Armand Louis de Gontaut, Duc de Lauzun (13 April 1747-31 December 1793) was a general of the Kingdom of France and the French Republic during the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolutionary Wars.
Biography[]
Armand Louis de Gontaut was born on 13 April 1747 in Paris in the Kingdom of France, and in 1788 he gained the title of Duke of Biron on the death of his uncle. In 1779 he became a general of the French Army after he wrote an essay on the defenses of Great Britain, with whom the French fought in the American Revolutionary War. He served under Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur during his expedition to the United States in 1780 with a French army and took part in the siege of Yorktown, returning home a hero in 1783. Made a Marechal de Camp, Gontaut was made a deputy to the Estates-General in 1789 and was affiliated with the revolutionary cause during the French Revolution, despite his noble rank.
In 1791 he took command of the French army in Flanders, but in July 1792 he was moved to command the Army of the Rhine. Gontaut watched the movements of the Imperial Habsburg troops of the Austrian Empire and fought against them there until May 1793, when he took over the French Revolutionary Army on the La Rochelle front. He operated against the Vendean Chouans, but the insubordination of his troops and the suspicions of his supervisors led to his resignation.
Accused of lack of civic virtue by Jean-Baptiste Carrier, Gontaut was executed durin the Reign of Terror by guillotine on 31 December 1793, and on 27 June 1794, his wife was killed.