Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont

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Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont (Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin )
Coat of arms of the Duke

Auguste-Frédéric-Louis Viesse de Marmont , Duke of Ragusa ( Dubrovnik ), (born July 20, 1774 in Châtillon-sur-Seine , †  March 2, 1852 in Venice ) was a Maréchal d'Empire and Colonel général of the hunters on horseback .

biography

As the son of a noble officer, he entered the infantry as a sous-lieutenant at the age of 15 , but soon went over to the artillery , made the acquaintance of Napoleon Bonaparte during the siege of Toulon , whom he enthusiastically joined and was supported by Taken along to the Italian campaign as adjutant in 1796 . He contributed significantly to the victory at the Battle of Castiglione .

As Chef de brigade (the rank was used in place of the Colonel between 1793 and 1803) he accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt in 1798 , returned as Général de brigade in 1799, supported the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire and was then appointed a member of the State Council. In the 1800 campaign in Italy , he commanded the artillery and after the battle of Marengo Général de division . As commander of the troops stationed in the Netherlands, he led them across the Rhine to Austria in 1805 , was sent to Dalmatia with his corps after the Peace of Pressburg to secure the Republic of Ragusa against the invasion of the Russians and Montenegrins , struck on October 31, 1807 the Russians at Castelnuovo and administered the land until 1809. He earned merit by laying several coastal roads and was given the title of Duke of Ragusa.

The day after the Battle of Wagram (July 6, 1809) he was given command of one of the avant-gardes of the Grande Armée and defeated the Austrians on July 10, 1809 in the Battle of Znojmo and was appointed Maréchal d'Empire.

After he had held the post of Governor General of Illyria for 18 months , the Emperor gave him command in Portugal in 1811 in place of Massénas . On July 22nd, 1812, he fought Wellington in the unfortunate battle of Salamanca , in which a bullet smashed his right arm.

Apelstein No. 25 in Leipzig

In the spring of 1813 he took command of the VI. Corps in Saxony . On May 2nd his troops fought in the Battle of Großgörschen , his resistance allowed Napoleon to bring reinforcements and win the battle. On May 9th, Marmont's troops moved into the Saxon state capital Dresden and fought in the Battle of Bautzen on May 20th and 21st . After the armistice was signed on June 2, the French VI. Corps positions at Bunzlau. The armistice expired on August 17th, Napoleon awaited the attack of the Bohemian Army on Dresden. He ordered the Marmont Corps to advance to the city as quickly as possible. On the second day of the Battle of Dresden (August 27th) the VI. Corps facing the Austrians in the center. The next day, Marmont's troops were deployed to pursue the Bohemian army. During the month of September the French army was gradually concentrated in the Leipzig plain . During the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , Marmont's troops were under Blücher on the northern section opposite the Prussians . In the battle of Möckern his troops repelled repeated attacks by the Silesian army for three days. In the midst of his troops, Marmont fought on October 16 under fire from 150 enemy cannons. Several officers on his staff are killed or wounded at his side. When the defeat became apparent on October 18, a huge traffic jam arose when they withdrew at the bridge in the city. Marmont aides were forced to break through the French ranks by force in order to be able to smuggle Marmont through. More than 20,000 French, including a large part of Marmont's troops, were cut off and taken prisoner. With the rest of the Grande Armée , Marmont withdrew to the Rhine in the direction of Mainz . When a fresh Austrian- Bavarian army under Wrede wanted to refuse to retreat to France in the battle of Hanau , it was Marmont who secured the French's retreat.

In the French campaign of 1814, Marmont's corps was re-established, but it thwarted Napoleon's last hopes of victory by capitulating on the basis of a secret agreement with Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg and thus breaking the emperor's line of defense. Since then, raguser (from Ragusa, today's Croatian city ​​of Dubrovnik , the Duke title of Marmont) has been synonymous in France with betrayed .

After the defeat of Napoleon, Louis XVIII confirmed him . in return for this breach of loyalty in his dignities and offices and appointed him peer of France and captain of the Garde du corps du roi , on March 20, 1815 also head of the royal household troops , who then accompanied the king on his flight to Ghent . During the Hundred Days , Napoleon struck Marmont from the list of marshals. In 1826 he went to Petersburg as ambassador extraordinary to congratulate Tsar Nicholas I on the accession to the throne.

After that he lived partly on his estate near Châtillon, where he built large iron works, partly in Paris, where he often appeared as a speaker in the Chamber of Peers.

During the July Revolution , on July 26, 1830, Charles X gave him the command of the 1st Military Division, but Marmont was unable to suppress the uprising in the capital and withdrew on the evening of July 29 with 6,000 Swiss and the few remaining battalions Paris back. He followed Charles X abroad and later made trips to England , Spain , Russia and Turkey . He spent the last years of his life in Vienna and Venice.

In 1852 he tried to bring about a merger of the French Legitimists with the Orléanists , but died on March 2, 1852 without heirs in Venice . He was buried in the city of his birth. Marmont was one of the most educated and capable generals of the French Empire .

Honors

In 1816 he was accepted into the Académie des Sciences . His name is entered on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 24th column.

Marmont was under Napoleon Colonel général des chasseurs à cheval .

literature

  • Dr. JE Woerl: Atlas of battles, meetings and sieges , Herdersche Verlagshandlung, Freiburg im Breisgau 1857, pp. 47, 79, 80, 88
  • Manfried Rauchsteiner : The battle near Deutsch Wagram on July 5th and 6th, 1809 (= military historical series. H. 36), ÖBV, Pädagogischer Verlag, Vienna 1997
  • David Chandler: Napoleon's Marshals , Maxmillan Publishing Company, New York 1987.
  • Georges Six: Dictionnaire Biographique des Généraux & Amiraux Français de la Révolution et de l'Empire (1792–1814), Gaston Saffroy, Paris 2003.

Web links

Commons : Auguste de Marmont  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter M. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 19, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Marmont, Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Duke of Ragusa, Marshal of France
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French general
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1774
PLACE OF BIRTH Châtillon-sur-Seine
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1852
Place of death Venice