French Revolutionary general, victor of Hohenlinden
On 3 December 1800 he led the Army of the Rhine to a decisive victory over an Austrian-Bavarian force at Hohenlinden. The allies' disastrous retreat forced an armistice and led to the Treaty of Lunéville, effectively ending the War of the Second Coalition.
A general produced by the French Revolution, he campaigned on the Rhine and in Italy and won a decisive victory at Hohenlinden in 1800, breaking the Second Coalition. He later became Napoleon's leading rival and was banished; returning to Europe in 1813 as an adviser to the coalition, he was mortally wounded at Dresden.
Activities and affiliations
-
French First Republic state institutionsCommander of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle and of the Army of the RhineMain
Military command
Career Timeline
- 1791Elected lieutenant-colonel of the Ille-et-Vilaine volunteers.
- 1793Promoted to général de brigade; served under Dumouriez.
- 1794Made général de division by Carnot; served under Pichegru in Flanders and won at Tourcoing.
- 1795–1796Took command of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle; won renown in 1796 for a celebrated 40-day retreat through the Black Forest.
- 1799Recalled to Italy against Suvorov; defeated at the Adda and Novi, where Joubert fell, and retreated to Genoa. He then assisted Bonaparte in the Brumaire coup.
- 1800Commanding the Army of the Rhine again, he won at Hohenlinden on 3 December.
- 1804Implicated in the Pichegru–Cadoudal conspiracy; sentenced to imprisonment, commuted by Napoleon to banishment. He left via Spain for America and settled near Philadelphia.
- 1813Returned to Europe as an adviser to the allied monarchs; mortally wounded at Dresden on 27 August and died on 2 September.
Related historical events
American Exile and Return to the Coalition (1805-1813)
Arrested in February 1804, Moreau was at first acquitted at his trial that June, then sentenced to two years' imprisonment after a retrial, a sentence Napoleon commuted to exile. After a long stay in Spain he crossed to the United States in 1805. French sources say he landed at Philadelphia, where he was welcomed, and that at the time he spoke not a word of English, while English-language sources record his arrival in New York in August 1805, so the port of arrival differs. He turned down every military post the United States offered him and in 1806 settled at Morrisville, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River, buying a house once owned by Robert Morris; until 1813 he spent his time fishing, hunting and socialising. His house in exile became a refuge for political exiles from many countries, and he met President Thomas Jefferson several times. In 1808 he lost his only son, Victor Eugène (1802-1808), in America.
The powers wanted to use him as a sword against Napoleon. From 1806 the Russian government sent Pahlen and then his successor Dashkov to the United States for secret negotiations, and on 30 September 1812 Alexander I ordered Dashkov to make a formal offer. When the War of 1812 broke out, President James Madison offered him command of the American army, and Moreau was prepared to accept. But when he heard in November 1812 that the Grande Armée had been destroyed in the Russian campaign, he decided to return to Europe. On 25 June 1813 he left the United States with P. Svinin aboard the merchant ship Hannibal and landed in Sweden on 27 July. Introduced by Bernadotte to Alexander I, he advised the allies on the conduct of the war in the hope of establishing a republic in a Europe at peace, and served as an adviser at the headquarters of the allied monarchs. On 27 August 1813, at the Battle of Dresden, he was struck by a French cannonball while talking with Alexander; both his legs were amputated, and he died at Laun in Bohemia on 2 September.