Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Comte d'Erlon (29 July 1765-25 January 1844) was a Marshal of the Empire of the First French Empire under Napoleon I during the Napoleonic Wars.
Biography[]
D'Erlon at the Battle of Ligny in 1815.
Drouet was born in Reims, Picardy, in northern France on 29 July 1765. In 1792, at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, he became a corporal in the French Army, but rose to become the aide-de-camp to Francois Lefebvre only two years later. He distinguished himself during the War of the Second Coalition at the Second Battle of Zurich in 1799, and after winning the Battle of Hohenlinden and conquering Hannover, he was promoted to Major-General in 1803.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Drouet distinguished himself in the War of the Third Coalition at the 1805 Battle of Austerlitz, where his division played a pivotal role, and the Battle of Jena during the War of the Fourth Coalition. Drouet was wounded in the 1807 Battle of Friedland in the foot while fighting against the Russian Army. Two years later, during the War of the Fifth Coalition, he replaced Marshal Lefebvre during the 1809 campaign in Tyrol against the Austrian general Andreas Hofer. Later in the year he was given command of the IX Corps in Spain during the Peninsular War and defeated Rowland Hill in Extremadura.
After the deposition of Emperor Napoleon, Drouet switched his allegiance to the new Kingdom of France, but accepted the command of the I Corps in the 1815 Hundred Days campaign. His corps was ordered by Napoleon to back him up at the Battle of Ligny on 16 June 1815, but the same day he was counter-ordered to reinforce Michel Ney at the Battle of Quatre Bras. His corps headed back and forth between the two battle sites, without fighting any Allied army.
Drouet proceeded to command cavalry during the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, commanding the left flank of the French army. He led an attack on the Brunswick Line Infantry of the British army as well as the Earl of Uxbridge Henry Paget, but was wounded and routed. He barely escaped the defeat of his attack, and was exiled to Bavaria after the final deposition of Napoleon. However, Drouet was granted amnesty by King Charles X of France in 1825 and became a general of King Louis-Philippe I of France when he took power after the 1830 July Revolution. Drouet was responsible for the 1832 arrest of Marie-Caroline of Sicily after quelling her uprising in the Vendee, and in 1834 he was appointed the Governor-General of French Algeria. Drouet was later relieved after General Trezel was defeated at the Battle of Macta by Algerian rebels under Abd al-Qadir. He died in 1844, made a Marshal of France a year earlier.