Achille Baraguey d'Hilliers

France state institutions 1795–1878 ✕ Suicide

General who replaced Changarnier at the head of the Paris army and backed the coup

Born in Paris in 1795, the son of a revolutionary general, he joined Napoleon's Grande Armée at seventeen, served in the Russian campaign of 1812 and lost his left hand at Leipzig in 1813. Made colonel after the capture of Algiers in 1830, he headed the military academy of Saint-Cyr and became a divisional general in the Algerian wars in 1843. Commanding at Besançon in 1848, he was elected for the Doubs to the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies and sat on the right. He commanded the French occupation army in Rome, and in 1851 replaced Changarnier, whom Bonaparte distrusted, as commander of the army of Paris, and backed the December coup. Taking Bomarsund in the Crimean War made him a Marshal and a senator, and he distinguished himself at Solferino in 1859. Governor of Paris in 1870, he was soon replaced by Trochu, and he took his own life in 1878.

Also known as: Louis-Achille Baraguey d'Hilliers