François Descatoire

Flag of France (1794-1815)

Flag of France (1814-1830)

Kingdom of France (1814-1815, 1815-1824)

Armée du Nord (1815)

1815 (Armée du Nord)

### Regiment/Battalion

24th Light Infantry Regiment (1804-1807, 1812)17th Light Infantry Regiment (1807-1809)

7th Voltigeur Regiment (1813-1814)

11th Light Infantry Regiment (1815)

### Brigade

1st Brigade (1804-1809, 1812, 1815)2nd Brigade (1813-1814)

### Division

2nd Division (1804-1807)3rd Division (1807-1809)

10th Division (1812)

1st Division (1813-1814)

7th Division (1815)

### Commands Held

1st Battalion, 7th Voltigeur Regiment (1813-1814)1st Battalion, 11th Light Infantry Regiment (1815)

### Battles and Wars

War of the Third Coalition- Bavaria and Moravia 1805

War of the Fourth Coalition

- Saxony 1806

- Poland and East Prussia 1807

War of the Fifth Coalition

- Bavaria and Austria 1809

Peninsular War

- Northern Spain 1808-1809

- Portugal and Western Spain 1810-1811

Invasion of Russia

- Russia 1812

War of the Sixth Coalition

- Germany 1813

- Northeast France 1814

War of the Seventh Coalition

- Belgium 1815

Invasion of Spain

- Spain 1823

### Parents

Gilbert Hyppolite Georges Jean-Patrice Descatoire (1750-1818)Beatrice Marie Josephine d’Hérault (1755-1819)

### Children

Claude-Nöel Descatoire (1825-1892)

**François Michel Jean-Baptiste Descatoire, 12th Marquis de Beaucouzé** (1781-1871) was a French officer of the Napoleonic Wars, who served in the Grand Armée's light infantry with distinction in several of Napoleon's major campaigns from 1804 to 1815.

## Early life and family

François Michel Jean-Baptiste Descatoire was born on April 7, 1781, at his parents’ estate just outside the city of Angers in western France. His father, Gilbert Hyppolite Georges Jean-Patrice Descatoire (1750-1818), was the eleventh Marquis de Beaucouzé, a title granted to the family during the reign of Henry III. His mother, Beatrice Marie Josephine d’Hérault (1755-1819), was from another locally prominent family.

François, the middle child of three brothers, was educated by a private tutor in Paris, where he was given a front-row seat to witness the drama of the French Revolution unfold. Coming of age in the city, he made company with other idealistic young men who supported the radical measures taken by the National Assembly towards equality. Yet whenever he journeyed home, he would hear his noble family’s anxieties over the new changes to their way of life.

### French Revolution

The Revolution split the Descatoire family along several lines. Many emigrated, a few supported the Revolution, but most attempted to adapt to the new ways and to keep their heads down, lest they lose them. Facing financial ruin, the family sold their estate and moved into modest dwellings in Paris. Claude-Noël, the eldest of the three brothers, was conscripted into the Army; he would be killed at Neerwinden in 1793.

Even as he mourned the loss of his older brother, François Descatoire began to take an interest in military matters, especially the campaigns of France’s hero of the hour. Stories of General Napoleon Bonaparte’s victories filled the pages of Paris’s newspapers. It seemed to Descatoire that the chaos and uncertainty was finally being resolved as Bonaparte seized power and became First Consul; the Revolution’s progress had been solidified, its abuses had ended, and the nation was once again united around one figure.

## Military service

### War of the Third Coalition

In 1802, Descatoire entered the new École Militaire in Fontainebleau, graduating in 1804 in the middle of his class. As a newly-minted sous-lieutenant, his first posting was to the 24th Light Infantry Regiment, stationed at Boulogne for a potential invasion of England. During the 1805 campaign, Descatoire fought with the 24th at Donauwörth, Memmingen, and Austerlitz, where it was part of General Vandamme’s attack up the Pratzen Heights that broke the Russian line.

For much of 1806, Descatoire was concerned with a personal errand. His uncle, Jerome d’Hérault, had been the owner of a substantial estate near Fourchambault on the banks of the Loire, before he had emigrated to England with his wife and children. Since then, the estate had been allowed to decay. Sensing an opportunity, Descatoire worked out a deal with the estate’s present owners that would allow him to pay for the land in installments while he fixed it up. Using every spare moment he had, Descatoire got to work renovating and refurbishing the manor house. The idea was to make a place for his now-ailing parents that befitted the aristocratic lifestyle they had so recently had to do away with, and then live there himself once he was able to get married.

### War of the Fourth Coalition

His plans were interrupted by the outbreak of war with Prussia, and the 24th Light marched off into Saxony to face the Prussian Army. Descatoire got his share of the glory at Jena, where he and a detachment captured a Prussian battery, and during the pursuit. Yet the soaring victory of the autumn of 1806 bogged down in the freezing mud of northern Poland, as the Russians moved once again to support their Coalition partners. During the frozen slaughter of Eylau, in which the 24th Light was among the first to attack the town, Descatoire received a nasty cut on the side of his face from a Russian curassier’s saber, and contracted hypothermia as an extra bonus. From a vantage point in a half-destroyed house, Descatoire watched in horror as the battle unfolded, witnessing the soldiers of VII Corps be mowed down by the thousands. The trial of Eylau shook Descatoire to his core, and the man who was previously known for his affability and generosity became bitter and quick to anger.

During one winter night, Descatoire overheard a lieutenant slandering the Descatoire family to the other officers. This was not merely a jab at the émigré members of the family, but the family itself. A particularly nasty statement about his mother, Beatrice, caused Descatoire to fly into a rage and challenge the officer to a duel. The regimental colonel attempted to stop the duel from taking place, but to no avail. In a frozen Polish field, Descatoire wounded the offending officer with a pistol shot that fractured a rib. The officer, as it turned out, was the son of the colonel. Sous-Lieutenant Descatoire’s association with the 24th Light ended, for now, with an ignominious transfer out to the 17th Light, of Marshal Lannes’ V Corps. The 17th found itself right in the middle of the Russian offensive at Friedland, holding the line until the main army could reinforce and deliver the Russians a crushing blow.

The commander of the 17th was so impressed with Descatoire’s performance that he recommended him for promotion to lieutenant, replacing an officer of that rank that had been killed during the battle. After a chance to rest during the events at Tilsit, which improved his health and temperament in equal measure, Descatoire took some much-needed time off to tend to his family and continue the project at the estate. In Paris, he met Therese Loutherbourg, the daughter of one of his mother’s friends, and the two became engaged to one another. However, the French Empire’s hard-won peace was not to stay for long.

### Peninsular War: Invasion

The 17th Light was again called upon for Napoleon’s invasion of Spain to put down the rebellion of Dos de Mayo. In late 1808, they crossed the border and routed the Spanish forces at Gamonal, near Burgos, driving them west into Galicia. However, it was clear that this was a new type of warfare that the Grande Armee was facing in Spain. Guerrillas harassed the army’s lines of supply and communication, and the French cracked down hard on the civilian population when such partisan raids occurred. The nature of the dirty, unglamorous, and intensely personal war in Spain appalled even such a veteran officer as Descatoire, and although he tried to moderate his men’s conduct as well as he could, many acts of reprisal, burnings, and lootings were still carried out under his command.

The 17th, part of Soult’s II Corps, pressed the Spanish and their British allies all the way to the coast, where Lieutenant Descatoire’s men led the attack at Corunna in January 1809. But the British evacuation could not be prevented, and a bad wound from a musket ball in his lower torso resulted in Descatoire being carried from the field as night fell.

During his recovery, Descatoire spent some time in newly-pacified Madrid, where he received the news that his fiancee had found a new lover and was breaking off the engagement. In addition to being surrounded by the chaotic situation in Spain, the news deeply depressed Descatoire. For several months, he did not answer his family’s letters, and had no wish to work on the estate.

### War of the Fifth Coalition

Descatoire did, however, have an opportunity to take his mind off things. In 1809, Austria was again on the march. The prospect of facing down an old enemy of the Empire in a stand-up, honorable fight was enough to cheer Descatoire up. He joined up with the 17th Light’s 4th Battalion in Bavaria, and marched to meet the Austrians head on. In the Four Days Campaign, Descatoire and his men won a series of rapid victories. But the Battle of Aspern-Essling, fought just outside the gates of Vienna itself, resulted in a bitter defeat. In addition to many of the 17th Light’s brave veterans, their commander Lannes was killed as well. It was a harsh lesson for an overconfident army, but it only stimulated the desire for revenge. At Wagram, Descatoire took part in the bloody but triumphant battle against the Austrians.

### Peninsular War: Continued

After four years’ service in a front line unit, and nearly a dozen major engagements under his belt, Lieutenant Descatoire was more than ready for a break. His service with the 17th Light ended shortly after the conclusion of the campaign on the Danube, and Descatoire was given a new assignment.

The city of Pau, in the shadow of the Pyrenees, was an important link in the supply chain that kept men and materiel flowing to the front lines in Spain. Thus, Descatoire’s job was to take charge of a supply depot, to guard it from theft and to keep track of the incoming and outgoing shipments of provisions, ammunition, and assorted war materiel. It was a far cry from leading light infantry on the attack, and Descatoire initially relished the chance to serve in a less dangerous capacity. Pau’s status as a vacation destination (in spite of its close proximity to an active warzone) meant that there was no shortage of interesting company for the lieutenant to meet and converse with. While on leave from his posting, Descatoire was finally able to complete the work on the manor, allowing his parents and younger brother to move into their new stately home.

In spite of his personal enjoyment of the posting, it was clear that Descatoire’s talents lay with the musket, not the quill. In 1810, he was offered a position on Marshal Ney’s staff. Ney’s VI Corps was about to go into action in Portugal, and the hard-fighting marshal wanted officers who wouldn’t shy away from action. In particular, Descatoire had a reputation for skill and courage. Feeling that he had had enough of a break, he accepted the position, and received a promotion to captain.

He was present at the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and had his hat shot through at Bussaco. However, the speed of the campaign in Portugal ground to a halt outside Lisbon, protected by the impenetrable Lines of Torres Vedras. Ney and his staff could only watch in frustration as autumn turned to winter, with miserable conditions and few provisions in the Portuguese countryside. The affair reminded Descatoire of the bitter winter in Poland, and it was a harbinger of things to come.

Present at French headquarters for the first time in his career, Captain Descatoire was on the front line of a different conflict: one between the marshals. Ney’s frustration with Marshal Masséna’s lackluster command resulted in a toxic atmosphere and occasional fiery outbursts. During the ignominious French retreat from the gates of Lisbon, this boiled over into open insubordination. Descatoire vocally supported Ney and believed his criticisms of Masséna to be valid. He was so outspoken that Masséna encouraged General Loison, VI Corps’ new commander, to dismiss him, but Loison refused. Descatoire remained in the service of General Loison, and served him well during the retreat. At Fuentes de Oñoro, the battle that capped off the Portuguese campaign, Descatoire was once again in the thick of the fighting and had his horse shot from under him.

The experience in Spain and Portugal had an effect on Descatoire. Fighting for the first time in a theater of war where the emperor was not in direct command, Descatoire was disappointed and disillusioned to see otherwise distinguished officers, men who he looked up to, bickering with one another. He also noted the unfavorable direction that France’s war in the Peninsula was taking, and wondered if, perhaps, the empire was reaching its limit. He kept these opinions well hidden, but they were to prove correct.

### Invasion of Russia

The old colonel of the 24th Light, whose loudmouthed son Descatoire had injured in their fateful duel, had been promoted out of his position and was replaced by the battalion commander that Descatoire had fought under at Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau. He needed good company commanders, and Descatoire ranked near the top of his list. With permission from General Loison, Descatoire accepted the post. He missed the light infantry, but after six years of active service, he could not muster the same enthusiasm that he had going off on campaign in 1805 and 1806.

In the summer of 1812, Napoleon’s Grande Armee was about to set off on its greatest undertaking yet: the invasion of Russia. Captain Descatoire, who had fought Russian soldiers at Austerlitz, Eylau, and Friedland, regarded them as tough fighters who ought to be respected, but nonetheless believed that the campaign would be a simple and decisive affair. With an army of over half a million strong led by the emperor himself, how could it not be? After saying goodbye to his parents and younger brother, Descatoire set off to join his regiment in Poland.

After crossing the Dnieper River, the 24th formed part of Napoleon’s main column, pushing deeper into Russian territory. The long marches in the oppressive summer heat were difficult on the men, even the veterans, and the poor supply situation and abundance of disease didn’t help. But it was the lack of a decisive encounter with the Russian armies that frustrated Descatoire more than anything.

Whenever he had a moment to spare, Descatoire took out his sketchbook that he had brought on campaign and filled it with drawings of the people he saw and the places he visited. For a man from western Europe, the towns of Lithuania, White Russia, and the Russian heartland were quite exotic. It also became clear that this foreign landscape and its people were as hostile to the French invader as those of Spain had been. Though they kept from attacking the main column, Descatoire’s men caught glimpses of Cossack horsemen and Russian peasant partisans, who wreaked havoc on the invasion force’s supply lines.

When the army came within sight of Smolensk, Captain Descatoire’s men saw their first action, hundreds of miles past the Russian border. They fought at Krasny and during the final assault on Smolensk itself, a brutal encounter that left thousands dead and a medieval city in ruins. Descatoire understood as well as any other that the Russians, fighting for their very homeland, were not going to be beaten so easily.

The Battle of Borodino, fought just outside of Moscow, saw some of the most savage fighting of the age. The 24th Light went forward against the fleche earthworks after Marshal Davout’s attack had ground to a standstill. Within the Russian positions, Descatoire’s men fought with bayonets, rifle butts, and even their bare fists. By the time the fleches were in French hands, Descatoire’s battalion had suffered close to 60% killed or wounded. He himself received a nasty gash from a Russian bayonet that might have killed him if it had been angled differently.

The Grande Armee entered the ancient city of Moscow without triumph or fanfare. What should have been a great victory was as hollow as the evacuated city’s houses and buildings. When the great fires erupted, Descatoire’s few able-bodied men fought to contain them, and dealt swiftly and harshly with anyone they suspected of lighting them.

The retreat from Moscow pushed Descatoire and his men to their breaking point, both physically and emotionally. As the temperature plummeted and food stores ran dry, the Russians stepped up their attacks. At Vyazma on November 3rd, the colonel of the regiment was killed, along with many of the soldiers. The battalion now numbered just over 100 fighting men.

When not marching or fighting Russian regulars, the remaining men of the 24th Light saw their numbers whittled away by hypothermia, desertion, and losses to Cossack raids. Things got worse when Marshal Ney’s III Corps, their parent formation, was ordered to take up the rearguard. In this desperate situation, III Corps was cut off by the Russians at Krasny and unable to break through. Descatoire, now leading only forty men from the 24th and several more from other units, took part in the night crossing of the Dnieper to escape the Russian trap. By the time Ney’s rearguard made it back to the army, the whole force numbered just 800 men.

Many years later, a number of French veterans would attribute their survival to a strong-willed captain from Maine-et-Loire. He took command of the situation, leading his mixed detachment in skirmishes with the cossacks, rationing food, ammunition, and water fairly, speaking powerful words of encouragement, and helping forward those who had lost the strength and will to go on. In one instance, he helped a struggling vivandière named Pauline Louise Quinet, who was attacked by a trio of stragglers for the food she was carrying. He killed one with a pistol shot, and sent the rest fleeing into the countryside. Many times when inspiring words would not cut it, Descatoire had to rely on the threat and subsequent application of violence to keep men in line.

The accolades would have to wait. Now, it was simply a struggle for survival. Nearly broken in mind, body, and spirit, Descatoire propelled himself forward out of sheer instinct and a desire to save French lives. At the Berezina, he was among the first to cross, and took part in the action to repel Chichagov’s attack. Finally, he was one of the last to cross the Niemen River into Poland in December. In his later life, he spoke of having stretched out a hand to help Marshal Ney himself cross the river.

There would be little rest for the survivors of the Russian debacle. As much as he wanted to go home in peace, he could not bring himself to lay down his arms while France was still at war. Over the past six months, he later wrote, he felt like he had aged sixteen years.

### War of the Sixth Coalition

The French Army which had marched into Russia was buried there. The next phase of the war would be fought by fresh young conscripts against France’s newly reinvigorated enemies. Experienced officers and men were in woefully short supply. Marshal Ney himself, who remembered Descatoire from Portugal and had fought side by side with him during the retreat, recommended that Descatoire be promoted to Chef de Battalion. Thus, Descatoire found himself in command of a battalion of the 7th Voltigeurs of the Young Guard. Now, he was finally among that celebrated body of men, but there was no cause for celebration just yet.

Descatoire’s young, inexperienced conscripts went into action that spring, fighting the Prussians to a standstill at Lützen and Bautzen, but at a high cost in casualties. They later fought at Dresden, driving the Austrians away in what was to be one of Napoleon’s last grand victories. At this point, Descatoire was disillusioned with the war and with Napoleon’s leadership. When was it all to end? Surely France could make peace with her honor intact after such a victory as Dresden. But the war was to continue. He showed a different side to his conscript soldiers, however. He extolled them to fight on for France and their emperor, to trust in final victory. He hoped that by saying such things, he would come to believe them too.

At the gigantic Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, the 7th Voltigeurs were initially held in reserve, but were eventually thrown into the fighting around Liebertwolkwitz on the southern flank. At a particularly desperate moment, Descatoire led a bayonet charge that threw the Austrians and Russians out of the village. Such acts of heroism were common on both sides, but the slaughter was to continue unabated over the next few days. On the third day of the fighting, the already battered 7th Voltigeurs were sent to bolster the defense of Probstheida, its houses ablaze from incendiary shells and under ferocious assault. Descatoire urged his men on as they repulsed two Prussian and Russian attacks before his mauled battalion was relieved by fresh guard units. On the last day, the survivors regrouped in Leipzig. During the final Allied assault on the city, they fled over the last bridge on the Elster and left the rearguard defenders to their fate. Descatoire and his men looked behind them in horror as the bridge was blown too early and a mass of men were driven into the river, to be shot point-blank, captured, or drowned.

At Hanau, the 7th did not go into action against the Bavarians, but a different Descatoire was among the men who did. His brother Bertrand, thirteen years his junior, had enlisted in the Guards of Honor, a special cavalry unit meant for sons of the old nobility. The elder Descatoire was surprised to see his younger brother on the field, and worried for his safety. The Descatoire family had lost one son to war, and now they might lose all three. Bertrand, however, was proud to go into action within such a distinguished unit, and admonished his older brother not to worry about him.

Descatoire might have been disillusioned with the emperor and the war, but the situation was different in 1814. Now, they were fighting on their home soil, defending France from invasion as did the heroes of Valmy 22 years ago. France might not survive the coming onslaught, but her honor would.

The men of the Young Guard who had survived the 1813 campaign had started as raw recruits just one year prior, but by now they were the army’s experienced veterans. The remaining ranks were filled with even younger, even greener conscripts. Descatoire did his level best to turn his battalion into a battle-ready unit during the few short weeks they had before the campaigning season, but he saw only mixed success.

The 7th Voltigeurs went into action at Brienne in January 1814, an indecisive affair that seemed to produce nothing but casualties for both sides. They were held in reserve at La Rothière, Napoleon’s first defeat on French soil. During what would come to be known as the Six Days’ Campaign, Marshal Ney’s Young Guard divisions would serve as Napoleon’s shock troops in the most tenacious campaign of the war.

Descatoire led his battalion into the fray as they smashed the Russians at Champaubert, drove in the Prussian line at Montmirail, and outflanked the Allies at Château-Thierry. These were stunning victories, achieved against a superior force in a short period of time. Descatoire was reminded of the crushing victories of Austerlitz and Jena, but the world no longer trembled at the emperor’s feet.

Pushing further north, Descatoire’s men took part in the assault on the Chemin des Dames at Craonne. Although they captured the ground, the victory was hollow in every way. The shrinking army could ill afford another 5,000 dead and wounded. On the second day of the disaster at Laon, the 7th fought a brief rearguard action, preventing Prussian cavalry from inflicting an even greater defeat on the battered French forces.

This action was to be the last fought by the 7th Voltigeurs, as Ney’s two Young Guard Corps were disbanded in the wake of the catastrophic losses of March 7-10. The 7th, which had suffered particularly heavily, was dissolved and its men were transferred to fill the gaps in other units. That, however, was not to be Descatoire’s fate. A battalion commander without a battalion, he was to go back to Paris along with several other officers to raise a force to defend the capital.

Paris was in chaos, a city under siege. Worse yet, the defenses were woefully inadequate. To defend France’s capital, all that remained were the National Guard, a few understrength regular units, citizens’ militias, and some ad-hoc units made up of invalided veterans. Descatoire himself, placed in charge of a National Guard battalion, worked on fortifying the approaches to the Montmartre Heights. Every day, he tried to train his men in preparation for the onslaught, and read the news of more and more French defeats in the fields along the Marne and Seine Rivers.

Equally depressing was the mood amongst the people of the capital. Following their well-deserved reputation for agitation against France’s rulers, the Parisian people grew increasingly restless and disaffected. Descatoire had two impossible tasks ahead of him: pacify internal discontent and prepare for external invasion. At one point, he led a detachment of trustworthy men from his battalion and stopped a mob from raiding one of the last remaining supply depots in the city, using the persuasive argument of the bayonet to disperse them. Some days later, they stopped another mob from lynching a public servant who worked for the Ministry of Police.

The news of the crushing defeat at Fère-Champenoise and the imminent arrival of the Allied armies brought the city into a state of even more frenzied panic. In the final few days before the impending attack, Descatoire’s National Guardsmen provided part of the escort for the Empress Marie-Louise and her son, along with most of the government. Descatoire himself caught a glimpse of the empress entering her carriage, and in one of his last few free moments, drew a picture of her in his sketchbook. A year and a half ago, France’s reach had once stretched from the Portuguese coast to Moscow. Now, they could not save Paris itself.

As Russian Imperial Guard infantry and grenadiers surged up the Montmartre Heights, Descatoire rallied his men for one final stand. It was a hopeless task. They fired the last of their ammunition and fell back into the city as night fell. Marshal Marmont ordered Paris’s surrender, and the last formations of French troops marched out of the capital to turn it over to the advancing enemy.

Now at Fontainebleau, the city where Descatoire had begun his military career ten years before, the former garrison of Paris stood to await Napoleon’s orders. The emperor wished to attack and retake the city, but his marshals refused to obey his orders. The surrender of Marshal Marmont’s corps was the last nail in the coffin for any hope for a French counteroffensive. By this point, Descatoire joined the chorus of voices calling for peace. There was no hope left for victory. France’s honor was more than intact, but her reserves were close to empty. What use was thousands more dead for one more hollow victory, if such a thing was even possible at the present moment?

### First Restoration

Once the emperor’s abdication took effect, the war was over. Descatoire later wrote that during those days, he felt directionless, unsure of what to do or where to go. The men of his National Guard battalion were sent home. He remained a regular army officer, still on the books. But what was to be France’s fate now? If the hated Bourbons had to return, he could only hope that they had taken the lessons of the Revolution to heart, and would act for the good of the nation.

For the first time in years, Descatoire was able to take leave, although he was now on half-pay. He visited his parents at the estate in Fourchambault. The previous month, a lone cossack horseman had attempted to pillage the estate, but, lacking the means to cart off anything large, had been satisfied in taking an ornate ceramic vase and a few items of silverware, without harming the occupants. Descatoire’s parents were relieved to see him alive and (relatively) well, and were equally happy to hear that Bertrand was unhurt as well, although he was not able to secure leave.

Descatoire’s parents were not the only family members he found himself reunited with. His uncle Jerome, whose abandoned estate he had refurbished, passed away in London in 1810, but his children had returned to France with the Bourbons in 1814. The eldest son, Henri-Julien d’Hérault, met his cousin in Paris and demanded compensation for the lost estate. The Descatoire family, then living on their son’s officer’s pay, did not have much to give. Descatoire himself refused to pay anything to a man he privately regarded as a traitor and whose possessions had become forfeit when he left them behind. The matter almost went to court, before Gilbert Descatoire and the estate’s former owners agreed to pay a reduced settlement to the d’Héraults. Relations with Henri-Julien’s sister, Léonore, were much less frosty. In September 1814, she used her connections in Versailles to get her cousin back on full pay.

Descatoire had hoped that the returning Bourbons would see the situation in France for what it was, and would avoid the mistakes that had caused a revolution to break out in the first place. It was not to be. Descatoire looked on from his barracks in frustration as King Louis XVIII’s ministers rolled back one change after the other, evidently intent on returning the country to its pre-1789 status quo.

### War of the Seventh Coalition

As if right on cue, the news of Napoleon’s dramatic escape from Elba electrified the country. Descatoire’s excitement over the emperor’s return was tempered by his worries about a possible civil war and his oath to the king. But when Napoleon entered Paris against virtually no resistance and the Bourbon court fled the country in March 1815, Descatoire considered his oath voided and his honor intact.

Already, the Coalition was reforming and France’s enemies were on the march once again. Descatoire sent a series of letters to his former commanders, including Marshal Ney, requesting a field command of some sort. Soon, he was to be back at his best, leading into battle the 1st Battalion of the 11th Light Infantry, part of the 7th Division, II Corps in the Army of the North.

The Army of the North was a curious organization, unlike either the Grande Armee of Austerlitz or the one of Borodino. There were veterans scattered throughout, and the army was well-supplied and outfitted. Spirits were high.

Descatoire’s men rapidly pushed into Belgium, intent on knocking out the Prussian and British-led armies there. After some maneuvering, Napoleon struck the Prussians at Ligny and the British at Quatre Bras. II Corps went into action at Quatre Bras, but the 7th Division was detached to reinforce III Corps and so took part in their attack on Blücher’s position. Descatoire’s men took Saint-Amand-la-Haye, only to lose it again to a Prussian counterattack. A renewed attack on a different portion of the field resulted in a Prussian retreat.

The next day, the armies marched around each other. For its part, the 7th Division rejoined II Corps, facing down the Duke of Wellington near the village of Waterloo. As a rainstorm engulfed both armies, Descatoire found himself soaked through to the bone, sleeping in the open field below the heights of Mont-Saint-Jean. Only his precious sketchbook remained dry, as he had convinced one of Ney’s aides, a man he knew from Spain, to hide it in the rafters of La Belle Alliance tavern until the next morning.

The drums of war sounded on the morning of June 18th, and Descatoire’s men prepared for their final battle to decide the fate of Europe, though they were more concerned with drying off their uniforms before they needed to go into action.

Descatoire’s battalion had been detached to join General D’Erlon’s I Corps attack in the center of the Allied line. When the order to advance was given, the battalion surged ahead towards the British-Dutch-German line on the heights, met with torrential artillery and musket fire. Descatoire’s men reached the sunken road and gradually pushed back the British and Hanoverian forces in their part of the line. Their advance was temporarily checked by a British counterattack, but the French attack seemed unstoppable.

At that moment, the British heavy cavalry charged, forcing the French infantry into a disorderly retreat across the valley to their start line. When French artillery opened up and cavalry counterattacked, the British threat was contained, but I Corps was in pieces. A frustrated and tired Descatoire spent the next several hours trying to reform his battalion to continue the attack.

At around 1600, the French infantry resumed the assault. Descatoire and his men played a role in helping to drive the King’s German Legion from the La Haye Sainte farmhouse, and forced a gap in the center of the Allied lines to allow artillery to move up and blast the enemy infantry squares. It seemed as if the day would be theirs.

Prussian forces charged out of the woods and attacked Plancenoit and Frichermont. The arrival of the Prussians, with no sign of Grouchy, obliterated French morale. Descatoire tried his best to rally the remainder of his battalion to face von Zeiten’s Prussian I Corps, but after only a few volleys they broke and ran.

The Army of the North essentially ceased to exist, with the exception of Grouchy’s detachment. Descatoire gathered up what few men were left from his battalion (the majority were either dead on the field or had scattered to the wind) and set off to join Grouchy. They were, however, blocked by Prussian hussars, and had to join the main column of retreating stragglers. Descatoire later wrote that the rout after Waterloo seemed to him a pantomime of the retreat from Russia, more farcical than tragic when it came to the fate of the troops.

On June 28, near the village of La Ferté-Milon, Descatoire fired the last shots of his military career when his stragglers repulsed a party of Prussian dragoons. Two days later, they reached Paris, and joined its numerically formidable garrison. Morale, however, had reached an extreme low, and Descatoire was no exception. He was tired, and the hopes of the early part of the Hundred Days were gone. He was in no mood to fight another battle for Paris.

After the Prussian victory at Issy, in which Descatoire was uninvolved, Paris was open to direct attack. The French high command capitulated on July 4, and the French Army marched out of Paris a second time to hand it over to its new occupiers.

### Second Restoration

There was hell to pay when the Bourbons returned for good this time. Those closest to Descatoire urged him to pledge loyalty and go through the motions, but he refused to say anything resembling an apology for joining Napoleon. Though Léonore was able to save him from being dismissed altogether, she could not prevent him from being placed on half pay.

During this period, Descatoire’s old comrade Marshal Ney was placed on trial, first by a military tribunal and then by the Chamber of Peers. This crucifixion of one of France’s greatest heroes caused Descatoire to lose whatever shreds of respect he had left for the Bourbon monarchy, and deeply depressed him. When he learned that Marshal Masséna was one of the men who refused to try Ney, Descatoire remembered his bitter, vocal criticisms of the marshal during his time in the Peninsula. He penned a letter to Masséna, acclaiming him as the hero of Zürich and Genoa, and a man of superb integrity and honor. He sincerely apologized for his harsh words against the marshal and asked for forgiveness. He never received any reply. When Ney was executed that December, Descatoire refused to leave his room for three days.

1816 proved to be a brighter year for Descatoire. In April, he had a curious visitor arrive at his townhouse in Paris, while he was on leave. It was a woman who introduced herself as Pauline Louise Quinet, the young vivandière who Descatoire had protected from brigands during the Russian retreat. She told him her story: as the daughter of a wealthy Belgian textile merchant, she had run away to join the army so as to avoid marrying a much older man whom her parents had chosen for her. After Russia, she accompanied the army through Germany, helping as a surgeon’s assistant at Leipzig. She had then returned home, to face her parents’ wrath. For a woman who had survived two years of the most difficult conditions imaginable, the sharp words of her mother and father were of little consequence.

She had wanted to meet the man who had saved her life in Russia, and finally tracked down Descatoire to offer her thanks. He was impressed by her courage and resilience, but also in the way that she, as someone who had seen so much, could remain upbeat and positive about the world.

The two began courting, and were married in a lavish ceremony at the estate at Fourchambault in October 1817. Old comrades in arms from the fierce battles in Germany, Poland, Spain, Russia, and France formed a guard of honor and raised their swords for the bride and groom to pass under.

In 1818, Gilbert Descatoire, Marquis de Beaucouzé, died of a long illness. His title, restored by the Bourbons, now passed to his son. As the new marquis was still on active service in Paris, it remained up to Bertrand Descatoire, aided by Pauline, to care for the ailing Beatrice. She died in June 1819 and was buried next to her husband.

Pauline and François Descatoire lived a relatively uneventful life in Paris, though their doors were always open to veterans of Napoleon’s campaigns who wanted to share a drink and swap stories.

By 1820, the attitudes of the Bourbons had softened somewhat, thanks to the great unpopularity of the White Terror. Descatoire was promoted, for the first time in seven years, to the rank of colonel. The rise in pay was much appreciated, as it allowed the couple to keep both their Paris townhouse and their country estate.

### Intervention in Spain

In 1823, Colonel Descatoire was offered a position as an aide-de-camp to Marshal Oudinot for the imminent invasion of Spain. The 42-year-old officer missed some aspects of campaigning, and thus accepted the position. He crossed the border with the French expedition led by the Duke of Angoulême and accompanied Oudinot’s staff as they swept across the country, meeting little of the fierce resistance that many of these men had experienced while invading the same country fifteen years prior. Descatoire was present at the Siege of Cádiz and had a shell explode near him during the assault on Fort Trocadero. Later on, he would write that if Napoleon’s invasion of Spain was an injustice, as he believed it was, King Louis’s invasion was monstrously immoral, as it placed the Spanish people under the yoke of absolute monarchy after they had come so close to freedom.

Descatoire remained in Spain with the occupation forces for close to a year after the invasion was concluded, and during this time he delighted in taking small parties of young officers to tour the battlefields of the Peninsular War, lecturing them on the important legacy that they had inherited as soldiers of France. When on fields that he himself had fought on, such as Gamonal, A Coruña, and Fuentes de Oñoro, he even tried to retrace his own steps.

### End of service

After returning from Spain, Descatoire decided to retire from the army, having served France for twenty years, risen to the rank of colonel, and fought everywhere from the plains of Portugal to the suburbs of Moscow. A month before his retirement, in July 1824, he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by King Louis XVIII, which was awarded by the Count of Artois, the future King Charles X.

## Later life

Pauline Descatoire gave birth to a son in 1825, who was named Claude-Noël in memory of the eldest of the three Descatoire brothers. In 1830, the marquis offered his vocal support to the July Revolution, which overthrew the reactionary King Charles X in favor of King Louis-Philippe. In 1840, he stood along the Champs-Elysees to see the procession in which Napoleon’s remains were reinterred at Les Invalides.

Claude-Nöel initially followed his father’s footsteps into the army, serving with a lancer regiment in Algeria. It was, to the marquis’s relief, a short career, as he left the army in 1846 to enter the diplomatic service, in which capacity he served as an assistant to the ambassador to Brazil and then as consul to the Principality of Serbia.

Having retired to their country estate, the Descatoires lived in relative comfort as the marquis focused on writing his memoirs, which were finally published in 1849 under the title of *The Memoirs of Colonel Descatoire: Eleven Years with Napoleon’s Light Infantry*. In 1862, Pauline Descatoire came down with typhoid fever and passed away that October. Her husband was so stricken with grief that he spent sometimes as many as five hours a day sitting by her grave in the family plot at Fourchambault.

In 1867, Descatoire left Fourchambault for the final time in his life, and lived out the remainder of his years in Paris to be closer to his physician. During the Prussian siege in 1870, the 89-year-old veteran insisted that his caretaker wheel his chair out into the streets of the city, where he shouted words of encouragement to the city’s National Guard defenders just as he had 56 years ago. After receiving news of France’s defeat in 1871, he wept openly, and died that September at the age of 90. His funeral at Fourchambault was well-attended, though there were few Napoleonic veterans left alive to pay their respects.

## Personality

Those who knew François Michel Jean-Baptiste Descatoire at the various points in his life knew a complicated and multifaceted man. He was smart and articulate, and usually kind and generous. Trying circumstances and the stresses of war, however, could make him irritable and willing to lash out at the slightest provocation. He could also be an overly harsh judge of what he considered incompetence. Perhaps most difficult to him was the loss of his soldiers, for whose deaths he often blamed himself.

In his spare time, he enjoyed drawing and playing the violin, which he could strum or play with a bow. Those who paid him a visit at Pau or Fourchambault were likely to be subjected to an impromptu concerto of Bach or Vivaldi, or a lively French folk dance, depending on his mood. His favorite drink was champagne, and would often apologize for past indiscretions on his part by gifting a bottle to those he had wronged. Though not exactly pious in the extreme, Descatoire was a Roman Catholic and always attended Mass when circumstances allowed. He frequently prayed in the churches of the towns that the army passed through, and never allowed his soldiers to loot holy places, though private dwellings were always fair game.

In combat, he was brave and active, frequently at the head of his men with a musket in hand. Those under Descatoire’s command found that this officer expected much from them, but he demanded nothing that he was not willing to perform himself. Though not without his flaws, Colonel Descatoire was an active and hard-fighting leader of men who rendered sterling service to France during some of its most turbulent years.