Guillaume-Jean-Noël de Lavillegris (Saint-Malo, 20 July 1752 - Paris, 21 January 1807) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 Navy officer.

Biography

Lavillegris was born to a captain of the East India Company

French East India Company

The French East India Company was a commercial enterprise, founded in 1664 to compete with the British and Dutch East India companies in colonial India....

. He started sailing with the Company in 1767 and rose to captain. In 1779, he joined the Navy as a reserve officer, taking part in the naval operations in the American Revolutionary War

Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War

The naval operations of the American Revolutionary War , divide themselves naturally into two periods...

.

In 1792, he was made a lieutenant and appointed to command the frigate Précieuse. In March 1794, he was promoted to captain, and given command of the Achille; he took part in the Glorious First of June

Glorious First of June

The Glorious First of June [Note A] of 1794 was the first and largest fleet action of the naval conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the First French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars...

, where Achille was captured and he was taken prisoner.

In 1797, Lavillegris was promoted to commodore and appointed to the Quatorze Juillet, which was being completed. Quatorze Juillet burnt in an accident before her commissioning, and Lavillegris was suspended for not having been aboard at the time. Reinstated in September 1799, he was appointed to the Annibal in 1804, and to Mont-Blanc

French ship Mont-Blanc (1791)

Mont-Blanc was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the French Navy.She was built at Rochefort as Pyrrhus in 1791. She was renamed Mont-Blanc in 1793 before being renamed Trente-et-un Mai in 1794. Under that name she fought at the Battle of the First of June in June 1794 under Honoré Joseph...

 in 1805.

Lavillegris took part in the Trafalgar campaign

Trafalgar Campaign

The Trafalgar Campaign was a long and complicated series of fleet manoeuvres carried out by the combined French and Spanish fleets; and the opposing moves of the Royal Navy during much of 1805. These were the culmination of French plans to force a passage through the English Channel, and so achieve...

. He was wounded at the Battle of Cape Finisterre

Battle of Cape Finisterre (1805)

In the Battle of Cape Finisterre off Galicia, Spain, the British fleet under Admiral Robert Calder fought an indecisive naval battle against the Combined Franco-Spanish fleet which was returning from the West Indies...

, took part in the Battle of Trafalgar

Battle of Trafalgar

The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....

, and was eventually taken prisoner at the Battle of Cape Ortegal

Battle of Cape Ortegal

The Battle of Cape Ortegal was the final action of the Trafalgar Campaign, and was fought between a squadron of the Royal Navy and a remnant of the fleet that had been destroyed several weeks earlier at the Battle of Trafalgar...

.

Lavillegris died of consequences of the wound sustained at the Battle of Cape Finisterre in Paris on 21 January 1807.

Sources and references

• Dictionnaire des capitaines de vaisseau de Napoléon, Danielle & Bernard Quintin, SPM, 2003, ISBN 2-901952-42-9