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Charles Le Gendre

Charles Le Gendre (26 August 1830-1 September 1899) was a French-American Union Army Brigadier-General who served in the American Civil War. Le Gendre served as an American diplomat in China from 1866 to 1872, when he deserted the diplomatic corps after falling out with the Consul in Xiamen over the failure of the Formosa Expedition; he went on to serve as an advisor to the governments of Japan and Korea until his death in Seoul in 1899 at the age of 69.

Biography[]

Guillaume Joseph Émile Le Gendre was born in the Lyon suburb of Oullins, France in 1830, the son of an art professor. At the age of 24, he married an American expatriate woman living in Brussels and moved with her to New York City, where he became a naturalized US citizen. At the start of the American Civil War, he helped recruit the 51st New York Infantry Regiment for the Union Army, and he was commissioned a major. Le Gendre served in North Carolina and was badly wounded at the Battle of New Bern, receiving a citation for his courage. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel on 20 September 1862 and to colonel on 14 March 1863, commanding the 51st at the Siege of Vicksburg and in the Overland Campaign. He lost his left eye and part of his nose at the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, but he recovered in time to defend Annapolis from a Confederate raid. Le Gendre was honorably discharged on 4 October 1864 and brevetted a Brigadier-General on 13 March 1865, and, after the war, he served as the US Consul to Qing China at Xiamen from 1866 to 1872, controlling five treaty ports, suppressing the illegal trade of indentured laborers, failing to peacefully resolve a diplomatic crisis with the Taiwanese aborigines (leading to the Formosa Expedition), and falling out with the Consul in Beijing over the 1871 Mudan Incident. In 1872, he was hired by Japanese Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi as a foreign and military affairs advisor, becoming the first high-ranking foreign employee of the Meiji Restoration government. He helped organize the Japanese Taiwan Expedition of 1874, but he was imprisoned in Shanghai for deserting the US diplomatic service before he could accompany the expedition to Taiwan. He retired in 1875, and he became the first foreigner to be awarded Japan's Order of the Rising Sun. Le Gendre started a family with the illegitimate daughter of Matsudaira Yoshinaga, despite never having divorced his American wife; his son and his granddaughter became famous theater performers. Le Gendre worked as a private advisor to Okuma Shigenobu until 1890, when he was hired by King Gojong of Korea. He served as an advisor to Gojong until his death from apoplexy in Seoul in 1899.

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