page_title: Louis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart
section_title: In the émigré army
hierarchical_section_title: Louis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart / Life / In the émigré army
caption_attribution_description: Louis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart
context_page_description: Louis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart was a French general of the House of Rochechouart fighting in the Royalist, Imperial Russian and Bourbon armies of the Napoleonic Wars.
context_section_description: Aged 12, Louis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart joined the régiment de Mortemart, one of the émigré regiments raised after the rout of Condé's army in 1799.  Little by little these regiments' original aim of freeing France from the Revolution became subordinated to overall British strategy. The régiment de Mortemart was sent to Portugal to support an operation by the Portuguese army on its frontiers, faced with a French advance. In 1801 Louis-Victor-Léon fought in the Alemtejo campaign during the War of the Oranges. After 15 days in close contact near Abrantès, the Portuguese army (with the regiment attached) on one side and the Franco-Spanish army on the other both retired without a single shot being fired. Peace was signed in Madrid under the aegis of Lucien Bonaparte. Having entered the regiment as an ensign, the comte de Rochechouart was a sous-lieutenant by the time the regiment was dissolved in 1802. Aged 14, he returned to Paris, where for 2 years he spent his fortune on the pleasures in the capital. In 1804 he tried to get to Russia, where he had traced his mother and brother. With no money, he travelled in fantastical fashion, financing his trip in part by wins at the Milan casino. He was miraculously reunited with a relation in Vienna, who helped him get to Poland, where he found his mother in 1805. From there they traveled to the Crimea, where the countess of Rochechouart and her son were living. The reunions were short-lived, however - she died a few weeks later. Louis-Victor-Léon was thus taken in by his uncle the duke of Richelieu, governor of Odessa, over time becoming his adoptive son.
caption: The comte de Rochechouart, during his service in the Russian Army
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