Philippe François Maurice d'Albignac

Count Philippe François Maurice de Rivet d'Albignac , also Count von Ried (e) (born February 15, 1775 at Triadou Castle in Peyreleau ( Aveyron department , France ); † January 20, 1824 in Pont-Saint-Esprit ) was a French General .

Life

Château Triadou in Peyreleau

Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France

He was the elder of two sons of Viscount Claude-François d'Albignac du Triadou (1740-1822) and his wife Henriette de Sambucy de Vendeloves and nephew of Bishop Philippe-François d'Albignac de Castelnau (1742-1814) of Angoulême .

Philippe became a page at the court of Louis XVI. After the king's failed escape in 1791, he emigrated from revolutionary France , joined the Royalist Army of Emigrants ( Armée des Princes ) set up in Trier in 1792 with his father , and became a sous-lieutenant and aide-de-camp of his great-uncle Philippe Claude Beaufort Canillac (1712–1797), the Count of Montboissier, who commanded the so-called “Red Companies”, the aristocratic gendarmes de la garde ( household troops of the king ). After the "Army of the Princes" was dissolved on November 24, 1792, Albignac was in the regiment of Duke Claude-Antoine-Gabriel de Choiseul (1760-1838) and in the 62nd Infantry Regiment, the former Salm-Salm regiment, from 1793 to 1795. and then in Austrian service. After Napoleon's coup in 1799 , he returned to France in 1800.

French Empire

On October 29, 1806, he joined the Gendarmerie d'ordonnance , re-established by Napoleon and commanded by the Count of Montmorency-Laval, as a simple cavalryman , where he soon became a sergeant ( Maréchal-des-logis ) and then a lieutenant, and with whom he was in 1807 in the Grande Armée at the campaign against Prussia took part.

Kingdom of Westphalia

After the Gendarmerie d'ordonnance had been dissolved by Napoleonic decree on October 23, 1807 , Albignac entered the service of Jérôme Bonaparte , King of Westphalia , as lieutenant colonel and aide-de-camp . On January 21, 1808, Jérôme appointed him to the Council of State. On July 1, 1808, he was appointed Grand Equestrian ( grand ecuyer ), and on August 1, 1808, he became Brigadier General and de facto Minister of War, as the incumbent Minister of War Joseph Antoine Morio had already fallen out of favor with the Emperor. In May 1809, as commander of the vanguard of the X. Corps of the "Armée d'Allemagne" , which was under Jérômes' supreme command, he was decisively involved in the pursuit of Ferdinand von Schill's Freikorps to Stralsund and expelled them from the Dömitz fortress . Then he pursued the black crowd of Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig on his march to the Weser .

Jérôme raised Albignac to Count von Ried (e) on May 3, 1810 and gave him the North Hessian castle Riede with the associated manor, which Albignac never visited himself. At the corrupt and lavish court of Jérôme in Kassel , Albignac made many enemies who intrigued against him through his open disapproval of the goings-on and his personal insistence on living with integrity . When in 1811, in a moment of indignation, he offered the king, whom he had not spared his criticism, to resign, the latter accused him of ingratitude, treated him with kindness and refused his resignation. Albignac withdrew his resignation , but the courtiers, seeing the opportunity to get rid of a more than uncomfortable critic, went out of their way to remind the king of what had happened between him and the general and convinced him that it would be interpreted as weakness if he did not properly punish Albignac's presumptuousness. To his surprise, Albignac had to read the day after his interview with the king in the “Moniteur Westphalien”: “The king has accepted the resignation of the Count of Albignac because of his poor health; he moves to the south of France. The king, in gratitude for his services, grants him his full pension. "

French Empire

Albignac left Kassel immediately and refused the pension he had been granted. Back in France he became Chief of Staff of the 6th Corps of the newly formed Grande Armée in 1812 and took part in the Russian campaign in 1812 . He distinguished himself first under General Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr , who received the Marshal's baton after the Battle of Polotsk (August 16, 1812) , and then under the Viceroy of Italy, Napoleon's stepson Eugène de Beauharnais . 1813-1814 he was in command of the Gard department in Nîmes and at the same time responsible for the organization of the 4th Reserve Division.

Reign of the Hundred Days

In the restoration of the Bourbons in April 1814 he was still in Nimes, and his prudence owed the city that she was saved from adversity. He was paid half pay , but also became a Knight of the Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis on July 8, 1814 and an officer of the Legion of Honor on August 24, 1814 .

When Napoleon landed in Provence on March 1, 1815 , Albignac was in Paris. He went to Orléans with Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr as his chief of staff , but after the general defection of the troops there and Gouvion Saint-Cyr's withdrawal to his household, he went to see the nephew of King Louis XVIII. , Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angouleme , who met Napoleon in the south of France. However, Angouleme failed and was captured on April 8 at Pont-Saint-Esprit. Albignac was able to visit the prince in captivity and received powers of attorney from him with which he traveled via Lyon to the king in exile in Ghent .

Second restoration

After the end of the reign of the Hundred Days , Albignac returned to France with the Bourbons. When Gouvion Saint-Cyr became Minister of War on July 7, 1815, Albignac ( Maréchal de camp ) and Secretary General of the War Ministry. When the minister resigned on September 26, 1815, Albignac also left. In the following year he was by Louis XVIII. appointed in command of the Saint-Cyr military school founded by Napoleon in 1802 , the first of the post-Napoleonic era. Also in 1816 he was a member of the court martial , which sentenced General François Antoine Lallemand , who remained loyal to Napoleon to the end, to death in absentia. On April 25, 1821 he was appointed lieutenant-général , but then retired in 1822 because of his poor health.

Honors; death

Albignac was commander of the Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis , commander of the Legion of Honor and commander of the Military Order of St. Henry .

He died without having been married on January 20, 1824 in Pont-Saint-Esprit and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

literature

• Hippolyte de Barrau: Le général comte d'Albignac. In: Ordres équestres: Documents sur les Ordres du Temple et de Saint-Jean-de-Jerusalem en Rouergue, suivis d'une notice historique sur la légion d'honneur et du tableau raisonné de ses members dans le même pays. N. Ratery, Rodez, 1861, pp. 285–288 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Marc Antoine F. Baron de Gaujal: Études historiques sur le Rouergue. Volume 4. Paul Dupont, Paris 1859, pp. 302–303 ( digitized in the Google book search).

Web links

Wikisource: Page: Michaud - Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne - 1843 - Tome 1.djvu / 358  - Sources and full texts (French)

Thoisnier Desplaces, Paris (French)

• ALBIGNAC Maurice François, lieutenant général comte d '(1775-1824).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Émile Marco de Saint-Hilaire: Histoire anecdotique, politique et militaire de la Garde impériale. E. Penaud, Paris 1847, p. 581.
2. ↑ He was released six days later on orders from Napoleon and went into exile in Madrid.