Louis Lebegue Duportail (14 May 1743 – 12 August 1802) was the chief engineer of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War from 1777 to 1783 (succeeding Rufus Putnam and preceding Stephen Rochefontaine) and Secretary of State for War of France from 16 November 1790 to 7 December 1791, succeeding Jean-Frederic de la Tour du Pin-Gouvernet and preceding Louis de Narbonne-Lara.
Biography[]
Louis Lebegue Duportain was born on 14 May 1743 in Orleans, France, and he graduated from the royal engineer school in Mezieres in 1765 as an engineer officer. Duportain became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Corps of Engineers, and in March 1777 King Louis XVI of France sent Duportail to serve as the chief engineer of the Continental Army for George Washington as per an agreement with Benjamin Franklin. Duportail was promoted to Colonel in July 1777, and he took part in the construction of fortifications from Boston, Massachusetts in the north to Charleston, South Carolina in the south. Duportail was promoted to Major-General after supervising the siege of Yorktown in 1781, and he returned to France in October 1783. For one year (winter of 1790-winter of 1791), Duportail served as Secretary of State for War of the Kingdom of France after the French Revolution, but he was forced to return to the United States after radical Jacobins sought to kill him. Duportail bought a farm near Valley Forge, where he died in 1802.