Marshall Ney
Marshal of the Empire Michel Ney (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl ˈnɛ]), 1st Duke of Elchingen, 1st Prince of Moscow (10 January 1769 – 7 December 1815), popularly known as Marshal Ney, was a French soldier and military commander during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He was one of the original 18 Marshals of the Empire created by Napoleon. He was known as Le Rougeaud ("red faced" or "ruddy") by his men and nicknamed le Brave des Braves ("the bravest of the brave") by Napoleon.
Michel Ney was born in the town of Sarrelouis, in the French province of the Three Bishoprics, along the French–German border. He was the second son of Pierre Ney (1738–1826), a master barrel-cooper and veteran of the Seven Years' War, and his wife Margarethe Grewelinger (1739–1791). He was the paternal grandson of Matthias Ney (1700–1780) and wife Margarethe Becker (d. 1767), and the maternal grandson of Valentin Grewelinger and wife Margaretha Ding. His hometown at the time of his birth comprised a French enclave in a predominantly German region of Saarland, and Ney grew up bilingual, due to his German roots.
He was educated at the Collège des Augustins, became a notary in Saarlouis and then subsequently became an overseer of mines and forges.
Life as a civil servant did not suit Ney, and he enlisted in the Colonel-General Hussar Regiment in 1787. Under the Bourbon Monarchy entry to the officer corps of the French Army was restricted to those with four quarterings of nobility (i.e., several generations of aristocratic birth). However, Ney rapidly rose through the non-commissioned officer ranks. He served in the Army of the North from 1792 to 1794, with which he saw action at the Cannonade of Valmy, the Battle of Neerwinden, and other engagements.
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