Jean Augustin Ernouf

Divisional-General Manuel Louis Jean Augustin Ernouf (29 August 1753 – 12 September 1827) was a French Army officer, colonial administrator and politician who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He demonstrated moderate abilities as a combat commander; his real strength lay in his organizational and logistical talents. He held several posts as chief-of-staff and in military administration.

In 1791, Ernouf enlisted in the French Royal Army as a private; in September 1793, he was promoted to brigade general in the newly formed French Revolutionary Army. Ernouf and his commanding officer were accused of being counter-revolutionaries, disgraced, and then, in 1794 restored to their former ranks. In 1804, Napoleon appointed him as the governor of Guadeloupe following the restoration of direct French rule and slavery in the colony. Although he was able to reestablish order and agricultural production through brutal methods, the British invaded the colony in 1810 and after a brief engagement forced him to capitulate.

Ernouf returned to France on a prisoner exchange, but was charged with treason by Napoleon, who was enraged with the loss of Guadeloupe. Before he could be exonerated by a court, the First French Empire fell in 1814; with the Bourbon Restoration in France, he retained his honors, and received command of the III Corps in Marseille. Following the Second Bourbon Restoration, he held an administrative position in one of the occupation zones, and later he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies of France.

Early life

Manuel Louis Jean Augustin Ernouf was born in Alençon, Normandy on 29 August 1753. After completing school, Ernouf joined the French Royal Army as a private. He was commissioned as a lieutenant of infantry in the 1st Battalion of Volunteers of the Orne on the 24 September 1791, and as a captain on 22 March 1792, and 5 May 1793 he became an aide-de-camp of General Barthel's Army of the North. On 30 July 1793, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Flanders campaign

In 1793, during the War of the First Coalition, Ernouf was sent to Cassel to strengthen the French position. The Duke of York laid siege to Dunkirk and blockaded the town of Bergues, on the Belgian border, which had insufficient garrison to fend off the British. Ernouf assembled a force of a thousand men and joined Jean Nicolas Houchard; together they marched to the relief of Dunkirk. Once there, he led a column in attack on the British camp. On 5 complémentaire an I (21 September 1793), which would have been the last day of the first year of the new Republic, he was raised to the rank of brigadier general and was appointed on 9 vendémiaire an II (30 September 1793) as chief of staff to the Army of the North. resulting in the War of the Second Coalition. On 2 March, the Army was renamed Army of the Danube, and it marched to Upper Swabia, where it engaged Archduke Charles' Habsburg force at Ostrach on 21 March, and again on 25 March at Stockach. In both battles, the Habsburg manpower, superior to the French numbers by three to one and two to one respectively, overwhelmed the French lines; Jourdan, the commander of the Army, was unable to concentrate his forces sufficiently to counteract the Habsburg numbers, and withdrew to the Black Forest in late March. Ernouf took command of the Army of the Danube while Jourdan returned to Paris to request more troops. He was replaced as commander of the Army of the Danube by André Masséna, and served as Massena's chief of staff in the Swiss campaign of 1799, during which he saw action in Zurich and central Switzerland; he was again at Zurich for the French victory over Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov.

Governor of Guadeloupe

In 1804, Ernouf became a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. Shortly afterward, he was sent to Guadeloupe as the new governor of the colony, charged with restoring order in the wake of an 1802 rebellion by Magloire Pélage and Louis Delgrès against the reintroduction of direct French rule and slavery. Within a year, Ernouf had fully restored slavery in Guadeloupe along with colony's productivity through waves of brutal repression. In contrast, he generously treated white planters who returned to Guadeloupe. Ernouf also ordered the occupation of the nearby Swedish colony of Saint Barthélemy, whose inhabitants traded with Haiti, which had recently gained independence from French rule as a result of the Haitian Revolution. Four French privateers operating out of Guadeloupe between 1805 and 1810 were named Général Ernouf, one of which was the captured sloop-of-war HMS Lilly.

The British capture of Martinique in 1809 led the French situation in Guadeloupe to become critical; due to the Royal Navy's effective blockade, the French troops and civilians on Guadeloupe were reduced to near starvation. Attacked on three sides at the end of January 1810, Ernouf's troops mounted a spirited yet brief defense and capitulated on 6 February 1810, after which he was transported to Britain. Ernouf was repatriated to France in a prisoner exchange in 1811. Angered at the loss of Guadeloupe to the British, Napoleon accused Ernouf of abuse of power, embezzlement and treason. He spent 23 months in prison while French courts debated how to proceed. Ernouf's son, Gaspard Augustin (8 December 1777 – 25 October 1848), was also a military commander during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Gaspard and his wife, Adelaïde Guesdon, were the parents of the 19th century historian, Alfred Auguste Ernouf (1816–1889).