ComtePierre Dumoustier (17 March 1771 – 15 Jun 1831) was a French general and politician during the First Republic and First Empire. His name is inscribed in column H on the north column of the Arc de Triomphe (between avenue de la Grande-Armée and avenue de Wagram).
At Jena he was wounded by a musket ball to the left leg after he and his regiment broke up a column of 3,000 grenadiers. He next fought at the battles of Pułtusk and Ostrołęka. On 30 December 1806 he was promoted to général de brigade and after this campaign set off for Spain in September 1808. He fought at the second siege of Saragossa. In April 1809 he returned to Germany as second in command of the foot chasseurs corps of the Imperial Guard under the command of Philibert Jean-Baptiste Curial. He fought at the battle of Essling, then commanded 1st Brigade of Curial's marching division of the guard at the Battle of Wagram. He returned to Spain in 1810 in command of four divisions of the 'Young Guard' and was promoted to général de division on 24 June 1811. he commanded 2nd Division of the 'Young Guard' at the battle of Lützen back in Germany - during the day his division relieved the village of Kaya and in the evening repelled a cavalry sortie then fought at Bautzen.
On 26 August 1813 he was in Dresden and commanded to repulse the enemy troops attacking the Flauen gate with an important gun. He sortied in command of 1st Division of the 'Young Guard' under fire, was wounded by grapeshot in the right leg and his horse was killed under him by five 'biscaïen' (large musket shots), but he remained on the battlefield until midnight despite the pain of his wounds. He was made a comte de l’Empire on 28 November 1813 and - on the First Restoration - declined an offer from the royal government to be made a member of the Order of Saint Louis in 1814.
Medallion of Dumoustier in the Passage Pommeraye.
Later in 1814 he retired but during the Hundred Days Napoleon assigned him to the defence of Paris. He was elected to the chamber of representatives for the department of Loire-Inférieure on 12 May 1815 and was one of the commissioners chosen after the defeat at Waterloo to take the chamber's address to the army. He retired again on the Second Restoration and went into internal exile at Nemours, under royalist surveillance. When the inhabitants of Nantes rose up during the 1830 revolution they asked Dumoustier to lead them. Although the city's commander Desquinois had to retreat into his home with the authorities, the chamber of commerce took over the city government and made Dumoustier commander of the city's National Guard.
On 5 August 1830 Dumoustier replaced Desquinois and four days later a letter from the minister of war, signed by count Maurice Étienne Germain, commissioner to the war ministry, officially made Dumoustier commander of the 12th Military Division at Nantes. On13 August another letter from Maurice Étienne Germain informed Dumoustier that king Louis-Philippe I "gave full approval to all that you have done so far", invested him with "all powers" and authorised him "to take all measures you judge suitable".
On 25 April 1830 he was badly wounded in his left knee in a riding accident during a tour of inspection near Beaupréau, a wound from which he died in Nantes fourteen months later. He and Pierre Cambronne are both buried in square GG of the cimetière Miséricorde in Nantes, Place Dumoustier in the city centre is named after him and a medallion showing his bust is in the passage Pommeraye in the city.
Sources
"Pierre Dumoustier", in Charles Mullié, Biographie des célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 à 1850, 1852
"Pierre Dumoustier", in Adolphe Robert and Gaston Cougny, Dictionnaire des parlementaires français (1789–1891), Bourloton, Paris, 1889 Edition detailsWikisource
