Louis Auguste Victor de Ghaisnes, de Bourmont

Louis de Ghaisnes was born into a noble family at Château de Bourmont (Anjou) on September 2, 1773. An officer in the French Guards in 1789, he emigrated with his father after the corps was disbanded, and served in 1792 and 1793 in the army of the Princes and the army of Louis V Joseph de Bourbon-Condé, known as the Condé army. He took part in the 1792 campaign under Charles-Guillaume-Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, fought on the Rhine in 1793 and crossed into the Vendée in February 1795.

In the years that followed, he acted less as a combatant than as an agitator and liaison officer, earning the nickname of the counter-revolution's traveling clerk.

In 1799, Bourmont was one of the leaders of the new Vendée insurrection. He captured Le Mans on October 15, signed a peace he had negotiated with the First Consul in January 1800, and resumed his conspiratorial activities, getting involved in all the royalist plots of the Consulate.

Arrested after the kidnapping of Senator Dominique Clément de Ris, he was imprisoned at the Temple and then at Besançon, from where he escaped in 1804.

Taking refuge in Portugal, he saw the arrival of the French armies there in 1807, and offered his services to Jean-Andoche Junot, who made him his executive officer.

After the capitulation of Cintra (August 30, 1808), he returned to France, where he was immediately arrested. Imprisoned, he was freed thanks to Junot's intervention, but placed under house arrest until 1810.

On that date, he was sent to Italy, as a way of removing a man whom the Emperor did not trust. What would our troops think of being commanded by such a leader? wrote Napoleon in 1812 to General Henri-Jacques-Guillaume Clarke, Minister of War.

Circumstances dictated that he should be employed in 1812 and 1813 during the French invasion of Russia and campaign in Saxony. He was awarded the Légion d'Honneur and the rank of brigadier general, as Napoleon I may have wanted to use these favors to win over the former Chouan, before using him in the West, where tensions were rising again.

In February 1814, he was entrusted with the defense of Nogent. The enemy appeared on the 11th at ten in the morning. At half past noon, Bourmont, wounded in the knee, handed over command to Colonel Théophile Voirol. In the evening, he left the town under the terms of a truce. On the 13th, Napoleon, learning that the town was still holding out and unaware that Bourmont was convalescing in Provins, appointed him Major General. Two months later, the "heroic defender" rallied to the Bourbons.

At the start of the Hundred Days, he presented himself to the new Minister of War, Louis-Nicolas Davout, to place himself at the Emperor's disposal. Davout preferred to kick him out. Bourmont succeeded, however, and was given command of a division staffed by royalist officers, with a view to collective desertion on June 15, 1815, three days before the battle of Waterloo.

After returning to France with Louis XVIII, Bourmont was given command of a division of the royal guard, an honorary position with a handsome salary. Shortly afterwards, his incriminating testimony effectively contributed to Marshal Ney's death sentence.

Pair de France in 1823, he was considered for the Ministry of War in 1829, which led to a wave of protests and resignations in the army, with one of his future colleagues even making it known that he would never agree to be part of a cabinet of which Bourmont was a member.

He saved face by obtaining command of the Algiers expedition. The city fell on July 5, 1830, earning him the Marshal's baton.

After the 1830 revolution, he fled to England. In 1832, he tried unsuccessfully to rekindle civil war in the Vendée for the Duchesse de Berry, and was stripped of his French nationality.

Amnestied in 1840, he returned to finish his days in his birthplace, where he died on October 27, 1846.