Louis-Camus Destouches (1668 – 11 March 1726), usually called Destouches-Canon, was an

artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...

General in the

French Royal Army The French Royal Army (french: Armée Royale Française) was the principal land force of the Kingdom of France. It served the Bourbon Dynasty from the reign of Louis XIV in the mid-17th century to that of Charles X in the 19th, with an interlude ...

Military career

Destouches was a lieutenant-general of the artillery in the Royal Army. He served under Kings

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

and

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

, gaining the nickname ''Canon''. He became a chevalier of the '' ordre de Saint-Lazare'' in 1690, and a chevalier of the '' ordre de Saint-Louis'' in 1720, then ''commandeur'' in 1725.

Family

From an affair with his mistress

Claudine Guérin de Tencin Claudine Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin, Baroness of Saint-Martin-de-Ré (27 April 1682 – 4 December 1749) was a French salonist and author. She was the mother of Jean le Rond d'Alembert, who later became a prominent mathematician, '' philosophe ...

, Destouches fathered a child in 1717. In later life, this son would become famous as

Jean le Rond d'Alembert Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (; ; 16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was, together with Denis Diderot, a co-editor of the ''Encyclopédie ...

, mathematician, ''

philosophe The ''philosophes'' () were the intellectuals of the 18th-century Enlightenment.Kishlansky, Mark, ''et al.'' ''A Brief History of Western Civilization: The Unfinished Legacy, volume II: Since 1555.'' (5th ed. 2007). Few were primarily philosophe ...

'', and co-editor of the ''

Encyclopédie ''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers'' (English: ''Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts''), better known as ''Encyclopédie'', was a general encyclopedia publis ...

''. At first, the child was abandoned to the Church by its mother, but Destouches arranged to have him raised privately by a family of the artisanal class. Destouches then secretly funded his illegitimate son's education, and when he died in Paris in 1726, he left d'Alembert a healthy income of 1,200 livres a year.

References

1668 births 1726 deaths French military officers {{France-mil-bio-stub