Mathurin-Léonard Duphot

Léonard Mathurin Duphot (21 September 1769 – 28 December 1797) was a French general and poet, whose Ode aux mânes des héros morts pour la liberté was highly fashionable at the time.

Life

Duphot was born in la Guillotière, a suburb of Lyon, a stonemason's son. He joined the Vermandois regiment on 25 July 1785 aged 15, rising to sergeant on 25 March 1792, joining the French expedition to Savoy and being sent to Nice. He was a member of one of the national volunteer battalions created on the outbreak of the French Revolution. He was made chef de bataillon adjudant-général in November 1794 and fought with distinction in several actions of the Italian campaign in 1796. He was often mentioned in dispatches by general Augereau. On 13 June 1795 he came off the list of active officers and in February 1796 he was drafted back into the army for home service, though he returned to Augereau and Italy in August 1796, fighting at Mantua, Rivoli and La Favorita.

, and became Queen of Sweden, when he became King Charles XIV John in 1818.

Sources

• Marie-Nicolas Bouillet and Alexis Chassang (dir.), "Léonard Duphot" in Dictionnaire universel d’histoire et de géographie, 1878
• Mullié, Charles (1852). "Duphot (Léonard)" . Biographie des célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 à 1850  (in French). Paris: Poignavant et Compagnie.