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Frederic-Louis-Henri Walther
20 June 1761 (1761-06-20) – 24 November 1813 (1813-11-25) (aged 52)
Place of birth	Obenheim, Alsace, Bas Rhin
Place of death	Kusel, Sarre, Rhineland-Palatinate
Allegiance	France
Service/branch	French Army
Years of service	1781 – 1813
Rank	Général de division
Battles/wars	War of the First Coalition War of the Second Coalition Napoleonic Wars
Awards	Grand Eagle, Legion of Honor; Order of the Iron Crown; Count of the Empire. Eastern Pillar, Column 16, Arc de Triomphe.

Frederic-Louis-Henri Walther (20 June 1761 – 24 November 1813), was a Alsatian-born general of division and a supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte. He fought for France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

He enlisted in 1781 and, in his 30-year career, he saw action at the major French defeats and victories in Europe, including in Andre Massena's Army of Switzerland, where he participated in the mountain warfare at Winterthur and first and second Zurich, the campaigns of 1806 against Prussia, and Napoleon's invasion of Russia. After the Russian campaign, while suffering from exhaustion, he contracted typhus and died in Kusel, in the Saarland. He was buried at the Panthéon, and his name is listed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Family

Walther was the son of a Lutheran pastor, Georges Henri Walther, and Marie Elisabeth Chatel of Montbelliard. He was born in Obenheim, in the Alsace region of the Bas-Rhin. His cousins, Frederik Cuvier and George Cuvier, were naturalists and zoologists.^[1] He married 20-year-old Salome-Louise Coulman on 12 April 1802. They had two daughters, born 1803 and 1807; in 1810,^[2] a third child was still-born.^[3]

Initially he enlisted as a simple soldier in the Bercheny Hussars, which, after 1791, became the 1st Regiment of Hussars. In 10 May 1792, he received a commission as a lieutenant.^[4] By the fall of that year, he was a general of brigade.^[5]

Military career

During the War of the First Coalition, he was active at the battle of Neerwinden and the campaign on the Piave River.^[6] In 1793, he was promoted to general of brigade.^[7]

In the War of the Second Coalition, he participated in the French defeats at Ostrach and Stockach in early Spring, 1799, and served under the newly-promoted Michel Ney on the forward line of defense of the Swiss city of Zürich. At the Battle of Winterthur, he directed the rear guard action covering Ney's retreat through Winterthur, holding a key bridge cross of the Tōss River for 90 minutes against a larger Austrian force under command of Friedrich Freiherr von Hotze.^[8] A few days later, he was present for the defeat at the First Battle of Zürich when Andre Massena withdrew the entire French force across the Limmat river, and at the Second Battle of Zürich a few months later, when Massena's Army of Helvetia and Army of the Danube crushed Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian force. He later fought at the Battle of Messkirch, participated in the Ulm Campaign, and was part of the French victories at Hohenlinden and Austerlitz, where he commanded a division of dragoons^[9] in Marshal Joachim Murat's Cavalry Reserve. He suffered wounds at both these battles and after the latter, he received le Grand Aigle de la Legion d'Honneur, and appointed Chamberlain to the Emperor. Subsequently, he was decorated as a Commander of the Order of the Iron Crown, and appointed as Colonel of the Grenadiers-a-Cheval, of the Imperial Guard, in 1806.^[10]

Walther's name is inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe (7th from the top on the right).

At the Battle of Wagram (July 1809) Walther commanded four squadrons of Grenadiers–a –Cheval of Jean-Baptiste Bessieres' Imperial Guard Cavalry.^[11] He accompanied Napoleon to Russia. After the Saxon campaign in 1813, in which the French army was pushed through Germany to the Rhine, he suffered from exhaustion. He collapsed and died in the night of 24 November 1813, in Kusel. Sources differ on whether he died of exhaustion or typhus. His body was transported first to the cathedral in Metz and from there to Paris, escorted by a detachment of the Imperial Guard. He was buried in the Pantheon.^[12]

His name appears on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.^[13]

Sources

Notes and citations

Bibliography

• Atteridge, Andrew. The bravest of the brave, Michel Ney: marshal of France, duke of Elchingen. New York: Brentano, 1913.
• Broughton, Tony. The Garde Imperiale and Its Commanders during the Period 1804 – 1815. Part I: The Cavalry Regiments, Regiment de Grenadiers-a-Cheval de la Garde Imperiale. Napoleon Series. Robert Burnham, editor in chief. Accessed 29 January 2010.
• (French) Dubois, Jocelyn. "Frederic-Louis-Henri Walther." Les Protestants. André Encrevé (ed.), Paris: Beauchesne, 1993, ISBN 2701012619
• Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de. Mountain warfare illustrated by the campaign of 1799 in Switzerland: being a translation of the Swiss narrative, compiled from the works of the Archduke Charles, Jomini, and other.... London: Henry S. King, 1875.
• Senior, Terry J. "Top 20 French Cavalry Commanders: #7 Frederic-Louis-Henri Walther." Napoleon Series.org, Robert Burnham, editor in chief. Accessed 28 January 2010.