page_title: Jean Léchelle
section_title: La Tremblaye and Cholet
hierarchical_section_title: Jean Léchelle / Army command / La Tremblaye and Cholet
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Général Rossignol (1759-1802)
context_page_description: Jean Léchelle or Jean L'Échelle briefly commanded a French army during the French Revolutionary Wars. Having served in the French Royal Army as a youth, the outbreak of the French Revolution found him employed as a fencing master. He was elected to lead a volunteer National Guard battalion which fought at Valmy and Jemappes in 1792. He earned promotion to general officer after distinguishing himself at the Siege of Valenciennes and saving a representative from an angry mob. He won such favor with the politicians and the war office that he was rapidly catapulted into command of an army in the War in the Vendée. After the capable battalion leader demonstrated his total unfitness for the post of army commander, he was just as quickly arrested and thrown into prison where he died, a probable suicide.
context_section_description: In early October 1793, as the French were about to launch a new offensive, Canclaux was suspended from command of the Army of the Coasts of Brest and du Bayet was also removed from his post. The dismissals were brought about by the scheming of Charles-Philippe Ronsin who convinced the minister of war Jean Baptiste Noël Bouchotte that Canclaux and du Bayet were responsible for the lack of success. A protégé of Bouchotte, Léchelle was called to be commander-in-chief of the Army of the West on 30 September. He had been promoted to general of division at about the same time. The new army took over the troops of the Army of the Coasts of La Rochelle, which was formerly led by Jean Antoine Rossignol, plus the Army of Mayence. On 6 October Rossignol went to command the Army of the Coasts of Brest. Léchelle was officially in command from 6 October. He was with the La Rochelle division at first and Kléber served as the interim commander of the Nantes and Mayence divisions in his absence. Leaving the La Rochelle division in charge of Alexis Chalbos, Léchelle assumed command from Kléber on 9 October.
  The Committee of Public Safety believed Léchelle combined "audacity with the necessary talents to end the war". Unfortunately, he turned out to be worse than Rossignol who, though brave, was generally understood to be incompetent. When Léchelle arrived at headquarters at Montaigu, Kléber placed a map in front of him and explained the strategy of his predecessor Canclaux. Without bothering to glance at the map, Léchelle replied, "On this terrain it is a question of display. One must march majestically and in mass". As Kléber quietly put away the map, the representative Antoine Merlin de Thionville declared that the government was appointing the most ignorant generals possible. After discussion, it was agreed that the Nantes and Mayence divisions would continue to march from the west toward Cholet where it would meet converging columns from Luçon and Les Sables d'Olonne in the south and from Bressuire in the east. After starting at La Châtaigneraie, Chalbos and François Joseph Westermann devastated the countryside as far as Bressuire where they were joined by columns from Saumur and Thouars, making a body of 20,000 soldiers.
  On 14 October 1793, Léchelle ordered the Luçon column to march through Mortagne-sur-Sèvre to make contact with the advance guard of the Mayence division under Michel de Beaupuy. A blundering staff officer failed to notify Beaupuy of the intended junction and the Luçon division marched into a Vendean ambush. After its commander was hit, François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers took charge of the column and fought off the Vendeans in the Battle of La Tremblaye on 15 October. Beaupuy marched to the guns and helped repulse the rebels whose leader Louis Marie de Lescure was badly wounded.
  The Vendean army evacuated Cholet the following day and it was occupied by 22,000 Republicans with 30 guns. Kléber deployed the troops of Beaupuy and Nicolas Haxo on the left, the Luçon division in the center under Marceau and Louis Antoine Vimieux's men on the right. During the early hours of the morning, 9,000 troops under Chalbos and François Muller arrived from the east. On 17 October 41,000 Vendeans attacked in the Battle of Cholet. Charles de Bonchamps and Maurice d'Elbée assaulted the center with 14,000 rebels while Henri de La Rochejaquelein and Jean-Nicolas Stofflet attacked the flanks. Beaupuy's division was driven back and 12 guns were lost, but Marceau and Vimieux both held their ground against desperate assaults. No sooner did Muller's 4,000-man division appear on the field than it panicked and fled. Finally, the reserve helped Beaupuy's division defeat the Vendeans in front of him. The Vendeans mounted a last gasp assault which failed and Bonchamps and Elbée were both shot down. The defeated army retreated north to Beaupréau that evening. Though Léchelle was nominally in command, Kléber wrote the battle dispatch. The Republicans suffered 4,000 killed and wounded while the Vendeans sustained 8,000 casualties.
caption: Léchelle proved to be worse than the inept Jean Antoine Rossignol.
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