Jacques-Henri Glasson (18 June 1768 – 21 October 1842) was a Général de division of the French Revolutionary and Imperial armies during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.
Biography[]
Jacques-Henri Glasson was born in Grenoble, Isere department, France in 1768, the son of Marc Glasson and Pauline Patin. The son of a struggling coachman, he attended common schools and excelled at his education despite his unstable economic background. Influenced by his father's liberal views, Glasson sympathized with the French Revolution from the outset and participated in the Day of the Tiles demonstrations in 1788 after King Louis XVI attempted to prevent a provincial assembly from meeting. Glasson was working as a notary when the storming of the Bastille occurred in July 1789, after which he became involved in the publication of revolutionary pamphlets. Glasson caught the eye of older revolutionaries for his passionate writing, and his weekly pamphlet Les temps changent attacked the Bourbon absolute monarchy and called for greater democratization and the empowerment of the middle-class.
On the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792, Glasson put aside his writing career to volunteer in the French Revolutionary Army. Glasson initially served on the Rhine front of the war, rising from the common soldiery to the colonelcy of a regiment by 1795. Glasson was initially a staunch Girondin, supporting the spread of the French Revolution to the rest of Europe while privately opposing the radical Jacobins' extremism and centralization policies. However, he sided with the government against the Federalist revolts and fought at the Siege of Lyon in 1793, demonstrating his loyalty to the Republic. After the Thermidorian Reaction of 1794, he wholeheartedly supported the Thermidorian government and its restoration of stability to the French First Republic.
Glasson was later promoted to Brigadier-General in time to serve under Napoleon Bonaparte during his Italian Campaign of 1796-1797. Glasson commanded a brigade during the invasion of Austrian Lombardy and the Republic of Venice, and he served as military governor of Padua in 1797. During this time, he appointed Italian patriots to administrative positions in a bid to keep the city loyal to France. He also took an Italian wife, Giulietta Pellegrini, during this time. Ultimately, he was forced to relinquish the city to the Austrians after the Treaty of Campo Formio ceded Veneto to the Austrians in exchange for French control over the rest of northern Italy.
Glasson did not partake in Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, instead redeploying to the Rhineland and assuming a brigade command under Jean-Baptiste Jourdan. He fought at the Battle of Ostrach and the Battle of Stockach, in which the Austrians twice defeated the French armies on the Rhine and sent them into a retreat. These losses convinced Glasson that the French Directory was ineffective during times of war, and he joined a cabal of army officers who supported a seizure of power by Bonaparte. While he had initially been reassigned after Jourdan's defeats, he was reinstated after Napoleon's Coup of 18 Brumaire and served under Victor Moreau at the Battle of Hohenlinden in December 1800, aiding in the defeat of the Austrians and the conclusion of the War of the Second Coalition in a French victory.
Glasson was a staunch supporter of Bonapartism during Napoleon's reign as Consul and Emperor, seeing Napoleon's military victories, sense of nationalism and patriotism, and strong rule as stabilizing factors in a country previously divided between city and department, Catholic and atheist, and Jacobin and moderate. Napoleon regarded Glasson as a better leader and writer than a military officer, and he came to rely on him to govern occupied cities. During the Napoleonic Wars, Glasson participated in the administration of occupied Vienna and Berlin, but he was recalled to active service during the Peninsular War.
In 1810, he served as a divisional commander in Edouard Mortier's corps during the French pacification of Andalusia, fighting at the Siege of Cadiz and at Badajoz. He fell ill with fever during the siege of Cadiz in 1811 and convalesced in France, after which he accompanied Mortier to the east to participate in the 1812 French invasion of Russia. Glasson led a division during the assault on the Bagration fleches at the Battle of Borodino, outflanking the isolated hilltops with line infantry while his chasseurs kept the Russian musketeers occupied. During Mortier's governorship over Moscow, Glasson helped Mortier with the destruction of the Russian capital before participating in the Grande Armee's devastating retreat in 1812-1813. Glasson narrowly evaded death when, during the retreat, he was beset by a troop of Russian hussars, shooting two of them dead before fleeing and rejoining the rest of the army in time to fight at the Battle of Berezina.
Glasson continued to serve in Mortier's corps during the German campaign of 1813, including Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden and Leipzig. In 1814, he also participated in the battles at Montmirail, Craonne, Laon, and at the final Battle of Paris. Glasson was loyal to Napoleon until the end, resisting his abdication until the Allied armies began to enter the capital. He declined to hold a command under the new Bourbon monarchy, instead returning to Grenoble, where he found that many of his neighbors or their sons had perished during the decades-long conflict in Europe. Back in civilian life, Glasson retrained as a lawyer. During this time, however, he secretly became a Bonapartist agent, supporting Napoleon's return from Elba in 1815. In May 1815, he was elected to the Chamber of Representatives as a Bonapartist deputy, although he sympathized with the liberal faction led by the Marquis de Lafayette, believing that France needed to liberalize in order for Bonaparte to regain lost support among the republican middle-classes.
Before Glasson could return to Napoleon's service as a general, he learned of the Battle of Waterloo and the final defeat of Napoleon's army. Glasson remained committed to a political career, joining the Doctrinaires who supported a constitutional monarchy. Glasson secretly retained his Bonapartist sentiments, although he acquired a strong sympathy for the Orleanists, liberal monarchists who, in 1830, overthrew the Bourbon Restoration regime. Glasson became a military advisor to King Louis Philippe I, and he died in 1842.