Guillaume Marie-Anne Brune, 1st Count Brune was a French military commander, Marshal of the Empire, and political figure who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.
18 Facts About Guillaume Brune
2.
Guillaume Brune moved to Paris in 1785, studied law, and became a political journalist.
3.
Guillaume Brune embraced the ideas of the French Revolution, and soon after its outbreak enlisted in the Parisian National Guard and joined the Cordeliers, eventually becoming a friend of Georges Danton.
4.
Guillaume Brune fought in Bordeaux during the Federalist revolts, and at Hondschoote and Fleurus.
5.
In 1793, Guillaume Brune was appointed brigadier general and took part in the fighting of the 13 Vendemiaire against royalist insurgents in Paris.
6.
Guillaume Brune commanded the French army that occupied Switzerland in 1798 and established the Helvetic Republic.
7.
Guillaume Brune rendered further good service in Vendee and in the Italian Peninsula from 1799 to 1801, winning the 1800 Battle of Pozzolo.
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In 1807 Guillaume Brune was appointed Governor General for the Hanseatic Ports and in 1808, Guillaume Brune held a command of troops fighting in War of the Fourth Coalition and occupied Swedish Pomerania, taking Stralsund and the Island of Rugen.
9.
Guillaume Brune made his biggest blunder while drafting a treaty between France and Sweden when he wrote "the French army" instead of "His Imperial Majesty's Army".
10.
Whether an intentional insult or act of incompetence, Napoleon was infuriated and Guillaume Brune was removed from duty.
11.
Guillaume Brune then spent the next years at his country estate in disgrace and was not re-employed until 1815.
12.
Guillaume Brune kept the mobs in Marseille and Provence under control.
13.
On 22 July 1815, after hearing of the defeat at Waterloo, Guillaume Brune surrendered Toulon to the British.
14.
Guillaume Brune then decided to travel to Paris over land with the promise of Royalist protection, although none was provided.
15.
Guillaume Brune managed to arrive safely with two aides-de-camp in Avignon, but was there shot and killed by an angry Royalist mob after being chased into an hotel, as a victim of the Second White Terror.
16.
The new Bourbon government soon fabricated the story that Guillaume Brune had committed suicide.
17.
Guillaume Brune's body, thrown into the River Rhone, was retrieved by a fisherman and buried by local farmers, and was later recovered by his wife Angelique Nicole to be buried in the cemetery of Saint-Just-Sauvage.
18.
In 1839, one year after Angelique's death, a monument to Marshal Guillaume Brune was erected in his hometown of Brives.