Gerik Perun (13 October 1786 – 3 July 1864) was a French and Polish general who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and the many Polish wars of independence.
Biography[]
Gerik Perun was born in Mszczonow Forests (near Warsaw, Poland) in the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in 1786. When Prussian forces took control of Poland in 1792 his family fled to France, and Perun enlisted in the Polish Legions in 1804 at the age of eighteen. A year later, Perun fought in the War of the Third Coalition and gained the chance to liberate his homeland in the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1807. Perun was promoted to Captain in 1809 after service in the War of the Fifth Coalition, and he took part in the invasion of Russia in 1812 under Marshal Michel Ney.
During the Defense of France, Perun was made the Colonel of a Polish Legion under Ney's command. At the Battle of Chalons-en-Champagne on 29 January 1814, his elite regiment assisted in the defeat of the Prussian and Dutch army and proved to be an experienced and talented commander. Perun fought in the later engagements in Burgundy with General Gebhard von Blucher, fighting a series of seesaw battles. He was promoted to Major General on 16 March 1814, and made a full General on 1 April. However, on 3 April 1814 the Russians occupied Paris and with Napoleon out of power, his Polish client state (the Grand Duchy of Warsaw) and his Polish legions were dissolved.
Perun lived in France until 1830, when Poland began a liberal revolution against Prussia and Russia. He left for Poland and took command of a brigade of Polish troops as a Brigadier-General, and was wounded in the fighting in Cracow. In 1831, with the suppression of the revolt, he fled back to France. He was made a Major-General in the French army as an honorary reward in 1854 on the 40th anniversary of the start of the French Campaign of the War of the Sixth Coalition, but this was merely a rank in name only, as he retired at the age of 70 in 1856. He died in Paris in 1864.