Bastien Rouelle (2 July 1777 – 14 August 1836) was a colonel of the Grande Armee of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars.
Biography[]
Bastien Rouelle was born in Limoges, France on 2 July 1777 to a family of teachers from the Third Estate, and Rouelle joined the French Revolutionary Army during the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s, serving in the cavalry. Rouelle became the commander of a cavalry regiment of the Armee d'Espagne in 1811 during the Peninsular War, and he came to lead his own army after Jean-Andre Massena was injured by a guerrilla. Rouelle was defeated by Arthur Wellesley's Allied force at the Battle of Tarouca in April 1811, and he narrowly escaped the defeat, as nearly his entire army was destroyed. Rouelle would return to France and retire after the war ended, and he died in 1836.