Théophile Malo Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne

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Théophile Malo Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne.
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Théophile Malo Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne (born November 23, 1743 in Carhaix "on the territory of the Aribogene " Brittany ; † June 27, 1800 in Oberhausen (near Neuburg / Danube) , Bavaria ) was a French officer in the Revolutionary Army .

Life

Early life

He was the son of the lawyer Olivier Corret and Jeanne Lucrèce Salaün, but he later claimed to be descended from an illegitimate son of Turenne and in 1777 added his name to those of the La Tour d'Auvergne family . He studied at the Jesuit college in Quimper , where he was distinguished by his interest in old and new languages. He joined the army at the age of 23, served with the black musketeers from 1767 and was promoted to lieutenant in the Angoumois infantry regiment in the same year.

The peace gave La Tour d'Auvergne time to continue his studies. He eagerly read Polybius and Vegetius and the writings of Folard and Montecuculi. Most of all he was interested in the comments of Caesar , because here he found precise accounts of ancient France ( Gaul ), whose earlier history caught his attention.

Nevertheless, La Tour d'Auvergne wanted to continue his military career. After pleading in vain to fight the British in American service, he took a vacation in 1781 to go to Spain and attended the siege of Mahon , which the British were defending. As a volunteer in the Spanish-French army under the Duke of Crillon , he set fire to a British frigate and several vehicles with ammunition under the cannons of Mahon; under the hail of bullets, he took a wounded friend from the combat zone. In recognition of his services, the Duke of Crillon appointed him his adjutant after he had refused supreme command of the volunteers; King Charles III of Spain awarded him a medal. Returning to his regiment, he studied with Jacques Le Brigant the relations that might exist between the ancient and living languages ​​of Europe with the Celtic as it had been preserved in Brittany. In 1784 he became a captain.

Military career during the French Revolution

La Tour d'Auvergne sympathized with the American Revolution and was an avid supporter of the French Revolution that broke out in 1789 . He was still captain of the grenadier because he had refused any advancement with rare modesty. In 1792 he took part in the campaign under Montesquiou , fought gloriously against the Sardinians and, sword in hand, first penetrated Chambéry at the head of his company . In 1793 he was sent to the Army of the Western Pyrenees under Joseph Servan , who made him commander of a grenadier corps of 8,000 men, which served as an elite force and mostly as an advance guard. This corps instilled great fear in the enemy and was given the title "Infernal Column"; often it decided victory.

La Tour d'Auvergne was not only characterized by bravery, but he was also an excellent tactician. He presented his plans to the council of war to which he belonged; they were widely accepted and he carried them out without shrinking from danger or difficulty. With only one company and eight guns, he took the strong fortress of San Sebastian by night ; He repeatedly struck the Spaniards, broke through their lines of defense, took magazines from them and took 9,000 prisoners. Nevertheless, the Paris government wanted to depose him as a former nobleman, whereas his soldiers protested so much that they gave in. La Tour d'Auvergne briefly and with belligerent boldness rejected the interference of the people's representatives, was too proud to flatter them, despised their favor and shared all the privations of the common soldiers, always marched on foot and delivered bravura pieces so that he himself deepened Worship by his soldiers.

After the Peace of Basel , La Tour d'Auvergne took a vacation for health reasons and embarked in Bordeaux for Brest in June 1795 , but fell into the hands of a British privateer and was taken prisoner with several of his compatriots to Cornwall . He used the time he had to spend there to study the national language and compare it with the Gallic and Breton languages. When British soldiers tried to force the French prisoners to take off their cockades, he threatened to pierce anyone who would use force.

In 1797, La Tour d'Auvergne was allowed to return home on a prisoner exchange, but was retired with a pension of 800 francs, which had to be all the more sensitive since his paternal inheritance only yielded 1,600 francs a year. Still, he didn't complain. Soon the government offered him the degree and pension of brigadier general , which he refused. He lived a very simple way of life, gave generously to the poor despite his relatively modest financial circumstances and limited his expenses to the bare minimum.

As early as 1792, in Bayonne, La Tour d'Auvergne's work Nouvelles Recherches sur la langue, l'origine et les antiquités des Bretons, pour servir á l'histoire de ce peuples with a polyglot dictionary was published and a second edition followed in 1795; now he was working in Passy, ​​where he had retired, on the third edition, which came out in Hamburg in 1801 as Origines gauloises, celles des plus anciens peuples de l'Europe, puisées dans leur vraie source… . He also began a polyglot dictionary, which was left behind as a manuscript, in which he compared words from 42 languages ​​and dialects, and a Dictionnaire Breton-Gallois-Français (see chapter Works).

When the assignats fell, La Tour d'Auvergne was forced to seek assistance, so the Minister of War offered him 1,200 francs. He took, however, only 120 francs of it as the sum of his present needs. Through his reputation he had obtained the restitution of possessions from the Duke of Bouillon; But when the latter offered him an estate in Beaumont-le-Roger with earnings of 10,000 francs, he refused. The recruitment hit the last son of his 80-year-old fellow student Le Brigant in 1799, the only support of the man who had 22 children; the son was of a weak nature and the father wanted to despair. La Tour d'Auvergne then obtained permission from the directorate that he could join the regiment as a debut for the former, and moved in 1799 at its head in Zurich , serving in André Masséna's army during his campaign in Switzerland. He also took coins and inscriptions that he had found in the ruins of ancient Vindonissa .

Death and remembrance

The Latour monument near Oberhausen

In 1800, La Tour d'Auvergne returned to Passy to serve in the Legislative Body but preferred the old warrior profession. On Carnot's report, Napoleon Bonaparte , then First Consul , awarded him a saber of honor and on April 27, 1800 appointed him "Premier Grenadier de la Republique". He also refused this title and asked to be allowed to go into battle, not as the first, but as the oldest grenadier in the republic. After making his will, he served as grenadier in the 46th Half Brigade under Jean Victor Moreau in the Army of the Rhine . However, he died on the evening of June 27, 1800 in a battle near Oberhausen near Neuburg (Bavaria) in an attack by Austrian horsemen through a lance stab in the heart and was buried here. The whole army prescribed a three-day mourning for the "First Grenadier", each soldier donated a daily salary to buy a silver urn that was supposed to enclose his heart and that was in the Panthéon until the restoration .

After the battle was won, General Moreau ordered the erection of a monument and the purchase of the property for the Republic of France in the daily order of July 1, 1800 (contract of sale of September 12, 1800). On September 30, 1800, on the property Latour d 'Auvergne, Colonel Forty and two other French officers were buried next to the monument. In 1889 the body was exhumed and transferred to the Panthéon in Paris .

His memorial stone, placed by the French on September 20, 1800, with the inscription À la mémoire de LATOUR D'AUVERGNE Premier Grenadier de France can be viewed on a hill near Oberhausen. At the place where he actually died, the (former) forester's house in Unterhausen , a memorial plaque was unveiled in 1980 on the 180th anniversary of Latour's death. His name is entered on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 18th column (LTr DAUVERGNE).

In his birthplace, Carhaix-Plouguer , a statue of Charles Marochetti was erected on the Place de la Tour d'Auvergne in 1841 . Four reliefs show various events in the officer's life: the first recalls an episode of the war in Catalonia in 1782, in which he defied the English shots and carried a Catalan officer on his shoulders. The second shows the capture of Fort Bar in Savoy on September 22, 1792 under General Jean Gabriel Marchand. The third legendary shows how La Tour d'Auvergne left Pontrieux to replace the youngest son of a friend in the army, the fourth the death of the hero in Oberhausen .

Works

La Tour d'Auvergne was interested in researching the Breton language and culture and published a book on it. He also published a work on the prehistory of the Celts in France. He used Strabo , Tacitus , Caesar , Pomponius Mela , but also the Edda and Breton oral traditions as sources . The terms " dolmen " and " menhir ", which are still used today to describe megaliths , come from him.

Publications

  • Théophile Malo Corret de La Tour d'Auvergne, Origines gauloises, celles des plus anciens peuples de l'Europe, puisées dans leur vraie source, ou recherches sur la langue, l'origine et les antiquités des Celto-Bretons de l'Armorique pour Servir á histoire ancienne et modern de ce peuple et á celle des Francais . Paris 1797 digitized , Hamburg / Paris 1801, third edition ( digitized )

See also

See also: La Tour d'Auvergne

literature

Web links

Commons : Théophile Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Théophile Malo Corret de La Tour d'Auvergne, Origines gauloises, celles des plus anciens peuples de l'Europe, puisées dans leur vraie source, ou recherches sur la langue, l'origine et les antiquités des Celto-Bretons de l'Armorique For serving a historical and modern age from Peuple et a cell des Francais. Hamburg / Paris 1801, third edition, p. 3
  2. ↑ Théophile Malo Corret de La Tour d'Auvergne, Origines gauloises, celles des plus anciens peuples de l'Europe, puisées dans leur vraie source, ou recherches sur la langue, l'origine et les antiquités des Celto-Bretons de l'Armorique For serving a historical and modern age from Peuple et a cell des Francais. Hamburg / Paris 1801, third edition, p. 5
  3. ↑ The same applies to the area around the Turenne monument in Sasbach for the alleged relative of La Tour, Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne , which is also owned by the French state .
  4. ↑ http://cliomaps.de/timelines/1-koalitionskrieg
  5. ↑ http://site.erin.free.fr/Bretagne/Finistere/Carhaix.htm
  6. ↑ Théophile Malo Corret de La Tour d'Auvergne, Origines gauloises, celles des plus anciens peuples de l'Europe, puisées dans leur vraie source, ou recherches sur la langue, l'origine et les antiquités des Celto-Bretons de l'Armorique For serving a historical and modern age from Peuple et a cell des Francais. Hamburg / Paris 1801, third edition, p. 8th
personal data
SURNAME Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne, Théophile Malo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer and prehistorian
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1743
PLACE OF BIRTH Carhaix , Brittany , France
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1800
Place of death Oberhausen (near Neuburg / Danube) , Electorate of Bavaria , Holy Roman Empire