Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau

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Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Rochambeau

Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau (born April 7, 1755 Paris , † October 20, 1813 near Leipzig , died) was a French general .

Life

Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau was a son of the Marshal of France Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau (1725-1807) and Jeanne Thérèse Tellez d'Acosta. In his early youth he also devoted himself to the military class, was Colonel of the Régiment Royal-Auvergne as early as 1779 and took part in the military expedition to North America under the command of his father in 1780/81 .

Promoted to Maréchal de camp on June 30, 1791 and appointed lieutenant-général on July 9, 1792 , Rochambeau received command in the French-West Indian colonies in July 1792 . He subjugated the rebels on Santo Domingo , appeared in Martinique in early 1793 and drove the royalists under Béhague together with the English. Then he also liberated Guadeloupe and St. Lucia , whereupon he was active as an ardent advocate of republicanism and convention politics in the colonies. In the following year, however, he was completely enclosed with his melted army of 600 men by 14,000 Englishmen under General Gray in Fort Royal and, after a 44-day siege, forced to surrender on March 22, 1794, as a result of which he and his troops were free to withdraw.

In 1796 Rochambeau was again sent to San Domingo by the directorate to suppress the uprising, but his armed forces were too small for the task. Since he did not adhere to the regulations of the civil inspectors accompanying him, they had him dropped off and transported to France, where he was imprisoned for a long time in Ham Castle. Not active again until 1800, he commanded the second division of the French army in Italy and was commissioned to defend the Var bridge . He fought back the Austrians under Melas . In the following year he took part in the campaign over the Piave , fought in Tyrol and seized Storo .

At the end of 1801, Rochambeau went to San Domingo for the third time under the command of Leclerc , in order to restore the unrestricted rule of France and to reintroduce slavery. The campaign began with great success and the leader of the locals, the black general Toussaint L'Ouverture , was captured and deported to France. But that did not end the fighting, especially since the news of the reintroduction of slavery angered the native mulattos and blacks even more against France. When Leclerc died of yellow fever in November 1802 , Rochambeau took over the command.

Rochambeau tried in vain to use unheard-of atrocities to subdue the island's colored population. The yellow fever soon weakened the French armed forces so much that Rochambeau had to surrender to the black general Jean-Jacques Dessalines with the remnants of his troops after the battle of Vertières , which was lost on November 18, 1803 . Dessalines then proclaimed the independence of Haiti , which was thus finally lost to France. On the way back to France, Rochambeau and his crew were captured by a British squadron and brought to England. In 1811 he was released as part of a prisoner exchange. After Napoleon's retreat from Russia, he was given command of a division in Lauriston's corps in the 1813 campaign . He fought in the Battle of Bautzen , was wounded in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig on October 16, 1813 and died four days later.

From his marriage to Marie-Françoise de Harville, daughter of the Marquis de Trainel, he had three children:

  • Augustine Eleonore (December 8, 1783 -) married to Victor Merle, comte de La Gorce
  • Constance Theresa (November 27, 1784 - December 14, 1866), married to Alexandre de Valon von Boucheron, comte de Ambrugeac
  • Philippe-Auguste (January 26, 1787 - August 14, 1868), later Peer of France, married to Elisa Roque de Clausonnette

Honors

His name is entered on the eastern pillar of the Triumphal Arch in Paris in the 16th column.

literature

Web links