Louis Le Bègue Duportail

Louis Antoine Jean Le Bègue de Presle DuPortail (born May 14, 1743 at Pithiviers , † 1802 at sea) was a French officer. He fought in the Continental Army under George Washington in the American War of Independence. He was instrumental in founding the United States Army Corps of Engineers . At the beginning of the French Revolution he was Minister of War in France.

Louis Le Bègue Duportail

Life

He came from a noble family, joined the French army and was trained as an engineer at the royal engineering school in Mézières . In 1765 he left school as a sous-lieutenant . In 1773 he was promoted to Capitaine .

At Benjamin Franklin's request for military engineers to support the Continental Army, he was posted to America. There he was on the staff of Washington and was promoted to colonel in the Continental Army in 1777 and a short time later to brigadier general. He fortified the forts on the Delaware River and took part in various military campaigns with George Washington. In the summer of 1778 he was commissioned by Washington to strengthen the defense of Philadelphia . In 1779 he was appointed commander of the engineering corps. He was late to fortify Charleston and was captured in May 1780, but soon released. He assisted Washington in the siege of Yorktown as the planner of the siege works. This led to the abandonment of the British. In 1781 he was promoted to major general.

In 1783 he resigned from American service and returned to France. There he was General de brigade of the infantry. In the Kingdom of Naples he was busy reorganizing the armed forces there for a long time.

In November 1790 he was appointed Minister of State for War as a confidante of Lafayette and a member of the Jacobins . He held the office until December 1791. In 1792 he was supposed to take over a command, but was recalled as a supporter of Lafayette. He was charged with and fled to America. There he ran a small farm. In 1797 the allegation of disloyalty was dropped and he traveled back to France in 1802 to rejoin the army. He died on the crossing and was buried at sea.

literature

• David F. Burg: The American Revolution. New York 2007 p. 402
• John C. Frederiksen: Revolutionary War Almanac. New York 2006 p. 355f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bernard Faÿ Louis XVI. or the fall into the abyss , 1961