Berthier

Berthier, ALEXANDRE, Prince of Neuchâtel and Wagram, was born at Versailles, February 20, 1753. A soldier's son, he entered the army in 1770, and fought with Lafayette in the American war of independence. In the French Revolution he soon rose to be chief of the staff in the army of Italy (1795), and in 1798 entered the papal territory, and proclaimed the republic in Rome. He accompanied Napoleon to Egypt in the same year as chief of the staff, a post which he also held in all the subsequent campaigns. At the revolution of 18th Brumaire (1799), he became war-minister, but continued to accompany the emperor on his campaigns. In 1807 he was made sovereign of the formerly Prussian principality of Neuchâtel, vice-constable, and imperial prince. In the campaigns of 1812, 1813, and 1814, he was constantly by the emperor's side, and acted both as chief of the staff and as quartermaster-general. On the fall of Napoleon, Berthier had to surrender the principality of Neuchâtel; and not to lose more, he submitted to Louis XVIII., who continued him his rank as peer and marshal. Napoleon made overtures to him from Elba; these he neither answered nor yet revealed to Louis, and this made him suspected by both. On the return of Napoleon from Elba, in a fit of irresolution Berthier retired to Bamberg, in Bavaria, to his father-in-law, Duke William. On 1st July 1815, as he looked from a window at a division of Russian troops marching towards the French frontier, the bitter sight was too much—he threw himself down into the street, and thus ended his life. His Mémoires appeared in 1826.