Pierre-François Bouchard
Encyclopedia
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
engineers.
Early life
He was born in 1771 to Pierre Bouchard (a master joiner, then a businessmen, then a merchant and finally a teacher) and his wife Pierrette Janet de Cressia, the youngest of their four daughters and 3 sons, all born in Orgelet. Pierre-François studied in the collège in Orgelet up until the classe de rhétorique, then spent two years studying philosophy and mathematics in the collège at Besançon. His military career began in 1793 as a sergent-major in a battalion of the Grenadiers de Paris. He was one of these famous "soldiers of Year II' and fought in Champagne and Belgium, before being sent to the École Nationale d' Aérostatique in 1794. He was made 'lieutenant des aérostiers' and taught maths as sous-directeur of this École, then based in Chalais-MeudonMeudon
Meudon is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris.-Geography:...
. There his right eye was badly damaged when a gas flask exploded during an experiment to produce hydrogen gas to inflate observation balloons - the experiment was led by Nicolas-Jacques Conté
Nicolas-Jacques Conté
Nicolas-Jacques Conté was a French painter, balloonist, army officer, and inventor of the modern pencil.He was born at Saint-Céneri-près-Sées in Normandy, and distinguished himself for his mechanical genius which was of great avail to the French army in Egypt...
who lost his left eye. Conté held Bouchard in very high esteem and recommended him to Claude Louis Berthollet
Claude Louis Berthollet
Claude Louis Berthollet was a Savoyard-French chemist who became vice president of the French Senate in 1804.-Biography:...
, one of the four founding fathers of the École Polytechnique
École Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
, which Bouchard entered on 21 November 1796. There he studied descriptive geometry under Gaspard Monge
Gaspard Monge
Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse was a French mathematician, revolutionary, and was inventor of descriptive geometry. During the French Revolution, he was involved in the complete reorganization of the educational system, founding the École Polytechnique...
and learned the art of fortification, until his studies were interrupted when he was taken on by the Ministry of War and attached as a lieutenant to the Egyptian expeditionary force on 20 April 1798.
Egypt
Before embarking for Egypt, he married Marie Élisabeth Bergere on 23 April 1798 - she was a young woman from Meudon, five years his junior, with whom he much later had two children. He then went to ToulonToulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....
and on 19 May the same year board the Franklin. He landed in Egypt on 4 July after the capture of Alexandria and was then made a member of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts. Still under Conté's command, he was attached to a group of mechanical artists and ordered to investigate Egyptian crafts and techniques. He left Alexandria for Cairo on 7 September and, after a few weeks in Cairo, was on 3 October put under Antoine-François Andréossy
Antoine-François Andréossy
Antoine-François, comte Andréossy was a French general and diplomat of noble origin and Italian descent.-Biography:...
's command as part of a team of geographers sent to investigate lake Menzalé between Damiette and Port-Saïd. Bouchard was only on this mission for forty days before going before the exit-panel of the École Polytechnique presided over by Monge, graduating in mid November. He was then promoted to engineer lieutenant, second class on 28 November 1798 and left the Commission des Sciences et des Arts to train in the army.
He was then was put in charge of rebuilding of Fort Julien
Fort Julien
Fort Julien was a fort in Egypt, originally built by the Ottoman Empire and occupied by the French during Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt and Syria between 1798-1801. It stood on the left bank of the Nile a couple of miles north-east of Rashid on the north coast of Egypt...
, an old Mamluk fortification near the port city of Rosetta
Rosetta
Rosetta is a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. It is located east of Alexandria, in Beheira governorate. It was founded around AD 800....
(present-day Rashid
Rosetta
Rosetta is a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. It is located east of Alexandria, in Beheira governorate. It was founded around AD 800....
) which Bonaparte
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
had renamed after Thomas Prosper Jullien
Thomas Prosper Jullien
Thomas Prosper Jullien was a French army officer of the French Revolutionary Wars. Aide de camp to Bonaparte, he rose to the rank of captain and was brother of the famous general Louis Joseph Victor Jullien de Bidon....
, recently assassinated in Egypt. During these works he discovered the Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...
on July 15 or 19, 1799. He was immediately convinced of its importance, an enthusiasm he passed on to generals Menou and Bonaparte. He found himself caught up in the fiasco which led to the fall of the fort of El-Arish, which he and general Cazals were defending against the Ottomans. He was sent as an envoy to the Grand Vizir but was arrested, disarmed and imprisoned in Damascus for forty two days. On his release he was promoted to captain on 1 May 1800 and attached again to the force at Rosetta, where he was again captured when the small French garrison Fort Jullien had to capitulate to the 2,000 British and 4,000 Ottoman troops sent against them. He was released at the end of the war in Egypt and got back to Marseille on 30 July 1801.
Saint Domingue and Spain
At Marseille he joined the Saint-Domingue expeditionSaint-Domingue expedition
The Saint-Domingue expedition was a French military expedition sent by Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, under his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc in an attempt to regain French control of the island of Saint-Domingue and curtail the measures of independence taken by the former...
, embarking in December accompanied by his wife, who came with him at her own expense in imitation of Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte was the first sovereign Duchess of Guastalla, an imperial French Princess and the Princess consort of Sulmona and Rossano. She was the sixth child of Letizia Ramolino and Carlo Buonaparte, Corsica's representative to the court of King Louis XVI of France. Her elder brother,...
, wife of the expedition's commander Leclerc. Bouchard and his wife both caught yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
on the island, though she was repatriated and gave birth to their daughter in 1802, without Bouchard receiving news until much later. Bouchard was captured on the island's surrender and interned on Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
before being released on parole in August 1804, after which he went back to France. He convalesced there for a few months before joining Napoleon in September 1805, upon which Bouchard was put in charge of construction works in the town of Vendée (later renamed Roche-sur-Yon), which Napoleon had founded to reestablish civil and military authority on a civilian population who he thought might be encouraged to resume the War in the Vendee by the British naval presence in the area. Bouchard was in the town for two years with his wife, who gave birth to a son.
After a brief stay in La Rochelle
La Rochelle
La Rochelle is a city in western France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department.The city is connected to the Île de Ré by a bridge completed on 19 May 1988...
, in 1807 Bouchard joined an expeditionary force which Napoleon was sending against Spain and Portugal after the Treaty of Tilsitt. Bouchard then spent seven years in the Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
under Dupont
Pierre Dupont de l'Étang
Pierre-Antoine, comte Dupont de l'Étang was a French general of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as a political figure of the Bourbon Restoration.-Revolutionary Wars:...
, Soult, Massena and Marmont, fighting bravely at the battle of Alcolea on the Guadalquivir. Even so, after Dupont's surrender at on 22 July 1808, Bouchard was yet again captured. When he was released he went to join Soult's army and was present at the battle of Corogne and the capture of Oporto, distinguishing himself at the head of the sappers in the crossing of the fortified bridge at Amarante. He was promoted to chef de bataillon on 24 November 1809, but left his wife in such great want she had to beg for an advance of 500 francs from his pay, which he had otherwise entirely devoted to buying equipment and new horses after the French pulled out of Portugal. In 1810 and 1811 he fought under Massena in a new expedition to Portugal, which once again ended in retreat. He was made a Knight of the Légion d'Honneur and attached to the defence of Astorga in Spain under the command of Marmont then Clauzel. There he was again captured on the city's surrender and sent to England in September 1812, leaving his children and his parents in the care of his wife, who was again impoverished now she did not have his income.
Restoration
Bouchard only got back to France after the treaty of ParisTreaty of Paris (1814)
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 May 1814, ended the war between France and the Sixth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars, following an armistice signed on 23 May between Charles, Count of Artois, and the allies...
in July 1814 and the Bourbon Restoration
Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...
saw him made an Officer of the Légion d'Honneur, a knight of the order of Saint Louis
Order of Saint Louis
The Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis was a military Order of Chivalry founded on 5 April 1693 by Louis XIV and named after Saint Louis . It was intended as a reward for exceptional officers, and is notable as the first decoration that could be granted to non-nobles...
and chief engineer of Orléans
Orléans
-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...
. During the Hundred Days
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
he sided with Napoleon, who put him in charge of defending Laon
Laon
Laon is the capital city of the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France.-History:The hilly district of Laon, which rises a hundred metres above the otherwise flat Picardy plain, has always held strategic importance...
. He was denounced after for this action and put on half-pay, until requesting in July 1816 that his service record be amended to play down his actions during the Hundred Days. He thus rejoined the army and was attached to the fortified cities in northern France. His classmate Prevost de Vernois recommended him for the rank of lieutenant colonel, but died in Givet in 1822 as Engineer in Chief there after a long and painful illness - his daughter died just before him, aged 13. His widow's friends convinced the king to accord her a 450 franc pension, only a quarter of the pension Bouchard himself had received.