General Dugommier

General Dugommier, portrait by François Bouchot (1836)

Jacques François Coquille named Dugommier (August 1, 1738, Trois-Rivières (Guadeloupe) - November 17, 1794, at the battle of the Black Mountain) was a French general.

He entered service in 1759 in the defense of Guadeloupe against the English and fought in Martinique in the Seven Years' War. He took the name Dugommier in 1785. He joined the Revolutionaries.

[edit] Commander in the Italian Army

Deputy of the Convention, he succeeded general Cartaux as commander of the Army of Piedmont-Sardinia, which was besieging Toulon. He adopted the strategy of Captain Bonaparte to retake the city (1793). In September, he drove the troops from Nice and Piedmont in the Austrian army under Von Win from the city of Gilette in several battles.

[edit] Campaign in the Pyrenees

Dugommier was then named head of the army in the Eastern Pyrenees. He was ordered to retake the territory taken by the Spanish headed by Antonio Ricardos Carrillo. He reorganized the army, weakened as it was by the hard combat of the preceding year spent incessantly and fruitlessly storming the Spanish positions. Through a combination of good strategy and good fortune (the Spanish became paralyzed by a leadership crisis following the successive deaths of two Commanders-in-Chief to disease), Dugommier succeeded in driving the enemy from French soil.

On April 28, he was victorious at the battle of the Tech, a success vindicated by the victory of Albere on April 30. The decisive victory at Le Boulou or Montesquieu against the Spanish under La Union on May 1 gave him back Roussillon. Port-Vendres, defended by La Union (who had under his command 400 French noblemen of the Légion Panetier) fell in May; Collioure was retaken on the 26th.

He retook the fort of Bellegarde on September 17, 1794 (the siege had lasted since May 7). On September 22, an audacious attack gave him the redoubt and camp of Costouge, putting the enemy to flight and capturing most of his equipment.

Dugommier fell on November 18 in the Battle of the Black Mountain (or of San-Lorenzo de la Muga or Figueras) in Catalonia, in the course of which the physician Larrey distinguished himself with 700 amputations in four days of battle. After this battle, Figueras was taken by Pérignon on November 28.

[edit] Memory

He is buried in Perpignan, and his name is inscribed in the Panthéon. Napoleon kept his souvenir, bestowing 100,000 Francs to his son for the memory of the battle of Toulon. He now rests at Perpignan in a pyramidal monument.