François Joseph Westermann

Brigade-General François Joseph Westermann (5 September 17515 April 1794) was a French Army officer. He is best known as one of the main French Republican commanders in the initial stage of the War in the Vendée.

Early life and military career

Westermann was born on 5 September 1751 in Molsheim, Alsace (today department of Bas-Rhin). He enlisted in Count Esterhazy's regiment of hussars in 1767, retiring six years later as a non-commissioned officer. Afterwards, Westermann rejoined the army and accompanied General Charles François Dumouriez on his campaigns with the Army of the North and the Army of the Ardennes, and assisted him in his negotiations with the Duke of Brunswick.

Some historians believe this letter never existed. The rebellion was still going on, and there were several thousand living Vendéan prisoners being held by Westermann's forces when the letter was supposedly written. The killing of civilians would also have been an explicit violation of the Convention's orders to Westermann.

After his victory, in January 1794 Westermann was summoned to Paris, where, as a friend and partisan of Danton, he was proscribed and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was guillotined along with the Dantonist party on 5 April 1794.

He is depicted by Jacques Villeret in the 1983 film Danton and by Eduard von Winterstein in the 1921 movie of the same name.