Joachim Murat (25 March 1767-13 October 1815) was one of the 26 Marshals of the French Empire and King of Naples from 1808 to 1815, succeeding Joseph Bonaparte and preceding Ferdinando IV of Naples. With his first command being the Lieutenant of a unit that crushed a 1793 Royalist garrison in Les Invalides, Murat later rose to become a famed cavalry commander of Napoleon Bonaparte who took part in the Italian and Egyptian campaigns, leading the cavalry charge at the Battle of Abukir in 1799. Murat was made King of Naples in 1808 after Joseph Bonaparte stepped down, and although he deserted Emperor Napoleon in 1814, he supported him in the Hundred Days of 1815 when he found out that the Coalition planned to depose him. He was defeated at the Battle of Tolentino by Austrian general Vincenz Ferrerius Bianchi and executed by firing squad.
Biography[]
The son of an innkeper, Joachim Murat profited from the revolution to become a cavalry officer. He attached himself to Napoleon from 1795, serving in his early campaigns in Italy and Egypt. After becoming a Marshal in 1804, Murat performed well at Austerlitz, but his outstanding moment of glory was leading a mass charge of around 10,000 cavalry against the Russians at Eylau in February 1807. Napoleon then made him king of Naples, and the rest of his life was uncomfortably torn between the roles of monarch and marshal.
In 1815, Murat's focus was on saving his throne, but he lost to the Austrians at the battle of Tolentino in May and was executed by a Neapolitan firing squad five months later.
