Background
François Chasseloup-Laubat was born at St Semin (Lower Charente) on the 18th of August 1754, of a noble family, and entered the French engineers in 1774.
François Chasseloup-Laubat was born at St Semin (Lower Charente) on the 18th of August 1754, of a noble family, and entered the French engineers in 1774.
François Chasseloup-Laubat's ability as a military engineer was recognized in the campaigns of 1792 and 1793.
He there conducted the first siege of Mantua, and reconnoitred the positions and lines of advance of the army of Bonaparte.
He was promoted general of brigade before the close of the campaign, and was subsequently employed in fortifying the new Rhine frontier of France.
His work as chief of engineers in the army of Italy (1799) was conspicuously successful, and after the battle of Novi he was made general of division.
When Napoleon took the field in 1800 to retrieve the disasters of 1-799, he again selected Chasseloup as his engineer general.
During the peace of 1801-1805 he was chiefly employed in reconstructing the defences of northern Italy, and in particular the afterwards famous Quadrilateral.
His chef-d'oeuvre was the great fortress of Alessandria on the Tanaro.
In 1805 he remained in Italy with Massena, but at the end of 1806 Napoleon, then engaged in the Polish campaign, called him to the Grande Armee, with which he served in the campaign of 1806-07, directing the sieges of Colberg, Danzig and Stralsund.
During the Napoleonic domination in Germany, Chasseloup reconstructed many fortresses, in particular Magdeburg.
In the campaign of 1809 he again served in Italy.
His last campaign was that of 1812 in Russia.
Louis XVIII made him a peer of France and a. knight of St Louis.
He refused to join Napoleon in the Hundred Days, but after the second Restoration he voted in the chamber of peers against the condemnation of Marshal Ney.
Chasseloup's later years were employed chiefly in putting in order his manuscripts, a task which he had to abandon owing to the failure of his sight.
His only published work was Correspondance d'un general frangais, &c. sur divers sujets (Paris, 1801, republished Milan, 1805 and r8rr, under the title Correspondance de deux generals, ire. , essais sur quelques parties d'artil- lerie et de fortification).
The most important of his papers are in manuscript in the Dep6t of Fortifications, Paris. As an engineer Chasseloup was an adherent, though of advanced views, of the old bastioned system.
His front was applied to Alessandria, as has been stated, and contains many elaborations of the bastion trace, with, in particular, masked flanks in the tenaille, which served as extra flanks of the bastions.
The bastion itself was carefully and minutely retrenched.
The ordinary ravelin he replaced by a heavy casemated caponier after the example of Montalembert, and, like Bousmard's, his own ravelin was a large and powerful work pushed out beyond the glacis.
chasseloup married the daughter of François Fresneau de La Gataudière, brought him the Château de la Gataudière, at Marennes, Charente-Maritime; his youngest son, Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat, was Minister of the Navy under Napoleon III.
