Pierre Antoine Noël Bruno, comte Daru

Pierre Antoine Noël Bruno, comte Daru (12 January 1767 – 5 September 1829) was a French soldier, statesman, historian, and poet. The French generally refer to him as Pierre Daru.

Born in Montpellier, he was educated at the Oratorian-maintained military school of Tournon, and entered artillery service at an early age. He also took an interest in literature, and he published several minor pieces, until the outbreak of the French Revolution made him concentrate on his military assignments.

In 1793 he became commissary to the army, protecting the coasts of Brittany from projected descents of the British, or of French Royalists. Thrown into prison during the Reign of Terror, on an unsubstantiated charge of friendliness to the Royalists and the British, he was released after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in the summer of 1794 (during the Thermidorian Reaction), and rose through the ranks until, in 1799, he became chief commissary to the French Revolutionary Army serving under André Masséna in the north of Switzerland.

In that position he won repute for his organizing capacity, capacity of work and probity (the last of which qualities was contrasted with the wave of corruption). He did not however limit himself to his tasks, and found time, even during the campaign, to translate part of Horace and to compose two poems, the Poème des Alpes and the Chant de guerre - the latter was a condemnation of the murder of the French envoys to the Second Congress of Rastatt.

The accession of Napoleon Bonaparte to power in November 1799 (the "18 Brumaire coup") led to the employment of Daru as chief commissary to the Army of Reserve intended for Northern Italy, and commanded nominally by Louis Alexandre Berthier, but really by the First Consul. Conjointly with Berthier and Dejean, he signed the armistice with the Holy Roman Empire which closed the campaign in North Italy in June 1800.

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