Brune (Guillaume-Marie-Anne), Marshal, was born at Brives-la- 
Gaillarde, in the department of Corréze, in 1763. His father, an 
advocate, sent him to Paris, there to study the law. On leaving the 
university, financial difficulties induced him to become an 
apprentice-compositor, and in such quality, in 1788, he printed a 
literary essay of his own entitled: “Voyage pittoresque et 
sentimental dans plusieurs provinces occidentales de la France”. 
Having acquired a small press of his own (Setzerei*), he published, 
in the first time of the Revolution, together with Jourgniac de 
St.-Méard and Gauthier, the Journal général de la Cour et de la Ville, 
one of the aristocratic papers which disappeared after the 10th of 
August.*?! Brune, however, soon turned his back to this aristocrat- 
ic print, enlisted in the guard-national, there drew attention upon 
himself by his martial figure and the ardour of his patriotism, 
became an adept of the club of the Jacobins, and decided partizan 
of Danton. To the protection of the latter he owed, during the 
famous days of September 1792, his appointment as adjunct to the 
adjutants généraux of the Interior, and his sudden promotion (on 
October 12, 1792) to the rank of colonel-adjutant-general. In this 
quality he first served under Dumouriez in Belgium. Sent 
afterwards against the federalists of Calvados, advancing under 
General Puisaye, he carried an easy victory since the federalist 
army, from different causes, melted down to a handful of men. In 
reward for his exploit, he wanted now to be created minister-of- 
war, but was put off with the advancement to the rank of general 
of brigade, in which quality he assisted at the battle of 
Hondschoote. The Committee of the Public Weal called him back, 

and intrusted him with the mission of putting down the symptoms 
of insurrection manifesting themselves in the Gironde, a task he 
vigorously executed. 

After Danton’s imprisonment, Brune was expected to put 
himself at the head of a mob in order to deliver his friend, but he 
stood prudently aloof. The storm having passed away, he 
insinuated himself with the family Duplays, with whom Robespierre 
lived, and thus contrived to be not molested during the reign of 
terror. After the 9th Thermidor, he again appeared on the public 
stage in company of Robespierre’s deadliest enemy, Fréron, whom 
he followed as “pacificator” to Marseilles and Avignon. On the 
13th Vendémiaire he was employed by Barras as one of the 
under-generals (mitraillade*), commanding the royalist sections of 
Paris under the command-in-chief of Bonaparte. After the affair 
of September 9, 1796, in which he had displayed all his energy 
against the Babouvists, he joined Bonaparte in Italy, and 
commanded a brigade of division under Masséna. He distin- 
guished himself by his intrepidity during the whole of this 
campaign. (Sieh” Schlosser.*”) Brune’s old connexion with the 
Dantonists, whose ranks were composed of bold adventurers, 
made it desirable to Bonaparte to secure him as one of his tools. 
Hence he made him general-of-division on the battle-field of 
Rivoli, mentioned him honourably in the bulletins, and induced 
the Directory to confide him the second division of the Italian 
army, become vacant by the depart of Augereau. 

After the peace of Campo Formio he was sent by the Directory 
to lull the Swiss into security, to divide their councils, to fall at 
the proper moment upon the canton of Berne with an army 
concentrated for this purpose, and there to plunder the treasury 
of Berne, which latter delicate mission peculiarly answered Brune’s 
rapacious instincts. In plundering the treasury of Berne, Brune 
took care to forget drawing up an inventory of it. It was again by 
manoeuvres of a diplomatic rather than a military character that, 
as commander of the army in Italy, he persuaded Charles 
Emmanuel, the king of Sardinia, then the apparent ally of France, 
to deliver into his hands the citadel of Turin (3 July 1798). 

The Batavian campaign against the Anglo-Russians who had 
invaded Holland,—a campaign lasting 2 months, opened on 22 
Aout‘ 1799, the capitulation of the Duke of York, signed on the 

18th October of the same year—forms the great event in Brune’s 
military life. An English squadron debarked on the coasts of 
Holland with 45,000 men under the Duke of York; Brune’s army 
25,000 men only; Brune charged the generals Daendels and 
Dumonceau, the one of the defence of the province of Holland, 
the other of the Eastern provinces, reserving for himself a reserve 
with which he would be able to turn on any points menaced. The 
Anglo-Russians having disembarked their matériel after a lively 
combat with Daendels, entered the Texel, occupied the Helder 
and seized upon the Dutch fleet, Brune concentrated his forces 
before Alkmaar and attacked the allied on the 9th September, but 
without success. On the 18th, the Anglo-Russians, in their turn, 
attempted dislodging him, but a Russian column being cut off and 
forced to capitulate, the Duke of York retreated, and both armies 
re-occupied their prior positions. (This battle at Bergen.) Both 
armies did nothing from the battle of Bergen to the 2nd of 
October. This inactivity a great fault on the part of the army 
which was more numerous and which received its provisions by 
the sea only. Brune profited by it for strengthening his position 
and swelling his army. The vigorous attack made by the enemy 
under -Abercromby, on the 2nd of October, in which Brune was 
near being cut off his retreat, he lost 4,000 men, and was obliged 
to transfer his headquarters to Beverwijk-Zee and Kiommen- 
Dig, where Brune occupied an excellent position. It was only on 
the 6th that the Gallo-Batavian lines were again attacked. York 
took Limmen and Askerloot, while the Russians rendered them- 
selves masters of Bakkum; but when they had arrived before 
Castricum, Brune routed them completely. A cavalry charge 
completed their defeat, and threw them back into their positions. 
(This: battle of Beverwyk.) York retired to his encampment 
behind the Zyp. Having destroyed the maritime establishments, 
cut upon the digues, laid fire to the buildings of the East India 
Company,*” he embarked himself for England; and in order to 
see this operation not troubled, he negotiated a capitulation, 
ignominious for the English, which stipulated, among other things, 
the free and unconditional renvoi? of 8,000 French made prisoners - 
before this campaign. 

In 1800 he was sent to the army of Italy en remplacement de 
Masséna“ After the battle of Marengo an armistice had been 

concluded with the Austrians. The hostilities recommenced on 24 
November. Brune seized upon 3 entrenched (retranchés) camps at 
the Volta, threw the enemy beyond this river, and prepared 
instantly to traverse it. According to his orders, his army ought to 
pass at two points, one between the moulin of. the Volta and the 
village of Pozzolo, the other at Monbazon. This second part of the 
operation having encountered difficulties, Brune gave order to 
delay it for 24 hours, although the right wing, which had 
commenced to pass at the other point, had already engaged with 
the Austrians. It was but due to the exertions of General Dupont 
that the whole right wing was not captured or destroyed, and 
Brune forced to retreat without ever crossing the Mincio. 
Napoleon says that from this moment it had become evident that 
Brune was not made for the command-in-chief of armies. 
Returned to the state-council, a member of which he had been 
since its creation, he was nominated president of the section of 
war. From 1802 to 1804, as French ambassador at Constantinople, 
he cut a sad figure. Recalled in December 1804, he was, on his 
return to Paris, appointed marshal of the Empire. He commanded 
for a while the camp at Boulogne. Being sent to Hamburg in 1807 
as governor of the Hanseatic towns and commander of the reserve 
of the grand army, he vigorously seconded Bourrienne in his 
extortions and “concussions”. A truce having been concluded at 
Schlatkow now between the French and the King of Sweden, he 
had, with regard to some contested points, a long interview with 
Gustavus, King of Sweden, near Anklam, in Pomerania, which 
seems to have given rise to suspicions on the part of Napoleon. 
When, afterwards, in the surrender of the island of Rigen by the 
Swedish general Toll, agreeably to a convention with Brune, the 
latter omitted in the text of the convention the titles of the 
Emperor Napoleon, and mentioned simply the French army and 
the Swedish army as parties to the agreement, Napoleon highly 
incensed. Berthier, by express order, had to write him that “no 
such scandal had ever been since the time of Pharamond”.” (He 
made mention of the “French army” instead of “the army of his 
Imperial and Royal Majesty”.‘) He lost his commandment, and 
retired to the department of Escaut to preside over an electoral 
college. One moment his indiscreet complaints of the imperial 

injustice threatened him with being ordered to restitute part of his 
plunder. Now cajoled Berthier, courtisait? the emperor. 

In 1814 he sent his adhesion to the acts of the senate against 
Napoleon and act of adhesion to Louis XVIII,” who gave him the 
cross of St. Louis; but as the royal favours went not farther, Brune 
became again Bonapartist. During the “Hundred Days”, he 
commanded under Napoleon a corps of observation on the Var, in 
which quality he developed all his brutal vigour against the 
Royalists. After the battle of Waterloo he proclaimed the king, and 
leaving his corps, was travelling from Toulon to Avignon on the 
way to Paris, when a furious mob forced its way into the inn at 
Avignon, where Brune was, insulted him as one of the Septem- 
briseurs of 1792, blocked him up, removed the obstacles which he 
had thrown up, penetrated to his room, and shot him. The mob 
seized up his cadaver, dragged it through the streets, and threw it 
into the Rhone. 

Nothing more notorious than his cupidity and greed.‘ 

“For more than a fortnight Avignon was consigned to turmoil, carnage and fire 
when, on August 2, 1815, Brune arrived there with two aides-de-camp and stopped 
for breakfast at the Hotel Palais-Royal where the horse relay station was. Recognised 
by an army veteran who had pointed him out to the curious, he regained his carriage 
about an hour later. A hundred steps from the town gates, where his passport was 
checked, the populace set upon him, throwing stones at his carriage and forcing him 
to return to the hotel he had just left. The crowd in the square kept swelling, and 
clamoured for the head of the man who had been pointed out to it as the assassin of 
the Princesse de Lamballe.’4 

Napoleon said at Saint Helena: 

“Brune, Masséna, Augereau, and many others were intrepid depredators.” ¢