Luc Urbain de Bouexic (21 June 1712-13 January 1790) was an admiral of the French Navy. The Comte de Guichen fought in the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain's Royal Navy on the Atlantic Ocean, and was known for his orderly leadership of the French Navy, although he did not have the aggressiveness of an average British admiral or his compatriot Baili de Suffren.
Biography[]
Luc Urbain de Bouexic, Comte de Guichen was born on 21 June 1712 in Fougeres, Ille-et-Vilaine, in the northeastern part of the Kingdom of France. In 1730 he entered the French Navy, and in 1748 he fought no fewer than five battles against Great Britain's Royal Navy during the War of the Austrian Succession. In 1778 he took part in the victory at the First Battle of Ushant, and was made Vice-Admiral in 1779. In January 1780, the Comte de Guichen was sent to the West Indies with a strong French squadron, and fought George Rodney in the Second Battle of Martinique, an indecisive battle. In 1781 he fought a small encounter in the Bay of Biscay against Admiral Richard Kempenfelt's unduly weak British force, but the British advanced through the fog and destroyed his fleet. He had no counterbalancing success, but witnessed Richard Howe's relief of Gibraltar in 1782. He died in 1790.