Jump to content
News Ticker
  • I am now accepting the following payment methods: Card Payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal
  • Latest News

    Unknown French General for ID Please


    Gold Party Pin Guy

    Recommended Posts

    Can anyone identify this General de Brigade? He is wearing wearing the L?gion d'honneur (Commandeur, Chevalier), Ordre de St Louis, Ordre du Lys, and the Knight Cross of the Order of Saint Joachim and the breast star of the same Order, probably awarded by Joachim Murat when he was Duke of Berg and Cleves (1806-08).

    Thanks for any help.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Thanks Barry,

    I'd love to find such a list. I happen to be the Deputy Grand Master of the modern Order of Saint Joachim (hence my avatar). The Order's records from the early years (1755-1850) are either lost or in the archives of the former KGB. They were captured as war booty by the Red Army from the possessions of Carl Eduoard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, who was president of the German Red Cross under Hitler. They are still there (now the IES), and all but inaccessible.

    Other records may be in France or Naples, as when Joachim Murat he was appointed Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves on March 15, 1806, he assumed the possessions of several German princlings, which included (he believed) the Grand Mastership of our Order, which was held by the Count of Leiningen. He was never recognized as the legitimate Grand Master, but awarded the Order of Saint Joachim to many French generals and holders of the Legion d'honneur, who he decreed automatically qualified. I wondered if Napoleon received one as a courtesy.

    In the portrait below by Gerard, he is wearing the variation breast star of the Order of Saint Joachim, visible just off the bottom of the portrait.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Belliard was made general d' Division before Austerlitz. This guy is younger-still a Brigadier AFTER the Bourbons have returned 10 years later.

    Really interesting about the KGB docs. Has anyone attempted to have them opened or returned recently? I thought there was an academic "thaw" going on.

    By the way, there's a lot of Murats' documents still extant in Naples and Italy. Have you contacted any of the Napoleonic Society? There are some key researchers there-like Haythornwaite, who may have this stuff tucked away in an odd file somewhere.

    Edited by Ulsterman
    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    The KGB archives were "privatized" and spun off into the Institute For Economic Security - a for profit corporate intelligence service. Here is one of their (our) documents shown on their website as a sample of what you can get if you pay enough: http://www.ies.ru/eng/special_archive/samples/3s006.html.

    They have told us that we can get copies of our documents for a hefty price - many thousands of dollars for photocopies, plus a substantial "research fee". There is no other way to access the documents, and many of them have no "intelligence" value - but great historic and cultural significance.

    They have a lot of interesting things in their collection that properly belong in western libraries and museums, since that is where all of it was taken from.

    As for this portrait, I thought it looked like General Edouard-Jean-Baptiste Milhaud: http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/co.../c_milhaud.html, but apparently it is not him.

    Not to bore, but it is interesting that the Order of Saint Joachim was also worn by Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar. He was made a Knight Grand Commander in 1802 and received the Royal Warrant to wear it on his admiral's uniform (in the non-French style of breast cross). Later portraits show him wearing it and the embroidered version is preserved on his "Trafalgar coat" displayed in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. You can see it here: http://www.stjoachimorder.org/nelson.htm.

    Is that Philip J Haythornwaite? How would I get in touch?

    Edited by Gold Party Pin Guy
    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Yup-that is phillip. I'll dig out his email.

    Interesting about this archive. There were and have been rumors for years and years that the Russians hauled away a good chunk of Hess's department archives, including a complete duplicate master index of NSDAP numbers and party cards- as well as several Gau archives.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 3 years later...

    Hello

    An old topic, may be dead since 2007 ...

    But I have these two gentlemen's names, awarded with St Joachim order :

    Comte Jean Louis Joseph de FERNIG, rank of colonel during the 1st empire, awarded "Grand croix", September 20th 1807 ;

    And :

    Baron THIERRY, lieutenant général, retired, (with a note on him before 1846).

    Regards

    Cuss

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Hello

    An old topic, may be dead since 2007 ...

    But I have these two gentlemen's names, awarded with St Joachim order :

    Comte Jean Louis Joseph de FERNIG, rank of colonel during the 1st empire, awarded "Grand croix", September 20th 1807 ;

    And :

    Baron THIERRY, lieutenant général, retired, (with a note on him before 1846).

    Regards

    Cuss

    Not dead - just forgotten by all but you and me!

    Many, many thanks. I collect images of the St Joachim in wear, and am always looking for new leads. Can I ask where you found this information?

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Hello

    Sorry, I'm unable to find again the reference to Baron Thierry, not noticed in the ''Annales Impériales'' or ''Royales'' ; nor in the files Xq49/50/51 in the Archives of the French army.

    I have this poor reference to general de Fernig in Google books :

    http://books.google.fr/books?id=LPVAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA321&dq=ordre+%C3%A9questre+de+saint+Joaqim&hl=fr&ei=1G5-TM2FKJONOOeX2YIE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Regards

    Cuss

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Hello

    Sorry, I'm unable to find again the reference to Baron Thierry, not noticed in the ''Annales Impériales'' or ''Royales'' ; nor in the files Xq49/50/51 in the Archives of the French army.

    I have this poor reference to general de Fernig in Google books :

    http://books.google.fr/books?id=LPVAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA321&dq=ordre+%C3%A9questre+de+saint+Joaqim&hl=fr&ei=1G5-TM2FKJONOOeX2YIE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Regards

    Cuss

    Hi Cuss,

    Many thanks again. I found this portrait of Fernig (and bought it for my collection). You can see his St Joachim order off the bottom right of the page.

    Now to track down Thierry.

    Thanks,

    Stephen

    Edited by Gold Party Pin Guy
    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 5 months later...

    Create an account or sign in to comment

    You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

    Create an account

    Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

    Register a new account

    Sign in

    Already have an account? Sign in here.

    Sign In Now
    ×
    ×
    • Create New...

    Important Information

    We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.