Gaspard Fornier d'Albe (1769-1834)

Gaspard Hilarion Fornier d’Albe (born 11 April 1769 at Nîmes; died 21 October 1834 at Paris) was a French officer whose career began in light cavalry under the late monarchy and culminated under the Empire in senior staff employment, the rank of général de brigade (1809), and a prolonged fortress governorship on the Oder. In the War of the Sixth Coalition his name is principally attached to Küstrin (French: Custrin), where he commanded the place through the blockade beginning in April 1813 and capitulated on 7 March 1814, a defense of more than eleven months which ended with his garrison declared prisoners of war by the terms of capitulation.

Fornier d’Albe came from the Protestant elite of Nîmes. He entered military service on 17 September 1784 as a sous-lieutenant in the chasseurs des Vosges, beginning as a junior officer in mounted light troops. On 15 May 1788 he became a captain in the chasseurs de Lorraine. In the first phase of the Revolutionary Wars he transferred into staff and aide-de-camp employment: on 18 May 1791 he joined the 1st chasseurs as a replacement captain, and on 20 March 1792 he became aide-de-camp to the chevalier de Grave, carrying out missions to the Armies of the North and of the Centre and being employed near senior commanders including Rochambeau and Lafayette. This early attachment to headquarters duty placed him in the mobile administrative and liaison work by which the Revolutionary armies attempted to coordinate newly raised units and inexperienced staffs.

On 18 May 1792 Fornier d’Albe was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 18th Dragoons, and on 4 June 1792 he became aide-de-camp to General Montesquiou. He served in the opening operations of the Army of the South in the County of Nice and Savoy, and on 2 January 1793 he was promoted Colonel of his regiment. Soon afterward he was transferred to the Army of the Western Pyrenees, where he was wounded by a sabre cut; he was then named adjudant-général chef de brigade on 17 June 1793 by representatives on mission. Under the Convention’s decree removing noble officers, he withdrew from service, and he obtained reinstatement only on 28 July 1795 (10 Thermidor Year III) through General Menou’s intervention; Menou took him again as aide-de-camp.

On 27 June 1796 (9 Messidor Year IV) he was assigned to the headquarters of the Army of the Interior, remaining until 22 September 1796 (1 Vendémiaire Year V). On 10 May 1798 (21 Floréal Year VI) he returned to Menou’s staff and accompanied him to Egypt. He returned to France in the train of General Bonaparte and on 2 January 1800 (12 Nivôse Year VIII) became head of the ingénieurs-géographes attached to the War Depot (dépôt de la guerre). On 9 August 1800 (21 Thermidor Year VIII) he was promoted adjudant-commandant and served with the Army of the Rhine in the 1800 and 1801 campaigns; on 29 October 1801 (7 Brumaire Year X) he was assigned to the 7th Military Division. He was made chevalier of the Légion d’honneur on 5 February 1804 and promoted officier on 14 June 1804.

In 1805 he was employed with the infantry reserve at Lille and then served in the Grande Armée’s campaigns of Austria (1805), Prussia (1806), and Poland (1806–1807) as general chief of staff to a division (service summaries place him with the 3rd Division). In the Ulm campaign he is recorded as distinguished at Pfaffenhofen (Pfeld) near Ulm on 14 October 1805. In the fighting of 20 November 1805 he led a charge—identified in French accounts as a charge of the 7th Dragoons—to prevent the enemy seizing the locality of Libeň after the division’s flank had been turned and its rear threatened; he made a second charge, described as at the head of the 94th Line. His horse was hit twice during the action. On 14 October 1806 at Jena he was severely wounded by a biscaïen. In 1807 he served with the Army of Germany, and on 19 March 1808 he was created a baron of the Empire by imperial decree, with letters patent issued at Bayonne on 2 July 1808.

Fornier d’Albe’s general officer rank came in the Danube campaign. He was promoted général de brigade on 9 July 1809, following the Battle of Wagram. His subsequent career shifted away from field command into the specialized sphere of fortress government on the Oder line. He took command of the place of Custrin on 4 April 1811. He was replaced by General François Antoine Teste on 26 June 1811, but then replaced Teste again on 13 September 1811, resuming the governorship. From that point he remained associated with Custrin through the crisis years of 1813–1814.

The fortress of Custrin, on the Oder at the confluence with the Warta, formed part of the defensive chain covering the eastern approaches to Berlin and the central Oder crossings. As commandant and governor, Fornier d’Albe’s responsibility encompassed the fortress artillery and magazines, the garrison’s discipline and rationing, the maintenance of works and outworks, and the management of relations with the town’s civil population. In the later Empire this meant maintaining a place that served simultaneously as depot, magazine, and strongpoint in a region increasingly threatened by Coalition cavalry raids and the collapse of Napoleon’s forward positions after the Russian campaign.

In 1813, after Napoleon’s spring operations and the renewed Coalition advance into the Oder region, Custrin was invested. The disambiguation note supplied—commandant there from at least 1811, with the blockade beginning 13 April 1813 and ending 7 March 1814—matches the principal French biographical summary of Fornier d’Albe’s service: he did not surrender the place to the Prussians until 7 March 1814, under a capitulation that declared him and his troops prisoners of war. The prolonged resistance is also tied in French accounts to an imperial nomination as commandeur of the Légion d’honneur during the blockade; the brevet is described as having been lost, with the award later confirmed under Louis XVIII by ordinance on 24 November 1814. Under the Bourbon Restoration he also received the cross of chevalier de Saint-Louis on 5 August 1814 and was attached to the Ministry of War on 8 August 1814.

After the end of the Empire’s main campaigns, Fornier d’Albe continued to serve in post-1814 administrative and staff roles rather than returning to field command. He was appointed deputy to the Inspector General of Infantry in the 7th Military Division on 2 January 1816. In the later phase of the Restoration crises he performed staff work under General Grenier in the defense of Paris and then served with the Army of the Loire until its disbandment. He was admitted to retirement on 1 September 1818. Though eligible by age in 1831 for placement in the reserve section of the general staff, he chose to remain retired and died in Paris on 21 October 1834.

Sources

• Wikipedia (French): Gaspard Fornier d'Albe
• Gallica (BnF): Chaix d’Est-Ange, Dictionnaire des familles françaises…, tome 19 (Fornier de Clausonne et d’Albe)
• Heraldique Blasons Armoiries: Armorial de la Noblesse d’Empire (Fornier d’Albe; references to Archives nationales BB/29)
• Wikipedia (French): Forteresse de Custrin
• Wikimedia Commons: File—Blason famille fr Fornier de Clausonne.svg