Étienne - Charles de Damas - Crux Étienne - Charles , duke of Damas - Crux ( 10 February 1754 , château de Crux , Nivernais region - 29 May 1846 , Paris ) was a French soldier and politician . He derived from one of France ' s oldest noble families , the House of Damas - he was the last son of Louis Alexandre de Damas , count of Crux ( died 1763 ) and his wife Marie - Louise ( 1712 - 1796 ) , daughter of François - Charles , marquis of Menou ( 1671 - 1731 ) . He became a brigadier des armées du roi and was received into the Knights of Malta . Life . Early service . Étienne - Charles joined the régiment de Limousin - infanterie as a sous - lieutenant on 22 February 1770 and rose to captain in the same regiment on 5 May 1772 . He made second in command of the régiment d ' Aquitaine on 3 October 1779 and fought with that regiment on all its campaigns in the East Indies during the American War of Independence . He was also put in command of a sepoy regiment and when one day this unit panicked and fled , Damas - Crux remained on the battlefield almost alone and was finally overrun and captured . Peace was concluded between France and Britain soon after his capture , enabling him to return to France , where he became a mestre - de - camp , commanding the régiment de Vexin - infanterie in 1784 . Revolution . On the French Revolution , Damas - Crux backed the king and emigrated - part of the Vexin - infanterie came to join him from the principality of Monaco and these men fought under his command in the 1792 campaign . In 1793 he raised the émigre ' Légion de Damas ' , leading it on the campaigns that year in the Netherlands . When the French Revolutionary Army invaded the Netherlands , the legion passed into British pay . The unit wished to land in western France , but this led to its infantry being largely destroyed on 21 July year III during the Quiberon expedition . In 1796 Damas - Crux concluded a surrender with the prince de Condé that allowed Damas - Crux to form a squadron of hussars out of the remains of his legion - he then commanded this squadron as part of the armée de Condé . In 1795 Louis XVIII ( or the count of Artois ) had promoted Damas - Crux to maréchal - de - camp . He followed Condé ' s army to Poland in 1801 and he and Condé joined the Russian army the following year . Damas - Crux was duke of Angoulême ' s attaché in Russia , as first gentleman of the chamber , and accompanied him from Mittau to join Condé ' s army , then to Warsaw and finally to England . In 1799 he married Anne - Félicité - Simone ( Paris , 15 January 1772 - Paris , 25 January 1848 ) , daughter of Armand , duke of Sérent , peer of France , governor of the royal château de Rambouillet , knight of the king ' s orders , former governor of the dukes of Angoulême and Berry and former president of the nobility in the Estates of Brittany . Bourbon Restoration . He finally returned to France in March 1814 with the Coalition armies and joined the duke of Angoulême in his trip to the Midi , " helping him in his counsels and his arms " on all occasions . On the following 21 March ( or 22 June ) he was made lieutenant - général des armées du Roi and on 22 August 1814 a knight grand cross of the Order of Saint Louis . He initially accompanied the Duke of Angoulême during the Hundred Days . He was sent to Toulouse as a king ' s commissioner alongside the baron of Vitrolles , but was arrested by order of de Laborde and conducted to the Spanish frontier . He then rejoined the Duke of Angoulême in Madrid , from which he was sent to Tolosa and Irun to enlist French Royalists there . De Damas - Crux entered Bayonne on 25 July , escorted by 1 , 800 Basques who he had recruited . He had refused all help from the Spanish general Enrique José O ' Donnell , who had offered to put his force under de Damas - Crux ' s orders . After Napoleon ' s defeat , de Damas - Crux was made governor of the 11th and 20th military divisions and commander of the armée des Pyrénées occidentales . On 17 July 1815 he was made a peer of France , voting for the death sentence for Michel Ney . On 3 February 1816 he was made a duke in return for his services during the Napoleonic Wars and took an oath to obey the royal court at that rank on 19 February . He was made a knight of the king ' s orders in Paris on 5 February 1824 , taking this up formally on 14 May 1826 . On 26 September 1815 he was replaced as commander of the 11th military division by the duc de Gramont , moving instead to the 25th division ( Corsica ) and then on 10 January 1816 to the 2nd military division . In March 1816 the duke of Angoulême gave him various missions in the Midi , which he completed - the measures he took , however , undermined the royal family ' s in that area . De Damas - Crux retired from the upper chamber after the July Revolution , after remaining faithful to the old government and refusing to take an oath to obey the new one . He retired from the army at the rank of lieutenant general on 30 June 1832 and died in Paris fourteen years later . He and his wife had no issue so the Damas - Crux branch ( the oldest branch of the house of Damas ) died out with him - he had taken measures to be succeeded in the peerage by Alexandre de Damas , but since Étienne - Charles had been dismissed from the peerage for refusing to take the oath to Louis Philippe his heir could not sit in the house of peers .