Albin Reine Roussin (French pronunciation: [albɛ̃ʁɛnʁusɛ̃] ; 21 April 1781 – 21 February 1854) was a French admiral and statesman.
Albin Reine Roussin (French pronunciation: [albɛ̃ʁɛnʁusɛ̃] ; 21 April 1781 – 21 February 1854) was a French admiral and statesman.
His father was a lawyer who was arrested during the French Revolution when Roussin was aged twelve. He left home in Dijon and travelled to Dunkerque where he enlisted as a cadet in the French Navy in December 1793. He served from 1794 to 1797 on various frigates. In 1801 he sat and passed the midshipman's exam following to lessons from the hydrographer Jean Petit-Genet.
His first posting as an officer was to command a gunboat at Antwerp, part of the "National Flotilla" of coastal ships, collecting in various Channel ports for Napoleon's projected invasion of England. By 1803 he was promoted to ensign and embarked aboard the frigate Sémillante under the command of Captain Léonard-Bernard Motard. They would spend six years in the Indian Ocean, based on Réunion, preying on British shipping bound to and from India.
The worn-out Sémillante was paid off at Mauritius in 1808 after sustaining damage in a fight with the Royal Navy frigate Terpsichore. Roussin was promoted to lieutenant and posted to the corvette Iéna . A cruise in the Persian Gulf and the Bay of Bengal ended when the Iéna encountered the 46-gun Royal Navy frigate Modeste off Calcutta and was captured after a two-hour engagement on 8 October 1808. Roussin and his captain, Lieutenant Maurice, were exchanged at the end of 1809 and returned to Réunion. Roussin was appointed second in command to Bouvet de Maisonneuve aboard the frigate Minerve, a prize taken by Guy-Victor Duperré. Roussin received a mention in Bouvet's dispatches for his conduct during the battle of Grand Port in August 1810. However, the French success at Grand Port was only a temporary setback to British plans to conquer Mauritius and Réunion, and Governor Comte Decaen finally signed a capitulation in December.
Roussin was repatriated to France, where he met the Emperor, who confirmed his promotion to captain and presented him with the légion d'honneur. Roussin was posted to command the frigate Gloire fitting out at Le Havre. After training, he cruised in the Atlantic Ocean from December 1812 to April 1813, taking fifteen prizes, including two sloops.
Under the restored monarchy of Louis XVIII, Roussin was promoted again and made a Chevalier de St Louis. When Napoleon returned to power during the Hundred Days, he was dismissed, but returned to service when Louis XVIII was again restored.
Following the infamous wreck of the Medusa off the Senegal coast in 1816, Roussin was given the task of surveying the African coast from Senegal to Guinea by Minister of Marine Count Molé. Following this, he surveyed the mouth of the River Amazon in 1819. He was made a Baron in 1820. In 1821 he took a squadron to South America, ostensibly to protect French trade, but with secret instructions to seek a quarrel with the forces fighting for independence from Spain led by Simón Bolívar, Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín. Returning to France in 1822, he was promoted to rear admiral. From 1824 until 1827 he served in administrative posts ashore.
Roussin returned to sea in May 1828, flying his flag aboard the ship of the line Jean Bart. He led a squadron to Brazil to persuade, through gunboat diplomacy if need be, the Brazilian Emperor Pedro I to pay compensation for French ships captured by the Brazilian Navy during the Cisplatine War. He arrived off Rio de Janeiro on 5 July 1828 and simply sailed into the harbour, ignoring the guns at the entrance, anchoring off the city. After saluting the Brazilian flag, he requested and received an audience with Emperor Pedro where the damages to be paid to French shipowners were agreed. On his return to France, Roussin was congratulated for solving the problem by diplomacy, and was appointed by King Charles X to the honorary post of Gentleman of the bedchamber.
On 25 January 1830 he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in recognition of his work on geography and navigation. He would later serve as member of the Bureau studying longitudes. Later in 1830 he turned the offer of commanding the naval force which supported Bourmont's attack on Algiers.
The July Revolution which brought Louis-Philippe to the throne, unlike the return of Napoleon in 1815, did not interrupt Roussin's career. He was given responsibility for personnel at the Navy Ministry, in which post he oversaw the creation of the École Navale at Brest.
He served as Minister of Marine from 1 March 1840 to 29 October 1840 and again from 7 February 1843 to 24 July 1843 when he retired due to ill-health
Roussin married in 1814 with Illumante Bihet Pontigny. They had two daughters and a son, Albert, who was later an admiral and also served as Minister of Marine.
François Joseph Bouvet was a French admiral.
Charles-Alexandre Léon Durand, Comte de Linois was a French admiral who served in the French Navy during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. He commanded the combined Franco-Spanish fleet during the Algeciras Campaign in 1801, winning the First Battle of Algeciras before losing the Second Battle of Algeciras. He then led an unsuccessful campaign against British trade in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea in 1803, being defeated by a harmless fleet of the East India Company during the Battle of Pulo Aura and ending his cruise and sea-going career being bested in battle by John Warren in the action of 13 March 1806. Following the Bourbon restoration, Linois was appointed Governor of Guadeloupe. He supported Napoleon during the Hundred Days and so, on his return to France, he was forced to resign and was court martialled. Although acquitted, he was placed in retirement and never served again.
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The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle fought on 20–27 August 1810 between squadrons of frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy over possession of the harbour of Grand Port on Île de France, as part of the Mauritius campaign during the Napoleonic Wars. A British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade the port to prevent its use by the French through the capture of the fortified Île de la Passe at its entrance. This position was seized by a British landing party on 13 August and, when a French squadron under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré approached the bay nine days later, the British commander, Captain Samuel Pym, decided to lure them into coastal waters where his forces could ambush them.
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Pierre Jean Van Stabel was a French naval officer and rear-admiral, famous for his role in the Glorious First of June.
The Sémillante was a 32-gun frigate of the French Navy and the lead ship of her class. She was involved in a number of multi-vessel actions against the Royal Navy, particularly in the Indian Ocean. She captured a number of East Indiamen before she became so damaged that the French disarmed her and turned her into a merchant vessel. The British captured her and broke her up in 1809.
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Admiral Pierre-Louis-Charles Rigault de Genouilly was a French naval officer. He fought with distinction in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War, but is chiefly remembered today for his command of French and Spanish forces during the opening phase of the Cochinchina campaign (1858–62), which inaugurated the French conquest of Vietnam.
The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a series of amphibious operations and naval actions fought to determine possession of the French Indian Ocean territories of Isle de France and Île Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign lasted from the spring of 1809 until the spring of 1811, and saw both the Royal Navy and the French Navy deploy substantial frigate squadrons with the intention of disrupting or protecting trade from British India. In a war in which the Royal Navy was almost universally dominant at sea, the campaign is especially notable for the local superiority enjoyed by the French Navy in the autumn of 1810 following the British disaster at the Battle of Grand Port, the most significant defeat for the Royal Navy in the entire conflict. After their victory, the British used the original Dutch name of Mauritius for Isle de France. In 1814, Île Bonaparte was returned to France, who eventually renamed it La Réunion.
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First cabinet of Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult (11 October 1832 to 18 July 1834) | ||
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Second cabinet of Adolphe Thiers (1 March 1840 to 29 October 1840) | ||
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Third cabinet of Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult (29 October 1840 to 19 September 1847) | ||
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