François Christophe Kellermann

François Christophe de Kellermann
French First Republic state institutions France France (Saxon descent) 1735–1820 ○ Died at Paris in

General who commanded the French at Valmy, Marshal of the Empire

At Valmy on 20 September 1792 Kellermann joined Dumouriez with the Army of the Centre at Dumouriez's request and placed his artillery on the western slopes. He steadied infantry shaken by an exploding ammunition cart and rallied them with the cry 'Vive la Nation'; the Prussians withdrew.

French soldier born in Strasbourg on 28 May 1735. His family, of Saxon origin, had settled in Strasbourg and was ennobled in his grandfather's generation. He entered the royal army in 1750 (or 1752), fought in the Seven Years' War, and became a brigadier in 1788, making him the only Marshal of the Empire to reach general rank under the old regime. Favourable to the Revolution of 1789, he commanded the Army of the Centre at Valmy on 20 September 1792 and drove back the Prussians, earning the name 'the victor of Valmy'. Arrested in November 1793 on suspicion of disloyalty, he spent 13 months in prison during the Terror and was released and reinstated after Robespierre's fall. Marshal in 1804 and Duke of Valmy in 1808, he voted in the Senate for Napoleon's abdication in 1814 and became a peer under Louis XVIII. He died in Paris in 1820.

Also known as: François Étienne Christophe Kellermann · François Christophe de Kellermann · Duke of Valmy

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Related historical events

Suppressing Lyon and imprisonment during the Terror

In August 1793 Kellermann moved the Army of the Alps against Lyon, which had risen against the National Convention. According to the French source, on 6 August he marched on Lyon with 20,000 men and the city was bombarded on 8 August; he then wavered and decided not to continue the bombardment, whereupon the representatives on mission demanded his dismissal. He was arrested soon after the city surrendered and taken to Paris.

The English sources frame the sequence somewhat differently. In August he was ordered to reduce Lyon, then in revolt against the Convention, and successfully retook the city; in September the National Convention relieved him of his command, but the representatives on the spot maintained it until an order to arrest him was dispatched in October. A separate article on the siege dates the operation 9 August to 9 October 1793 and states that the Army of the Alps, engaged in Savoy, turned west for the assignment. Either way, he was confined in the prison of l'Abbaye in Paris after Lyon's surrender, during the Terror.

He spent about thirteen months in prison and escaped the guillotine. The French source says he came close to the scaffold and narrowly survived; the English secondary source explains that his trial kept being postponed in favor of others, which spared him. After Robespierre's fall in July 1794 he was acquitted and reinstated. The episode shows how the revolutionary government treated a general who had defended the Republic, and the fact that the victor of Valmy spent roughly a year in prison reveals the precarious position of the military command during the Terror. The sources agree on the imprisonment and the acquittal, but emphasize different steps and dates for the order that led to his arrest.