Savary

Savary, ANNE JEAN MARIE RENÉ, Duc de Rovigo, a French general and diplomatist, was born at Marcq, in Ardennes, 26th April 1774, entered the army as a volunteer in 1790, and served with distinction under Custine, Pichegru, and Moreau on the Rhine, under Desaix in Egypt, and in the battle of Marengo (1800). Napoleon, whose notice he had attracted, made him commander of his bodyguard, and employed him in diplomatic affairs, for which he showed an admirable capacity. In 1804, as commandant of the troops stationed at Vincennes, he presided at the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, an event which he is believed to have unduly hastened; and in the wars of 1806-8 he acquired high military reputation at Jena, in the capture of Hameln, and by his victory at Ostrolenka (February 16, 1807), a brilliant achievement. Created Duke of Rovigo in the beginning of the following year, he was sent to Spain by the emperor, and negotiated the perfidious arrangement by which the Spanish king and his son were kidnapped. In 1810 he superseded Fouché as minister of Police. After the fall of Napoleon, to whom he had always been passionately devoted, and whom he served with a fidelity that stopped not at unscrupulous acts, he wished to accompany him to St Helena; but he was confined by the British government at Malta for some months, and at last made his escape to Smyrna. After experiencing several vicissitudes he returned to Paris in 1819, and was reinstated in his titles and honours. In 1831 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army in Algeria; but ill-health forced him to withdraw to France in March 1833, and on the 2d of June following he died at Paris. Savary's Mémoires (Paris, 8 vols. 1828) are among the most curious and instructive documents relating to the first empire.