Background
Charles Pichegru was born at Arbois, or, according to Charles Nodier, at Les Planches, near Lons-le-Saulnier, on the 16th of February 1761. His father was a labourer.
Charles Pichegru was born at Arbois, or, according to Charles Nodier, at Les Planches, near Lons-le-Saulnier, on the 16th of February 1761. His father was a labourer.
The friars of Arbois gave the boy a good education, and one of his masters, the Pere Partault, took him to the military school of Brienne.
In 1783, he entered the 1st regiment of artillery, where he rapidly rose to the rank of adjutant-second lieutenant, and briefly served in the American Revolutionary War. When the Revolution erupted in 1789, he became leader of the Jacobin Club in Besancon, and, when a regiment of volunteers of the départment of the Gard marched through the city, he was elected lieutenant colonel.
The fine condition of his regiment was noticed in the French Revolutionary Army section of the Rhine, and his organizing ability got him appointed in the headquarters, and then promoted Général de brigade.
In 1793, Lazare Carnot and Louis de Saint-Just were sent to find roturier (non-aristocratic) generals who could prove successful. Carnot discovered Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, and Saint-Just discovered Louis Lazare Hoche and Pichegru.
At first, Pichegru was appointed general of division and commander of the Division of the Upper Rhine. Appointed commander-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine, Pichegru attacked the Coalition army of Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser in the Battle of Haguenau in 1793. Over a period of weeks the Coalition Forces were driven back step by step in bitter fighting. The intervention of the Army of the Moselle under Hoche at the Battle of Froeschwiller in late December finally caused Wurmser to abandon Alsace. For the Second Battle of Wissembourg, Pichegru was placed under the command of Hoche, who proved to be a difficult superior. Nevertheless, the French again won the battle, compelling Wurmser to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine and the Prussian army to withdraw toward Mainz.
In December 1793, Hoche was arrested, probably owing to his colleague's denunciations, and Pichegru became commander-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle. He was summoned to succeed Jourdan in the Army of the North in February 1794, subsequently fighting three major campaigns within the year. The forces of the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Dutch Republic and Habsburg Austria held a strong position along the Sambre to the North Sea. After attempting to break the Austrian centre, Pichegru suddenly turned their right, and defeated the Count of Clerfayt at Cassel, Menin and Courtrai, while his subordinate, Joseph Souham, defeated Prince Josias of Coburg in the battle of Tourcoing in May 1794. After a lull, during which Pichegru feigned a siege of Ypres, he again attacked Clerfayt, and defeated him at Roeselare and Hooglede, while Jourdan, commanding the newly named Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, withstood Austrian attacks in the battle of Fleurus (27 June 1794), which eventually led to Allied evacuation of the Low Countries.
Pichegru began his second campaign by crossing the Meuse on 18 October, and, after taking Nijmegen, drove the Austrians beyond the Rhine. The Anglo-Hanoverian army withdrew behind the Waal. Then, while Pichegru's troops prepared to go into winter quarters, the Convention ordered the Army of the North to mount a winter campaign. On 27 December two brigades crossed the Meuse on the ice, and stormed the Bommelerwaard. On 10 January Pichegru's army crossed the ice of the Waal between Zaltbommel and Nijmegen, then, on 13 January, entered Utrecht, which surrendered on the 16th. The Anglo-Hanoverian army retreated behind the IJssel and then withdrew to Hanover and Bremen.
Pichegru, who had successfully penetrated the frozen Hollandic Water Line, arrived in Amsterdam on 20 January, after the Batavian Revolution had taken place. The French occupied the rest of the Dutch Republic in the next month.
Although a former associate of Saint-Just, Pichegru offered his services to the Thermidorian Reaction, and, after having received the title of Sauveur de la Patrie ("Saviour of the Fatherland") from the National Convention, subdued the sans-culottes of Paris, when they rose in insurrection against the Convention on 12 Germinal (1 April). Pichegru then took command of the armies of the North, the Sambre-and-Meuse, and the Rhine, and, crossing the Rhine in force, took Mannheim in May 1795.
Although he had become a hero of the Revolution, he allowed his colleague Jourdan to be defeated, betrayed all his plans to the enemy, and took part in organizing a conspiracy for the return and crowning of Louis XVIII as King of France. The plans were suspected, and, when he offered his resignation to the Directory in October 1795, it was promptly accepted.
He retired in disgrace, but secured his election to the Council of Five Hundred in May 1797 as a leader of the Royalists. He was there the royalist leader, and planned a coup d'etat, but on the 18th Fructidor he was arrested, and with fourteen others deported to Cayenne in 1797. Escaping, he reached London in 1798, and served on General Korsakov's staff in the campaign of 1799. He went to Paris in August 1803 with Georges Cadoudal to head a royalist rising against Napoleon; but, betrayed by a friend, he was arrested on the 28th of February 1804, and on the 15th of April was found strangled in prison. It has often been asserted that he was murdered by the orders of Napoleon, but there is no foundation for the story.
In mid-1795, he begun to turn against France’s republican regime, siding with the royalist deputies in 1797.
Pichegru's campaigns of 1794 are marked by traits of an audacious genius which would not have disgraced Napoleon. His tremendous physical strength, the personal ascendancy he gained by this and by his powers of command made him a peculiarly formidable opponent, and thus enabled him to maintain a discipline which guaranteed the punctual execution of his orders. He had also, strangely enough, the power of captivating honest men like Moreau. He flattered in turn Saint Just and the Terrorists, the Thermidorians and the Directors, and played always for his own hand-a strange egoist who rose to fame as the leader of an idealist and sentimental crusade.