Maximilien Foy
Maximilien-Sébastien, comte Foy (born February 3, 1775 in Ham , Picardy , † November 28, 1825 in Paris ) was a French general and statesman . He is considered one of the most capable and courageous commanders of Napoleon and, after the second restoration, was one of the spokesmen for the liberal opposition.
Life
Foy was the son of an old soldier who had fought at Fontenoy and then settled down as a postmaster and an English mother. He was trained in the war school at La Fère . He took part in the campaigns in Belgium as an artillery officer from 1792–93 , but was arrested for publicly disapproving of some of the convent's blood orders . Released after the 9th Thermidor , he distinguished himself from 1795 to 1797 in the campaigns of the Rhine and Moselle armies, in 1798 in Switzerland and in 1799 in the Danube Army under Masséna .
In 1800 he went over to the Italian army and, as adjutant general, commanded a brigade of the vanguard with distinction. After the Peace of Amiens in 1802, Foy became colonel of the artillery and in 1804, although he was known to Napoleon as a follower of Moreau , under General Marmont, he was chief of the artillery general staff in the camp of Utrecht . In the war with Austria (1805) he commanded under Marmont and was then sent to Friuli and Venice .
In 1807, at his request, Napoleon sent him to help Turkey with 1200 artillerymen against the Russians and English. After his return, Foy commanded under Junot in Portugal , from November 1808 as Général de brigade and from 1812 as Général de division (Napoleon had promoted him personally) in Spain, where on July 21, 1812 he temporarily took over the supreme command in place of the wounded Marmont the defeated army in the battle of Salamanca took over. During the retreat he led, his infantry troops were caught by surprise at the Battle of Garcia Hernandez , but in 1813 he proved his worth when the troops marched back to the south of France. Not until February 27, 1814, after the battle of Orthez , did he leave the army, dangerously wounded, and go to Nantes as inspector general of the infantry .
Although Louis XVIII. He was appointed Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor , Inspector of the 2nd and 16th Military Divisions, and later a Count, but he rejoined Napoleon on his return, commanded a division under Marshal Ney in 1815 and was wounded again at Waterloo .
After living in retirement for a while, the Département Aisne sent him to the Chamber as a deputy in 1819 , where he consistently showed himself to be one of the best and most decisive constitutional-liberal speakers and at the head of a weak opposition the ultra-royalist and clerical majority , especially under the Ministry of Villèle , fought vigorously and not without success.
He died on November 28, 1825. At his funeral, the Liberals held a large demonstration against the Bourbons . His coffin was followed by approximately 100,000 people, and national subscription raised 1 million for his family. In 1879 his statue was unveiled in Ham.
Foy was a member of the Freemasons Association , he was presumably accepted into a field box .
Honors
His name is entered on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 35th column.
Works
The Discours du général Foy , to which a biography of Foys von Tissot was added, appeared in Paris in 1826 (2 volumes). The Histoire de la guerre de la péninsule sous Napoléon (Paris 1827, 4 volumes; German, Leipzig 1827) was published from his estate .
This and that
Foy borrowed newspapers from the British during the war in the Pyrenees to keep up with the state of his British government bonds.
literature
- Vidal: Vie militaire et politique du general Foy .
- Life, last moments and deaths of General Foy: translated from the French. Franckh, Stuttgart 1826. Digitized
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon . Revised and expanded new edition of the 1932 edition, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2161-3 , 951 pp.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Foy, Maximilien |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Foy, Maximilien-Sébastien (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French general and statesman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 3, 1775 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ham , Picardy |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 28, 1825 |
| Place of death | Paris |