Biographies

Son of a sous-aide-major of the regiment de Conti-cavalerie. Saint-Hilaire was born in 1766 in Ribemont, in the Aisne department. From the age of eleven, he served as a cadet in his father’s regiment, remaining there until 1783. The following year he was appointed sub-lieutenant in the Regiment d’Aquitaine and left with them for the […]

Born in a Hanoverian farming family, Scharnhorst was an artillery teacher and founded a newspaper which was published until 1805. Once his reputation was established, he let himself be recruited by Prussia in 1801. There he gave talks (Clausewitz was amongst his audience), and he helped the Duke of Brunswick when the latter occupied Hanover […]

Born 15 February, 1761 at Deventer in Holland, he studied Classics and Law at Leiden, subsequently becoming a lawyer at Amsterdam, where he was made mayor in 1795 after the flight Stathouder. From 1798, he represented the Batavian Republic in France in Paris, and participated in the negotiations for the Peace of Amiens in 1802. […]

Karl Philip von Schwarzenberg belonged to an old aristocratic family of the Holy Roman Empire, originally from Franconia. The family eventually settled in Bohemia during the 18th century, where it amassed large estates. Karl Philip was born on 15 April, 1771, in Vienna. From a young age he was destined for a military career, and […]

 

David Sinzheim was born into a family of rabbis in Trier on 16 November 1745. His father, with whom he studied the Talmud, was a rabbi in Niedernai. By marriage, he became the brother-in-law of Cerf Beer, an influential thinker concerning the emancipation of the Jews in Alsace and who in 1786 created the yeshivah […]

One of an impressive pantheon of Gascon-born soldiers (including Murat, Ney and Lannes) who rose to international renowm under Napoleon, Soult was a clerk's son, and joined the royal French Army as a private in 1775. A sergeant in 1791, he was commissioned in 1792 and a battalion commander when he first achieved public distinction […]

'Je vois par votre lettre que vous êtes jaloux de gloire : c'est le moyen de faire de grandes choses', Napoleon to Suchet, 1800.