Henri Gatien Bertrand (28 March 1773-31 January 1844) was a French general who served in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars, and who served as Grand Marshal of the Palace under Emperor Napoleon I.
Biography[]
Henri Gatien Bertrand was born in Chateauroux, France in 1773, and he came from a well-to-do bourgeois family. He joined the French Army at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, following Napoleon to Egypt and being promoted to brigadier-general in time for the Battle of Austerlitz, after which he became Napoleon's aide-de-camp. Bertrand was made a count in 1808 and Grand Marshal of the Palace in 1813, and he married the daughter of Arthur Dillon in 1808. In 1809, he directed the building of the bridges by which the French army crossed the Danube at the Battle of Wagram, and he served as Governor of illyria in 1811 and as commander of the IV Corps during the German campaign of 1813. Bertrand accompanied the exiled Napoleon to Elba in 1814, held a command at the Battle of Waterloo, and accompanied Napoleon into his second exile on St. Helena. He was condemned to death in 1816 but amnestied by King Louis XVIII, and he was elected a deputy in 1830 and defeated for re-election in 1834. He took part in the return of Napoleon's remains to France in 1840, and he died in 1844.