François Baron de Tott

François Baron de Tott (Hungarian: Báró Tóth Ferenc) (August 17, 1733, Chamigny, France - September 24, 1793, Hungary) was an and a French military officer of Hungarian origin. Born on August 17, 1733 in Chamigny, a village in northern France, the descendant of a Hungarian nobleman, who had emigrated to the Ottoman Empire and then moved on to France with the cavalry of Count Miklós Bercsényi, and was later raised to the rank of baron.

As a youngster, François joined the regiment his father was serving in, and in 1754 was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. In 1755 he travelled to Constantinople, the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, as the secretary of his uncle Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, who had been appointed ambassador. His main duty was to learn the Turkish language, to investigate the situation in the Ottoman Empire and to gather information about the Crimean Khanate.

He returned to Paris in 1763, and was sent to Switzerland in 1766 by the French government. In 1767, he was appointed consul in Crimea in order to learn about the country and incite the Crimean Tatars to rebel against the Imperial Russia. François de Tott played a major role during the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). Leaving Crimea for a while, he was commissioned by the Ottoman government with the task of defending the Dardanelles against the Russian fleet.

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