Pierre Berthezène

Pierre Berthezène (also styled Pierre, baron Berthezène; frequently “général baron de Berthezène”) was a French infantry officer of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars who rose from the volunteer battalions of 1793 to become a général de division of the Empire, later serving the restored monarchy and the July Monarchy, including senior command in the early French occupation of Algiers. Born at Vendargues (Hérault) on 24 March 1775, he entered military service during the Revolution on 15 September 1793 with the 5e bataillon de volontaires de l’Hérault, quickly gaining non-commissioned grades in that unit. He served with the armées of the south in the early phases of his career and was present at Toulon during the revolutionary siege operations of 1793; thereafter he joined the Army of Italy, where repeated field service brought advancement into commissioned rank and staff employment. By 1799 he was attached to senior headquarters in Italy and was promoted captain on the field (23 June 1799) in the fighting at Saint-Julien (San Giuliano Vecchio), a battlefield associated with the renewed war in northern Italy.

During the Consulate, Berthezène’s career combined regimental duty and appointments in the large coastal camps and northern formations maintained for war against Britain and for operations on the North Sea littoral. From 1803 to 1805 he was employed at the camp of Saint-Omer, a posting that placed him amid the concentration and training of formations later used in the Empire’s continental campaigns. On 14 June 1804 he was made a member of the Légion d’honneur. In 1805–1806 he served with the Armée du Nord, and on 10 July 1806 he was promoted to the grade of Major in the 65e Régiment d’infanterie de ligne. The same period brought him into service connected with Louis Bonaparte in Holland and in the occupation of Hanover, work that—while often less visible than battlefield command—required the handling of garrison rotations, requisitioning, and the practical management of occupied territory.

Berthezène’s principal early reputation, however, was made as a regimental commander. On 10 February 1807 he was appointed Colonel of the 10e Régiment d’infanterie légère. In the War of the Fourth Coalition’s later operations he led the 10e léger in combat, and the regiment distinguished itself at Heilsberg on 10 June 1807. Recognition followed in the imperial system of honors and titles: on 11 July 1807 he received the officer’s cross of the Légion d’honneur, and on 19 March 1808 he was created baron of the Empire, with a Westphalian endowment. After Tilsit, the 10e léger served under Marshal Davout and occupied the island of Rügen on the Baltic—an assignment that combined coastal defense with the security of lines of communication and supply along the northern maritime flank.

The Fifth Coalition brought Berthezène back into Major field operations with the Grande Armée on the Danube. When Austrian mobilization compelled French forces toward Bavaria and the Danube in 1809, the 10e léger marched to join the field army. In the April operations, the regiment fought in the battles of 19–24 April 1809 that opened the campaign, culminating in Eckmühl on 22 April 1809. Berthezène was severely wounded at Eckmühl while the 10e léger carried a principal enemy position. On 23 April 1809, in front of Regensburg (Ratisbonne), he was made a commander of the Légion d’honneur, an award that in that period was more typically associated with general officers and which signaled that his regimental performance had been noticed at the highest level. His wounding removed him from continuous field command during the remainder of the 1809 campaign; nevertheless, the episode fixed his name among those colonels whose regiments had been heavily engaged in the decisive April battles.

By the later Empire, Berthezène had moved into general officer rank. He is recorded as a général de brigade in imperial service before the end of 1813 and as a général de division from 1813, entering the cohort of divisional commanders employed to rebuild and lead field formations in the increasingly demanding campaigns of the Sixth Coalition. His 1813 service is most clearly tied to the Saxon theater and the fate of the garrison of Dresden. After Napoleon’s victory at Dresden (26–27 August 1813), the city became a principal French base and depot in Saxony; following the subsequent strategic reverses culminating in Leipzig, Dresden was isolated. Berthezène was among the French generals shut up in the fortress during the siege conducted from 10 October to 11 November 1813. The garrison capitulated on 11 November 1813 under General Gouvion Saint-Cyr, and Berthezène became a prisoner of war; accounts place his captivity in Hungary. This imprisonment removed him from the 1814 campaign in France and lasted until the political turn of the First Restoration.

Released in June 1814, Berthezène returned to France and was placed at the disposition of the restored Bourbon government. Louis XVIII awarded him the cross of Saint-Louis on 19 July 1814. On 18 December 1814 he was attached to the committee of war under Marshal Soult, a posting that placed him inside the administrative and planning machinery of the restored army. This combination—imperial baron and senior légion d'honneur officer, yet also decorated by the Bourbons—made him one of the senior officers whose expertise the Restoration sought to use while managing the political legacy of the Empire.

During the Hundred Days he again entered active employment under Napoleon. On 29 March 1815 he was named president of the commission charged with the placement of officers on half-pay, a sensitive administrative role in the rapid reconstitution of the imperial army. More decisively, on 7 June 1815 he received command of the 11e division d’infanterie in IIIe corps of the Armée du Nord. In the Belgian campaign he fought at Fleurus/Ligny on 16 June 1815 (the battle generally known as Ligny), where his horse was shot from under him. In the subsequent operations on the Dyle, after General Habert was severely wounded at Wavre (18–19 June 1815), Berthezène combined Habert’s command with his own. Within the combats around Wavre and its approaches he is specifically credited with driving Prussian battalions from the heights of Bierges, an action consistent with the tactical contest for crossing points and dominating ground along the Dyle line. On 20 June 1815, during the retreat after Waterloo, General Vandamme placed two additional infantry divisions under Berthezène’s orders and tasked him with holding off the enemy to cover Marshal Grouchy’s movement toward a position at Dinant; the resulting fighting around Namur lasted into the night and again cost Berthezène another horse.

After the final collapse of the imperial regime, Berthezène experienced the political reaction that followed 1815. He sought permission to retire to his estate (authorized 16 September 1815) and subsequently obtained permission (9 December 1815) to retire to Belgium; this exile was later lifted, and he was allowed to return to France. On 18 April 1816 he was placed on the non-active list. Under the post-Napoleonic army reorganization, his professional standing returned: in 1818 Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr named him inspector-general of infantry, and in 1820 he was again placed on active duty. These appointments reflect a career that, despite political reversals, retained institutional value in the restored army’s senior inspection and advisory structures.

By 1830 Berthezène held an influential position in infantry matters, being named a member of the advisory committee on the infantry in January of that year. The July 1830 expedition against Algiers brought him back to operational command. He was given command of the 1re division d’infanterie of the expeditionary corps, serving under the commander-in-chief, the comte de Bourmont. Berthezène landed on 14 June 1830 near Algiers and on the same day seized a Turkish position defended by sixteen guns and two mortars. He subsequently took the camp of Staouéli and the strong position of Bouzaréah. During the severe storm of 16 June 1830, when Bourmont considered a withdrawal toward Sidi-Ferruch because ammunition had been damaged, Berthezène argued against retreat and undertook to hold his ground even if reduced to bayonet use; the decision was reversed, the position maintained, and the advance resumed. He participated in the operations culminating in the capture of Algiers on 5 July 1830, and his conduct in the campaign contributed to subsequent political elevation under the July Monarchy.

Following the July Revolution in France, Berthezène returned from Algeria to France in November 1830, but he soon received renewed employment. On 27 December 1830 he was made Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur. In early 1831 he was appointed to succeed General Bertrand Clauzel as commander-in-chief in Algeria, taking office on 21 March 1831 and serving until early December 1831. His tenure was marked by efforts to secure and administer the immediate Algiers zone and the principal coastal points with limited resources while managing a volatile situation in the surrounding regions. In July–summer 1831 he led or supervised movements beyond the immediate perimeter, including operations in difficult terrain in the approaches of the Atlas, during which his column and its rear elements experienced sharp pressure; his published and later-circulated accounts include detailed descriptions of rear-guard dispositions and the management of wounded during withdrawals, indicating the practical battlefield problems he confronted in mountain defiles and on the return to the Mitidja plain. He returned to France in early 1832, and in October 1832 he was made a Peer of France.

From 1832 until his death, Berthezène remained a public figure of the July Monarchy’s military and political establishment. He sat in the Chamber of Peers and remained associated with military commissions and questions tied to Algeria and to the army. In 1840 he became embroiled in a public dispute regarding the conduct of Marshal Grouchy in June 1815, engaging through open correspondence and later signing a formal retraction (19 November 1840) under political pressure, a controversy that illustrates how the memory of Waterloo continued to intersect with careers and reputations decades after the event. Administratively, he entered the second section of the general staff cadre on 23 March 1840, and in 1842 he was named to a commission connected with a subscription for a monument at Algiers.

Berthezène’s name was later included among those inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, reflecting the official commemoration of generals of the Revolutionary and imperial armies. He died at Vendargues on 9 October 1847. His memoir literature, issued posthumously and also in separate works on Algeria, belongs to the corpus of senior-officer recollections of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and includes coverage extending through the 1815 operations.

Sources

• Wikipedia (French): Pierre Berthezène
• Wikipedia (English): Pierre Berthezène
• British Museum: Pierre Berthezène (biographical entry)
• Britannica: Battle of Dresden
• Wikipedia (English): Siege of Dresden (1813)
• BnF CCFr (authority/archival notice): Signature de Monsieur Pierre Berthezène (septembre 1815)