Quick Facts
French in full:
Dominique-Joseph-René Vandamme, comte d’Unebourg
Born:
November 5, 1770, Cassel, near Dunkirk, France
Died:
July 1, 1830, Cassel (aged 59)

Dominique-René Vandamme, count of Unebourg (born November 5, 1770, Cassel, near Dunkirk, France—died July 1, 1830, Cassel) was a French general in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

Vandamme, of petit bourgeois origins, enlisted in the French army as a private in a regiment serving in Martinique (1788). Two years later he deserted and returned to civilian life in France. A supporter of the French Revolution, he enlisted in the French army as a private (1791). He raised a company of volunteers and was named its captain. When war broke out in 1792, he was sent to the Army of the North. A strong supporter of the Revolutionary government, he was rapidly promoted and by September 1793 had been named a general of brigade.

Vandamme fought in the Low Countries (1794), on the Rhine (1795), and in Germany (1796–99). When the British and the Russians invaded Holland in 1799, he was sent to serve under Gen. Guillaume Brune and played a significant role in defeating the Allied forces. At the Battle of Austerlitz (1805), Vandamme and Gen. Louis-Vincent-Joseph Le Blond, count of Saint-Hilaire, led their division onto the Pratzen Heights and broke the centre of the Russian army, which led to Napoleon’s greatest victory. In 1808 Vandamme was rewarded with the title count of Unebourg.

Following the destruction of the Prussian army in 1806, Vandamme successfully laid siege to the major cities in Silesia (Golgau, Breslau, and Brieg). He commanded a division during the Wagram campaign (1809) and was given command of the Eighth Corps of the army that, under Napoleon, invaded Russia in 1812. However, early in the campaign he quarreled with Jérôme Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, and was removed from the army and ordered back to Paris.

The Dresden phase of the Leipzig campaign (1813) was a disaster for Vandamme. Ordered to block the retreat of the Austrian army that had been defeated at the Battle of Dresden several months earlier, he was encircled and his corps destroyed. Vandamme was taken prisoner and sent to Russia, where he spent the next year. When he returned to France in 1814, he was not well received by the restored Bourbon government and was discharged. Upon Napoleon’s return from Elba and his seizure of power in 1815, Vandamme was given command of an army corps and took part in the Waterloo campaign, fighting in Belgium at the Battle of Ligny and at Wavre. After Napoleon’s final defeat, at the Battle of Waterloo, Vandamme was exiled and sought refuge in the United States, where he lived in Philadelphia (1816–19). In 1819 he was allowed to return to Europe and settled with his family in Ghent, Belgium. Reconciled with Louis XVIII, he was able to returned to Cassel, his birthplace, where he died.

John G. Gallaher The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Quick Facts
Date:
c. 1801 - 1815
Location:
Europe
Context:
British Empire
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Napoleonic Wars, series of wars between Napoleonic France and shifting alliances of other European powers that produced a brief French hegemony over most of Europe. Along with the French Revolutionary wars, the Napoleonic Wars constitute a 23-year period of recurrent conflict that concluded only with the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon’s second abdication on June 22, 1815.

(See “Napoleon’s Major Battles” Interactive Map)

When the Coup of 18–19 Brumaire (November 9–10, 1799) brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power, the Second Coalition against France was beginning to break up. In Holland a capitulation had been signed for the withdrawal of the Anglo-Russian expeditionary force. Although the Russo-Austrian forces in Italy had won a series of victories, the course of the campaign in Switzerland had reflected growing differences between Austria and Russia. Despite Russia’s subsequent abandonment of the common cause and France’s recovery of control over Holland and Switzerland, the British government paid no serious attention to Bonaparte’s proposals for peace in December 1799. On the one hand the regime in France had yet to prove itself and on the other it was expected that the Austrians would make further gains.

The defeat of Austria, 1800–01

Though Bonaparte had to embark on the campaigns of 1800 with inadequate forces and funds, the weaknesses of allied strategy went far to offset the disadvantages under which he laboured. Austria had decided on an equal division of its strength by maintaining armies of approximately 100,000 men in both the German and Italian theatres. Instead of reinforcing Austrian strength in northern Italy, where there was most hope of success, the British government spent its efforts in limited and isolated enterprises, among them an expedition of 6,000 men to capture Belle-Île off the Brittany coast and another of 5,000 to join the 6,000 already on the Balearic Island of Minorca. When in June these two forces were diverted to cooperate with the Austrians they arrived off the Italian coast too late to be of use.

Bonaparte’s plan was to treat Italy as a secondary theatre and to seek a decisive victory in Germany. It proved impossible to increase Victor Moreau’s Army of the Rhine to more than 120,000—too small a margin of superiority to guarantee the success required. Nevertheless, Bonaparte was busy with the creation of an army of reserve which was to be concentrated around Dijon and was destined to act under his command in Italy. Until he had engaged this force in the south, Bonaparte would be able, should the need arise, to take it to Moreau’s assistance. In Italy André Masséna’s 30,000–40,000 outnumbered troops were to face the Austrians in the Apennines and in the Maritime Alps until the army of reserve, marching to the south of the Army of the Rhine, should cross the Alps, fall upon the Austrians’ lines of communication, cut off their retreat from Piedmont, and bring them to battle. Bonaparte had hoped that Moreau would mass the Army of the Rhine in Switzerland and cross the river at Schaffhausen to turn the Austrian left in strength and obtain a decisive victory before dispatching some of his army to join the force descending on the rear of the Austrians in Italy. Moreau, however, preferred to cross the Rhine at intervals over a distance of 60 miles (approximately 100 km) and to encounter the Austrians before concentrating his own forces.

Louis IX of France (St. Louis), stained glass window of Louis IX during the Crusades. (Unknown location.)
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