Boniface de Castellane

Esprit Victor Elisabeth Boniface de Castellane, comte de Castellane (21 March 1788 – 16 September 1862), was a French military officer and ultimately a Marshal of France.[1]

Boniface de Castellane

Comte de Castellane
Boniface, Marshal de Castellane
Personal details
Born
Esprit Victor Elisabeth Boniface de Castellane

(1788-03-21)21 March 1788
Died16 September 1862(1862-09-16) (aged 74)
Lyon, France
Spouse(s)
Louise Cordélia Eucharis Greffulhe
​
(
m. 1813; died 1847)
RelationsMarie de Castellane (granddaughter)
Antoine de Castellane (grandson)
Philippe de Rohan-Chabot (cousin)
ChildrenHenri de Castellane
ParentsBoniface Louis André de Castellane
Adélaïde Louise Guyonne de Rohan-Chabot
AwardsMarshal of France

Early life

He was a son of Boniface Louis André de Castellane (1758–1837) and Adélaïde Louise Guyonne de Rohan-Chabot (1761–1805), who was also known as Mademoiselle de Jarnac. After his mother's death, his father remarried, in 1810, to Alexandrine Charlotte de Rohan-Chabot (whose husband, Louis Alexandre, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, was killed during the September Massacres of the Reign of Terror).[lower-alpha 1]

His paternal grandparents were Esprit François Henry, Marquis de Castellane and Louise Charlotte Armande Charron de Ménars. His maternal grandparents were Charles Rosalie de Rohan-Chabot, Lord of Clion, Maroite and Brassac, joint-Lord of the castellanies of Montagrier and Chapdeuil, Maréchal de camp (a son of Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot) and the former Guyonne Hyacinthe de Pons Saint-Maurice. His maternal uncle, Major-General Louis Guy Charles Guillaume de Rohan-Chabot married Lady Isabella FitzGerald (the youngest daughter of William FitzGerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster)[3] and were the parents of Philippe de Rohan-Chabot, vicomte de Chabot and comte de Jarnac who served as the French Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1871.

Career
Marshal de Castellane, c. 1860.

Boniface de Castellane entered the French army on the day of the coronation of Napoléon I of France (December 2, 1804) as an enlisted soldier in the 5th Light Infantry Regiment.[4] In February 1806 he was promoted to 2nd lieutenant in the 7th Dragoons. The same month he was transferred to the 24th Dragoons with whom he served in the Kingdom of Naples. In 1808 de Castellane followed general Georges Mouton into Spain as an aide-de-camp. When Napoléon returned to Germany in 1809, de Castellane followed and he fought in that campaign at Abensberg, Eckmühl, Ratisbon, Aspern-Essling and Wagram.

Promoted to captain in 1810, he further served Mouton, by now count of Lobau, as aide-de-camp and he accompanied him into Russia where he served at Vitebsk, Smolensk and Borodino. In October 1812 he was made aide-de-camp of general Narbonne and was present at Krasnoi and the crossing of the Beresina. Promoted to major, he served in the personal protection detail of the emperor during the retreat. De Castellane was promoted to command of the 1st Regiment Garde d'Honneur in June 1813. During the German campaign he fought at Dresden.

Restoration and July Monarchy

In 1822 de Castellane was given command of a regiment of hussars of the Royal Guard. In 1823 he was serving in Spain but he was recalled in 1827 for his opposition to Ferdinand VII's politics of revenge. In 1824 he was made maréchal de camp (major general). In 1829 he was made an inspector-general of infantry. De Castellane was part of the French army sent to secure Belgium's new found independence. In this campaign he commanded the 1st brigade of the 2nd division. He served in the siege of Antwerp in 1832. In 1833 de Castellane was promoted lieutenant-general and given command of the division of the Pyrénées-Orientales and in 1835 of the 21st military division. Appointed a Peer of France in 1837, de Castellane was sent to Algeria as inspector-general. In 1838 he returned to his old post in the Pyrenees.

Revolution, Republic and Second Empire

In February 1850, de Castellane was given command of the 42nd military division at Bordeaux. To this was added the 44th and 45th divisions centered at Nantes and Rennes. Later that year, he was sent to the 6th military division at Lyon. In January 1852, he was named a senator and governor of Lyon.[5] In December of that year, he was given the dignity of Marshal of France.

Personal life

In 1813, he married Louise Cordélia Eucharis Greffulhe (1796–1847), the younger sister of French banker and politician Jean-Henry-Louis Greffulhe (father of Henri Greffulhe and Louis-Charles Greffulhe).[6] Together, they were the parents of:

Marshal de Castellane died in Lyon on September 16, 1862.[1]

Descendants

Through his eldest son, he was a grandfather of Marie Dorothée Élisabeth de Castellane (1840–1915), who married Prince Antoni Fryderyk Wilhelm Radziwiłł (a grandson of Prince Antoni Radziwiłł and Princess Louise of Prussia)[12] and Antoine de Castellane, Marquis de Castellane (1844–1917), who married Madeleine Le Clerc de Juigné.[13][14]

Through his youngest daughter Pauline's first marriage, he was a grandfather of Margarete von Hatzfeldt (1850–1923) (wife of Ambassador Anton Saurma von der Jeltsch), Louise von Hatzfeldt (1852–1909) (wife of Bernhard von Welczeck), Franz Ludwig Hermann Karl von Hatzfeldt, and Hélène Boniface Pauline Luise von Hatzfeldt (wife of Georg von Kanitz, aide de camp to Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia[10]).[15] Through her second marriage, he was posthumously a grandfather of Marie Dorothée Louise Valençay de Talleyrand-Périgord (1862–1948), who married Karl Egon IV, the Prince of Furstenberg (1852–1896) in 1881. After his death, she married her much older cousin Antoine's son, Jean de Castellane (1868–1965),[16] in 1898.

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References
Notes
  1. Alexandrine Charlotte de Rohan-Chabot was also the lover of William Short, the "adoptive son" of Thomas Jefferson, who served as U.S. Ambassador to France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Alexandrine and Short exchanged hundreds of love letters.[2]
Sources
  1. "Decease of an Old French Soldier". The New York Times. October 11, 1862. Retrieved 2015-01-03. One of the most eccentric military notabilities of the present epoch, the Marshal Count Castellane, has just died at Lyons.
  2. “William Short, Jefferson's Only "Son"” The North American Review, September 1926, p. 471-486
  3. "Leinster, Duke of (I, 1766)". www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk. Heraldic Media Limited. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  4. Charles Mullié, "Boniface de Castellane (1788-1862)" in Biographie des célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 à 1850, 1852.
  5. Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year: 1862. New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1863. p. 691.
  6. "Greffulhe Papiers de la Famille" (PDF). Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  7. de), Louise-Eléonore-Charlotte-Adélaide d'Osmond Boigne (comtesse (1907). Récits d'une tante: Mémoires de la comtesse de Boigne née d'Osmond (in French). Plon-Nourrit et cie. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  8. Proust, Marcel; Carter, William C. (2018). The Guermantes Way: In Search of Lost Time. Yale University Press. p. 218. ISBN 978-0-300-18619-2. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  9. de), Dorothée Dino (duchesse (1910). Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino: (afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand Et de Sagan) 1841-1850. W. Heinemann. p. 372. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  10. Hatzfeldt, Paul Graf von (1905). The Hatzfeldt Letters: Letters of Count Paul Hatzfeldt to His Wife, Written from the Head-quarters of the King of Prussia, 1870-71. John Murray. p. 46. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  11. Castellane, comte Pierre De (1886). Souvenirs of Military Life in Algeria. Remington. p. 6. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  12. Radziwill (Fürstin), Marie Dorothea Elisabeth de Castellane; Robilant, Mario Antonio Nicolis di (1934). Lettres de la princesse Radziwill au général de Robilant, 1889-1914: 1908-1914 (in French). N. Zanichelli. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  13. Mension-Rigau, Eric (2011). L'ami du prince: Journal inédit d'Alfred de Gramont (1892-1915) (in French). Fayard. p. 60. ISBN 9782213665023. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  14. The Cyclopedic Review of Current History. Current History Company. 1896. p. 145. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  15. Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der gräflichen Häuser (in German). Justus Perthes. 1884. p. 435. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  16. "Portrait de Jean Castellane 1868-1965 by Ferdinand Buyle". www.artnet.com. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
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