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Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont, duke
of Ragusa (July 20, 1774 - July 22, 1852), marshal
of France, was born at Châtillon-sur-Seine.

He was the son of an ex-officer in the army who
belonged to the petite noblesse and adopted the
principles of the French Revolution|Revolution.
His love of soldiering soon showing itself, his
father took him to Dijon to learn mathematics
prior to entering the artillery, and there he made
the acquaintance of Napoleon Bonaparte|Bonaparte,
which he renewed after obtaining his commission
when he served in Toulon.

The acquaintance ripened into intimacy; Marmont
became General Bonaparte's aide-de-camp, remained
with him during his disgrace and accompanied him
to Italy and Egypt, winning distinction and
promotion to general of brigade. In 1799 he
returned to Europe with his chief; he was present
at the coup d'Ă©tat of the 18th Brumaire, and
organized the artillery for the expedition to
Italy, which he commanded with great effect at
battle of Marengo|Marengo. For this he was at once
made general of division. In 1801 he became
inspector-general of artillery, and in 1804 grand
officer of the Legion of Honour, but was greatly
disappointed at being omitted from the list of
officers who were made marshals.

In 1805 he received the command of a corps, with
which he did good service at Battle of Ulm|Ulm. He
was then directed to take possession of Dalmatia
with his army, and occupied Ragusa. For the next
five years he was military and civil governor of
Dalmatia, and traces of his beneficent régime
still survive both in great public works and in
the memories of the people. In 1808 he was made
duke of Ragusa, and in 1809, being summoned by
Napoleon to take part in the Austrian War, he
marched to Vienna and bore a share in the closing
operations of the campaign. Napoleon now made him
a marshal and governor-general of all the Illyrian
provinces of the empire.

In July 1810 Marmont was hastily summoned to
succeed Andre Massena|Masséna in the command of
the French army in the north of Spain. The skill
with which he maneouvred his army during the year
he commanded it has been always acknowledged. His
relief of Ciudad Rodrigo in the autumn of 1811 in
spite of the presence of the English army was a
great feat, and in the maneouvering which preceded
the battle of Salamanca he had the best of it. But
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of
Wellington|Wellington more than retrieved his
position in the battle, and inflicted a severe
defeat on the French, Marmont himself being
gravely wounded in the right arm and side.

He retired to France to recover, and was still
hardly cured when in April 1813 Napoleon, who soon
forgot his fleeting resentment for the defeat,
gave him the command of a corps. With it he served
at the battles of Battle of LĂĽtzen
(1813)|LĂĽtzen, battle of Bautzen|Bautzen and
battle of Dresden|Dresden, and throughout the
great defensive campaign of 1814 until the last
Battle of Paris (1814)|battle before Paris, from
which he drew back his forces to the commanding
position of Essonne. Here he had 20,000 men in
hand, and was the pivot of all thoughts. Napoleon
said of this camp of Essonne:
:"C'est lĂ  que viendront s'addresser toutes les
intrigues, toutes les trahisons; aussi y ai-je
placé Marmont, mon enfant élevé sous ma tente."


Marmont then took upon himself a political role
which has, no doubt justly, been stigmatized as
ungrateful and treasonable. A secret convention
was concluded, and Marmont's corps was surrounded
by the enemy. Napoleon, who still hoped to retain
the crown for his infant son, was prostrated, and
said with a sadness deeper than violent words: 
:"Marmont me porte le dernier coup."

This act was never forgiven by Marmont's
countrymen. On the restoration of the House of
Bourbon|Bourbons he was indeed made a peer of
France and a major-general of the royal guard, and
in 1820 a knight of the Saint Esprit and a grand
officer of the order of St Louis; but he was never
trusted. He was the major-general of the guard on
duty in July 1830, and was ordered to put down
with a strong hand any opposition to the
ordinances. Himself opposed to the court policy,
he yet tried to do his duty, and only gave up the
attempt to suppress the revolution when it became
clear that his troops were outmatched. This
brought more obloquy upon him, and the duke
d'Angouleme even ordered him under arrest, saying:
:"Will you betray us, as you betrayed him?"

Marmont did not betray them; he accompanied the
king into exile and forfeited his marshalate
thereby. His desire to return to France was never
gratified and he wandered in central and eastern
Europe, settling finally in Vienna, where he was
well received by the Austrian government, and,
strange to say, made tutor to the duke of
Reichstadt, the young man who had once for a few
weeks been styled Napoleon II. He died at Venice
on the 22nd of March 1852.

Much of his time in his last years was spent upon
his MĂ©moires, which are of great value for the
military history of his time, though they must be
read as a personal defence of himself in various
junctures rather than as an unbiased account of
his times. They show Marmont, as he really was, an
embittered man, who never thought his services
sufficiently required, and above all, a man too
much in love with himself and his own glory to be
a true friend or a faithful servant. His strategy
indeed tended to become pure virtuosity, and his
tactics, though neat, appear frigid and antiquated
when contrasted with those of the instinctive
leaders, the fighting generals whom the theorists
affect to despise. But his military genius is
undeniable, and he was as far superior to the mere
theorist as Jean Lannes|Lannes and Louis Nicolas
Davout|Davout were to the pure divisionaire or
"fighting" general.

His works are:
*Voyage en Hongrie, etc. (4 vols., 1837);
*Voyage en Sicile (1838);
*Esprit des institutions militaires (1845);
*Cesar; Xenophon; and MĂ©moires (8 vols.,
published after his death in 1856).

See the long and careful notice by Charles
Augustin Sainte-Beuve|Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du
Lundi, vol. vi.

1911