Alexandre d’Aubremé (1773-1835)

Alexandre Charles Joseph Ghislain d’Aubremé (also recorded in Dutch as Alexander Karel Joseph Gislain graaf d’Aubremé) was born in Brussels on 17 June 1773 and pursued a long military career that moved through the armies and state structures created in the Netherlands and the Southern Netherlands during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. He entered service in 1792 as a second Lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of Belgians in the Armée du Nord of the French Republic. In the War of the First Coalition he served in the Flanders theatre under commanders including Dumouriez, Custine, Houchard, and Pichegru, and he was present in the French winter offensive that entered the Dutch Republic in December 1794.

After the establishment of the Batavian Republic he transferred into Batavian service in June 1795 with the rank of captain. With Batavian forces under Herman Willem Daendels he served in the 1796 Rhine operations. In 1799 he was engaged in the defence of the Franco-Batavian forces against the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, the main fighting taking place around the North Holland peninsula during the expedition.

Under the Kingdom of Holland, in 1808, d’Aubremé was promoted to Major while serving in a Guards regiment. When the Kingdom of Holland was annexed to the French Empire in 1810, he continued in the enlarged imperial army and eventually became Colonel commanding the French 136e Régiment d’infanterie de ligne. In the 1813 German campaign he and the 136th fought at Lützen, where he distinguished himself and was wounded, and again at Bautzen two weeks later while still not fully recovered. After Bautzen he received the knight’s cross of the Légion d’honneur. In the 1814 campaign in France the 136th was committed in the fighting around Brienne and Montmirail, and at Gué-à-Tresmes; in these operations he was wounded near Lizy-sur-Ourcq on 28 February 1814, and by that point the regiment had been reduced to a handful of survivors.

After the first Bourbon restoration, in October 1814, d’Aubremé left French service and entered that of the Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands as a colonel. He was appointed military governor of the fortress of Mons and the province of Hainaut. In April 1815 he was promoted to major-general. During the Hundred Days he commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Netherlands Division in the Mobile Army of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, part of I Corps in the Anglo-Allied army. His brigade remained at Nivelles during the battle of Quatre Bras (16 June 1815), but at Waterloo (18 June 1815) it was committed in the later phases of the battle as part of the intervention by Chassé’s division against French formations near the end of the fighting; d’Aubremé was mentioned in dispatches in connection with Waterloo.

In the post-war Dutch army he was appointed Adjutant-General of the army on 23 February 1818 with responsibility for personnel matters. On 5 February 1819 he became Commissioner-General (Minister) for War and held that portfolio until 15 June 1826, when he was succeeded by Prince Frederik of the Netherlands; at the end of his ministerial tenure the king created him a count. In 1828 he was promoted to lieutenant-general.

During the Belgian Revolution of 1830 d’Aubremé was in Brussels and served on the general staff. He remained loyal to King William I, left the Southern Netherlands, and later went into voluntary exile at Aachen. He died at Aachen on 13 February 1835, reported as sudden death from a stroke.