Skip to content
Curated playlist

Names inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe

  • Marquis de LafayetteThe Marquis de Lafayette lies buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris, beneath soil carried across the Atlantic from Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. He gathered that earth himself, intending it for his grave. Americans call him simply Lafayette.…
  • Louis BonaparteNapoleon made his brother Louis king of Holland, and Louis refused to send troops for the Russia invasion.
  • Joachim MuratFacing a firing squad in 1815, Joachim Murat told his soldiers to aim at his heart. He had asked for a scented bath.
  • Auguste de MarmontA French marshal's name became a French verb meaning to betray. Marmont's 1814 deal with the Allies led to "raguser."
  • Jérôme BonaparteJérôme Bonaparte married a Baltimore woman despite her father's warnings, then abandoned her for a crown.
  • Pierre-Charles VilleneuveDid Admiral Villeneuve take his own life after Trafalgar? Historians still disagree about how he died in 1806.
  • Charles XIV JohnBernadotte threw his epaulettes on the ground to stop his retreating soldiers. They picked them up and counter-attacked.
  • Jean-Baptiste KléberBritain refused Kléber's deal to send his army home from Egypt, so he attacked instead.
  • Jean-Andoche JunotJean-Andoche Junot met Napoleon because he had clear handwriting. A cannonball just missed him at Toulon, and he joked.
  • Louis Philippe IBefore he became king of France, Louis Philippe I lived above a Boston oyster house.
  • Charles Leclerc (general, born 1772)General Leclerc sailed for Saint-Domingue promising freedom while carrying secret orders.
  • Charles-Pierre AugereauAt Castiglione in 1796, Augereau held off the main Austrian army with 11,000 men. It gave Bonaparte time to win.
  • Louis DesaixNapoleon cried, "Why am I not allowed to weep?" on hearing General Louis Desaix was dead.
  • Michel NeyMarshal Michel Ney gave the order to fire at his own execution. Napoleon had called him "the bravest of the brave."
  • Jean Victor Marie MoreauGeneral Jean Victor Marie Moreau was fatally wounded standing beside a tsar. He was fighting the France he once served.
  • Józef PoniatowskiAt Raszyn in 1809, Józef Poniatowski led a bayonet charge against an Austrian force twice his size.

Queue