Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc (17 March 1772,
Pontoise - 2 November 1802) was a
French Army general and husband to
Pauline Bonaparte, sister to
Napoleon Bonaparte.
Biography
To 1801
Leclerc started his military career in 1791 during the
French Revolution as one of the army volunteers of
Seine-et-Oise and passed through the ranks of
sous-lieutenant in the 12th Cavalry, then aide-de-camp to general
Lapoype. He was made a captain and divisional chief of staff during the
siege of Toulon, at which he first allied himself to
Napoleon Bonaparte. Following the revolutionary success there, he campaigned along the
Rhine. He began serving under Napoleon Bonaparte in the Alpine and Italian campaigns, fighting at
Castiglione della Pescaia and
Rivoli and rising to
général de brigade in
1797. He was then charged with announcing to the
French Directory the signature of the peace preliminaries at
Leoben.
Pauline Bonaparte was at this time receiving a large number of suitors, thus pressing her brother Napoleon Bonaparte to have her married off. On Leclerc's return, he accepted Bonaparte's offer of Pauline's hand in marriage and they married in 1797, having one child, and occupying the
Château de Montgobert.
He became
chef d'état-major to generals
Berthier and
Brune and served in the second unsuccessful French Army military expedition to Ireland led by
Jean Joseph Amable Humbert in 1798. On Bonaparte's return from the
Egyptian expedition in 1798, he made Leclerc a
général de division and sent him to the
armée du Rhin under
Moreau. At this rank Leclerc was able to participate in the
coup d'etat of
18 Brumaire (in November 1799) that made his brother-in-law Napoleon
First Consul of France - supported by
Murat, he ordered the grenadiers to march into the room of the
Council of Five Hundred. He was next noted for his participation in the Rhine campaign and the
battle of Hohenlinden, receiving the supreme command of the 17th, 18th and 19th military divisions. He then passed from that post to being commander-in-chief of an army corps that Napoleon meant to send to
Portugal to force it to renounce its alliance with England, though that expedition never took place.
Saint-Domingue
His brother-in-law Napoleon I then appointed him commander of the expedition to re-establish control over the French colony of
Saint-Domingue (now
Haïti). Slavery had been abolished in Saint-Domingue since late 1793 and the former slave and general
Toussaint L'Ouverture had created a constitution appointing him President for life, although he still swore loyalty to the French nation. Leclerc set off from Brest in December 1801 and landed at
Cap-Français in February
1802, with other warships and a total of 40,000 troops, publicly repeating Bonaparte's promise that "all of the people of Saint-Domingue are French" and forever free. L'Ouverture's harsh discipline had made him numerous enemies and Leclerc played off the ambitions of L'Ouverture's younger key officers and competitors against each other, promising that they would maintain their ranks in the French Army and thus bringing them to abandon L'Ouverture. The French won several victories and regained control in three months after severe fighting, with L'Ouverture forced to negotiate an honorable surrender and retire to tend his plantations under house arrest. However, Napoleon's secret instructions to Leclerc were to arrest Toussaint L'Ouverture and so Leclerc seized L'Ouverture during a meeting for deportation to France, where he died while imprisoned at
Fort-de-Joux in the
Jura mountains in 1803.
Despite his superiors' warnings, Leclerc did not consolidate his victory by disarming L'Ouverture's old officers and they and the black and Creole population rose up again when news reached the island of the reestablishment of slavery on
Guadeloupe, bringing the prospect of a similar restoration on Saint-Domingue and swinging the tide inexorably against French hopes for reimposing control. Leclerc's reports to France about his counter-insurgency campaign included such statements as, "Since terror is the sole resource left me, I employ it", and, "We must destroy all the mountain negroes, men and women, sparing only children under twelve years of age. We must destroy half the negroes of the plains..." He faced the new organised and powerful insurrection bravely but fell victim to the
yellow fever which also decimated his army, dying aged 30 on 1 November 1802. He was succeeded in command by General
Rochambeau, whose brutal racial warfare drew more leaders back to the rebel armies, including black and
mulatto army officers
Jean Jacques Dessalines,
Alexandre Pétion and
Henri Christophe. On 18 November 1803, Dessalines defeated Rochambeau's forces in the
Battle of Vertières. Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haïti and its new name on 1 January 1804. In the meantime Leclerc's body had been transported to France by his widow and buried on one of his estates.
Memorials
thumb|200px|left|Statue of LeClerc at PontoiseA statue at
Pontoise shows him in Napoleonic uniform, his scabbard touching the earth. It was put up by marshal
Davout and his second wife (Leclerc's sister) at the top of a staircase built in 1869 by François Lemot. Around 3m high, the statue is on a square stone pedestal inscribed with information on him in gold
majuscule letters. It adjoins the south side of city's
cathedral. There is also a statue of him by
Jean Guillaume Moitte in the
Pantheon de Paris.
Footnotes
Bibliography
- The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James (1938)
