Berthier: Pierre Guillaume Gratien

Pierre Guillaume Gratien was a French general of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period who spent a significant phase of his senior career in the service of the Kingdom of Holland under Louis Bonaparte, and later returned to French service before ending his career on the Italian theatre in 1813–1814. He was born in Paris on 1 January 1764 and died of illness at Piacenza on 24 April 1814. His name “GRATIEN” was among those inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe.

He enlisted on 21 January 1787 in the Dauphin-Dragons regiment. In the opening phase of the Revolution he entered the Paris National Guard; on 13 July 1789 he became Lieutenant of grenadiers in the battalion of the Enfants-Rouges, and in July 1790 he was promoted to captain in the same formation. With the outbreak of war he transferred to the volunteer battalions raised for field service, becoming captain in the 2nd Battalion of Volunteers of Paris on 19 July 1791 and lieutenant-colonel on 6 January 1792. He served with the Armée du Nord in 1792–1793. During the defection crisis of General Dumouriez in spring 1793, Gratien was credited with withdrawing his battalion from Maulde and conducting it to safety via Escautpont and then to Douai, preserving the unit during a moment of extreme confusion on the frontier.

In the 1793 campaign he fought in the fighting on the northern frontier and distinguished himself at Linselles (18 August 1793), after which he was promoted to général de brigade on 3 September 1793. His rise was then interrupted. At Wattignies (15–16 October 1793), an episode in which his troops were thrown into disorder by enemy fire and conflicting orders contributed to a contested withdrawal led to his removal from command and arrest; he was imprisoned at Arras (from 18 October 1793) and was acquitted on 30 March 1794. He was reinstated only in 1795, returning to employment in the west and on the Channel coast in the forces organized against internal revolt and against the threat of British-supported landings.

In December 1796 he took part in the French expedition to Ireland, embarking with the Brest fleet in the attempt to land an army that was ultimately frustrated by weather and dispersal at sea. After the failure of that expedition he was assigned to the Armée de Sambre-et-Meuse, and in April 1797 he was present at the crossing of the Rhine at Neuwied. He was again connected with preparations for an Irish expedition in 1798–1799, though he did not sail in the later preparations, and held departmental commands in Normandy (including the Manche) around 1799 in the shifting administrative-military arrangements of the Directory and early Consulate.

In 1801 he embarked with Admiral Ganteaume’s fleet as part of the attempt to send reinforcements toward Egypt, a Major naval effort that did not achieve its strategic objective. After the collapse of France’s Egyptian position and the rearrangements of French commitments, Gratien was sent in 1802 to the Armée de Hollande, serving in the Batavian sphere at a time when French influence over Dutch military organization was direct and growing. He became a Commandeur of the légion d'honneur on 14 June 1804.

Gratien’s association with Holland became central after the creation of the Kingdom of Holland (1806) under Louis Bonaparte. Passing into Dutch service, he was promoted to Lieutenant general on 15 February 1807 and received Dutch royal distinctions. He commanded Dutch formations employed in northern Germany in operations connected to French strategic control of the coast and the suppression of irregular threats. In 1809 he led a Dutch division against the forces of Ferdinand von Schill and the insurgent elements gathered around him, and at Stralsund (31 May 1809) his troops stormed the defenses; Schill was killed in the fighting in the town. For this operation Gratien received high honors from allied monarchies: he was made Commandeur of the Dutch Order of the Union (with the diamond insignia noted in Dutch court correspondence) and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog in 1809, reflecting Denmark’s alliance position and the regional political importance attached to restoring control in the Baltic littoral.

After the French annexation of the Kingdom of Holland (1810) and the absorption of Dutch troops into the French imperial system, Gratien returned to French service. He was re-employed as a general officer and in late 1809 received command of an infantry brigade in the reserve formations sent to the Iberian Peninsula. In 1810–1811 he served in Portugal under General Junot (duc d’Abrantès). In October 1810 he fought at Sobral (the combat on 12 October 1810 associated with the French probing actions in front of Wellington’s defensive system) and the following day at Caxarias (11 October 1810 in some summaries, reflecting the sequence of engagements and reports around the same period), where French troops engaged Allied forces that threatened the flank of Junot’s corps. The surviving summarized accounts place him in these actions as a brigade-level commander within the French order of battle during the difficult operations that preceded the long standoff and eventual French withdrawal from the Lisbon lines area.

In 1812, after the consolidation of imperial forces following annexations, Gratien held a divisional command in the French army in the campaign year, though he left the active army in January 1813 for reasons of health. He returned in June 1813 and was sent to Italy, where French forces under Eugène de Beauharnais and senior generals were attempting to hold the line of the eastern approaches and the Venetian plain as Austria re-entered the war. In the 1813 operations he commanded a division (identified in later accounts as the 2nd Division under General Grenier) and took part in a sequence of maneuvers and combats on the frontier line: he evacuated Villach in August 1813 and later reoccupied it; he was engaged at Tarvis (Tarvisio) and in the fighting around Bassano in October 1813, where he was wounded. As the French Italian army reorganized in late 1813, his division was broken up in November; in December he formed a new division at Alessandria. In early 1814 this formation became the 3rd Division of the Armée de Réserve in Italy, and in February 1814 it rejoined the main field army.

In the final Italian campaign he fought at the Battle of the Mincio (8 February 1814), one of the decisive set-piece engagements of the theatre as the French attempted to check Austrian advances. In March 1814 he commanded in the fighting at Parma (combat of Parma), as the campaign compressed toward the Po valley and the political-military situation in France collapsed toward abdication. Assigned to Piacenza, he died there on 24 April 1814, after the end of Major hostilities in the Italian theatre.

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Pierre Guillaume Gratien

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