This week I met some friends in Koblentz (1) and, being me, I couldn’t not go and look up a few history-adjacent places. Koblentz is a pleasant city, best known (at least in my corner of things) for hosting noble émigrés (2) in the early phase of the Revolution. But I’m not here to talk about émigrés today.
No. Today we’re talking about a man who was buried in Koblentz at 27 and became known not only as an exceptionally capable general, but as an unusually humane one as well.Â
In a time that seems saturated with idiotic amounts of violence, it feels worth pausing over a young man who managed to wage war with a measure of mercy and plain decency, enough, in the end, to be mourned by his enemies: François Séverin Marceau.
If you’ve been following what I write and/or you care about the history of the Civil War in the Vendée (3), his name won’t be entirely new. He was one of the most brilliant generals on the Republican side.
But before he went west and, at 22, was promoted to general, François Séverin Marceau was a boy his parents didn’t like.
A rejected childÂ
Born François-Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers in 1769, he was the eldest child from his father’s second marriage to Anne-Victoire Gaulier. His childhood was not easy. His mother was notably cold and left him with a wet nurse for the first ten years of his life. His father, a local magistrate (procureur), was a spineless man who showed a clear preference for his other children. Marceau was brought up in a harsh environment and felt deeply hurt and singled out by his family’s treatment. The breach ran so deep that he refused to use the family name, “Desgraviers.”
In the middle of this domestic hostility, Marceau found his only comfort in his older half-sister, Emira (4) (a daughter from his father’s first marriage). She, too, was poorly treated, and in practice became his surrogate mother. She educated him, advised him, and shaped his character. Marceau remained intensely grateful, sustaining a quiet, unwavering devotion to her throughout his life.
When Emira was pushed into an unwanted marriage and had to leave their hometown of Chartres, the young Marceau felt entirely alone and close to despair. Convinced that his parents’ coldness was only hardening, he chose to run away and enlist in the army as a form of escape.
A great soldier
At the age of 16, on December 2, 1785, Marceau enlisted in the AngoulĂŞme infantry regiment, leaving home with little more than his enlistment bonus of 200 livres. He served relatively obscurely for a few years, spending his time studying the lives of great military captains like Frederick II, Charles XII, and Peter the Great to complete his education. In July 1789, he traveled to Paris and joined the Parisian National Guard, even participating in the storming of the Bastille on July 14.
He later returned to Chartres and entered the local National Guard (5). When volunteer battalions were raised in the autumn of 1791 to meet the foreign invasion, he was said to be the first to enlist in the Eure-et-Loir (6) battalion. With prior service behind him, he advanced quickly: captain, then adjutant-major, and by May 1792 elected lieutenant-colonel.
In September 1792 his battalion was trapped in Verdun during the Prussian siege (7). Marceau argued for a continuing defence, but the local authorities and the defence council lost their nerve and chose surrender. As the youngest member of the council, he was assigned the soul-crushing task of delivering the capitulation to the Prussian king, blindfolded. He lost his savings and equipment in the process, retaining only his sword. He then served briefly under General Dumouriez (8) in the Army of the North, distinguishing himself in several actions.
Marceau was intent on entering the regular army (troupes de ligne) as a cavalry officer. He was sharply disappointed when first offered a sub-lieutenancy in an infantry regiment and protested, arguing that his experience and rank as a volunteer lieutenant-colonel warranted a cavalry post. The complaint was eventually upheld, and on 7 November 1792 he was appointed first lieutenant in the light cuirassiers of the LĂ©gion Germanique.
The Légion Germanique was soon sent to the Vendée to reinforce the Army of the Coasts of La Rochelle. Marceau’s arrival did not go smoothly. He had barely reached his station when he was arrested in Tours as a “suspect.” The government had opened a strict inquiry into the Légion Germanique, denounced as a disorderly collection of foreign deserters.
Tried alongside his general, Marceau conducted his defence with enough clarity and force to secure acquittal. One of the judges, the representative Goupilleau (9), declared himself struck by Marceau’s character, calling him both a brave soldier and a genuine republican. Released and cleared, Marceau went straight back to the front to resume his service.
A brilliant general
One of the first things Marceau did after returning to the battlefield was to save the life of one of the very men who served the government that had accused him. During the Republican rout at Saumur in June 1793, the political representative Bourbotte (10) had his horse shot from under him and was on the verge of capture. Marceau dismounted, gave him his own horse, and cut a path through the enemy with his sword.
Promoted adjutant-general, he stood out at Luçon (August 1793) and Chantonnay (September 1793). He played a decisive role at Cholet (October 1793), one of the pivotal battles of the war. Acting as a brigade general, he commanded the centre. By holding firm, he bought General Kléber (11) the time needed to stabilise a collapsing wing, turning the fight into a major victory. He was formally promoted to General of Brigade for it.
After a series of defeats brought on by a collection of almost impressively inept superiors, the government consolidated its forces into the Army of the West and, in November 1793, named the 24-year-old Marceau interim Commander-in-Chief. (As an aside, the Vendéan army at the time was led by the 21-year-old Henri de La Rochejaquelein…two very young men at the head of opposing forces.)
In command, Marceau led the army to two final, crushing victories that effectively ended the main Vendéan threat. At Le Mans (December 1793), he and General Westermann (12) launched a hazardous night assault in miserable weather. After brutal street fighting and a brief encirclement, Kléber’s arrival at dawn secured a complete victory. Appalled by the massacre of Vendéan civilians that followed, Marceau put himself at risk to shield several innocents, including the young royalist Angélique des Melliers (13), whom he personally tried to save (unsuccessfully; she was guillotined soon after).
In the last major engagement of the campaign, at Savenay (December 1793), Marceau and Kléber trapped the remnants of the Vendéan army. Marceau charged alongside his staff, helping to bring about the final rout.
Despite saving the Republic in the West, Marceau was sidelined when the official commander, General Turreau, finally arrived and took control. Exhausted, suffering from a severe skin disease (14) contracted during the grueling winter campaign, and disgusted by the ongoing violence, Marceau obtained medical leave in late December 1793 to recover in his hometown of Chartres
A commander in the North
Following his medical leave to recover from the exhaustion and illness picked up in the Vendée, Marceau was sent to the northern frontier in April 1794.
He was first given command of the vanguard of the Army of the Ardennes under General Charbonnier(15) and, as usual, distinguished himself quickly. In May 1794 he led a bold early-morning attack, crossed the Sambre (16), and took Thuin. At Fleurus (17) in June 1794 he commanded the right wing and fought with his usual disregard for personal safety, having two horses shot under him.
After Fleurus, the army was reorganised into the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse under General Jourdan(18). Marceau developed a deep, almost filial devotion to Jourdan, whom he regarded as a mentor. Under him, Marceau helped secure a string of victories in the autumn of 1794, including a sharp cavalry charge at the Ourthe (Ayvaille) and a hard five-hour stand at Düren during the Roër(19) campaign. In late October 1794, he cornered the enemy and captured Koblentz.
It was not all triumph. The 1795 campaign was defined by inertia, catastrophic supply problems, and general misery. Marceau blockaded Ehrenbreitstein and was worn down by watching his men starve.
During a retreat in October 1795, a serious blunder nearly ended in tragedy: one of his officers destroyed the bridge at Neuwied too early, leaving the rearguard under his close friend KlĂ©ber stranded. Convinced he had doomed his friend and compromised the army, Marceau grabbed a pistol to shoot himself. KlĂ©ber stopped him. Clearly the years of war were taking a toll on the young general.Â
In the brutal winter of late 1795, Marceau was sent into the HunsrĂĽck to hold off the Austrians with a small, starving, badly equipped force. His men had no shoes and barely any ammunition. He fought anyway. After a victory at Sultzbach in December, sheer exhaustion on both sides led him to negotiate a winter armistice with the Austrian General Kray(20). The two commanders came away with a real respect for one another.
The final command
When hostilities resumed in the summer of 1796, Marceau was given a thoroughly thankless assignment. With a meagre force of just 25,000 men, he was ordered to hold the line of the Rhine and somehow keep the converging armies of Jourdan and Moreau(21) in contact. It was a defensive brief, very much against his instincts, but he carried it out all the same, fighting constant skirmishes along the Nahe and the Selz (22) . During this period he suffered a violent relapse of his skin disease, and given eighteenth-century medicine it was almost certainly worse than anyone realised, yet he continued issuing detailed tactical orders from his sickbed.
In September 1796, Archduke Charles(23) decisively defeated Jourdan at WĂĽrzburg, forcing the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse into a precarious retreat. Marceau was given the rearguard, which is rarely a reward. He fought a series of desperate, bloody delaying actions to secure the crossings of the Lahn at Limburg and Diez against vastly superior Austrian forces. On 18 September, at Freilingen, he endured seven punishing hours of fighting, personally charging with his cavalry and rallying his infantry to secure the army's escape.
The very next morning, 19 September, after successfully covering the retreat through Altenkirchen, he rode forward to the edge of the Höchstbach forest to reconnoitre the Austrian vanguard himself. A concealed Tyrolean marksman shot him there.Â
The agony of death
Around 11:00 AM, after positioning his artillery near the edge of the Höchstbach forest, Marceau rode forward to reconnoitre the advancing Austrian vanguard himself. He was accompanied by an engineer and two orderlies. As he watched an enemy hussar, a Tyrolean sniper, hidden behind a tree near the road, fired a carbine shot.
The bullet struck him on his right side. It passed through the flesh of his right arm above the elbow, entered just below his lowest ribs, travelled diagonally through his abdomen, and stopped beneath the skin on his left side.
He understood immediately that the wound was fatal. Abdominal wounds at the time were, in practical terms, a guarantee of a long and unpleasant death. He dismounted quietly. With striking composure, he ordered those around him to keep the injury from the troops so as not to cause panic and asked only that he not be left to fall into enemy hands.
His men carried him from the field, first on their muskets and later on a makeshift stretcher fashioned from a ladder covered with hay and coats. The journey to Altenkirchen took three hours under a burning sun and constant enemy fire; one of the soldiers carrying him was shot dead along the way. Despite the pain, Marceau remained controlled, presenting a calm front to his openly weeping soldiers.
When he reached Altenkirchen, he was met by his mentor, General Jourdan, who burst into tears. Marceau, already fading, was too weak to be moved further. The army, however, had no such luxury. It had to retreat. Jourdan was forced to leave his dying friend in the house of the local Prussian governor and ride on. Before doing so, he wrote to the advancing Austrian commanders, commending Marceau to their honour and generosity.
French and Austrian surgeons, the latter sent by Archduke Charles, worked together to treat him. They removed the bullet, which had lodged just beneath the skin on the left side, and enlarged the wound, but it was an exercise in futility.Â
On the first day Marceau suffered persistent nausea, a feeling of pressure in the chest, and general abdominal pain. By the next morning the pain had concentrated sharply in the lower abdomen. Severe urinary retention followed, causing such distress that he had to be catheterised twice. On the final night his condition became critical. He complained of ringing in his ears; the vomiting grew frequent and heavy, eventually mixed with blood and bodily fluids. His pulse weakened and turned irregular, his extremities became icy cold, and he broke out in cold sweats.
While he lay dying, the Austrian generals he had been fighting only days before came to his bedside. The aging Kray, visibly shaken, remained there for a long time, holding Marceau’s hand and weeping. Officers from the Austrian hussar regiments also arrived to pay their respects to the man they had been trying to kill. Through the pain, Marceau was said to remain composed and courteous, speaking to his former enemies with gentleness.
At 1:00 AM on 21 September, aware that the end was close, he dictated his final wishes. He ordered that his remaining meagre possessions be used to settle his debts, with what remained to go to his younger brother and his sister, and he distributed his horses among his friends.
Shortly after signing the document, he lost consciousness and slipped into delirium, speaking incoherently of his soldiers, his battles, and the recent retreat. At 3:00 AM he briefly rallied, recognised the Austrian General Elsnitz at his side, and said quietly, “Mon ami, je ne suis plus rien.” (24)
After a short spell of agitation, his pulse faded, his eyes fixed, and at around 6:00 AM he died. He was twenty-seven.
A resting place for the hero
General Marceau’s funeral took place on 23 September 1796 in the entrenched camp he had constructed at Koblentz. As expected, it was a military ceremony. The French artillery fired its salutes, and, out of respect for the man who had technically been their prisoner, the Austrian guns replied in kind. He was buried beneath a simple earthen pyramid.
Kléber soon decided that this would not suffice. He opened a subscription for a proper monument and drafted the design himself. At least, that is what Marceau’s most complete biography by Hippolyte Maze (25) claims. The city of Koblenz disagrees. They insist that the architect was Peter Joseph Krahe. Personally, I have no idea who is right, and, if I am honest, I am not sure it matters that much. Yes, if his friend Kléber, who also happened to be trained as an architect, had designed it, that would be touching. But whether it was friendship or municipal planning, the result is still a gigantic pyramid.
Exactly one year later, on 23 September 1797, Marceau’s body was exhumed, placed in an iron coffin, and carried to the Petersberg, where it was burned in the presence of the entire army, a specific wish expressed by Kléber. His ashes were collected in a marble urn engraved Hic cineres, ubique nomen (“Here the ashes, everywhere the name”). The urn was set inside the pyramid, right beside the remains of another young general who had died in September 1797 in Koblentz, Lazare Hoche (26), who by an irony of fate, had also had a decisive influence on the course of the war in the Vendée.
This is the monument that I visited in Koblentz.
As I mentioned, it is a large pyramid with a reclining lion at the front. The original relief was a trophy; the lion, meant to signal restrained strength, was added in 1855 by the sculptor Philipp Bohl (27). It is an impressive structure, perhaps slightly excessive for a man generally described as modest.
Each of the four sides of the pyramid carries an inscription. Most of them are in poor condition and half-consumed by moss. I tried to piece them together through a combination of staring at the stone for far too long and checking original sources.
The front is a dedication from his men and it reads:
Il vainquit dans les champs de Fleurus, sur les bords de l’Ourthe, de la Roer, de la Moselle et du Rhin. L’armée de Sambre et Meuse à son brave général Marceau.
In English: He was victorious on the fields of Fleurus, on the banks of the Ourthe, the Roer, the Moselle and the Rhine. The Army of Sambre and Meuse to its brave general, Marceau.
The left side is an elegy from his enemy, the man who held Marceau’s hand as he died:
Je voudrais qu’il m’en eût coûté quatre de mon sang et vous tinsse en santé mon prisonnier, quoique je sache que l’Empereur, mon maître, n’eût en ses guerres plus rude ni fâcheux ennemi.Alluding to the words of the Austrian general, Baron de Kray.
Roughly translated: I would have wished it had cost me four of my own men and that I might have kept my prisoner in good health, even though I know that the Emperor, my master, had in all his wars no harsher or more formidable enemy.
The right side is the most damaged. On the monument itself I could only make out fragments, but a period engraving preserves the full inscription. It recounts his death:
L’armée de Sambre et Meuse, après sa retraite de la Franconie, quittait la Lahn. Le général Marceau était chargé de couvrir les divisions qui défilaient sur Altenkirchen.Le 3e jour complémentaire de l’an IV (28) , il faisait ses dispositions au sortir de la forêt d’Höschbach lorsqu’il fut mortellement atteint d’une balle. On le transporta à Altenkirchen, où sa faiblesse obligea de l’abandonner à la générosité de ses ennemis. Il mourut entre les bras de quelques Français et des généraux autrichiens.
In English: The Army of Sambre and Meuse, after its retreat from Franconia, was leaving the Lahn. General Marceau had been tasked with covering the divisions as they marched toward Altenkirchen. On the third complementary day of Year IV (28), he was making his dispositions as he emerged from the forest of Höschbach when he was mortally struck by a bullet. He was transported to Altenkirchen, where his weakness made it necessary to leave him to the generosity of his enemies. He died in the arms of a few Frenchmen and Austrian generals.
Lastly, the back inscription, the least damaged and, in my view, the most pointed:
Ici repose Marceau, né à Chartres, département d’Eure-et-Loir, soldat à seize ans, général à vingt-deux ans. Il mourut en combattant pour sa patrie le dernier jour de l’an IV de la République française. Qui que tu sois, ami ou ennemi de ce jeune héros, respecte les cendres.
In English: Here lies Marceau, born at Chartres in the department of Eure-et-Loir, a soldier at sixteen, a general at twenty-two. He died fighting for his country on the last day of Year IV of the French Republic. Whoever you are, friend or enemy of this young hero, respect his ashes.
The man with lots of tombs
Sadly, his ashes were not really respected and ended up being divided more or less everywhere.
Understandably, one of Marceau’s companions in arms gave a portion of his ashes to Emira in 1798. She and her family kept them carefully in a small alabaster urn, and these are the only ashes we can actually account for. Emira gave a portion to Marceau’s fiancée, who may or may not have lost them. She also gave a portion to a friend who helped her secure a pension from Napoleon.
Less understandably, in 1804 thieves broke into the monument hoping to find silver coins or valuables (keeping it classy by robbing a dead man who was, in fact, broke). They overturned and emptied the marble urn, scattering Marceau’s ashes on the ground. The ashes were gathered up as carefully as one can gather ashes, and the urn was kept at the Koblenz prefecture until the imperial government ordered the monument repaired and the urn returned with the appropriate ceremony.
In 1819, the construction of new Prussian fortifications at Ehrenbreitstein required the monument to be moved. The stone pyramid was dismantled and rebuilt a short distance away near the main road. The main urn, and whatever ashes were meant to be inside it, vanished completely. As far as I have been able to find, no document ever bothered to explain what happened to it during the move.
When Emira died on 6 May 1834, she was buried with the ashes she still had. The portion she had given to her friend was later handed to the city of Chartres, which placed it in a cavity inside the statue erected to Marceau’s memory in 1851 on the Place des Épars.
On 25 July 1889, for the centenary of the Revolution, the box containing the ashes was removed from Emira’s tomb. On 10 August, together with the remains of Lazare Carnot (29), La Tour d’Auvergne (30), and Alphonse Baudin (31), the ashes of General Marceau were transferred to the PanthĂ©on (32) with great ceremony. They now rest in the same vault. He is the youngest person to be buried at the PanthĂ©on.Â
The last portion was in the possession of Marceau’s brother-in-law, Sergent-Marceau (33). Those ashes somehow ended up in the hands of the Musée de l’Armée in 1943 and were deposited at Les Invalides (34) in 1947.
So, in summary, half of Marceau is simply gone, and the other half is split between three places: his statue in Chartres, the Panthéon, and Les Invalides (potentially four, if the fiancée did not lose her share and it was passed down somewhere in the family, who knows). Which means what I saw in Koblenz is a cenotaph.
I am sure there is some neat cosmic metaphor in there about the unloved child who ends up either scattered to the wind or adopted by an entire nation and turned into an example. Unfortunately, I am not a philosopher, and I will spare you the attempt. You are free to extract your own symbolism.
That being said, if you have made it to the end of this essay, first of all, I am mildly impressed, and secondly, thank you. Thank you for reading about a man who did his job well regardless of the circumstances and who, in an environment defined by violence, tended to err on the side of restraint and compassion. If there is a lesson in Marceau’s life, it may simply be that decency is not automatically cancelled by the times one happens to live in.
Notes
(1) A Rhine frontier city at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine. In the early years of the Revolution, it became a well-known gathering point for aristocratic émigrés.
(2) French nobles (and other opponents of the Revolution) who fled abroad after 1789, often organising political and military opposition from border courts and refugee hubs.
(3) For those new to this blog, the Civil War in the Vendée refers to the counter-revolutionary insurrections in western France (1793–1796), driven by a mix of anti-conscription protest, religious conflict, and royalism. It was the largest counter-revolutionary movement of the period.
(4) Marie Jeanne Louise Françoise Suzanne Marceau Desgraviers (1753–1834), Marceau’s much older half-sister, who acted as a mother figure to him. She led a rather interesting life herself: married at sixteen to a much older man, she divorced him when the Revolution legalised divorce, and later married for love the engraver Antoine-François Sergent.
(5) The town-based citizen militia created in 1789, which in provincial centres like Chartres became both a security force and a key local political institution.
(6) Eure-et-Loir was one of the original departments created in 1790, with Chartres as its prefectural centre.
(7) France was at war with much of the European continent because the Revolution collided with established dynastic politics and monarchical solidarity.
(8) Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez (1739–1823), a Revolutionary general who commanded major armies in 1792–93 before defecting to the Austrians in 1793.
(9) Jean-François, Marie Goupilleau de Fontenay (1753–1823), Convention deputy and representative on mission, active with the Army of the Coasts of La Rochelle in 1793.
(10) Pierre Bourbotte (1763–1795), Convention deputy and representative on mission; one of the political commissioners attached to armies in the west.
(11) Jean-Baptiste Kléber (1753–1800), one of the Republic’s ablest generals. He fought in the Vendée in 1793, in the Army of the North from 1794 onward, and later became famous for the Egyptian campaign before being assassinated.
(12) François-Joseph Westermann (1751–1794), a hard-driving Revolutionary general prominent in the Vendée campaign; executed in Paris in 1794.
(13) Various sources attribute differing degrees of romance to this relationship. What we do know is that Marceau signed a certificate attesting that she was a good citizen and had voluntarily surrendered herself to him. It proved useless, as she was guillotined nonetheless.
(14) Most likely he had scabies (gale). “Scabies” refers to infestation by Sarcoptes scabiei, spread by close contact and notoriously common in crowded, impoverished conditions such as winter campaigning, prisons, and barracks. Older French sources often use gale, and medical writers also employed terms such as gale répercutée to describe a supposed “driven-in” form following misguided treatment (likely referring to complications arising from untreated or improperly treated scabies).
(15) Louis Charbonnier (1754–1833), Revolutionary general who commanded the Army of the Ardennes in 1794.
(16) The Sambre, a river running through northern France and Belgium, joining the Meuse at Namur; a major operational line during the 1794 campaign.
(17) The Battle of Fleurus (26 June 1794), a decisive French victory that helped secure the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium) for the Republic.
(18) Jean-Baptiste Jourdan (1762–1833), a highly capable commander of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and later closely associated with the Revolutionary conscription system.
(19) “Roër” commonly refers to the Rur River theatre in the Rhineland (fighting around crossings and towns such as Düren), and later also gave its name to the French département de la Roer (1797–1814).
(20) Paul Kray von Krajowa (1735–1804), a senior Habsburg commander in the Revolutionary Wars who repeatedly confronted French armies on the Rhine front.
(21) Jean-Victor Moreau (1763–1813), French general who commanded the Army of the Rhine and Moselle in 1796; later an opponent of Napoleon and mortally wounded while campaigning with the Allies in 1813.
(22) The Selz, a small river in Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany) flowing into the Rhine; part of the manoeuvre zone during the 1796 Rhine operations.
(23) Archduke Charles of Austria, Duke of Teschen (1771–1847), Austria’s most prominent commander of the Revolutionary era.
(24) “Mon ami, je ne suis plus rien.” in English: “My friend, I am nothing now.”
(25) Hippolyte Mazé (1839–1891), a nineteenth-century French writer and politician.
(26) Lazare Hoche (1768–1797), Revolutionary general who played a major role in suppressing the Vendée in 1796 and later commanded on the Rhine; he died in 1797 at the age of twenty-nine.
(27) Philipp Bohl, a nineteenth-century sculptor active in Koblenz.
(28) Le 3e jour complémentaire de l’an IV: The French Republican Calendar ended each year with five or six “complementary days.” Year IV’s third complementary day corresponds to 19 September 1796.
(29) Lazare Carnot (1753–1823), engineer and leading revolutionary statesman, member of the Committee of Public Safety, and central architect of wartime mobilisation policy.
(30) Théophile Malo Corret de La Tour d’Auvergne (1743–1800), celebrated infantry officer nicknamed the “First Grenadier of France,” killed in action in 1800.
(31) Alphonse Baudin (1811–1851), republican deputy killed on a Paris barricade while resisting Louis-Napoléon’s coup in December 1851; later memorialised as a republican martyr.
(32) The former church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, converted in 1791 into a state mausoleum for figures honoured for service to the nation.
(33) Antoine-François Sergent, known as Sergent-Marceau (1751–1847), engraver and Revolutionary politician; he married Émira Marceau and adopted the compound surname.
(34) The Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, founded under Louis XIV as a veterans’ hospital and home; it now houses major military institutions, including the Musée de l’Armée and national military memorial spaces.
