François Séverin Marceau

François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers ( , ; 1 March 1769 – 21 September 1796) was a French general of the Revolutionary Wars.

Early life Desgraviers was born on 1 March 1769 in Chartres, in the province of Orléanais, the son of a prosecutor. In December 1785, at the age of 16, he enlisted in the Angoulême Infantry Regiment, which later became the 34th Infantry Regiment of the French Army. While on furlough in Paris, Marceau participated in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. After that event he took his discharge from the regular army and returned to Chartres, but the opposition of his family soon compelled him to seek new military employment.

Revolutionary Wars In July 1792, Marceau was appointed captain of the Revolutionary Army's 2nd Battalion of Volunteers of Eure-et-Loir.

Death

After Jourdan and Jean Victor Marie Moreau's Rhine Campaign of 1796 ended in defeat, Marceau's men covered Jourdan's retreat over the Rhine. Marceau fought in the desperate Battle of Limburg on the Lahn River (16–19 September 1796). While conducting a successful rear guard action near Altenkirchen on 19 September, he received a mortal wound. He died two days later in the early morning, aged only twenty-seven.

The Austrians competed with Marceau's own countrymen to honour the dead general. His body was burned and the ashes placed under a pyramid in Koblenz designed by Kléber. They were transferred to the Panthéon in 1889.

Marceau was immortalized in Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

LVI

By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground, There is a small and simple pyramid, Crowning the summit of the verdant mound; Beneath its base are heroes' ashes hid, Our enemy's – but let not that forbid Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb Tears, big tears, gush'd from the rough soldier's lid, Lamenting and yet envying such a doom, Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.

LVII

Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career, — His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes; And fitly may the stranger lingering here Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose; For he was Freedom's champion, one of those, The few in number, who had not o'erstept The charter to chastise which she bestows On such as wield her weapons; he had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept.