People of the Revolution and the USSR

Army of Condé Counter-revolutionary forces 1736–1818

Bourbon prince who commanded the émigré Army of Condé

A Bourbon prince du sang who fled Revolutionary France and commanded the émigré Army of Condé against it.

A Bourbon prince of Condé, Louis Joseph left France soon after the Revolution began. He organized and commanded the émigré Army of Condé, which fought Revolutionary France alongside foreign monarchies. He returned to France after Napoleon’s fall.

French monarchy state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1754–1793 ✕ Executed

French king deposed and tried during the Revolution

The National Convention ruled on 3 December 1792 that it would try Louis XVI itself; convicted of high treason by vote, he was guillotined on 21 January 1793.

King of France from 1774, Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General in 1789 amid a fiscal crisis. He accepted the Constitution of 1791, but the Flight to Varennes and foreign war deepened distrust of the crown. The monarchy was suspended in 1792; the National Convention convicted him and he was executed in January 1793.

French monarchy state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1757–1836 ○ Died in exile

Count of Artois who led émigré royalism during the Revolution

At his 1825 coronation at Reims he tried to revive the royal touch, asserting the sacredness of monarchy; in July 1830 his ordinances dissolved the chamber and censored the press, and the Paris rising forced his abdication on 2 August.

Louis XVI’s younger brother, the Count of Artois left France soon after the fall of the Bastille in 1789. Abroad he promoted Bourbon restoration and became a political centre of émigré royalism. He succeeded as Charles X in 1824 and was overthrown by the July Revolution of 1830.

United Kingdom state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1758–1805 ✕ Killed in action at Trafalgar

Royal Navy admiral who destroyed the French fleet at the Nile

Commanding the British fleet as Rear-Admiral of the Blue at Aboukir Bay in August 1798, he destroyed the French fleet that had escorted Napoleon's army to Egypt: the French flagship Orient exploded, and of the 17 French ships engaged only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped.

British Royal Navy officer. Born in 1758 at the rectory of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, he entered the navy through his uncle Maurice Suckling's influence, served in the West Indies and the Mediterranean, lost the sight of one eye at Calvi in 1794 and his right arm at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, destroyed the French fleet at Aboukir Bay on 1–3 August 1798, stranding Napoleon's army in Egypt, defeated Denmark at Copenhagen in 1801, and was killed at Trafalgar in 1805.

Catholic and Royal Army (Vendée) Counter-revolutionary forces 1759–1793 ✕ Died of wounds

First generalissimo of the Vendéan insurgency

A peddler and sacristan from Le Pin-en-Mauges, he took up arms in March 1793 over conscription and the clergy's civil constitution; the Vendéan chiefs elected him generalissimo at Saumur on 12 June 1793. Mortally wounded storming Nantes on 29 June, he died on 14 July.

A peddler from Anjou and devout Catholic, Cathelineau joined the anti-conscription rising of 1793. He helped unite peasant forces and was chosen as the first generalissimo of the Catholic and Royal Army. He died from a gunshot wound received during the attack on Nantes.

Catholic and Royal Army (Vendée) Counter-revolutionary forces 1763–1796 ✕ Executed

Royalist commander who led guerrilla war in the Lower Vendée

A royal navy officer of the Breton petty nobility, he became the emblematic commander of the Vendéan insurgency against the Republic. His choices and rivalries made him its most controversial general, even among royalists.

A former French naval officer, Charette became a commander of the Catholic and Royal Army in the War in the Vendée. He led guerrilla warfare in the Lower Vendée, signed the Treaty of La Jaunaye in 1795, and later resumed the revolt. Captured in 1796, he was executed by firing squad in Nantes.

French First Republic state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1767–1823 ○ Died in New Orleans in

French revolutionary general, commander of the 1798 Irish expedition

On 22 August 1798 he landed at Killala and on 27 August defeated British forces under Lord Lake at Castlebar. The Connacht republic was proclaimed on 31 August, and on 8 September he was defeated and taken prisoner at Ballinamuck.

Born in 1767 at Saint-Nabord in the Vosges, he volunteered in 1792, rose quickly, and became a général de brigade in 1794. In 1798 he commanded the expedition to Ireland, landing at Killala on 22 August and defeating British forces at Castlebar on 27 August; he took part in the proclamation of the Connacht republic on 31 August, but surrendered at Ballinamuck on 8 September and returned home in a prisoner exchange. He later served in the Saint-Domingue expedition, moved to the United States in 1813, aided US forces at New Orleans in 1815, and taught French in his last years; he died at New Orleans in 1823.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1768–1793 ✕ Executed after trial

Norman noble and Girondin sympathizer who assassinated Marat

On 13 July 1793 she gained an interview with Marat by claiming to know of a Girondin plot, then stabbed him to death in his medicinal bath.

A figure of the French Revolution who supported the Girondins. On 13 July 1793 she assassinated the Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, whom she held responsible for the September 1792 massacres; she judged that the radicalised Jacobins had placed the Revolution in danger. Arrested at the scene and convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, she was guillotined on 17 July.

Consulate and First Empire state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1769–1821

A conqueror who rose from revolutionary general to emperor

In the coup of 9–10 November 1799 (18 Brumaire), he conspired with Talleyrand and Sieyès and used troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the Council of Five Hundred and overturn the Directory, then took effective power as First Consul.

Born into an Italian-descended Corsican family, he was commissioned in the French royal artillery in 1785, supported the Revolution of 1789, and rose through his victories over royalists at Toulon in 1793 and Vendémiaire in 1795. The Italian campaign of 1796 made him a national hero, and in November 1799 the Brumaire coup overthrew the Directory and made him First Consul; in 1804 he became emperor of the First Empire. He won at Austerlitz in 1805 but was ruined by the Russian campaign of 1812 and Leipzig in 1813, was exiled to Elba in 1814, and after the Hundred Days lost at Waterloo and died on Saint Helena in 1821. His reforms such as the Napoleonic Code and public education endure, while the plunder of occupied lands, suppression of the press and deportation or imprisonment of critics, and the restoration of slavery in the colonies make him a contested figure.

Catholic and Royal Army (Vendée) Counter-revolutionary forces 1772–1794 ✕ Killed in action

Young noble officer elected generalissimo of the Vendéan army

Emerging as a Vendéan commander in 1793, he was elected royalist commander-in-chief at 21 after Cholet. He led the campaign north of the Loire in late 1793 and died fighting a guerrilla war in January 1794.

A former royal army officer, La Rochejaquelein joined the Vendéan rising in 1793 and led forces in its major battles. After the defeat at Cholet he was elected generalissimo of the Catholic and Royal Army at age twenty-one and took part in the campaign north of the Loire. He was killed in a skirmish in 1794.

Independent activity Counter-revolutionary forces 1797–1877 ○ Stroke

July Monarchy premier who as chief executive in 1871 crushed the Paris Commune and became the Third Republic’s first president

After ordering the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, Thiers secured the early departure of German troops from French territory, then resigned in 1873 amid monarchist opposition.

A lawyer and journalist from Marseille who made his name with a History of the French Revolution, he helped bring Louis-Philippe to the throne in 1830 and served the July Monarchy as interior minister and premier, putting down the Lyon silk workers’ and Paris risings of 1834. Under the Second Empire he led the liberal opposition. The National Assembly made him chief executive in February 1871; when the seizure of the Montmartre cannon failed on 18 March he moved the government to Versailles and crushed the Commune in Bloody Week. President from August 1871, he paid off the German indemnity early but was forced out by the monarchist Assembly in 1873.

France state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1808–1893 ○ Natural causes

Marshal captured at Sedan who led the Versailles army against the Paris Commune and became the president of “Moral Order”

As commander of the Versailles army, he led the suppression of the Paris Commune in May 1871. Elected president in 1873, he headed a “Moral Order” government; after Republicans won a parliamentary majority in 1877, he resigned in 1879.

A soldier from a family of Irish descent, he won his marshal’s baton and dukedom in the conquest of Algeria, the storming of the Malakoff in the Crimea and at Magenta in 1859. In 1870 he led the Army of Châlons to relieve Metz and was wounded and captured with the emperor at Sedan. Released by Germany, he commanded Thiers’s Versailles army, entered Paris in May 1871 and directed the repression and mass executions of Bloody Week. Succeeding Thiers as president in 1873, he led a “Moral Order” government awaiting a restoration, lost the 1877 confrontation with parliament and resigned in 1879.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1848–1918 ✕ Assassinated

German field marshal who governed occupied Ukraine in 1918 and was assassinated in Kiev by a Left SR

Prussian field marshal Hermann von Eichhorn became military governor of occupied Ukraine in 1918 and was assassinated in Kiev by Left Socialist-Revolutionary Boris Donskoy, who bombed his carriage.

A Prussian officer who fought in the wars of 1866 and 1870–71 and rose to command the XVIII Army Corps. In the First World War he led the 10th Army from January 1915, taking Kovno and Grodno, and from 1916 also Army Group Eichhorn; he was made field marshal in December 1917. On 3 April 1918 he became commander of Army Group Kiev and military governor of occupied Ukraine. On 30 July 1918 the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Boris Donskoy killed him in Kiev with a bomb thrown at his carriage.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1857–1938 → Died in exile

Yomut Turkmen chief who held real power in the Khanate of Khiva in 1918–1920 and fought Soviet rule for more than a decade

Born in 1857 (some sources say 1862), the son of a Yomut Turkmen chief, he served as a village judge (kazi) and water distributor (mirab) and made his name in the Turkmen uprisings of 1912–1916. Appointed commander of the armed forces of Khiva by Asfandiyar Khan in January 1918, he had the khan assassinated, installed the khan’s uncle Sayyid Abdullah as a puppet and took real power. He besieged Petro-Alexandrovsk in November 1918 and in 1919 opened contact with Kolchak’s government, but in early 1920 the Red Army defeated him and he retreated into the Karakum desert. He then repeatedly invaded the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic and the Turkmen SSR, besieging Khiva in January 1924. He went into exile in Persia and Afghanistan and died near Herat in 1938.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1859–1925 ✕ Executed by shooting

Avar religious leader and mufti of the North Caucasus who led anti-Bolshevik uprisings in Dagestan and Chechnya in 1918–1925

Born in 1859 to an aristocratic Avar landowning family in the village of Gotsob in Dagestan, he was an Islamic scholar. In May 1917 the congress of the Union of Highlanders of the North Caucasus made him mufti of the North Caucasus, and in August he was proclaimed Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya but gave up the title three days later. He fought the Bolsheviks in 1918, and in 1919 he collaborated with Denikin’s Volunteer Army as a lesser evil than the communists. In September 1920 he raised and led the Dagestan uprising, which was put down in May 1921. Moving to Chechnya to prepare another rising, he was arrested in September 1925 and shot that October.

Russian White movement Counter-revolutionary forces 1863–1925 ○ Natural causes

A lawyer-statesman who held White Siberia together through compromise

He told Kolchak that the government’s authority, and Kolchak’s own, was falling with every passing hour.

Pyotr Vologodsky was a lawyer and statesman shaped by Siberian regionalism and the Socialist Revolutionary movement, advocating local self-government and legal reform before 1917. In 1918 he led Siberia’s anti-Bolshevik government and managed compromises among right-wing, socialist, and regionalist forces. He remained head of government after Kolchak’s seizure of power, criticized the crisis produced by military arbitrariness and administrative weakness, and resigned in 1919 before emigrating to China.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1865–1937 ○ Natural death

General who directed Germany’s war with Hindenburg and later joined Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch

Born to a commoner family in the Province of Posen, he served on the General Staff and won fame at Liège and Tannenberg in 1914. In August 1916 he and Hindenburg took over the Supreme Army Command; as First Quartermaster General he directed the war under a de facto military dictatorship and drove the Hindenburg Programme. His spring offensive, opened with Operation Michael in March 1918, failed; in September he demanded an immediate armistice and in October he was dismissed. After the war he spread the stab-in-the-back myth and took part in the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. He sat in the Reichstag for the National Socialist Freedom Movement in 1924–1928 and died in Munich in 1937.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1865–1946 ○ Died

Freikorps commander who tried to keep Germany's eastern influence in Finland and the Baltic

White Army quartermaster Hannes Ignatius described him as the "true regent of Finland."

He led the Baltic Sea Division to the aid of the Finnish Whites in 1918, then commanded the German troops and Freikorps in Latvia in 1919, retaking Riga but backing a coup against the Latvian government he saw as an obstacle. Recalled after Cēsis, he led far-right veterans' movements in the Weimar years.

Poland state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1865–1947 ○ Died

Polish general who seized Vilnius in a staged 'mutiny' and set up Central Lithuania

On 9 October 1920 Vilnius was occupied not by the Polish general Żeligowski, but by the Lithuanian Żeligowski.

A Polish general from the Russian imperial army, he seized Vilnius on 9 October 1920 in a 'mutiny' agreed with Piłsudski and set up Central Lithuania, an affair that blocked Polish-Lithuanian relations until 1938. He died in London in 1947.

Poland state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1867–1935 ○ Illness

The soldier-politician who began as a socialist, became Head of State of reborn Poland, broke the Red Army's westward drive at Warsaw in 1920, and later ruled through a coup-built authoritarian regime

To be defeated and not to yield, that is victory; to be victorious and to rest on one's laurels, that is defeat.

Born 5 December 1867 at Zułowo manor (now Zalavas, Lithuania, then Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire), second son of a noble szlachta family that sources characterize either as Polish or as Polonized Lithuanians. Arrested in March 1887 over the plot against Alexander III and sent to five years of Siberian exile, he joined the Polish Socialist Party in 1893, led it, and edited its underground organ Robotnik from 1894. In the First World War he raised the Polish Legions on Austria's side, was imprisoned at Magdeburg after the 1917 Oath crisis, became Chief of State of reborn Poland in November 1918, and broke the Red Army's drive at Warsaw in 1920. He ruled as the strongman of the Sanacja regime after the May 1926 coup, jailed opponents in the Brest trials and Bereza Kartuska, signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR in 1932, and died of liver cancer in Warsaw on 12 May 1935.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1867–1942 ○ Illness

The voice of Action Française, the polemicist who pushed a scandal from the page into the street day after day

Through January 1934 his columns called out the implicated deputies one by one, and on the morning of 6 February the paper urged its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. At the front of the columns that filled the square that night were the Camelots du Roi, the action squads of Action Française

The son of the novelist Alphonse Daudet, a medical student turned polemicist, who founded the daily Action Française with Maurras and set its tone. He sat as a deputy for Paris from 1919 to 1924, and his method of personal attack and denunciation left its mark on a generation of French political language. After losing a libel case brought over his claim that the police had killed his son Philippe in 1923, he fled to Belgium in 1927 and returned under an amnesty in 1930. In January 1934 he printed the names of the politicians touched by the Stavisky affair day after day, building the picture of a 'republic of thieves' that carried the paper's readers to the square on 6 February.

Finland state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1867–1951 ○ Natural causes

Aristocratic soldier who rose from Russian Imperial lieutenant general to Marshal of Finland, facing the Soviet Union in two wars

"Forts, cannons and foreign aid will not help unless every man himself knows that he is the guard of his country."

A Swedish-speaking Finnish aristocrat who served 30 years in the Imperial Russian Army, rising to lieutenant general through the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. In the 1918 Finnish Civil War he commanded the White Army to victory, then as regent consolidated Finland's independence, telling the London Times that 'the historic mission of Finland is to drive Bolshevism out.' As commander-in-chief in the Winter War and Continuation War, he led outnumbered Finnish forces against the Soviet Union, fighting alongside Nazi Germany but refusing to assault Leningrad. Elected president in 1944, he concluded peace with the USSR and expelled German forces in the Lapland War, leaving Finland the only Eastern European nation to escape occupation.

France state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1867–1965 ○ Natural causes

From Foch's brilliant staff officer to a general of defeat and accommodation

On 12 June 1940, Weygand advised the French government to capitulate.

Maxime Weygand was a French general who served as Ferdinand Foch's key staff officer in the First World War, coordinating Allied operations and reading the armistice terms to the German delegation in 1918. Between the wars he carried French military influence in Poland and the Levant, then became commander-in-chief of the French armies in May 1940 and, after the German breakthrough, judged that continued fighting in metropolitan France was no longer feasible and advised an armistice. He joined the Vichy government and later directed French North Africa, choosing limited accommodation with Germany while enforcing antisemitic measures harshly. Detained after the war on treason charges and cleared in 1948, he later defended Marshal Pétain's memory.

Action Française Counter-revolutionary forces 1868–1952 ○ Died

The brain of Action Française, the royalist theorist who denied the republic itself in the name of integral nationalism

'It is the revenge of Dreyfus!', on hearing his life sentence in the court at Lyon, 27 January 1945

A poet and polemicist from Martigues in Provence, deaf from his youth, who led Action Française for half a century after the movement formed out of the Dreyfus affair. His 'integral nationalism' called for the restoration of the monarchy and the abolition of the parliamentary republic, and named Jews, Protestants, Freemasons and foreigners as the 'four confederate states' eating France from within. The movement survived the Vatican's condemnation of 1926, and in 1938 he was elected to the Académie Française. Through January 1934 his paper named 'the thieves' day after day, and on the morning of 6 February it called on its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. He welcomed Pétain's accession in 1940 as a 'divine surprise', backed Vichy, and denounced resisters and Jews in print throughout the occupation. In January 1945 he was sentenced to life imprisonment and national degradation for collusion with the enemy.