Jean Joseph Amable Humbert (22 August 1767 – 3 January 1823) was a general of the French First Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1798, he launched an ill-fated invasion of Ireland that ended with the surrender of the French-Irish army, and he also fought in Switzerland and Haiti. Due to differing politics, Napoleon I dismissed Humbert in 1803, and Humbert fought for Mexico, Argentina, and the United States during the 1810s. He settled down in New Orleans as a schoolteacher, and he died there in 1823.
Biography[]
Jean Joseph Amable Humbert was born in Saint-Nabord, France on 22 August 1767, and he rose from the rank of a sergeant in the Lyon National Guard to Brigadier-General in the French Revolutionary Army from 1789 to 1794; promotions in the French Revolutionary Wars were quick. In 1796, he served under Lazare Hoche during his attempted invasion of Ireland, but a storm scattered the French fleet. In 1798, Humbert was given command of another French army with the goal of liberating Ireland from Great Britain, but much of the Irish forces had already been defeated by the British Army by the time that he had arrived with his small army. His army won at Castlebar and proclaimed an Irish republic, only to be defeated at Ballinamuck and forced to surrender. He was later swapped in a prisoner exchange, and he fought at Zurich in 1799 and in Haiti during the early 1800s. In 1803, he was dismissed due to his strong republican and anti-monarchist views, and he later settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1813, he attempted to foment a revolution in Mexico, and he led a corps of revolutionaries in Argentina before returning to New Orleans. Wearing his Napoleonic uniform, he fought alongside Andrew Jackson and the US Army at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, and Jackson thanked Humbert for his service. Humbert lived peacefully as a schoolteacher until his death in 1823.