Jacques Bernard Modeste d’Anselme (1740-1814)

Jacques Bernard Modeste d’Anselme was a French regular infantry officer of the late Bourbon army who became a senior general of the Revolutionary forces on the Alpine–Ligurian frontier in 1792–1793, most closely associated with the occupation of the County of Nice in September 1792 and with the brief, improvised independent command commonly called the “Armée du Var,” which was soon regularized into the armée d’Italie. His career combined long regimental service under the Ancien Régime, colonial and expeditionary experience in the War of American Independence, and a rapid elevation to high command during the first months of the Revolutionary Wars, followed by recall, political prosecution, imprisonment, and eventual retirement.

Born at Apt (Vaucluse) on 22 July 1740, d’Anselme entered the army extremely young, in keeping with the administrative practice by which the sons of serving officers were “entered on the rolls” of a regiment. His early service is tied to the infantry regimental establishment that later became associated with the régiment de Soissonnais. He advanced through the junior officer grades during the Seven Years’ War era and is recorded as serving in the 1756 expedition and fighting around Minorca. He was promoted through the company and field-officer structure, serving as capitaine aide-major from 28 October 1760, and later undertaking a Corsican posting in 1768–1769. On 18 April 1770 he was made chevalier of the Order of Saint-Louis, a decoration that in the pre-Revolutionary army both marked long service and placed him among the recognized professional officers eligible for higher staff and regimental responsibilities.

His pre-Revolutionary career included successive appointments as major in line infantry regiments—first in the régiment de Périgord (20 February 1774) and then in the régiment de Maine (26 April 1775)—before his elevation to lieutenant-colonel in the régiment de Soissonnais on 17 July 1777. In that capacity he went to North America for the War of American Independence, serving from 1780 to 1783. This period is directly relevant to his later Revolutionary command only insofar as it established him as an experienced field officer accustomed to extended deployments and to operating in a theatre where supply and movement depended heavily on coastal and maritime lines—experience that later informed the practical management of troops on the Mediterranean frontier when Nice became the forward base for French operations.

On 1 January 1784 d’Anselme was appointed mestre de camp (colonel) of the 2nd régiment provincial d’État-Major, and on 9 March 1788 he was promoted maréchal de camp (a general officer grade of the Ancien Régime). On 1 April 1791 he became aide de camp to Rochambeau. In the early Revolution he was employed within the system of the military divisions that organized territorial command in France: he is recorded as serving in the 9th military division from 20 May 1791, then being sent to the armée du Midi on 15 February 1792. He temporarily commanded the 10th military division on 3 April 1792 while at Perpignan, where he is specifically noted for intervening during disorders caused by elements of the régiment de Vermandois in Easter 1792—an incident that mattered because it placed a general officer under immediate scrutiny for maintaining discipline in politically volatile garrison towns.

D’Anselme’s main operational prominence came with the opening of the war against the Kingdom of Sardinia and Austria on the Alpine frontier in 1792. Promoted général de division for Revolutionary service on 22 May 1792, he was named commander-in-chief of the armée du Midi on 27 August 1792 but did not take that command. Instead, he led the right-wing force assembled on the Var. In late September 1792, after French operations in Savoy under Montesquiou had opened the broader Alpine theatre, d’Anselme crossed the Var and moved into the County of Nice. On 28 September 1792 he took Nice, and on 30 September he took Villefranche-sur-Mer; the occupation is described in contemporary and later summaries as being achieved with little or no Major fighting in the town itself, aided by the Sardinian withdrawal under Eugène-Philippe de Courten. In the broader campaign narrative this was the rapid establishment of a French forward base on the Mediterranean flank: by securing Nice and the coastal fortifications—including the works around Mont Alban—d’Anselme provided the Republic with a port, artillery stores, and winter quarters that would become critical once the theatre was reorganized as the armée d’Italie.

Immediately after the occupation, d’Anselme attempted to shape his force into an independent army command. From 29 September 1792 he began to style his troops the “Armée du Var,” a title that was not officially recognized; administratively, the formation remained the right wing of the armée du Midi until the Executive Council regularized it as the armée d’Italie on 7 November 1792. The episode is nevertheless important for understanding his command position in autumn 1792: he was operating with an army-sized body on a sensitive frontier, negotiating subordination to distant commanders, and trying to secure political and administrative recognition for a separate theatre command based at Nice.

On 7 November 1792 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army established at Nice, and he continued operations into the early winter. His immediate tactical problem was the mountainous barrier line—Saorge, Sospel, and the passes controlling approach routes into Piedmont and the upper valleys. The surviving operational summaries attach his “less successful” continuation of operations to the onset of severe weather and to the state of his troops. In these accounts the combination of rain, snow, shortages of clothing and shoes, and inadequate munitions curtailed offensive possibilities and forced him to limit himself to occupation and winter quarters around Sospel. This constraint was not simply climatological; it directly affected his ability to concentrate battalions for attacks on fortified positions in the high valleys and to maintain guarded communications back to the Var and the depots around Nice.

A distinct episode of active operations followed in November 1792 on the Ligurian coast. Acting “in concert” with Admiral Laurent Truguet, d’Anselme projected a combined operation against Oneglia (modern Imperia), a Savoyard-held coastal town. On 23 November 1792 the French fleet appeared before the town and a delegation was sent to negotiate surrender; the delegation was fired upon, with casualties recorded among the envoys. The town was bombarded the same day, occupied the next day, and then abandoned after being pillaged and burned. This raid on Oneglia, while tactically limited and not held as a permanent conquest, was politically and operationally consequential for d’Anselme: it became intertwined with accusations that his army could not maintain discipline and that abuses in the occupied County of Nice were tolerated or inadequately punished. From the standpoint of command responsibility, the episode placed him under immediate suspicion at Paris at a moment when the Convention was increasingly intolerant of perceived negligence, corruption, or weakness in generals on external fronts.

By December 1792 his command unraveled under political pressure. Reports of disorder and depredations by troops in the County of Nice contributed to the emergence of local armed resistance (the barbets), and commissioners sent by the Convention judged his measures insufficient. He was ordered to Paris on 16 December 1792 and replaced in command; in the organizational transition, Armand-Louis de Gontaut Biron took over the army on the Var while the newly designated armée d’Italie continued under successive commanders. D’Anselme left Nice on 23 December and was suspended by representatives on 27 December 1792. On 14 February 1793 he was decreed under accusation on charges connected to pillage at Nice, and he was imprisoned. He remained incarcerated through the high period of Revolutionary political repression, being released after 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794). He was then authorized to retire on 12 April 1795 and granted a pension later in 1795.

Although removed from operational command early in the war, d’Anselme returned briefly to official employment late in the Directory period. On 6 December 1798 he was appointed inspector of troops stationed in the Midi, a post that implied travel, inspection of unit readiness, and reporting within the administrative-military system rather than field command. On 27 January 1801 he was admitted to retirement at age 60. He did not hold Major operational appointments under the Empire, and his formal distinctions in the Revolutionary/Imperial period are chiefly commemorative: his name, “ANSELME,” was later inscribed among the officers under the Arc de Triomphe (south pillar, 23rd column). He died in Paris on 17 September 1814.

Sources

• Wikipedia (French): Jacques Bernard d’Anselme
• Wikipedia (English): Jacques Bernard d’Anselme
• Wikipedia (French): Armée du Var
• Wikipedia (French): Guerre des Alpes (1792-1796)
• Wikisource: Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography — “Anselme, Jacques Bernard Modeste d’”
• FrenchEmpire.net: Jacques Bernard Modeste d’Anselme (1740–1814)