Jean Hardy

Jean Hardy (born May 19, 1763 Mouzon ; † May 29, 1802 Cap Haïtien ) was a French Général de division .

Life

In 1784 Hardy joined the royal army. He was a supporter of the revolution , but soon became an enthusiastic partisan of Napoleon .

Hardy fought in the Revolutionary Wars ; u. a. at Hondschoote (September 8, 1793) and Fleurus (June 26, 1794). He was able to distinguish himself several times and was therefore promoted very quickly. When the Sambre and Maas Army was set up in the same year , Hardy became a staff officer there.

On October 5, 1795, he helped Napoleon put down a revolt of royalists in Paris in front of the church of St-Roch ( 1st arrondissement ).

At the end of 1796 Napoleon assembled an expeditionary army (15,000) under the leadership of General Lazare Hoche . He wanted to support the Society of United Irishmen under the leadership of Theobald Wolfe Tone in their independence efforts (→ Irish Rebellion of 1798 ). Hardy volunteered to do this; together u. a. with Hercule Corbineau , Pierre Joseph Habert , Louis Vasserot and François Watrin . This enterprise failed completely.

In 1799 Hardy was promoted to Général de brigade and joined the Rhine Army in the same year .

In 1802 he moved to the staff of General Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc , when he set up an expeditionary army to fight against the insurgents led by Toussaint Louverture in Saint-Domingue ( Hispaniola ) . Other officers on Ostin's staff were Alexandre d'Alton , Nicolas Bernard Guiot de Lacour , Pierre Quantin and Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez . Hardy contracted yellow fever in Hispaniola and died ten days after his 39th birthday on May 29, 1802 in Cap Haïtien.

Honors

• His name can be found on the north pillar (6th column) of the triumphal arch on Place Charles-de-Gaulle (Paris).

literature

• David Chandler: The campaigns of Napoleon . Weidenfeld, London 1993, ISBN 0-297-81367-6 (reprint of the London 1966 edition).
• Philip J. Haythornthwaite: Who was who in the Napoleonic Wars . Arms & Armor, London 1998, ISBN 1-85409-391-6 .
• Charles Mullié: Biography of the célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 à 1850 . Poignavant, Paris 1851 (2 vols.).