Brune, Guillaume Marie Anne, a marshal of the French empire, 
born at Brives-la-Gaillarde, March 13, 1763, died, in Avignon, 
Aug. 2, 1815. His father sent him to Paris to study the law, but on 
leaving the university, financial difficulties caused him to become a 
printer. In the beginning of the revolution, together with Gauthier 
and Jourgniac de St. Méard, he published the Journal général de la 
Cour et de la Ville. He soon embraced the party of the revolution, 
enlisted in the national guard, and became an ardent member of 
the club of the cordeliers.° His grand figure, martial air, and 
boisterous patriotism, rendered him one of the military leaders of 
the people in the demonstration of 1791 in the Champ de Mars, 
which was crushed by La Fayette’s national guards.” Thrown into 
prison, and the rumor spreading that the partisans of the court 
had attempted to get rid of him by odious means, Danton was 
instrumental in procuring his release. To the protection of the 
latter, among whose partisans he became prominent, he owed a 
military appointment during the famous days of Sept. 1792,”°° and 
his sudden promotion, in Oct. 12, 1792, to the rank of colonel and 
adjutant-major. He served under Dumouriez in Belgium; was sent 
against the federalists of Calvados, advancing under Gen. Puisaye 
upon Paris, whom he easily defeated. He was next made a general 
of brigade, and participated in the battle of Hondschoote. The 
committee of public safety intrusted him with the mission of 
putting down the insurrectionary movements in the Gironde, 
which he did with the utmost rigor.” 

After Danton’s imprisonment, he was expected to rush to the 
rescue of his friend and protector, but keeping prudently aloof 
during the first moments of danger, he contrived to shift through 

the reign of terror. After the 9th Thermidor he again joined the 
now victorious Dantonists,7 and followed Fréron to Marseilles 
and Avignon. On the 13th Vendémiaire (Oct. 5, 1795) he acted as 
one of Bonaparte’s under-generals against the revolted sections of 
Paris.2? After having assisted the directory in putting down the 
conspiracy of the camp at Grenelle (Sept. 9, 1796),’” he entered 
the Italian army in the division of Masséna, and distinguished 
himself during the whole campaign by great intrepidity. Wishing 
to propitiate the chiefs of the cordeliers, Bonaparte attributed part 
of his success at Rivoli?’ to the exertions of Brune, appointed him 
general of division on the battle-field, and induced the directory to 
instal him as commander of the second division of the Italian 
army, made vacant by Augereau’s departure for Paris. 

After the peace of Campo Formio*” he was employed by the 
directory on the mission of first lulling the Swiss into security, 
then dividing their councils, and finally, when an army had been 
concentrated for that purpose, falling upon the canton of Bern, 
and seizing its public treasury; on which occasion Brune forgot to 
draw up an inventory of the plunder. Again, by dint of 
manoeuvres, bearing a diplomatic rather than a military character, 
he forced Charles Emmanuel, the king of Sardinia, and the 
apparent ally of France, to deliver into his hands the citadel of 
Turin (July 3, 1798). The Batavian campaign,”” which lasted 
about 2 months, forms the great event of Brune’s military life. In 
this campaign he defeated the combined English and Russian 
forces, under the command of the duke of York, who capitulated 
to him, promising to restore all the French prisoners taken by the 
English from the commencement of the anti-Jacobinic war. After 
the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire,? Bonaparte appointed 
Brune a member of the newly created council of state, and then 
despatched him against the royalists of Brittany. 

Sent in 1800 to the army of Italy, Brune occupied 3 hostile 
camps, intrenched on the Volta, drove the enemy beyond this 
river, and took measures for crossing it instantly. According to his 
orders, the army was to effect its passage at 2 points, the right 
wing under Gen. Dupont between a mill situated on the Volta and 
the village of Pozzolo, the left wing under Brune himself at 
Monbazon. The second part of the operations meeting with 
difficulties, Brune gave orders to delay its execution for 24 hours, 
although the right wing, which had commenced crossing on the 
other point, was already engaged with far superior Austrian 
forces. It was only due to Gen. Dupont’s exertions that the right 
wing was not destroyed or captured, and thus the success of the 

whole campaign imperilled. This blunder led to his recall to Paris. 
From 1802 to 1804 he cut a sorry figure as ambassador at 
Constantinople, where his diplomatic talents were not, as in 
Switzerland and Piedmont, backed by bayonets. On his return to 
Paris, in Dec. 1804, Napoleon created him marshal in preference 
to generals like Lecourbe. Having for a while commanded the 
camp at Boulogne,*” he was, in 1807, sent to Hamburg as 
governor of the Hanseatic towns, and as commander of the 
reserve of the grand army.” In this quality he vigorously 
seconded Bourrienne in his peculations. In order to settle some 
contested points of a truce concluded with Sweden at Schlatkow, 
he had a long personal interview with King Gustavus, who, in fact, 
proposed to him to betray his master. The manner in which he 
declined this offer raised the suspicions of Napoleon, who became 
highly incensed when Brune, drawing up a convention relating to 
the surrender of the island of Rigen to the French, mentioned 
simply the French and the Swedish armies as parties to the 
agreement, without any allusion to his “imperial and_ royal 
majesty.”"* Brune was instantly recalled by a letter of Berthier, in 
which the latter, on the express order of Napoleon, stated 

“that such a scandal had never occurred since the days of Pharamond.”? 

On his return to France, he retired into private life. In 1814 he 
gave his adhesion to the acts of the senate,””’ and received the 
cross of St. Louis from Louis XVIII. During the Hundred Days? 
he became again a Bonapartist, and received the command of a 
corps of observation on the Var, where he displayed against the 
royalists the brutal vigor of his Jacobin epoch. After the battle of 
Waterloo”” he proclaimed the king. Starting from Toulon for 
Paris, he arrived at Avignon, on Aug. 2, at a moment when that 
town had for 15 days been doomed to carnage and incendiary 
fires by the royalist mob. Being recognized by them, he was shot, 
the mob seizing his corpse, dragging it through the streets, and 
throwing it into the Rhone. 

“Brune, Masséna, Augereau, and many others,” said Napoleon at St. Helena, 

“were intrepid depredators. 

In regard to his military talents he remarks: 

“Brune was not without a certain merit, but, on the whole, he was a général de 
tribune rather than a terrible warrior.”* 

A monument was erected to him in his native town in 1841. 

1857 and January 8, 1858 can Cyclopaedia