Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Le chevalier Saint George was in command of "La Legion franche des americains" that became "la Legion des americains du midi" which was then called the 13th Regiment de Chasseurs (a cheval). He had some trouble later because of Dumouriez betrayal, his nobility made him suspect to the power of the time. They put him in jail but by the end of the Terror they let him go.
He never recovered his command and died in 1799.

Chevalier Saint George was a very complex man and interesting. As said before he was a very good fencer and an accomplished musician, compositor and the director of most famous orchestras of the French court. He was even called by some "the black Mozart".

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Général David Guegan

3ème Régiment de Grenadiers - Bataillon d'élite du 3ème Légère
2ème Brigade
Grenadiers de la Réserve
Réserve
La Grande Armée
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"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."
Napoléon Bonaparte

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
Groucho Marx

At the outbreak of the Revolution, seeing the opportunity for carving out a new career, he went to Paris, where he joined the Jacobin Club in 1789. The death of Mirabeau, to whose fortunes he had attached himself, proved a great blow. However, opportunity arose again when, in his capacity as a lieutenant-general and the commandant of Nantes, he offered to march to the assistance of the National Constituent Assembly after the royal family's unsuccessful flight to Varennes.

In 1790, Dumouriez was appointed French military advisor to the newly established independent Belgian government and remained dedicated to the cause of an independent Belgian Republic.

Minister of War, Louis Lebègue Duportail, promoted Dumouriez from president of the War Council to major-general in June 1791 and attached him to the Twelfth Division, which was commanded by General Jacques Alexis de Verteuil.

He then attached himself to the Girondist party and, on 15 March 1792, became the French minister of foreign affairs. Dumouriez then selected Pierre LeBrun as his first officer for Belgian and Liégeois affairs. The relationship between the Girondists and Dumouriez was not based on ideology, but rather based on the practical benefit it gave to both parties. Dumouriez needed people in the Legislative Assembly to support him, and the Girondists needed a general to give them legitimacy in the army.[1] He played a major part in the declaration of war against Austria (20 April), and he planned the invasion of the Low Countries. His foreign policy was greatly influenced by Jean-Louis Favier.[2] Favier had called for France to break its ties with Austria. On the king's dismissal of Roland, Clavière and Servan (13 June 1792), he took Servan’s post of minister of war, but resigned it two days later on account of Louis XVI's refusal to come to terms with the National Constituent Assembly, and went to join the army of Marshal Luckner. After the émeute of 10 August 1792 and Lafayette’s flight, he gained appointment to the command of the "Army of the Centre". At the same moment, France's enemies assumed the offensive. Dumouriez acted promptly. His subordinate Kellermann repulsed the Prussians at Valmy (20 September 1792), and Dumouriez himself severely defeated the Austrians at Jemappes (6 November 1792). After these military victories, Dumouriez was ready to invade Belgium to spread revolution. He was a true revolutionary in the sense that he believed that nations which had undergone a revolution, in this instance France, should give aid to oppressed countries. As his plans were largely limited to Belgium, this tunnel vision sometimes prevented him from acting in the most logical fashion as a commander.[3]

Returning to Paris, Dumouriez encountered popular ovation, but he gained less sympathy from the revolutionary government. His old-fashioned methodical method of conducting war exposed him to the criticism of ardent Jacobins, and a defeat would have meant the end of his career. To the more radical elements in Paris, it became clear that Dumouriez was not a true patriot when he returned to Paris on 1 January 1793 and worked during the trial of Louis XVI to save him from execution. Dumouriez had also written a letter to the Convention scolding it for not supplying his army to his satisfaction and for the Decree of 15 December, which allowed the French armies to loot in the territory they had won. The Decree insured that any plan concerning Belgium would fail due to a lack of popular support among the Belgians. This letter became known as “Dumouriez’s declaration of war”.[1] After a major defeat in the Battle of Neerwinden in March 1793, he made a desperate move to save himself from his radical enemies. Arresting the five commissioners of the National Convention who had been sent to inquire into his conduct (Camus, Drouet, Bancal-des-Issarts, Quinette, and Lamarque) as well as the Minister of War, Pierre Riel de Beurnonville, he handed them over to the enemy, and then attempted to persuade his troops to march on Paris and overthrow the revolutionary government. The attempt failed, and Dumouriez, along with the duc de Chartres (afterwards King Louis Philippe) and his younger brother, the duc de Montpensier, fled into the Austrian camp. This blow left the Girondists vulnerable due to their association with Dumouriez.

More on the Life of Saint Georges
Saint-George was born on the French-ruled Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on December 25, 1745. His last name has sometimes been spelled "Saint-Georges," but his father generally dropped the final "s," and a street named after the younger Saint-George in Paris also omits it. Saint-George's father, George de Bologne Saint-George, was a plantation owner and slaveholder on Guadeloupe who while still in France had been part of the inner circle of King Louis XV. He was married and had a legitimate daughter, but he also had a slave mistress, likely born in Senegal, named Nanon and said to be exceptionally beautiful. It was unorthodox for George de Bologne Saint-George to acknowledge this interracial infidelity, and more unusual still when he took not only his wife but his mistress and illegitimate son with him to France in 1748, fleeing a court conviction for killing a man in a duel. Joseph Boulogne, as a man who was half black, was barred from French noble status but did enjoy his father's support and patronage.
Saint-George received the tutoring appropriate for a young member of the French nobility, attending a boarding school run by a famous swordsman named La Boëssière. Besides fencing and swordsmanship, his studies included literature, the sciences, and horseback riding. The teacher became the first of several observers to write admiringly of Saint-George's prowess with the sword. Saint-George was tall, handsome, and gracious, and he quickly found his way into the halls of the French aristocracy. In 1765 a fencer named Picard insulted Saint-George and challenged him to a duel. Saint-George at first refused, but his father promised him a new carriage if he fought and won. At the duel in the city of Rouen, Saint-George quickly emerged the victor. He suffered his first defeat the following year at the hands of the famed Italian fencer Giuseppe Gianfaldoni, who praised Saint-George and said that he would soon be the best fencer on the European continent.
In music, too, Saint-George was a standout student. Several of France's leading composers had benefited from the elder Saint-George's patronage in the past, and young Saint-George benefited from their musical attentions. He is thought to have studied the violin with one of the great French virtuosi, Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder, and he mastered the harpsichord (an ancestor of the piano) as well. By the late 1760s he had become the recipient of a dedication from François-Joseph Gossec, the composer at the center of Parisian concert life. In 1769 Saint-George joined an orchestra called Le Concert des Amateurs, directed by Gossec, as first violinist, and in 1773, when Gossec moved on to a different conducting post, Saint-George became the group's director.
Even as he notched these successes, Saint-George's status in French society was an ambivalent one. Religious leaders were agitating for the end of slavery, and King Louis XVI himself was opposed to the practice. But interracial marriages were forbidden (Saint-George was never able to marry), and belief in the genetic inferiority of Africans was widespread. As word of his athletic and musical exploits spread, Saint-George became famous. Word even reached America of how he could swim across the Seine River using only one arm or shoot at and hit a coin thrown into the air, and he was something of a fashion trendsetter as well. But there was always an undercurrent of racial controversy surrounding his reputation. Saint-George had powerful backers who appreciated his talents, including Queen Marie Antoinette (to whom he was unusuall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AadRwQS1Eog&t=4m8s (Engsub)

San Domingo,Santo Domingo,Hispaniola(Haiti)...

The Negroes soldiers in the French army.

Some 400 men.

The orders in war are awful!

With more than 3,700 Polish soldiers were 300 of live.

This is a snippet of Polish film called "Popioły" (Ashes) of 1965. Glory and bitterness Poles during the Napoleonic era.

Ironically, a few years ago ... betrayal, shame, shame on us.

In Mantua,Italy,in 1799.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi8eeTXzMsc&t=41m51s (Engsub)

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Général de Brigade Cezary Pluskwa,
17ème Régiment de Dragons,
1ère Brigade,
4ème Division de Dragons,
3ème Corps d'Armée,
La Grande Armée.

My gratitude to ju mon ami a powerful movie.

Brave Polish Legion L' Best he had Tu Armes!