Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout
Louis-Nicolas Davout was the only one of Napoleon's marshals never to lose a battle. Born in Burgundy in 1770 into a family of minor nobility with a long military tradition, he attended the same military school as Bonaparte and was commissioned into a cavalry regiment. He embraced the Revolution, was dismissed for it, and re-enlisted, rising rapidly in the republican armies. He served in Egypt, where Bonaparte noticed him, and was made a marshal in the first creation of 1804. His reputation rests on Auerstedt. On 14 October 1806 he was ordered to march on the Prussian rear with a single corps of about 26,000 men and encountered the main Prussian army of some 63,000 under the Duke of Brunswick. He fought it all day in fog, holding three divisions in squares against repeated cavalry attacks, killed Brunswick, and broke it — while Napoleon, a few miles away at Jena, defeated the smaller force believing it to be the main one. Napoleon initially refused to believe the report. He fought at Eylau, at Eckmühl and Wagram in 1809, and commanded the largest corps in the invasion of Russia in 1812, where he took Smolensk and fought at Borodino and through the retreat. He held Hamburg through a year-long siege in 1813-14 and surrendered only on the order of the restored king. He was known for severity of discipline and for incorruptibility, alone among the marshals in not enriching himself. He was Napoleon's war minister during the Hundred Days and died in 1823.
- Lived: 1770 CE – 1823 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: field_marshal
