François Séverin Marceau

François Séverin Desgraviers-Marceau

The Marceau monument at the Franzosenfriedhof in Koblenz

François Séverin Desgraviers-Marceau (born March 1, 1769 in Chartres , † September 21, 1796 in Altenkirchen (Westerwald) ) was a general of the First French Republic during the Civil War in the Vendée and the First Coalition War.

Life

Marceau came from the second marriage of his father Desgraviers (mostly handed down under this family name. His son took the family name Marceau only after joining the army). He had several siblings. His older sister Emira is described in biographies as a close confidante with a great influence on his education and career.

Marceau was to begin a career in the judiciary as clerc de procurateur (clerk) , according to the will of his father, who held the office of procurator (today public prosecutor) in the Bailiwick of Chartres , but entered the military at the age of 16 and was 23 -Year old already in the rank of general.

He is described as a distinguished and elegant personality with a pale complexion, with simple manners that reveal nothing of his praised soldierly hardness. Portraits, probably all posthumous, show Marceau with soft, not very masculine facial features. In British descriptions he is called "the boygeneral" because of his boyish appearance.

Marceau became engaged to  the 17-year-old Agathe from the noble family Leprêtre de Chateaugiron in January 1794 at the age of 24 - during a hospital stay in Châteaubriant , during his assignment in the Vendée . This connection, as well as his previous advocacy for the young noblewoman Angélique des Melliers ( Kléber : "  on ne vit de femme ni plus jolie, ni mieux faite, ni plus intéressante  "), which he made during the Vendée uprising before the brutality of his own troops allegedly protected (and yet could not save them from being convicted and executed as "insurgents"), led radical Republicans to accuse him of behavior that was harmful to the state.

Like other general colleagues, Marceau had to deal with the people's representatives and war commissioners who had to judge his execution of government instructions and his political behavior. He was charged several times on suspicion of unauthorized and counter-revolutionary action - and was also temporarily detained. Thanks to his military successes and patriotic attitude, however, influential advocates repeatedly exonerated him.

If one follows the biographies of the 19th century, Marceau must have had a disposition to melancholy and pessimism, from which he suffered during the armistice and especially in his last years 1795 and 1796. After the conquest of the Meuse region and the Rhineland , the clashes with a re-strengthened Austria had in phases turned into a guerrilla war over plundered villages and devastated areas on both sides of the Rhine . Depressed about the uncertain political situation at the front in Germany and his own situation after four years of war, he probably replied to an encouraging letter from his sister Emira in 1796: «  … vous me parlez de mes lauriers […] ils vous feraient horreur; ils sont teins de sang humain.  "And to War Commissioner M. Robert:"  … je suis ruiné de fond en comble. Il me reste la cape et l'epée, l'honneur et la vie qui ma foi devient un fardeau…  »In fact, a few months later, fatally wounded, he was able to save only a few his siblings, and his 6 horses his two adjutants and the generals Kléber and Jourdan left in their will.

Military career and death

"I have never met a General again, who could change an original battle plan as coolly and resolutely that same battle" described General Kléber its 16 years his junior friend Marceau. Both fought together in the Vendée, in the Habsburg Netherlands (now Belgium ) and on the Rhine.

Marceau's quick intelligence and decisiveness is also evident in his rapid rise as an army officer: within six months of 1792 he made a career in the uprising of the Vendée , from simple Sous-lieutenant to general de division to commandant en chief of an entire army. The special civil war situation, the change from battles of drilled army units to merciless partisan struggle with small units, required commanders with qualities like those described by the Prussian Scharnhorst when he analyzed the successes of the French revolutionary troops over the armies of the Ancien Régimes : "... We will Only win when we have learned, like the Jacobins, to awaken the common spirit. When all resources of the nation are mobilized with the same drive and ruthlessness, their bodies, their fortunes, their inventiveness, their devotion to their homeland and, last but not least, theirs Love of ideas. "

Marceau began his military career in December 1785 at the age of 16 in the royal Régiment d'Angoulême. 1789 it became a unit in the National Guard of General La Fayette . In August 1790 he was no longer listed in the Guard.

In the summer of 1792 Marceau was elected Capitaine in his hometown Chartres by the volunteers of the 2me compagnie du 1er bataillon des volontaires d'Eure-et-Loir . The volontaires reinforced the regular troops in the defense of France against an invasion by Austro-Prussian armies. In August and September Marceau took part with the unit of his home department Eure-et-Loir in the defense of the fortress Verdun against the Prussians invading France.

When the citizens of Verdun demanded surrender after weeks of bombardment of their city, the fortress commander Nicolas-Joseph Beaurepaire allegedly killed himself out of shame. His successor agreed to the surrender (and was guillotined for it a little later). Marceau, who had protested strongly against the abandonment, was chosen as the youngest officer to bring the surrender to the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II. he is also said to have negotiated the conditions for the surrender of the fortress and the withdrawal of the troops. Perhaps a legend, but imaginable: each soldier was only allowed to take one item from the fortress - Marceau chose his saber. All the officers of the fortress, however, returned from the front, were accused and punished by revolutionary courts of cowardice and treason - Marceau was the only one acquitted.

His request to be transferred from the infantry service to the cavalry, which was too little demanding on him, brought him to the Cuirassiers légères in the Légion Germanique . This approximately 5,000 strong force consisted mainly of German and Austrian deserters who fought as volunteers under the Alsatian General Westermann for revolutionary France in the Vendée . In November 1792 Marceau was chief d'escadron of the cuirassier regiment .

After the dissolution of the légion , Marceau was Lieutenant-Colonel of the chasseurs à cheval in the Armée Côtes de La Rochelle , next at the age of 22 Général de brigade, then Général de division of the new Armée de l'Ouest in the battles against the nobility, the peasants and the population in the uprising of the Vendée . His greatest success is the capture of the city of Le Mans after the Battle of Le Mans on 12/13. December 1793 and the subsequent persecution and extermination of the Vendéer in the Battle of Savenay . During this time he was the commander-in-chief of the united armies of the West and the incorporated, so-called "Armée de Mayence", the former garrison of Mainz fortress.

General Marceau with his troops in the street fight at Le Mans in December 1793, oil painting Jean Sorieul from 1852

Marceau's rapid rise to the rank of army leader was an indirect consequence of the incompetence and political nepotism typical of Jacobin rule when filling positions. In the critical phase of a military equilibrium in the insurrectionary area, the convention had removed almost all officers from the nobility and the former royal army from their command. Instead, sans-culottes and radical revolutionary supporters appeared in the Vendée and had been appointed generals to command. Due to their chaotic troop leadership, the Republicans suffered a series of loss-making defeats against the Vendéer: between the battle of (Laval) on October 22nd and that of Pontlieue on December 10th, 1793 they are said to have lost nine skirmishes and battles. General Kléber, respected by all sides, recommended in this situation that his younger friend Marceau be made commander in chief, which was immediately confirmed by the welfare committee . Marceau insisted on having his friend Kléber as an advisor. His saying has been passed down that he would accept the title, but leave Kléber the actual order and the means to save the army. This is said to have replied: "Be quiet, my friend, we want to fight together and be guillotined together." The extremely bloody victories of the Republicans in Le Mans and Savenay marked the temporary end of the uprising in the Vendée. Marceau and Kléber were honored with the “Citizens' Crown” in Nantes .

After an illness-related vacation in the winter of 1793-94, Marceau was in the Netherlands in the summer with the army of Commander -in- Chief Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and led the right wing with two divisions in the decisive battle at Fleurus against the Austro-English coalition troops . After the heavy fighting at Aldenhoven and the river crossings over the Ourthe and Rur , the left bank of the Rhine from Cologne to Koblenz (on October 23, 1794) was captured and occupied in a few weeks .

The poor equipment of his troops, their “torn down” condition and undisciplined demeanor aroused incredulous horror among the population: “[…] are not yet amazed, but then when you saw those we are now running in front of,” a shouted over the Imperial soldier fleeing the Rhine to a stunned Koblenz citizen.

Marceau's occupation of Koblenz was not an exceptional operation; the Prussians had already left the coalition, while the Austrians had withdrawn to the right bank of the Rhine and initially felt that their strategic positions were sufficiently secured by the strong fortresses of Ehrenbreitstein , Mainz , Philippsburg and Mannheim . For Marceau's reputation in the motherland, however, the conquest of this center of the hated aristocratic emigrants (who had since fled from there) as a victory over the counter-revolution of the princes and princes was extremely important.

After taking Koblenz, Marceau occupied the upper Middle Rhine Valley, the southeastern Hunsrück and the western Mainz hinterland as far as the northern Palatinate with the right wing of the Sambre and Maas Army . In October 1795 the imperial fortress garrison blew up the siege ring around Mainz and pushed Marceau's troops back into the Hunsrück. After a counter-offensive with an army reinforced to 5 divisions, the French were able to prevent the imperial troops from advancing further west in several clashes with high losses on the upper Middle Rhine, in the southern Hunsrück and on the lower Nahe . The onset of winter and the impossibility of supplying the troops from the region, which had already been requisitioned in many places after repeated marches, prompted Marceau, without having consulted his superior General Jourdan , to negotiate an armistice agreement with the Austrian General Kray , which dated January 1, 1796 from the two commanders in chief Clerfait and Jourdan for a period of 6 months.

Before the official end of the armistice in May, the imperial troops were surprised by a new invasion by Generals Jourdan and Moreau as far as Nuremberg and Munich. Only at Amberg on August 24th and near Würzburg on September 3rd was Archduke Karl of Austria able to clearly defeat Jourdan and force the bulk of the Sambre and Maas Army to retreat chaotic to the left bank of the Rhine in further fighting.

During these weeks Marceau had the task of blocking the imperial fortresses from Ehrenbreitstein to Mannheim on both sides of the Rhine with a corps of around 40,000 men. The garrisons of these fortresses, behind the armies of Jourdan and Moreau, were a strategic threat that became acute for Jourdan's army, which was flowing back towards the Rhine.

At the beginning of September Marceau crossed the Rhine with 16,000 men, stormed the fortress Königstein im Taunus , occupied Frankfurt am Main and destroyed the ship bridges over the Main near Rüsselsheim and over the Rhine near Winkel in the Rheingau. Along the lower Lahn of Limburg to Nassau he formed a front line to the rear to cover the major highways Leipzig-Cologne and Frankfurt and Cologne for the returning army associations.

In fact, Jourdan was able to break away from Archduke Karl, who was pursuing him, in the Battle of Limburg and lead the bulk of his troops to the Rhine, which was not least thanks to Marceau's dogged resistance. He is said to have lost and re-conquered the positions at the exit of Limburg three times. The traditional documents with Marceau's urgent demands for ammunition and cavalry support to Jourdan and his requests to persevere prove his "cool head" and his steadfastness in critical situations.

The fatally injured Marceau; Etching by Matthias Gottfried Eichler from 1817 after a drawing by Abraham Girardet

The retreat fights on the Lahn and in the Westerwald in September 1796 were Marceau's last significant achievements. While monitoring (défilé) the withdrawal of his division on September 19 near Poststrasse Frankfurt-Cologne near Höchstenbach , Marceau was fatally injured by a gunshot.

Despite careful care, Marceau died two days later on September 21, 1796 in Altenkirchen (Westerwald). He was only 27 years old. His body was first brought by Austrian troops to Neuwied , then to Koblenz, where "friend and foe united for a solemn burial". "  [...] Ce jeune homme, regretté de deux armées, fut enseveli au bruit de leur double artillery  ". The respect that Marceau was shown by his opponents is shown by their extraordinary sympathy for his death and their declarations of honor at his funeral in Koblenz on September 25th, which were carefully recognized by the French.

souvenir

The Marceau monument near Höchstenbach in the Westerwald

Marceau was buried in the French fort on the Petersberg in Koblenz-Lützel, which was later named after him . After the funeral of his colleague General Lazare Hoche, who also died young, a year later, also on the Petersberg, the remains of Marceau were exhumed and burned; the ashes of the deceased were buried in a marble urn bearing the Latin inscription “Hic cineres, ubique nomen” (here is the ashes, the name is everywhere). As Koblenz city commander, General Bernadotte is said to have removed the urn and handed it over to Marceau's sister Emira, who in turn gave part of the ashes to his fiancée Agathe de Châteaugiron and the city of Chartres. The grave monument in Koblenz had the shape of a pyramid on a square base and was built at the instigation of his friend Kléber and based on a design by the architect Krahe . In 1815 it had to give way to the construction of the Bubenheimer Flesche and was demolished. Only through the intervention of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. the tomb at the foot of the mountain was rebuilt in a reduced form. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, a cemetery was built around this monument for the French soldiers who died in POW camp II on the Petersberg. It is a legend that the so-called French cemetery in Koblenz-Lützel is still supposed to be French territory today. The cemetery is only partially owned by the French state.

In addition to General Hoche , who also died early , Marceau was counted in French obituaries and biographies of the 19th century as one of the patriotic defenders of the revolution and heroes of the nation. In Germany at the same time, Meyers Konversations-Lexikon praised his “noble character and outstanding general talent” as one of the “most distinguished generals of the French Revolution”. A memorial stone near Höchstenbach , erected on the initiative of his adjutant Souhait in 1797, marks the place where he was wounded: «  … il mourut estimé pleuré du soldat, de l'habitant et de l'ennemi.  »From Napoleon III. a monument in the form of an obelisk was donated in 1863 . One of the four inscriptions reads: “German people! This monument placed on a noble dead person is recommended to your protection, protect it like your fathers protected the old plaque. "

Classicist relief by Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire (1798–1880) at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Title: Les funérailles du général Marceau September 20, 1796

In 1941 a NSDAP district leader from nearby Westerburg had the monument blown up. In 1945 the French occupation rebuilt the monument in its old form. General de Gaulle attended the inauguration. It stands in the Westerwald near Höchstenbach on a small forest clearing near the federal highway 8 and is marked from there with a sign saying "General Marceau".

Honors

• Marceau was made an honorary officer of the Austrian army while he was still alive, possibly on the occasion of the armistice he had agreed with the Austrian General Kray to protect the troops on both sides in the winter of 1796.
• In 1796 the Marceau monument was erected in Koblenz-Lützel .
• In his late romantic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , written between 1812 and 1818, the English poet Lord Byron Marceau dedicates two stanzas to Marceau's grave in Koblenz and his memory, one of which is: Honor to Marceau! […] Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career, - / His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes; […] For he was Freedom's champion, […] he had kept / The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept.
• In 1851 the city of Chartres erected a monument by the sculptor Auguste Préault (1809–1879)
• Marceau monument erected in 1863 near Höchstenbach
• In 1889 his remains found a place of honor in the Paris Panthéon .
• In 1910 a statue of Marceau by the sculptor Coutalpas was integrated into the north facade of the Louvre in Paris in Rue Rivoli (together with other generals from the Republican and Napoleonic times).
• His name is entered on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 6th column. There is also a relief of Marceau on his death bed.
• The Avenue Marceau is one of the great boulevards of Paris, which for de Arc Triomphe leads.
• The Collège Marceau in Koblenz was a school built by the French military administration after the Second World War for the children of the French garrison members; since 1957 the German Max-von-Laue-Gymnasium .
• In 2014, as part of the 700th anniversary of the city of Altenkirchen, the "General Marceau March", a military march, was created by the composer Sven Hellinghausen in memory of General Marceau.

literature

• Joseph Lavallée (1747-1816): Éloge historique du Gén. Marceau pour la sociétée philotechnique de Paris. At VI. www.gallica.bnf.fr
• Adolphe Thiers , History of the French Revolution, published from 1823, 6 volumes, trans. into German by A. Walthner, Verlag Heinrich Hoff Mannheim 1844
• A. Hugo: France militaire. Histoire des armées de terre et de mer. 1792-1837. Tome 2, Paris 1838. www.gallica.bnf.fr
• François J. Doublet de Boisthibault: Marceau. Chartres 1851. www.gallica.bnf.fr
• Alain Pigeard: Les Ètoiles de Napoléon. Édition Quatuor, Paris 1996
• Hippolyte Maze: Les généraux de la République. Glue. Hoche, Marceau. Paris 1889, www.gallica.bnf.fr
• General German real encyclopedia for the educated classes. Conversations Lexicon . 10th edition. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1853 (15 vols., Here especially 10th vol.).
• Wolfgang Schütz: Koblenz heads. People from the city's history - namesake for streets and squares. 2. revised u. exp. Edition. Publishing house for advertising papers , Mülheim-Kärlich 2005, OCLC 712343799 .
• Joseph Hansen: Sources on the history of the Rhineland in the age of the French Revolution 1780-1801. Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, Bonn 1931–1938.
• Jürgen König: The Hunsrück in French times. Dissertation, Mainz 1995, ISBN 3-9804416-0-1 .
• Hansgeorg Molitor, From Subject to Administré. Institute for European History Mainz, Vol. 99, Wiesbaden 1980, ISBN 3-515-02972-9 .
• Thankmar v. Münchhausen, call for destruction, FAZ supplement Pictures and Times of September 25, 1993, Frankfurt 1993
• Günter Schneider: 1794 - The French on the way to the Rhine. Aachen 2006, ISBN 3-938208-24-4 .
• Detailed and source-rich description of the coalition war in the Westerwald and Marceau's death in: Volker Ecker: General Marceau's last battle near Höchstenbach, Sept. 19, 1796. in the Ortschronik of the municipality of Höchstenbach from 1994, p. 219 ff.
• Det. Description of Marceau's funeral of Prof. A. Minola in The French in Coblenz 1794-1797 , ed. Dr. H. Cardauns , Koblenz 1916, p. 116 ff. Original online: www.dilibri.de
• Jean-Baptiste Jourdan , translated by Johann Bachoven von Echt: Memories of the History of the Campaign of 1796. Coblenz 1823, online at Google books

Web links

Commons : François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Maze, Les généraux ... , p. 240.
2. ↑ Pigeard: Les étoiles ... , S. 470th
3. ↑ Maze: Les généraux ... p. 277 ff.
4. ↑ Jürgen König: The Hunsrück in French times. Dissertation, Mainz 1995, p. 25 ff.
5. ↑ Maze, Les généraux ... , p. 287 ff.
6. ↑ Doublet de Boisthibault, Marceau, facsimile print of a handwritten will in the preface with Marceau's signature
7. ↑ content translated from H. Maze, Kléber, Hoche, Marceau, p. 308.
8. ↑ Quotation from: Gerd Fesser, Preußische Mythen , Bremen 2012, p. 39.
9. ^ According to other sources in the Régiment de Savoie-Carignan .
10. ↑ The death of Beaurepaire is described differently: JW v. Goethe writes in his campaign in France that the general agreed to the surrender at the meeting with the municipality and then shot himself. Elsewhere, his death is described as the result of an assassination attempt.
11. ↑ Doublet de Boisthibault, Marceau , 5.
12. ↑ According to Pigeard, Les Ètoiles ... , p. 599, François Joseph Westermann was guillotined in April 1794 for " hostility to the republic".
13. ^ A. Thiers: History of the French Revolution . Volume 3, p. 320 ff.
14. ↑ Prof. Minola, Bonn around 1816, Die Franzosen in… , p. 38ff. edited and edited by Dr. Hermann Cardauns , Koblenz 1916.
15. ↑ König, Der Hunsrück ... , p. 39ff.
16. ↑ Use and communication between Marceau and Jourdan in Memories ..., after Jourdan into German translated. 1823, chap. III, from p. 117
17. ↑ Written orders and notes on the course of the fighting in Jourdan's Memories of the Campaign of 1796, from p. 92, German translation from 1823 on Google books
18. ↑ Volker Ecker: General Marceau's last battle near Höchstenbach, Sept. 19, 1796. Ortschronik der Gemeinde Höchstenbach from 1994, p. 219 ff.
19. ↑ Adolphe Thiers , Histoire de la Révolution francaise , Paris 1823-27, Vol. 8, p. 420. A detailed, German description of the funeralies at: www.dilibri.de, Die Franzosen in Koblenz 1794 to 1797 after Prof. Minola, around 1815, edited and edited by Dr. Hermann Cardauns, Koblenz 1916.
20. ↑ Prof. Minola, Bonn around 1816, Die Franzosen in…, pp. 116–117, edited and edited by Dr. Hermann Cardauns, Koblenz 1916.
21. ^ A. Hugo, France Militaire ... , Vol. 2, p. 56.
22. ↑ See also the description and illustration in the article Monument General Hoche .
23. ↑ After Adjutant Capitaine Souhait.
24. ↑ König, Der Hunsrück in ... , p. 39ff.
25. ↑ George Gordon Byron: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , Canto III, verses 56-57
26. ↑ A march for Altenkirchen ( memento of the original from June 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .