Jean-Charles Pichegru (16 February 1761-5 April 1804) was a general of the French First Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars. Pichegru, a former mathematics teacher and artilleryman, rose to command French forces on the Rhine and in the Austrian Netherlands, but he harbored royalist sympathies and betrayed the republic to the Austrian Empire. He was not imprisoned, and he was instead elected President of the Council of Five Hundred in 1797 as a member of the Legitimists; he was overthrown in the Coup of 18 Fructidor when Napoleon Bonaparte revealed Pichegru's correspondence with the Austrians. In 1804, Pichegru was arrested for attempting to murder Napoleon with British aid, and he was strangled in his jail cell.
Biography[]
Rise to fame[]
Jean-Charles Pichegru was born in Arbois, Burgundy, France on 16 February 1761, and he instructed Napoleon Bonaparte as a mathematics teacher before serving in the artillery of the French Army during the American Revolutionary War. In 1789, he became the leader of the Jacobin Club in Besancon, and he became Lieutenant-Colonel of a volunteer regiment. As a man of non-aristocratic birth, he was sought after by the Committee of Public Safety leader Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, who recruited him and Lazare Hoche for the French Revolutionary Army as division commanders. Pichegru commanded revolutionary forces on the Rhineland front and in Flanders, and he led the French occupation of the Netherlands in 1795 after the establishment of the Batavian Republic.
Treason and death[]
Pichegru later betrayed Saint-Just by supporting the Thermidorian Reaction, and he crushed the 12 Germinal revolt of the Sans-culottes on 1 April 1795. Pichegru was given command of the Army of the Rhine as a result, but he began to collude with the Holy Roman Empire to restore the monarchy; he allowed for Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's army to be defeated, and he betrayed his plans to the Austrians. In October 1795, he resigned in front of the French Directory, only to be elected to the Council of Five Hundred in May 1797 as a leader of the Legitimists. He was deported to French Guiana after attempting to take part in the Coup of 18 Fructidor on 4 September 1797, and he fled to the United Kingdom, where he plotted to assassinate Emperor Napoleon I. In 1804, Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal attempted to arrange for Napoleon's kidnapping, only to be captured. On 28 February 1804, he was betrayed to the police by a friend, and he was found strangled in his cell on 5 April 1804.