Jean-Joseph Ange D'Hautpoul - Revolutionary Wars

Revolutionary Wars

By contemporary accounts, d'Hautpoul was a big man, possibly taller than Joachim Murat, who was nearly six feet tall. Endowed with broad shoulders and a big voice. He spoke the language of the common soldier, and led from the front. Early in the French Revolution, commissioners visited the various regiments to weed out dangerous, and prospectively traitorous nobles; generally, the commissioners cowed by the army into submission, but d'Hautpoul's cavalry regiment refused to be intimidated. When the commissioners came for their colonel, a scion of impoverished nobility, his soldiers refused to give him up: "No d'Hautpoul, no 6th Chasseurs." Thus, despite his noble birth, at the exhortations of his soldiers he remained in the French Revolutionary Army.

d'Hautpoul served in the 1794–1799 campaigns against the armies of the First and Second Coalitions. In April 1794, d'Hautpoul was promoted in the field to general of brigade and he commanded the brigade under both Jacques Desjardin and his successor, François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers. After the battle of Fleurus, his unit was transferred to the division of François Joseph Lefebvre. In June 1795, his provisional rank of general of brigade was made permanent by the Committee of Public Safety. He distinguished himself in a fight at Blankenberge on 13 September 1795. In June 1796, d'Hautpoul was promoted to general of division and inspector of the cavalry. At Altenkirchen, he was wounded in the shoulder by a musket ball.

After his recovery, d'Hautpoul was given command of the heavy cavalry of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse under General Paul Grenier. After at Neuwied, he was transferred to the Army of England under command of Lazare Hoche. When the French Directory abandoned the idea of an invasion of England, he again was deployed on the German front, this time as part of the Army of the Danube. After the French loss at the Battle of Ostrach, his Cavalry reserve protected the French retreat from Pfullendorf. A few days later, after failing to lead a timely charge at the Battle of Stockach, he was suspended on orders of the Army commander, Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, who blamed d'Hautpoul for the defeat. Acquitted by a court-martial in Strasbourg, d'Hautpoul resumed his duties at the end of July 1799, having missed the critical actions at the First Battle of Zurich.

In 1799, d'Hautpoul commanded cavalry brigades under Ney, Lecourbe and Baraguey d'Hilliers in rest of the campaign in northeastern Switzerland. In the German campaign of 1800, he served under Moreau and distinguished himself at the battles of Biberach and Hohenlinden, during which his heavy cavalry was instrumental in disrupting the Austrian infantry defenses.