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Jean Baptiste Kléber

Jean-Baptiste Kléber
Guerin general Jean-Baptiste Kleber.JPG
General Kléber, by Jean-Urbain Guérin, Nationalmuseum,
Born (1753-03-09)9 March 1753
Strasbourg, France
Died 14 June 1800(1800-06-14) (aged 47)
Cairo, Egypt
Buried at Place Kléber, Strasbourg, France
Allegiance  Kingdom of France
Banner of the Holy Roman Emperor with haloes (1400-1806).svg Holy Roman Empire
France French First Republic
Service/branch French Royal Army
Imperial Army
French Revolutionary Army
Years of service 1769–1770 (France)
1777–1783 (HRE)
1792–1800 (France)
Rank General de Division
Unit 1st Hussar Regiment
Regiment Kaunitz
Commands held 4th Haute-Rhin Battalion
Army of Sambre-et-Meuse
Army of the Orient
Battles/wars

War of the Bavarian Succession
French Revolutionary War

War in the Vendée

War of the First Coalition

Awards Inscription on the Arc de Triomphe
(Southern Pillar, Column 23)

War of the Bavarian Succession
French Revolutionary War

War in the Vendée

War of the First Coalition

Jean-Baptiste Kléber (IPA: [ʒɑ̃ batist klebɛʁ]) (9 March 1753 – 14 June 1800) was a French general during the French Revolutionary Wars. His military career started in Habsburg service, but his plebeian ancestry hindered his opportunities. Eventually, he volunteered for the French Army in 1792, and rose through the ranks.

Kléber served in the Rhineland during the War of the First Coalition, and also suppressed the Vendee Revolt. He retired to private life in the peaceful interim after the Treaty of Campo Formio, but returned to military service to accompany Napoleon in the Egyptian Campaign in 1798–99. When Napoleon left Egypt to return to Paris, he appointed Kléber as commander of the French forces. He was assassinated by a student in Cairo in 1800.

A trained architect, Kléber, in times of peace, designed a number of buildings.

Kléber was born in Strasbourg, where his father worked as a builder. He briefly engaged in 1769 in the 1st Hussar Regiment, but resigned to study, from 1770 to 1774, architecture, partly in Paris with Jean Chalgrin. His opportune assistance to two German nobles in a tavern brawl obtained for him nomination to the military school of Munich. From this education, he obtained a commission in the Kaunitz regiment of the Imperial army, he took part in the War of the Bavarian Succession, but did not see major engagements, as he was stationed alternately in the garrisons of Mons, Mechelen and Luxembourg in the Austrian Netherlands. He resigned his commission in 1783 on finding his humble birth hindered his chances for promotion.


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