Claude Francois de Malet

Claude François de Malet (June 28, 1754 – October 31, 1812) was born in Dole to an aristocratic family. He was executed by firing squad, six days after staging a failed republican coup d'état as Napoleon I returned from the disastrous Russian campaign in 1812.

Malet enlisted as a Musketeer at age seventeen as was common for a young nobleman of the Ancien Régime, but King Louis XVI disbanded the musketeer regiments in 1776 for budgetary reasons.

In 1790 Malet's family disinherited him for supporting the French revolution, when he became commander of his home town's National Guard and celebrated the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Malet volunteered for the Revolutionary army when war broke out and was assigned to the 50th infantry regiment of the Army of the Rhine as a captain.

He was discharged in 1795, but reenlisted again in March 1797, first as Chief of Staff of the 6th division, then in 1799 as Chief of Staff of the Army of the Alps under the command of general Jean Étienne Championnet. After receiving honourable citations from both Championnet and general André Masséna for defending the Little St. Bernard Pass in August 1799, Malet was promoted to Brigadier General on October 19, 1799. He fought in the Helvetian Republic throughout 1801, until the fighting ended with the Second Coalition in 1802 by the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens.

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