Pierre Victor, baron de Besenval de Brünstatt was the last commander of the Swiss Guards in France.
Background
Born at Solothurn, he was the son of Jean Victor de Besenval, colonel of the regiment of Swiss Guards in the pay of France, who was charged in 1707 by Louis XIV with a mission to Sweden to reconcile Charles XII with the tsar Peter the Great, and to unite them in alliance with France against England.
Career
Pierre Victor served at first as aide-de-camp to Marshall Broglie during the campaign of 1748 in Bohemia, then as aide-de-camp to the duke of Orleans during the Seven Years" War. He then became commander of the Swiss Guards. When the French Revolution began de Besenval remained firmly attached to the royal court and he was given command of the troops which the king had concentrated in Paris in July 1789, a move which led to the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.
Besenval showed incompetence in the crisis, and attempted to flee.
He was arrested, tried by the tribunal of the Châtelet, but acquitted. He then fell into obscurity and died in Paris in 1794.
The authenticity of these memoirs is not absolutely established.