Jean Baptiste Van Merlen
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Jean Baptiste Van Merlen
Major General Jean Baptiste Baron van Merlen (11 May 1772–18 June 1815) (also spelt Joannes Baptista Baron van Merlen) was a Dutch-Belgian army officer who, following the varied fortunes of his homeland, fought on both sides during the French Revolutionary Wars, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Fighting in a series of campaigns in the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, he played an important part in the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, where he was killed in action. Early life and French Service Merlen was born in Antwerp on 11 May 1772, fifth of the thirteen children of merchant Bernardus Josephus Antonius van Merlen and his wife Isabelle Caroline Ligeois. At age fifteen, he travelled to Brussels and became volunteer in the service of the state of Brabant on 17 March 1788. During the Brabant Revolution a year later, he fought at Battle of Turnhout (1789), Turnhout and the capture of Diest, and was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant on 21 March 1790. When Austria succeeded in ...
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Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,Statistics Belgium; ''Loop van de bevolking per gemeente'' (Excel file)
Population of all municipalities in Belgium, . Retrieved 1 November 2017.
it is the most populous municipality in Belgium, and with a metropolitan population of around 1,200,000 people, it is the second-largest metro ...
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Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest), is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion of the country and is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the Flemish Region (within which it forms an enclave) and the Walloon Region. Brussels is the most densely populated region in Belgium, and although it has the highest GDP per capita, it has the lowest available income per household. The Brussels Region covers , a relatively small area compared to the two other regions, and has a population of over 1.2 million. The five times larger metropolitan area of Bruss ...
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Rittmeister
__NOTOC__ (German and Scandinavian for "riding master" or "cavalry master") is or was a military rank of a commissioned cavalry officer in the armies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Scandinavia, and some other countries. A ''Rittmeister'' is typically in charge of a squadron (a company-sized unit called a "troop" in the United States, as opposed to the U.S. cavalry squadron of larger battalion size), and is the equivalent of a '' Hauptmann'' rank (en: captain). The various names of this rank in different languages (all Germanic, plus Estonian) were: * sv, ryttmästare * da, ritmester * no, rittmester (bokmål; the spelling ''ritmester'' was used until 1907) or ''rittmeister'' (nynorsk) * german: Rittmeister * et, rittmeister The Dutch equivalent, ''Ritmeester'', is still the official designation for officers in the cavalry branches of the Royal Dutch Army. The Norwegian rank, ''rittmester''/''rittmeister'', still serves as the official designation for officers in the armo ...
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Hussar
A hussar ( , ; hu, huszár, pl, husarz, sh, husar / ) was a member of a class of light cavalry, originating in Central Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely adopted by light cavalry regiments in European armies in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. By the 19th century, hussars wore jackets decorated with braid and shako or busby hats and they developed a romanticized image of being dashing and adventurous. A small number of modern armies retain the designation of hussars for some armored (tank) units. As well, some modern armies have ceremonial mounted units which wear historical hussar uniforms on parades or to provide a VIP escort to national leaders. Historically, the term derives from the cavalry of late medieval Hungary, under Matthias Corvinus, with mainly Serb warriors. Etymology Etymologists are divided over the derivation of the word ''hussar''. Several alternative theor ...
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Battle Of Tourcoing
The Battle of Tourcoing (17–18 May 1794) saw a Republican French army directed by General of Division Joseph Souham defend against an attack by a Coalition army led by Emperor Francis II and Austrian Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The French army was temporarily led by Souham in the absence of its normal commander Jean-Charles Pichegru. Threatened with encirclement, Souham and division commanders Jean Victor Marie Moreau and Jacques Philippe Bonnaud improvised a counterattack which defeated the Coalition's widely separated and poorly coordinated columns. The War of the First Coalition action was fought near the town of Tourcoing, north of Lille in northeastern France. The Coalition battle plan drawn up by Karl Mack von Leiberich launched six columns that attempted to envelop part of the French army holding an awkward bulge at Menen (Menin) and Kortrijk (Courtrai). On 17 May, the French defeated Georg Wilhelm von dem Bussche's small column while the columns of ...
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Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau
Count Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau de Bergendal (7 November 1760 – 29 December 1821) was a general from the Southern Netherlands, in the service of France and the Netherlands. Life At first destined for a career as an architect (for which he showed a marked disposition), he fought in his first battles in 1788 as a volunteer in the ''Canaris'' (after its uniform's colour) cavalry regiment during the Brabant Revolution. He became a lieutenant colonel in that unit in November 1789. After the revolution was stopped in 1790, he fled and offered the First French Republic his services, commanding a battalion of the Belgian Legion, fighting at Jemappes and rising to général de brigade in 1793 after his defence of the approaches to Lille against the young comte de Bouillé. Fighting in the invasion of the Dutch Republic under general Pichegru in 1795, he moved to the Batavian Republic's army as a lieutenant-general. In 1796 he commanding the troops protecting the provinces of Groningen, ...
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Battle Of Lincelles
The Battle of Lincelles was an action that took place as part of a larger manoeuvre on 17 August 1793 in the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. It was fought between the forces of Revolutionary France under the command of Jean Baptiste Jourdan and , versus those of Great Britain under Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany and the Dutch Republic under the Hereditary Prince of Orange. The action resulted in a coalition victory. The battle In the Autumn of 1793 the Allied forces of Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld were poised to invade France. The Hereditary Prince of Orange held Menin with 10,000 Dutch troops, with instructions to cover the movement of the corps of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany in his advance towards Dunkirk. To facilitate this and take advantage of York's nearby support Orange decided to lead a column against the French-held village of Lincelles, while another under the Friedrich Karl August, Prince of Waldeck and ...
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Battle Of Neerwinden (1793)
The Battle of Neerwinden (18 March 1793) saw a Republican French army led by Charles François Dumouriez attack a Coalition army commanded by Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The Coalition army of the Habsburg monarchy together with a small contingent of allied Dutch Republic troops repulsed all French assaults after bitter fighting and Dumouriez conceded defeat, withdrawing from the field. The French position in the Austrian Netherlands swiftly collapsed, ending the threat to the Dutch Republic and allowing Austria to regain control of its lost province. The War of the First Coalition engagement was fought at Neerwinden, located east of Brussels in present-day Belgium. After Dumouriez's victory at Jemappes in November 1792, the French armies rapidly overran most of the Austrian Netherlands. Rather than driving the Austrians to the west bank of the Rhine River, Dumouriez and the French government became preoccupied with a war with the Dutch Republic. During the breath ...
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Battle Of Jemappes
The Battle of Jemappes (6 November 1792) took place near the town of Jemappes in County of Hainaut, Hainaut, Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), near Mons during the War of the First Coalition, part of the French Revolutionary Wars. One of the first major offensive battles of the war, it was a victory for the armies of the infant French Republic, and saw the French Armée du Nord, which included many inexperienced volunteers, defeat a substantially smaller regular Austrian army. General Charles François Dumouriez, in command of an army of French Revolutionary Military volunteer, volunteers, faced the Habsburg monarchy, Imperial army of Field Marshal Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen and his second-in-command François Sebastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt, François de Croix, Count of Clerfayt. The French, who outnumbered their opponents by about three-to-one, launched a series of enthusiastic but uncoordinated attacks against the Austrian position on a ridge. At len ...
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Charles François Dumouriez
Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez (, 26 January 1739 – 14 March 1823) was a French general during the French Revolutionary Wars. He shared the victory at Valmy with General François Christophe Kellermann, but later deserted the Revolutionary Army, and became a royalist intriguer during the reign of Napoleon as well as an adviser to the British government. Dumouriez is one of the names inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe, on Column 3. Early life Dumouriez was born in Cambrai, on the Scheldt River in northern France, to parents of noble rank. His father, Antoine-François du Périer, served as a commissary of the royal army, and educated his son most carefully and widely. The boy continued his studies in Paris at the '' Lycée Louis-le-Grand'', and in 1757 began his military career as a volunteer in the campaign of Rossbach, where he served as a cornet in the ''Régiment d'Escars''. He received a commission for good conduct in action, and served in the later German ...
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Army Of The North (France)
The Army of the North or Armée du Nord is a name given to several historical units of the French Army. The first was one of the French Revolutionary Armies that fought with distinction against the First Coalition from 1792 to 1795. Others existed during the Peninsular War, the Hundred Days and the Franco-Prussian War. Campaigns 1791 to 1797 At the creation of the Army of the North on 14 December 1791, the government of the Kingdom of France appointed Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, as its commander. Rochambeau was replaced in May 1792, and he retired from service. The suspicious government of the First French Republic later charged him with treason and he barely escaped execution. In 1792-1794, the guillotine awaited military commanders who either failed, belonged to the nobility, or displayed insufficient revolutionary zeal. In the Army of the North these unfortunates included Nicolas Luckner, Adam Custine, and Jean Houchard. Under Charles François ...
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Douai
Douai (, , ,; pcd, Doï; nl, Dowaai; formerly spelled Douay or Doway in English) is a city in the Nord département in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. Located on the river Scarpe some from Lille and from Arras, Douai is home to one of the region's most impressive belfries. History Its site probably corresponds to that of a 4th-century Roman fortress known as Duacum. From the 10th century, the town was a romance fiefdom of the counts of Flanders. The town became a flourishing textile market centre during the Middle Ages, historically known as Douay or Doway in English. In 1384, the county of Flanders passed into the domains of the Dukes of Burgundy and thence in 1477 into Habsburg possessions. In 1667, Douai was taken by the troops of Louis XIV of France, and by the 1668 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the town was ceded to France. During successive sieges from 1710 to 1712, Douai was almost completely destroyed by the British Army. By 1713, the town ...
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