Tag: Quartermaster
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Guard Grenadier Philippe Ballut at Lützen and Bautzen, 1813 …
In the evening, with the 2nd Grenadier Regiment occupying the ground on a plateau, the soldiers sighted the town of Lützen, with its round bell tower and a tall belfry tower dominating the large tile roofed buildings. The French cavalry had already entered the town to capture a few stragglers. It was known that Blücher…
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Correspondence from Charleroi conscripts under Napoleon (II) …
Letters from Pierre-Joseph Guilbert to his father Pierre-Joseph Guilbert was born in Jumet on 18 March 1781. He was the son of Charles and Marie Perony. A conscript of the Year IX (1800), he became a fusilier in the 5th Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 94th Line Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division of the…
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Letters of Désiré Trefcon, quartermaster in the 22nd Dragoons – 1806-1807
Désiré Trefcon was conscripted in Year VII and initially served with his brothers Pierre-Antoine and Toussaint-Jean in the 15th Demi-Brigade. Due to his frail health and poor tolerance of arduous stages, he was almost constantly assigned to the depot companies. He had therefore remained in Bitche (Moselle Department) during the brilliant campaign of 1800. Eager…
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Two letters of beau sabreur Jean-Baptiste Guindey, 1805-1807 …
Guindey, who was born on 12 April 1785 at Laruns in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, was a French quartermaster in the 10th Regiment of Hussars during the Napoleonic Wars. He is reputed to have killed Prince Louis-Ferdinand of Prussia in single combat at the battle of Saalfeld in 1806. He would find his death as a lieutenant…
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Imperial decrees related to POWs, desertion and call to arms, 1806-1814
Year 1806 (N° 1,167) – IMPERIAL DECREE relating to the prosecution of offences committed by prisoners of war. At the Imperial headquarters at Brünn, 17 Frimaire. NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH, KING OF ITALY, HAS DECREED and HEREBY DECREES the following: Art. 1. Offences committed by prisoners of war throughout our Empire are under the…
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Second Lieutenant Zickel’s letters from Spain, 1808-1809 …
Here we have François-Joseph Zickel, an officer in the 10th Regiment of Chasseurs à Cheval, after nine years’ service and almost as many campaigns. His ‘new epaulette’ received its baptism of fire at Friedland on 14 June 1807. Then, after the peace of Tilsit and a few months’ well-earned rest, the two Zickel brothers moved…
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The plight of an officer in the train (transport logistics), 1812-1813
Here are the ‘Recollections’ of Nicolas Nottat, brigadier in the Train Regiment. This account was published the first time in June 1939 in the ‘Revue d’Histoire’, by the Reserve Captain Pierre Arnoult. A second publication dates from October 1953 in the ‘Revue du Train’ at the initiative of Mr. Péchon, President of the Train Cadets…
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Memoirs of a Dutch cavalry officer at Waterloo …
Heuvingh recounts his time serving in the 4th Regiment of Dutch-Belgian Light Dragoons in the 1815 campaign … … Hardly had the Dutch government been informed that Napoleon, in March 1815, had escaped from the island of Elba and returned to France, when the various military corps soon received orders to advance to the southern…