Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan won the battle that saved the French Republic and later wrote the law that supplied Napoleon's armies with conscripts. Born in Limoges in 1762, the son of a surgeon, he was orphaned and enlisted at sixteen, serving in the American War of Independence in the West Indies, where he contracted a fever that troubled him for life. He left the army and worked as a haberdasher in Limoges. He re-enlisted with the Revolution and rose with extraordinary speed through the volunteer battalions, commanding an army within two years. At Fleurus in June 1794 he defeated the Austrians and their allies in what was among the largest battles of the age, using a tethered observation balloon for reconnaissance — the first military use of aircraft. The victory secured Belgium for France and ended the immediate threat of invasion, and it is generally credited with saving the Republic. He was elected to the Council of Five Hundred, and in 1798 carried the Jourdan Law, which established universal male conscription as a permanent obligation rather than an emergency levy. It gave France a manpower base no other European state could match, and it is the reason Napoleon could lose armies and raise new ones. He opposed Bonaparte's coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 and was briefly struck off the army list, which coloured their relations permanently. He was made a marshal in 1804 and served in Spain as chief of staff to Joseph Bonaparte, a thankless post in which his advice was routinely overruled; he was defeated at Vitoria in 1813. He accepted the Bourbon restoration, sat in the Chamber of Peers, and died in 1833.

• Lived: 1762 CE – 1833 CE
• Nationality: French
• Roles: military_leader