François Joseph Lefebvre

François Joseph Lefebvre, Duke of Danzig ( , ; 25 October 1755 – 14 September 1820) was a French military commander of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, and one of the original eighteen Marshals of the Empire created by Napoleon.

Early life Lefebvre was born on 28 May 1755 in Rouffach, Alsace, the son of a miller and retired hussar. Orphaned at a young age, he was raised by an uncle who, himself a priest, unsuccessfully tried to lead him to a career in the church.

Napoleonic Wars

On 19 May 1804, Lefebvre was one of four senators to be made a Marshal of the Empire. He presented the Joyeuse to Napoleon in his coronation as emperor on 2 December.

Lefebvre commanded the infantry of the Old Guard in the 1812 French invasion of Russia, and fought at the Battle of Borodino. He served in the German campaign (1813) and in the French north-east campaign (1814) of the War of the Sixth Coalition, and voted for the emperor's deposition at the Senate in April 1814. After the first Bourbon Restoration he was made Peer of France by King Louis XVIII (4 June 1814), but rallied to Napoleon during the Hundred Days.

Later life Lefebvre was excluded from the Chamber of Peers during the second Restoration. However, he retained his rank of marshal. Louis XVIII restored his peerage on 5 March 1819. He died in Paris on 14 September 1820, and was buried near André Masséna at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery.

He never forgot the risks he undertook that brought him rank and wealth. When a friend expressed envy of his estate, Lefebvre said, "Come down in the courtyard, and I'll have ten shots at you with a musket at 30 paces. If I miss, the whole estate is yours." After the friend declined this offer, Lefebvre added, "I had a thousand bullets shot at me from much closer range before I got all this."

In popular culture Lefebvre is portrayed by Yves Montand in Sacha Guitry's 1955 film Napoléon.

In the 1931 anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise, the alternate history scenario "If the Moors in Spain Had Won" by Philip Guedalla has Napoleon appointing Lefebvre as King Youssef I of Granada after deposing the House of Boabdil, only to trigger an analog of the Peninsular War.