Auguste de Marmont Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont , 1st Duke of Ragusa ( 20 July 1774 – 22 March 1852 ) was a French General , nobleman and Marshal of France . Biography . Marmont was born at Châtillon - sur - Seine , the son of an ex - officer in the army who belonged to the petite noblesse and adopted the principles of the Revolution . His love of soldiering soon showed itself , and his father took him to Dijon to learn mathematics prior to entering the artillery , and there he made the acquaintance of Napoleon Bonaparte , which he renewed after obtaining his commission when he served in Toulon . The acquaintance ripened into intimacy ; Marmont became General Bonaparte ' s " aide - de - camp " , remained with him during his disgrace and accompanied him to Italy and Egypt , winning distinction and promotion to general of brigade . In 1799 he returned to Europe with his chief ; he was present at the " coup d ' état " of the 18th Brumaire , and organized the artillery for the expedition to Italy , which he commanded with great effect at Marengo . For this he was at once made general of division . In 1801 he became inspector - general of artillery , and in 1804 grand officer of the Legion of Honour , but was greatly disappointed at being omitted from the list of officers who were made marshals . In 1805 he received the command of a corps , with which he did good service at Ulm . He was then directed to take possession of Dalmatia with his army , and occupied the Republic of Ragusa . For the next five years he was military and civil governor of Dalmatia , and traces of his beneficent régime still survive both in great public works and in the memories of the people . In 1808 he was made duke of Ragusa . In the War of the Fifth Coalition , he defeated an Austrian holding force in the Dalmatian Campaign of May 1809 and captured the opposing commander . Breaking out of Dalmatia , he reached Ljubljana ( Laibach ) in early June . After he drubbed Ignaz Gyulai ' s corps in the Battle of Graz , Napoleon summoned the XI Corps to Vienna . He arrived in time to fight in the Battle of Wagram on 5 and 6 July . In the subsequent pursuit of Archduke Charles , Marmont got his corps into a difficult spot and was bailed out only by the arrival of Napoleon with heavy reinforcements . Napoleon made him a Marshal of France , though he said , " Between ourselves , you have not done enough to justify entirely my choice . " Of the three marshals created after Wagram , the French soldiers said , MacDonald is France ' s choice < br > Oudinot is the army ' s choice < br > Marmont is friendship ' s choice . He was appointed governor - general of all the Illyrian provinces of the empire . In July 1810 Marmont was hastily summoned to succeed Masséna in the command of the French army in the north of Spain . His relief of Ciudad Rodrigo in the autumn of 1811 in spite of the presence of the British army was a great feat , and in the manoeuvring which preceded the battle of Salamanca he had the best of it . But Wellington more than retrieved his position in the battle , and inflicted a severe defeat on the French . Marmont and his deputy commander Comte Jean - Pierre François Bonet were both struck by shrapnel very early in the battle . Marmont was gravely wounded in the right arm and side and command of the battle passed to Bertrand Clausel . He retired to France to recover . In April 1813 Napoleon gave him the command of a corps , which he led at the battles of Lützen , Bautzen and Dresden . He then fought throughout the great defensive campaign of 1814 until the last battle before Paris , from which he fought a skilful fighting retreat drawing back his forces to the commanding position of Essonne and inflicting high casualties on the enemy . Marmont then took upon himself a political role , seeking to halt what he now saw as a pointless prolonging of a war which France would now assuredly lose . Marmont contacted the Allies and reached a secret agreement with them . As the Allies closed on Montmartre , Marmont — together with marshals Mortier and Moncey — marched to a position where they were quickly surrounded by Allied troops and then surrendered their forces , as had been agreed . Bourbon Service . Marmont stayed loyal to the restored Bourbon king Louis XVIII during the Hundred Days , and following Waterloo voted in favour of the execution of Marshal Ney . He was made a peer of France and a major - general of the royal guard , and in 1820 a knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit and a grand officer of the Order of St Louis . He was the major - general of the guard on duty in July 1830 during the July Revolution , and was ordered to put down with a strong hand any opposition to the ordinances . Himself opposed to the court policy , he yet tried to do his duty , and only gave up the attempt to suppress the revolution when it became clear that his troops were outmatched . This brought more obloquy upon him , and the Duke d ' Angoulême even ordered him under arrest , saying : Marmont accompanied the king into exile and forfeited his marshalate . His desire to return to France was never gratified and he wandered in central and eastern Europe , settling finally in Vienna , where he was well received by the Austrian government , and , strange to say , made tutor to the duke of Reichstadt , the young man who had once for a few weeks been styled Napoleon II . Despite his long friendship with Napoleon , by this time the verb " raguser " — derived from his title , the Duke of Ragusa — was a household word in France : it meant " to betray " . He died at Venice in March 1852 , the last living Napoleonic Marshal . Works . In his last years , Marmont spent much of his time working on his " Mémoires " , which are of great value for the military history of the time . His works are : Family . Marmont had married , in 1798 , Hortense de Perregaux , the daughter of Jean - Frédéric Perregaux , a Swiss ( and Protestant ) banker , later a founder and regent of the Banque de France , and Adélaïde de Praël de Surville , herself the natural daughter of the banker to the court of Louis XV , Nicolas Beaujon . They had no children and were divorced in 1817 . She outlived him by five years , dying in Paris in 1857 .