Pierre Cambronne

Pierre Jacques Étienne Cambronne, later Pierre, Viscount Cambronne (26 December 1770 – 29 January 1842), was a General of the French Empire. He fought during the wars of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Era. He was wounded at the Battle of Waterloo.

Military career

Cambronne was born in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire, close to Nantes (Loire-Atlantique). He joined the Grenadiers as a volunteer in 1792, serving under Charles François Dumouriez in Belgium, in the Vendée, took part in the battle of Quiberon, then in the expedition to Ireland under Hoche in 1796. He then joined the Army of the Alps under André Masséna, where he was promoted to command of a grenadier company at the Battle of Zurich (1799).

In 1800, he commanded a company under Latour d'Auvergne, and later succeeded him as First Grenadier of France. He was made a Colonel at the Battle of Jena in 1806, given command of the 3rd Regiment of the Voltigeurs of the Guard in 1810, and was made a Baron the same year. ("Voltigeur", a French word meaning "vaulter" or "leaper", was given to elite light infantry units in the French Army, who acted as advance units of the main column.)

Cambronne then fought in Spain, then joined La Grande Armée. In Russia he commanded the 3rd Regiment of Voltigeurs of the Guard, and took part in the battles of Bautzen, Dresden, and Leipzig, before being promoted to General.

The hundred days and Waterloo

He became Major of the Imperial Guard in 1814, and accompanied Napoleon into exile to the island of Elba, where he was a military commander. He then returned with Napoléon to France in 1815 for The Hundred Days, capturing the fortress of Sisteron (5 March), and was made a Count by Napoleon when they arrived at Paris.

After the Battle of Waterloo, commanding the last of the Old Guard, he was summoned to surrender by General Colville. A journalist named Rougement reported Cambronne's reply as "La garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!" ("The Guard dies, but does not surrender!") These words became famous and were put on a Cambronne statue in Nantes after his death.cite book |last=Boller, Jr. |first=Paul F. |authorlink= |coauthors=George, John |title=They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions |year=1989 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |isbn=0-19-505541-1 ]

However, Cambronne always denied that he had made the "The Guard dies ..." statement. His reply, according to his own account, was the much more direct "Merde!" ("Shit!", a French equivalent of the English expletive "Fuck!") This version of the reply became famous in its own right, becoming known as "le mot de Cambronne" ("the word of Cambronne") and referred to as such in Victor Hugo's novel "Les Misérables" and Edmond Rostand's play "L'Aiglon". Later his name would come to be used directly as a polite euphemism ("What a load of old Cambronne!") and was sometimes even as a verb, "cambronniser".

In a series of letters to "The Times" it was claimed that British Colonel Hugh Halkett, commanding the 3rd Hanoverian Brigade, had already captured Cambronne before the reply (whatever it was) was made. [ [http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/miscellaneous/c_cambronne.html The Guard dies, it does not surrender. Cambronne surrenders, he does not die] ] It is known for certain that Cambronne, seriously wounded, was taken prisoner by the British after the battle.

Complicating matters is that the "The Guard dies ..." statement has also been ascribed to General Claude-Etienne Michel.

Further career

He was tried for treason in France, but well-defended by the royalist Antoine Pierre Berryer, he was acquitted on 26 April, 1816. He later married Mary Osburn, the Scottish nurse who had cared for him after Waterloo.

In 1820, Louis XVIII made him Commandant at Lille with the rank of Brigadier, and made him a Viscount. He retired to his birthplace in 1823, dying there in 1842. A statue of Cambronne was erected in Nantes in 1848, and a square in Paris, the "Place Cambronne", also commemorates him.

References