Joseph Victor Audoy

Joseph-Victor Audoÿ was a French General, military engineering officer and politician. He was born on 9 May 1782 in Lavaur (Tarn) and died on 25 November 1871 in Saint-Lieux-lès-Lavaur (Tarn).

Biography Joseph-Victor Audoÿ was the son of Pierre Séverin Audoÿ (first Mayor of the city of Lavaur during the French revolution between 1789 and 1792 and member of the National Legislative Assembly between the 28 June 1791 and July 1792) and of Marie Henriette Lucile Pétronille de Clausade de Riols de Mazieu.He was born on 9 May 1782 in Lavaur in the department of Tarn. He was the second child in a family of four children.

Napoleonic Wars Audoy became aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Joseph, Viscount of Rogniat. He thus served in the army of Spain from 1810 to 1812. Promoted Captain to the corps of military engineers of the army of Aragon, he participated in the sieges of Lérida, of Tortosa, of Tarragona and of Valencia and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor on 6 August 1810. Audoy liberated at the head of his sappers, the cities of Navarino, Modon (Methoni) and Coron (Koroni) in Peloponnese in October 1828, then took the "Morea castle" of Patras (on 30 October 1828) to the Turkish-Egyptian occupation troops of Ibrahim Pasha. During this campaign, on 22 February 1829 at Navarino, king Charles X of France made him Commander of the Legion of Honor. He built bridges, as on the Pamissos river between Navarino and Kalamata. The road between Navarino and Modon, the first in independent Greece, was also built. He thus built from October 1828 the new cities of Modon (current Methoni) and Navarino (current Pylos), outside the walls of the fortresses, on the model of the bastides of Southwest France (Audoy originated from Tarn) and the cities of the Ionian Islands (which share common features, such as a central geometrical square bordered by covered galleries built with a succession of contiguous arches, each supported by a colonnade, as the arcades of Pylos or Corfu). All these cities quickly repopulated and returned to their pre-war activity. On his return to France, the newly installed king Otto I of Greece conferred by royal decree on Audoy the title of Commander of the Royal Order of the Redeemer, on 30 July 1835.

Retired to Saint-Lieux-lès-Lavaur in the familial Château des Cambards after his final retirement from public life, he died there on 25 November 1871 at the age of 89. He was buried in the municipal cemetery. His grave was rehabilitated by the National Association of French Souvenir in 2013.

Decorations

60x60px Knight of the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis on 18 August 1819.

60x60px Commander of the Legion of Honor on 22 February 1829. 60x60px Commander of the Royal Order of the Redeemer (Greece), on 30 July 1835.

Annexes