Jozef Sułkowski

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Jozef Sułkowski as a French officer

Jozef Sułkowski (born January 17, 1773 in Poznań , † October 22, 1798 in Cairo ) was a Polish and French military officer and Napoleon's adjutant in the Italian and Egyptian campaigns .

Life

He came from the Polish aristocratic Sulkowski family . He was the nephew of August Kazimierz Sułkowski , who adopted him and took care of his upbringing. During this time he visited almost all the major courts in Europe as a child and was also introduced to Queen Marie Antoinette . Supported by his uncle, he joined the Polish army. There he made it to the captain . After an argument with his uncle, Sulkowski was disinherited. During this time he carried out intensive language studies and eventually mastered English, French, German, Italian, Turkish and Arabic. In the discussion about the constitution of 1791 he intervened with a polemic.

He served in the Polish-Russian War of 1792. With 500 men he held a bridge against 5000 Russian soldiers. He was then appointed regimental commander. He was also one of the first carriers of the newly created Polish Virtuti Militari order . Sulkowski has published a history of the campaign.

Sulkowski went to France and supported the revolution. At first he served as a diplomat and was sent to the embassy in Constantinople . In 1793 he received French citizenship and married one of the two daughters of the orientalist Jean-Michel de Venture de Paradis . After the outbreak of the Polish Revolution, also known as the Kościuszko Uprising , in 1793/94, the ambassador sent him on a secret mission to Poland. Although he was captured several times by Austrian officials, he achieved his goal. He did not play a significant role in the events. However, he was so well informed of the events that he wrote a report on it in two volumes. The uprising ended with the third partition of Poland .

Jozef Sułkowski a few hours before his death

After the end of Polish independence, he returned to France. He joined the army on May 1, 1796 and was transferred to the Italian Army with the rank of captain . There Napoleon noticed him. He was impressed by his military bravery, which Sulkowski demonstrated when conquering an enemy battery, for example, but also appreciated his language skills and his military expertise. He made him his personal adjutant as an aide-de-camp . He was wounded in the Battle of Arcole . Sulkowski also left records of the Italian campaign without these being published. Some authors claim that Sulkowski was promoted to brigadier general by Napoleon, while others point out that he never achieved a higher military rank.

After the end of the war, Sulkowski tried to get Napoleon to support the Polish cause. In 1798 he also took part in the campaign to Egypt . He was wounded again in the Battle of the Pyramids . He became a member of the Institut d'Égypte and was entrusted with various work. This included in particular the development of a French-Arabic dictionary. Sulkowski also took part in the study of Egyptian antiquities. He himself found the head of an Isis statue and a stone with hieroglyphic inscriptions , which he tried to translate.

During the Cairo uprising on October 22, 1798, he and his patrol were ambushed and dismembered. On October 27th, Napoleon wrote to the Directory: “C´était un officier des plus grandes espérances.” Napoleon named a fort on the road to Belbeis “Fort Sulkowski”. His name (SULKOWKI) was immortalized in the Arc de Triomphe . Dominique Vivant Denon made a portrait drawing a few hours before Sulkowski's death, which he then used around 1810 as a template for one of his first lithographic works.

literature

  • Hortensius de St.-Albin: J. Sulkowski. Mémoires historique, politique et militaire sur les Revolution de Pologne 1791, 1794, la Campagne d'Italie 1796, 1797, l'Expedition du Tyrol, et les Campagnes d'Egypte 1798, 1799 . Paris, 1832 digitized
  • Review of Sulkowski's biography . In: Blätter for literary entertainment year 1832, vol. 2. Leipzig, 1832 p. 843 f.
  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Sulkowski, Joseph . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 40th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing House, Vienna 1880, p. 302 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Philip G. Dwyer / Peter McPhee: The French Revolution and Napoleon. A sourcebook . London, New York, 2002. p. 130

Web links

Commons : Józef Sułkowski  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Baron Stillfried: Historical and genealogical news from the Sulkowski family. In: General Archive for the History of the Prussian State. Vol. 4, Berlin among others, 1831 p. 110
  2. ^ Review of Sulkowski's biography. In: Blätter for literary entertainment year 1832, vol. 2. Leipzig, 1832 p. 843
personal data
SURNAME Sułkowski, Jozef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sulcowsky, Joseph; Sulkowki, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish and French officer
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1773
PLACE OF BIRTH Poznań
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1798
Place of death Cairo