but at the intercession of Tsar Alexander I this was reversed: He was allowed to stay in France, but lost his peerage in 1815.

Caulaincourt took the hostility of the ultra- royalists as an opportunity to withdraw completely from public life. He settled with his family on one of his estates and died 10 weeks after his 53rd birthday in Paris. It was there that the first preparatory work for his autobiography Souvenirs du duc de Vicence was made , but he did not live to see it published.

Charlotte de Sorin published it between 1837 and 1840. A new edition did not appear until 1933 under the title Mémoires du géneral de Caulaincourt, duc de Vincence, grand écuyer de l'empereur .

In the second empire Caulaincourt's eldest son became senator. Caulaincourt's younger brother Auguste (1777-1812) was Général de division and fell in the Battle of Borodino on September 7, 1812.

Honors

His name is entered on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 31st column (CAULAINCOURT, L.). The rue Caulaincourt in the 18th arrondissement of Paris , where the Lamarck-Caulaincourt metro station is located, also bears his name.

Trivia

In the miniseries Napoleon by Yves Simoneau Caulaincourt was of Heino Ferch played.

Works

original
- Mémoires du général de Caulaincourt, duc de Vicence, grand écuyer de l'empereur . Plon, Paris 1946
  - 1. L'ambassade de Saint-Pétersborg et la campagne de Russie 1
  - 2. L'ambassade de Saint-Pétersborg et la campagne de Russie 2
  - 3. L'agonie de Fontainebleau

German
- In private with Napoleon. Monuments of General Caulaincourt . Koehler Publishing House, Stuttgart 1956.
- Friedrich Mathaesius (ed.): With Napoleon in Russia . Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld 1938

English
- The Memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza . Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1976, ISBN 0-8371-8689-7 (Repr. Of the Westport edition, Conn. 1935)

predecessor	Office	successor
Hugues-Bernard Maret	Foreign Minister of France November 20, 1813 - April 1, 1814	Antoine-René-Charles Mathurin, Comte de La Forest

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME	Caulaincourt, Armand de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Caulaincourt, Armand Augustin Louis, marquis de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French general and statesman
DATE OF BIRTH	December 9, 1773
PLACE OF BIRTH	Caulaincourt
DATE OF DEATH	February 19, 1827
Place of death	Paris