page_title: Pierre Cambronne
section_title: The hundred days and Waterloo
hierarchical_section_title: Pierre Cambronne / The hundred days and Waterloo
context_page_description: Pierre Jacques Étienne Cambronne, later Pierre, 1st Viscount Cambronne, was a general of the First French Empire. A main strategist of the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars, he was wounded at the Battle of Waterloo.
context_section_description: He became major of the Imperial Guard in 1814, and accompanied Napoléon into exile to the island of Elba, where he was a military commander. He then returned with Napoléon to France on 1 March 1815 for the Hundred Days, capturing the fortress of Sisteron (5 March), and was made a Count by Napoléon when they arrived at Paris. Cambronne was seriously wounded at the Battle of Waterloo and was taken prisoner by the British. He subsequently married the nurse who cared for him.
  The exact circumstances of his surrender to the British are disputed. At the battle's conclusion, Cambronne was commanding the last carré (section) of the Old Guard when General Colville called on him to surrender. According to a journalist named Rougement, Cambronne replied: "La garde meurt mais ne se rend pas !" ("The Guard dies but does not surrender!"). These words were often repeated and put on the base of a statue of Cambronne in Nantes after his death. 
  Other sources reported that Colville insisted and ultimately Cambronne replied with one word: "Merde!" (literally, "Shit!", figuratively, "Go to hell!") This version of the reply became famous in its own right, becoming known as le mot de Cambronne ("the word of Cambronne") and repeated in Victor Hugo's account of Waterloo in his novel Les Misérables and in Edmond Rostand's play L'Aiglon. The name Cambronne was later used as a polite euphemism ("What a load of old Cambronne!") and sometimes even as a verb, "cambronniser".
  Cambronne always denied both Rougement's account and the one-word response, stating that he could not have said such a thing and remained alive. A series of letters to The Times claimed that British Colonel Hugh Halkett, commanding the 3rd Hanoverian Brigade, captured Cambronne before he made any reply.
  "The Guard dies ..." statement has also been ascribed to General Claude-Etienne Michel. In July 1845 the sons of General Michel requested a royal decree stating that the words attributed to General Cambronne had in fact been said by their father, producing a number of witnesses and published historical works as evidence. The attribution was left undecided.
caption: Popular image of the 1820s illustrating the deeds of General Cambronne
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