Louis Charles Antoine Desaix

Biography of Louis Charles Antoine Desaix. (1768-1800).

Louis Charles Antoine Desaix was born on August 17, 1768 in Auvergne, at Château d'Ayat, Saint-Hilaire d'Ayat, in the generalitat of Riom [today Ayat-sur-Sioule in the Puy-de-Dôme département], into a noble but not very wealthy family, the second youngest of five children (one daughter and four sons, one of whom died in infancy). His parents were first cousins: his mother Amable de Beaufranchet (1734-1802) and his father Gilbert Antoine de Beaufranchet d'Ayat de Boucherol Desaix (1716-1783), seigneur de Veygoux.

Even before the age of eight, Desaix was sent to the Royal Military School in Effiat, run by the Oratorians. For generations, his family had benefited from a scholarship instituted by the Marquis d'Effiat. It had already been awarded to his elder brother, and would be awarded again to his younger brother. Desaix proved to be a brilliant pupil, contrary to what has sometimes been written.

On leaving school in October 1783, Desaix considered serving in the navy, but ended up as third sub-lieutenant in the Bretagne-Infanterie regiment. He then took the name Desaix de Veygoux to distinguish himself from his brothers, as was customary at the time. The following years passed without any notable events, in the monotony of a garrison life. His career stalled: Desaix was promoted to second lieutenant on July 8, 1784, and to lieutenant on November 24, 1791. This advancement was due in part to the resignation of many noble cadres. Both his brothers had emigrated, and his mother and sister urged him to follow in their footsteps. He refused, reluctant to serve against his country. In December, following a request for transfer, Desaix became Commissaire des Guerres in Clermont-Ferrand. He took his oath to the municipality on January 9, 1792. But, as the position required him to be over twenty-five, Desaix had to cheat on his age by aging himself by two years. With his deception exposed, the young man had to step down.

In May 1792, Desaix was reintegrated into his original corps - now the 46th infantry regiment. A few days later, on May 23, General Victor de Broglie, Chief of Staff of the Army of the Rhine, promoted Desaix to the rank of captain and appointed him aide-de-camp. Desaix received his baptism of fire on August 3, 1792, at the battle of Arzheim, near Landau in der Pfalz. On September 8, for supporting his leader's protest against the suspension of King Louis XVI, he was arrested and detained in Épinal for 46 days. The intervention of minister Jean-Marie Roland led to his release on October 25.

In the year that followed, Desaix was promoted at lightning speed. Desaix was successively appointed Adjutant General on May 20, 1793, Brigadier General on August 20 (the day after the battle of Lauterbourg, where he continued to command despite suffering a bullet wound in both cheeks), and Major General on October 21. However, he missed out on national hospitality again on November 13. His status as the brother of an emigrant meant that he was suspended from duty, and the authorities came to his camp to arrest him. Desaix's soldiers were quick to object, before Louis Antoine de Saint-Just himself, then a member of the Comité de salut public and representative on a mission to the Army of the Rhine, reinstated Desaix to his rank. At the head of his division, Desaix took part in the battle of Bertsheim on December 2, during which he was wounded in the heel. On the 27th, he captured the town of Lauterbourg; Speyer fell on the 31st. When the campaign ended, Desaix was in front of Mannheim.

As he did not hesitate to share his soldiers' lives and routines, they were very appreciative of Desaix. His superiors also had great confidence in him: not only General Claude Ignace François Michaud, but also such renowned chiefs as Charles Pichegru and Jean Victor Marie Moreau did not hesitate to seek his advice on strategic matters. He was offered command of the Army of the Rhine three times, but turned it down each time, as the post had already cost many of its incumbents their heads. However, he never shirked his responsibilities, leading up to five divisions simultaneously, signing an armistice with Austrian general François Sébastien de Croix de Clairfayt on December 25, 1795, and acting as interim commander to Moreau in March-April 1796.

In June 1796, Desaix took the town of Kehl after the vanguard of the Rhin-et-Moselle army had attempted and succeeded under his leadership in crossing the Rhine , which had been considered impossible. He then won at Radstadt [Rastatt] (48.85021 N, 8.20038 E) and Ettlingen / Malsch (48.91401 N, 8.36184 E), preventing Archduke Charles of Habsburg from intervening or sending reinforcements to Italy at a time when Austria was preparing to resume the offensive there.

In April 1797, while again acting commander of the Rhine-et-Moselle army, Desaix was wounded in the thigh as he crossed the Rhine  again at Diersheim. His convalescence kept him in Strasbourg  for three months, after which he went to Italy to meet Napoleon Bonaparte, whose exploits had aroused his enthusiasm and admiration. Dressed in civilian clothes and accompanied only by an aide-de-camp and a servant, he spent several weeks traveling through Switzerland and northern Italy. The diary he wrote on the occasion of this trip records his numerous encounters with civilian and military personalities, foremost among them Bonaparte himself, whom he saw for the first time on August 27, 1797. The two men took an instant liking to each other, and the army's General-in-Chief immediately proved invaluable to his new friend. During this trip, the directorial coup d'état of 18 fructidor Year V took place.

Among other consequences, this political event led to Pichegru's arrest for collusion with Prince Louis V Joseph de Bourbon-Condé, leader of the emigre army. General Moreau revealed that he had known about the betrayal for several months, a secret he claimed to share with several former subordinates, including Desaix. This was all the government needed to consider Desaix's dismissal. The intervention of Bonaparte, to whom the Directors could refuse nothing since the recent coup d'état had been carried out with his support, made them abandon the idea. Desaix was able to return to his post in Hoffenburg on October 20, via Trento, Innsbruck, Munich and Stuttgart. Shortly afterwards, he was given command-in-chief of the Army of England.

In early 1798, this command was transferred to Napoleon Bonaparte, with Desaix becoming his deputy. Together, they toured the Channel ports . But both men were already thinking about Egypt. Ever since their meeting in Italy, Desaix had been aware of the planned expedition. Once it had been approved by the Directors, he went to Civita-Vecchia [Civitavecchia] to organize one of the planned sea convoys.

On April 2, 1798, Desaix was in Rome , happily multiplying himself to fulfill a mission that gave him the opportunity to reconnect with the seafaring aspirations of his youth. He left Civita-Vecchia, the port of the Eternal City, on May 26 with sixty ships and seven thousand men. Mounted on the frigate Courageuse with his chief of staff François-Xavier Donzelot and his two aides-de-camp Jean Rapp and Anne Jean-Marie René Savary, he arrived in sight of Malta  on June 7. Two days later, he was joined by the Toulon squadron (whose flagship L'Orient carried Napoleon Bonaparte). On June 10th, Desaix took part in the capture of the island, securing the surrender of Fort Rohan at Pointe Saint-Paul. On June 20, he left Malta two days after the rest of the squadron, once the final arrangements for the occupation had been made.

On July 1, 1798, Desaix and his division landed on Marabout beach, not far from Alexandria. Once the city had been taken, he was sent, as second-in-command, to Damanhour and Ramanieh, leading the brigades of Louis Friant and Augustin Daniel Belliard. It was a most dangerous mission. The march through the desert harassed the French soldiers, while the Mamelukes mercilessly executed stragglers and loners. Unfortunately, two-thirds of the three cavalry regiments Desaix had at his disposal to contain them had to go on foot, for lack of horses.

At the battle of the Pyramids , the Desaix division occupied the army's right wing. It then embarked for Memphis, in Upper Egypt, to which the Mamluk leader Murad Bey had fled. Some 30 scientists accompanied Desaix, whose troops first settled in the Fayoum oasis, awaiting the end of the Nile's  great floods, which lasted from August to October. Attacked by the Mamelukes, Desaix won the battle of Sediman on October 7. On November 8, he repeated the feat at Medineh el Fayoun, then, in pursuit of Mourad, who was plunging ever further south, he committed his 6,000 men to the left bank of the Nile . Accompanying him were generals Louis-Nicolas Davout, who had recently arrived from Cairo at the head of a 1,200-horse reinforcement, Friant, Belliard and Donzelot. They were joined by several members of the scientific mission, including Dominique Vivant Denon, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Edme François Jomard.

During the march, ancient Egyptian cities were rediscovered, such as Hermopolis (now Achmounein) and Siout, where the expedition arrived on Christmas Day 1798. Desaix chose the latter as his headquarters. On December 29, he pushed on to Girgeh, where he was met by a supply flotilla.

Mourad Bey attacked again at Samanhout on January 21, 1799. He was beaten again. His pursuit led the French to Denderah, where they marveled at the Temple of Hathor, then to Thebes, where Desaix, on seeing the obelisks of Louksor, wrote: Transported to Paris, they would be quite extraordinary. Thirty years later, Sultan Mehemet Ali would turn this vision into reality by offering them to France (one of them now stands on the Place de la Concorde, the other was never moved and was returned to Egypt).

The division then crossed Erment, Esneh, Edfou, where it camped in front of the Temple of Horus, then Silsileh, where it crossed the Nile  for the first time, before continuing along the right bank to Aswan, reached on February 2. The island of Philae, a little further south, marks the limit of the expedition. Desaix had an inscription carved in stone to commemorate the passage of his division.

At the end of February 1799, Mourad Bey, having learned of Bonaparte's departure for Syria, discreetly turned back towards Cairo. Desaix, informed of this move, followed him northwards, not without a few retrograde marches when operations required it. On April 2, he was almost killed at Byr el Bar. By then, however, the whole of Upper Egypt was under his command, and Murad Bey's forces were reduced to a few hundred helpless men with no base of operations. In May, Desaix sent General Belliard to seize the Red Sea port of Koseir, which the British were using to deliver supplies and ammunition to the Mamluks. After crossing 150 kilometers of desert with 500 camel-riding cavalry (including Vivant Denon), Belliard captured the town on May 29. Adjutant-General Donzelot occupied it with two companies.

During this conquest, Desaix showed himself to be an administrator of rare quality. Perfectly honest and fair, he succeeded in pacifying the subjugated regions - whose language he had been careful to learn - using means that earned him the nickname of the Just Sultan. His greatness of spirit and generosity earned him the unanimous respect and admiration of soldiers, scholars and even the local population, who held his memory in high esteem for decades to come.

Desaix also confirmed his dazzling military skills. Was the war waged by the Mamelukes totally different from what he had experienced in Europe? He adapted: the use of camel regiments, conceived in conjunction with General-in-Chief Napoleon Bonaparte, was extended and their tactical use perfected; an intelligence service was organized to match local customs; indigenous troops were recruited, in particular a Coptic brigade. It was also Desaix who introduced the use of colored pins stuck on cardboard maps to record enemy movements (the process, transmitted by Savary to Napoleon, was to be used extensively by the latter).

When the time came for Napoleon to leave, he did so in such a hurry that Desaix had no time to reach Alexandria, as he had been ordered to do, before it happened. The General-in-Chief therefore instructed him to return to France in early winter, to take advantage of the poor weather conditions to escape British surveillance. However, Desaix didn't leave the country until March 3, 1800, in the company of Davout, on the occasion of the short-lived Convention of El-Arich. He left between the date of his signature and the news of his rejection by the English authorities, who had refused to honor the agreement reached between Jean-Baptiste Kléber and Sidney Smith.

The crossing was eventful, with stopovers at Coron [Koróni] in Morea and Sciacca in Sicily, rather than Candie [Heraklion in Crete] and Malta, as planned. As it seemed to be ending, the two ships of the flotilla were held in Livorno by the English admiral George Keith Elphinstone, who claimed that the Convention of El-Arich was null and void. Desaix remained captive until contrary orders from London led to his release. Once freed, he and his men were almost captured again by barbarian pirates from Tunis. Finally, on May 4, they disembarked at Toulon.

After the statutory three-week quarantine, Desaix set off for Italy on May 27, hoping not to arrive too late to secure a command in the campaign that was about to begin. He headed up the Tarentaise valley, crossed the Petit Saint-Bernard pass and joined the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte in Stradella on June 11, 1800. The two men had a long discussion, at the end of which Desaix was given command of Jean Boudet's and Jean-Charles Monnier's divisions - over 9,000 soldiers in all - to form the army's reserve.

On June 12, Desaix was given the task of guarding the communication routes to Genoa, to prevent the Austrian forces from retreating to the town that André Masséna had been forced to evacuate after his surrender on June 6. In the evening, Desaix and the Boudet division were blocked on the right bank of the Scrivia by a flood. They crossed the river the following day.

On the 14th, they continued to head south, Bonaparte having confirmed his marching orders, despite some information about the belligerent intentions of the Austrian general-in-chief, Michael Friedrich Benedikt von Melas. Between noon and one o'clock, however, Desaix was alerted to the events at Marengo as he neared Rivalta Scrivia. He retreated, reached the battlefield    around 5 p.m. and joined Bonaparte and the others towards San Giuliano Vecchio   . There, Desaix declared his readiness to fight and win a new engagement which would compensate for the failures suffered since the beginning of the morning. This was perfectly in line with the expectations of the First Consul, who politically could not afford a defeat. Loopholes were appearing in the Austrian system, and exploiting them could undoubtedly change the course of events. Melas, confident of victory, spread his troops too thinly, repeating the mistake that had put his adversary in such a bad position.

Desaix took charge of operations against the main enemy column. He deployed his forces with consummate skill, supported by a large battery of 18 cannons assembled by Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont, who was in charge of the artillery. The attack began at around 5.30 or 6pm. Desaix himself, on horseback, advanced at the head of the 9th light infantry demi-brigade. Success soon far exceeded the expectations of those who had planned this last-chance attack. But Desaix was unable to appreciate the outcome. He fell at the very first salvo of musketry, in the Vigna Santa sector (44.88685 N, 8.73831 E), not far from the Il Cantone cassina.

His body was found by his aide-de-camp, Savary, as Desaix's death went virtually unnoticed at the time. The remains were embalmed two days later in Milan  by order of the First Consul.

They were then transported to the Grand-Saint-Bernard hospice  and placed in the chapel of the Hospitaliers  on June 19, 1805. Marshal Alexandre Berthier represented the Emperor at the ceremony and delivered the eulogy.

In the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, Napoleon, to whom Desaix inspired a friendship tinged with admiration, confided the following to Emmanuel de Las Cases: Desaix's talent was ever-present; he lived and breathed nothing but noble ambition and true glory. He was an ancient character. He loved glory for its own sake and France above all else (...) Spirit and talent were in balance with character and courage, a precious balance he possessed to a superior degree.

Napoleon created five brothers, first cousins and nephews of Desaix, as barons, although none of them rose above the rank of captain.

Desaix's eldest sister married François Beker (1770-1840), division general in 1806, count in 1807, and invested in 1815 with the formidable honor of accompanying Emperor Napoleon from La Malmaison to the island of Aix.

Desaix, along with Hoche, Kléber, Marceau and others, is one of the great men who were crowned by the Third Republic in particular. Since then, historical research has shown that, for most of them, the truth diverged somewhat from the legend, and that the heroes' behavior sometimes lacked the desired exemplarity. Desaix, for his part, resisted this challenge. As far as he was concerned, the myth proved to be in line with the facts. It has been said of him: Plutarch's men have been singularly misused, by comparing them to a crowd of honest men who had nothing heroic in them. But Desaix really was Plutarch's man, and antiquity could scarcely oppose him to a Greek or Roman captain.

In 1968, the French Postal Service released a 0.30 Franc stamp bearing the effigy of Louis Charles Antoine Desaix .