Louis Klein

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Louis Klein
Peer of France, 1831.[1]
Other workSenator.

Dominique Louis Antoine Klein (19 January 1761 – 2 November 1845) served in the French military during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars as a general of cavalry.

Initially part of the house guard at the royal residences for

Jena and Auerstadt
. Following the Prussian campaign, he retired from active service, entered politics, and performed administrative duties in Paris.

Klein served in the French Senate, and voted for

Louis XVIII of France
raised him to the French peerage upon the second restoration.

Military career

Initially, Klein served in the royal house guard for the King of France, holding the prestigious position as guard of the gate. He left military service in 1787. After the French Revolution began in 1789, he rejoined the military and in 1792, he was listed as an infantry lieutenant in the Army of the North. His cavalry regiment participated in the Battle of Fleurus.[2]

French Revolutionary Wars

By 1795, Klein was a brigadier general in the

Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, where he replaced Adjutant-General Michel Ney.[3]
Klein was appointed general of division in 1799 and crossed the Rhine at
Andre Massena received overall command of both the Army of the Danube and the Army of Helvetia; Klein's column joined Massena near Zurich.[7]

In May 1799, Klein led a cavalry division of 2,010 prior to the

Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier, on the north or south flanks respectively, as required. The Austrian assault fell hardest on Mortier, who was driven back from the strategically placed Dietikon. Klein's reserve enabled the French to retake and hold the village. This convinced the Russian commander in Zurich, Alexander Korsakov, that he should draw his troops back to the city fortifications.[8] Later, as Korsakoff relinquished these, the Russians executed a confused withdrawal to Constance. In the chaos, Honoré Théodore Maxime Gazan's division, supported by Klein's reserve, pressed the Coalition forces hard at the west end of Constance, by the bridge to the abbey at Petershausen. They nearly captured the Prince Condé and the Duke d'Enghien themselves. Although the French took many prisoners, including many of the Army of Condé, the French emigrant army, these prisoners were not massacred whole-sale, as had happened after earlier battles. Klein and Mortier issued instructions, which were supported by Massena, that the émigrés be assigned Russian names—they were, after all, under Russian pay and wearing the Russian cockade in their caps—and treated with dignity; they were eventually exchanged for French officers held prisoner by the Austrians and Russians.[9]

Returning to France after the

Legion d'honneur.[3]

Napoleonic Wars

In 1805, Klein's division was part of the newly created VIII. Corps, under command of

St. Pölten, northwest of Vienna. Klein's entire regiment of dragoons patrolled the northern Danube shore, while the rest of his division, the last in the extended line of march, was more than a day behind Maxime Gazan's lead division.[10] Klein's division did not take part in the Battle of Dürenstein, although his dragoons were with Mortier and Gazan immediately prior to the engagement.[11]

Klein's division was part of the decisive defeat of the Austrian and Russian force at the subsequent

Pressburg, and could move either west or east, depending on the actions of the Archduke Charles or the Russian commander Kutuzov.[13] Consequently, Klein's dragoons, held the road between Austerlitz and Vienna, eliminating a possible Austrian retreat.[14]

Promotions & Awards

  • 1777–1787, Guard of the Gate.[15]
  • 1792, First Lieutenant, 83rd Regiment, later 11th Chasseurs[2]
  • 1794, General of Brigade,
    Army of Sambre-et-Meuse[15]
  • 1799, General of Division, Army of the Danube
  • 1802, Inspector General of Cavalry[15]
  • 1804, Legion of Honor[1]
  • 1805, Envoy, Grand Armeé[3]
  • 1807, Senator[2]
  • 1808, Governor of the Imperial Palace[15]
  • 1808-1809, Count of the Empire, Grand Cordon of the Order of the Bavarian Lion[1]
  • 1812, National Guard, Paris[15]
  • 1814-15, Peer of France, Order of St. Louis[2]
  • 1834, Grand Cross, Legion of Honor[3]

In the

Soult, and so does Adolphe Thiers; furthermore, Petre maintains, Klein's dragoons were sent to guard the communications lines between Erfurt and Weimar, where several groups of Prussians had skirmished with the French rear guard.[18]

Administrative and political duties

Following the Prussian campaign, Napoleon appointed Klein as governor of the Imperial palace. In 1807, Klein was called to the Senate. In 1808, he was raised by letters of patent to a count of the empire and awarded the Grand Cordon of the

Order of the Bavarian Lion.[1] In 1812, he was placed in command of the recruitment and training of a cohort of the National Guard.[3]

He remained in the Senate until April 1814, when he voted for Napoleon's abdication. In 1814, during the Bourbon Restoration, he was named a knight of the Order of Saint Louis.[2] He did not support Napoleon's return in the Hundred Days. In the Second Restoration, Louis XVIII raised him to the French peerage.[3]

Family and personal life

Louis Klein was born on 25 January 1761 in

Lorraine region. He married 7 January 1783 to Marie-Agathe Pierron, with whom he had a son Edouard Marie Arsène (1784 – 1843). Edouard had two daughters, Arsène Louise Marie, born 1820, married Mathieu Prosper Morey; and Louise Françoise Clémence, born in Hebreville, 1825, married in Paris to Henri Tollier.[19]

In 1808, Klein divorced Pierron, with the Emperor's permission, and on 2 July of that year remarried to Caroline of Valangin-Arberg, daughter of the Countess of Arberg, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress

Josephine de Beauharnais. In this marriage, he had a son, Eugene Joseph Napoleon, who was born in 1813 in Paris and died in 1872 . Louis Klein died 2 November 1845 in Paris.[19]

Sources

Notes and citations

  1. ^ a b c d (in French) Henri Gourdon de Genouillac. Dictionnaire des anoblis, 1270-1868, suivi du Dictionnaire des familles. Paris, Bachelin-Deflorenne, 1875, p. 157.
  2. ^ a b c d e (in French) Eudoxe Soulié; Musée national de Versailles et des Trianons. Notice des peintures et sculptures composant le Musée Impérial. Versailles : Montalant-Bougleux, 1854–1855, v. 1, p. 358.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Louis Hennequin. Zürich. Masséna en Suisse, messidor an vii-brumaire an viii (juillet-octobre 1799). Paris, Nancy, Berger-Levrault, 1911. p. 179.
  4. ^ Roland Kessinger and Geert van Uythoven. Order of Battle, Army of the Danube Archived 2010-05-07 at the Wayback Machine. Stockach: Roland Kessinger & Geert van Uythoven. Accessed 14 April 2010.
  5. ^ Jourdan, Jean-Baptiste, A Memoir of the operations of the army of the Danube under the command of General Jourdan, taken from the manuscripts of that officer. London: Debrett, 1799, pp. 144–145.
  6. ^ Phipps, p. 62
  7. ^ a b Phipps, p. 97.
  8. ^ a b Phipps, pp. 129–133
  9. ^ Phipps, p. 159–161.
  10. ISBN 1-85367-644-6
    , p. 76.
  11. ^ Digby Smith. "Clash at Dürenstein", Napoleonic Wars Databook, p. 213.
  12. ^ Goetz, p. 93.
  13. ^ Goetz, p. 94.
  14. ^ Goetz, pp. 294–297.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g (in French) Charles Mullié. "Dominique Louis Antoine Klein." Biographie des célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 à 1850. 1851–52.
  16. ^ Sloane William Milligan. The Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: Century, 1911, OCLC 10388397, Volume II, p. 436.
  17. ^ Francis Loraine Petre. Napoleon's Conquest of Prussia. London, John Lane; New York, John Lane Co., 1907, OCLC 1817897, pp. 196–200.
  18. ^ Petrie, p. 214. Adolphe Thiers. History of the consulate and the empire of France under Napoleon. D. Forbes Campbell and John Stebbing (trans.). London: Chatto & Windus; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1893–1894, OCLC 12606477, vol. 4, p. 300.
  19. ^ a b (in French) Albert Révérend, vicomte. Titres, anoblissements et pairies de la restauration 1814–1830. Paris, Chez l'auteur et chez H. Champion, 1901—06, volume 4, p. 95.

Bibliography

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