Mémoires du maréchal Marmont, duc de Raguse (4/9)

Marmont

Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont, duc de Raguse (English: mar-MOHN, French: [oɡyst fʁedeʁik lwi vjɛs də maʁmɔ̃]; 20 July 1774 – 22 March 1852) was a French general and nobleman who rose to the rank of Marshal of the Empire and was awarded the title Duke of Ragusa (French: duc de Raguse). In the Peninsular War, Marmont succeeded the disgraced André Masséna as commander of the French army in northern Spain but lost decisively at the Battle of Salamanca as France ultimately lost the war in Spain. At the close of the War of the Sixth Coalition, Marmont went over to the Restoration and remained loyal to the Bourbons through the Hundred Days. This gave Marmont a reputation as a traitor among the remaining Bonapartists, and in French society more broadly. He led the royalist Paris garrison during the July Revolution in 1830, but his efforts proved incapable of quelling the revolution, leading King Charles X to accuse Marmont of betraying the Bourbons as he had betrayed Napoleon. Marmont departed France with Charles's entourage and never returned to France. Spending his exile mostly in Vienna and other lands of the Austrian Empire, he died in Venice in 1852.