Jacques MacDonald

Born in Sedan in 1765, Macdonald was serving in the Irish Brigade when the revolution broke. He threw in with the cause and climbed fast: brigade general by 1793 after Jemappes, divisional general a year later. He commanded French forces in Rome after the republic was declared there in 1798, helped conquer Naples in 1799, then took a crushing defeat at the Trebbia against Suvorov's Austro-Russian army. He backed Napoleon's 1799 coup but his ties to Moreau cost him - forced into semi-retirement for years. Napoleon pulled him back in 1809; at Wagram he fought well enough to be made marshal on the field and duke soon after. He covered the retreat from Leipzig in 1813 and nearly didn't make it out. After the Bourbons returned he became a peer, stayed clear of the Hundred Days, and spent his last decades as chancellor of the Legion of Honour. He died in 1840 at seventy-four.