Louis Lazare Hoche (24 June 1768-19 September 1797) was a general of the French First Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Biography[]
Louis Lazare Hoche was born in Versailles, Kingdom of France on 24 June 1768 to a family of poor Third Estate members. He joined the Gardes Francaises in 1784 at the age of 16, and he served as an aide-de-camp to General Charles-Francois Dumouriez during the French Revolutionary Wars. Hoche went from serving as a private in 1789 to the commander of the Army of the Moselle in 1793 as a result of the rapid promotion system that the French Revolutionary Army had implemented during wartime. Although he lost his first battle at Kaiserslautern to the Prussians in 1793, his energetic behavior led to the Committee of Public Safety sparing him during the Reign of Terror. His victory at Froeschwiller in December 1793 led to the committee giving him command of the Army of the Rhine, and he drove Austrian general Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's army from Alsace after defeating them at Wissembourg. Hoche was nearly executed during the Thermidorian Reaction for his friendship with Maximilien Robespierre, but he was released from prison to lead republican forces in the Vendee region. In 1797, his army attempted to invade Ireland, but a storm forced his fleet to return to France. He died in Wetzlar, Germany in 1797 at the age of 29 from tuberculosis, and he was buried next to his friend Francois Severin Marceau.