Bon Adrien Jannot de Moncey

Duke of Conegliano

Born on July 31, 1754 in Moncey (parish of Palise), Franche-Comté, eastern France, to a lawyer at the Besançon parliament, Bon Adrien Jannot de Moncey was an unruly and undisciplined child from an early age. At the age of fifteen, he ran away from school and joined the army; his father ransomed him; he did it again. This time, he left the service of his own free will a few months later, before joining the gendarmerie again in 1774. When he reached the rank of lieutenant in 1785, he saw his career blocked, like so many others, by his non-noble origins.

In 1789, he bought the château of his native village  from the Marquis du Cheylard.

In 1791, Moncey enlisted again, this time in a volunteer regiment, which elected him captain. He was assigned to the army of the Pyrénées-Occidentales from 1793 to 1795. He was so well appreciated by the representatives on mission that they appointed him brigadier general on April 18, 1794, and major general and commander-in-chief of the army six months later.

After having tried to escape this responsibility, which he considered overwhelming - but his letter to the Comité de Salut Public had no effect - he resigned himself to assuming it, and did so with great success. A series of victories enabled him to push the Spanish back behind the Ebro and take Bilbao on July 17, 1795.

Denounced as a royalist after the coup d'état of 18 fructidor Year V, and a friend of Lazare Carnot and Jean-Charles Pichegru, he was discharged despite an eloquent memoir in support of his case (October 26, 1797). Unemployed for the next two years, he was reinstated two months before the 18 Brumaire, and lent his support to Napoleon Bonaparte.

He led a corps in the second Italian campaign, in 1800, but got on badly with Guillaume Marie-Anne Brune and then Joachim Murat, under whose orders he refused to serve.

On December 3, 1801, Bon Adrien Jannot de Moncey was appointed Inspector General of the Gendarmerie, making him the equal of the Minister of Police. In this capacity, he had his own espionage services, secret funds for which he was accountable only to the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, and direct access to the latter, without even going through the Secretary of State, all in an era particularly rich in conspiracies.

Marshal in 1804, Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honor in 1805, he was sent to Spain at the beginning of 1808, where he won a number of victories that earned him the title of Duke of Conegliano on July 2, led the siege of Valencia (September) and began the second siege of Saragossa in December.

He returned to France in 1809 and commanded various reserve armies until 1813.

On March 30, 1814, as second-in-command of the Paris National Guard, he heroically defended the Barrière de Clichy against the Russians , then, after the capitulation, gathered the remnants of his troops and led them back to Fontainebleau.

Peer of France under the first Restoration, Peer of France under the Hundred Days, he lost this title when Louis XVIII returned for the second time.

Appointed to preside over the council of war charged with judging Marshal Michel Ney, he sent the king a magnificent letter of refusal: Sire, faced with the cruel alternative of disobeying Your Majesty or failing my conscience, I had to explain myself to Your Majesty. I will not enter into the question of whether Marshal Ney is innocent or guilty... It was at the passage of the Beresina, Sire, it was in that terrible catastrophe that Ney saved the wreckage of the army; and I would send to his death the man to whom so many Frenchmen owe their lives!... No, Sire, if I am not allowed to save my country, nor my own existence, I will at least save honor (...).

As a result of this letter, he was stripped of all his ranks and sentenced to a three months imprisonment in the fortress of Ham. The Prussian commandant of the fortress having declined the shameful honor of being the jailer of France's glories, Moncey settled for the duration of his sentence in the inn opposite the prison. It is said that the Prussian regimental band serenaded him there every day. He then retired to his château de Baillon, near Luzarches, pretending to consider himself a prisoner. On July 3, 1816, the king, feeling ridiculous, discreetly gave him back his baton. The peerage followed in 1819.

In 1823, at the age of 70, the Duke of Conegliano again took command of an army corps during the Spanish Expedition. At its head, he conquered Catalonia, taking Barcelona, Tarragona and Hostalrich.

In 1833, following the death of Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, he became Governor of Les Invalides , where he received Napoleon's ashes on December 15, 1840. After kissing the hilt of Napoleon's sword, this old man of eighty-seven, who had been begging his doctors for days to let him live long enough to receive the Emperor, said the words that marked the end of an era: Now, let's go home and die.

He died on April 20, 1842, and was buried  at Les Invalides, in the governors' crypt  of Saint-Louis cathedral .

In 1976, the French Postal Service issued a 0.80 F stamp bearing the effigy of Bon Adrien Jannot de Moncey .

Moncey's name is inscribed on the 33rd column (west pillar) of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile , while a full-length statue by Félix Desruelles honors his memory on the north façade of the Louvre, rue de Rivoli , and a monument surmounted by a bronze statue , the work of Amédée Doublemard, has commemorated his heroic conduct on March 30, 1814, on Place de Clichy since 1869.