[331] Henri Amédée Mercure Comte de Turenne (1776-1852) was an officer in the King's Regiment, when the Revolution broke out. He refused to emigrate and wished to continue his military service, but was imprisoned as a suspect under the Terror and not released until the 9 Thermidor, when he served in the Army of the Western Pyrenees. The decree of 1794 against the nobles obliged him to leave the army; he remained in private life until the proclamation of the Empire, when he was one of the first to rally to the new power. He held various offices in Napoleon's Civil and Military Households, and was created a count of the Empire in 1813. Turenne was present at Napoleon's leave-taking at Fontainebleau, but failed to obtain leave to accompany the Emperor to Elba. Louis XVIII. made him a knight of St. Louis and a sub-lieutenant in the Grey Musketeers. Under the Hundred Days, he resumed his service with Napoleon, who made him a peer, and fought at Ligny and Waterloo, where he made desperate efforts against the English Guards. The Second Restoration deprived him of his titles and functions, but received him into favour in 1829. Turenne, however, sided with the Monarchy of July, and was again created a peer of France by Louis-Philippe. He was smitten with blindness a few years later, and ended his days in retirement—B.
[332] Jacques Antoine Manuel (1775-1827), a noted orator and advocate. He opposed the monarchy throughout the Restoration, and in 1823 was expelled by force from the Chamber of Deputies. Manuel was not re-elected. He remained a popular hero, and his body was followed to the grave by over 100,000 persons.—T.
[333] 22 June 1815.—B.
[334] Nicolas Marie Baron Quinette (1762-1821) had been a member of the Convention voting for the death of the King, and Minister of the Interior to Napoleon (1799), who made him a baron of the Empire. In 1814, he adhered to the Restoration, and was created a peer of France, but returned to the Emperor during the Hundred Days, and at the Second Restoration was banished as a relapsed regicide.—T.
[335] General Paul Comte Grenier (1768-1827) served with distinction in the wars of the Revolution and the Empire. He was vice-president of the Chamber in 1815 and, under the Second Restoration, sat as a deputy from 1813 to 1822.—B.
[336] General Horace François Bastien Comte Sébastiani de La Porta (1775-1851), one of Napoleon's most intrepid cavalry generals. He accepted the Restoration in 1814, but returned to Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and was left without employment under the Second Restoration. He sat as a Corsican deputy from 1816 to 1824 and 1826 to 1830, sitting in the Extreme Left and maintaining an active opposition to the Government Under Louis-Philippe, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1830 to 1833, and subsequently Ambassador to Naples (1834) and London (1835-1840). On his return from the latter embassy he was created a marshal. His last years were clouded over by the assassination of his daughter, the Duchesse de Praslin, by her husband (17 August 1847).—T.
[337] Louis Gustave Le Doulcet, Comte de Pontécoulant (1764-1853), had, as a member of the Convention, resisted the excesses of 1793 and was outlawed and fled to Zurich. He returned after the Terror and filled various military and diplomatic offices under Napoleon, who created him a count (1808). Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France, and for over thirty years he took a prominent part in the work of the House of Peers.—T.
[338] Vide the Works of Napoleon, vol. I., the last pages.—Author's Note.
[339] Auguste Charles Joseph Comte de Flahaut de La Billarderie (1785-1870), a peer of the Hundred Days, a peer of France from 1831 to 1848, a senator of the Second Empire, Ambassador to London from 1860 to 1862, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour from 1861 to 1870. Flahaut was a general of division in 1813, at the age of twenty-eight. He died on the 1st of September 1870, on the day of the disaster of Sedan, and did not behold the fall of the dynasty to which he was attached by intimate and secret affections. The Duc de Moray, natural brother to Napoleon III., was his son.—B.
[340] Charles Angélique François Huchet, Comte de La Bédoyère (1786-1815), served with distinction under Napoleon and became a colonel at the age of 26. After the first abdication, his family obtained for him the Cross of St. Louis and the command of the 7th Regiment of the Line. Nevertheless he was the first colonel to join Napoleon with his regiment after the return from Elba. The Emperor made him a general and raised him to the peerage (2 June 1815). After the second abdication, La Bédoyère was arrested, tried by court-martial for treason, and shot (19 August 1815) in the twenty-ninth year of his age.—T.