Athanase-Charles-Marie Charette de la Contrie

Athanase-Charles-Marie Charette de la Contrie
Athanase-Charles-Marie Charette de la Contrie in 1871
Born	September 3, 1832 Nantes, France
Died	9 October 1911(1911-10-09) (aged 79) Saint-Père, Ille-et-Vilaine, France
Spouse(s)	Marie-Antoinette Fitzjames Antoinette Polk
Parent(s)	Charles Athanase Marie de Charette de La Contrie Louise Charlotte Marie de Bourbon

Baron Athanase Charles Marie Charette de la Contrie (born Nantes, 3 September 1832, died La Basse-Motte (Saint-Père, Ille-et-Vilaine), 9 October 1911) was a French royalist military commander.

Athanase Charles Marie Charette de la Contrie was born on September 3, 1832 in Nantes, France. His great-uncle, General Charette, was shot in Nantes on 29 March 1795, during the rising of the Vendee. His mother, Louise, Countess de Vierzon, was the daughter of the Duc de Berry and Amy Brown Freeman. As the Duchesse de Berry was at that time in hiding at Nantes, and Charette's father was being sought by the police, the child's birth was concealed; he was secretly taken from Nantes on 17 September and was registered in the commune of Sainte-Reine as born on 18 September.

Unwilling, by reason of his legitimist antecedents, to serve in France under Louis Philippe, young Charette, in 1846, entered the Military Academy of Turin; he left in 1848 to avoid serving Piedmont, the revolutionary policy of that kingdom being evident to him.

In 1852 the Duke of Modena, the brother-in-law of the Comte de Chambord, appointed Charette sub-lieutenant in an Austrian regiment stationed in the duchy. Duke Francis V was not only ruler of Modena but was also an Austrian archduke and the Jacobite successor to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. Duke Francis was a most exemplary ruler who, with his own hands, tended to and served the victims of cholera that broke out in his duchy when the Piedmontese revolutionary army invaded. The Piedmontese annexed and incorporated Modena into the new, anti-Catholic Italy.