Marie Victor de Fay, marquis de Latour-Maubourg
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Marie Victor Nicolas de Fay, marquis de Latour-Maubourg (Château de La Motte-de-Galaure, near Grenoble 22 May 1768 — 1850) followed a military career under the Ancien Régime of France, during the First French Empire and a diplomatic one after the Bourbon Restoration.
In 1789, at the outbreak of the French Revolution, he was the colonel of the Soissonois at Uzès[1], who was called to Paris, where he was an under-lieutenant in the Royal Guard, in 1792, when he accompanied the royal family on the return to Paris after their abortive flight to Varennes (20-21 June 1791). He was appointed Colonel of the 3e Régiment des Chasseurs-a-Cheval 5 February 1792 and during the late summer was arrested and taken prisoner by the Austrians as were a number of prominent French officers, one source of the anger and suspicion of Parisians that led to the September Massacres. On his release by the Austrians he did not return to France but went to Brussels as an émigré where he remained for the next five years.
At the end of 1799 he returned to France and was sent to Egypt by the First Consul, where he served as aide-de-camp to General Kléber, with whom he received a head wound at Alexandria, 13 March 1801, and after Kléber's assassionation to General Menou.
He was present at the battle of Austerlitz, forming part of Joachim Murat's cavalry reserve, and was shortly promoted to brigadier general, Christmas Eve 1805. He fought at Jena and in the Peninsular War in Spain, winning the title of a Baron de l'Empire. He was recalled to participate in the march on Moscow. Surviving the retreat, at Wachau he lost a leg above the knee: famously responding to his body-servant's weeping at the sight he remarked to his man, "You have one less boot to polish".
With the restoration of the Bourbons he pledged loyalty to Louis XVIII and remained with him during the Hundred Days, for which he was rewarded with some diplomatic posts, including that of Ambassador to London in 1819. He was briefly Minister of War and sat on the tribunmal that condemned Marshal Michel Ney to death. At the consistory that elected Pope Gregory XVI in 1831, the marquis had the honour of informing the assembled cardinals that Louis-Philippe would waive his right of veto, with the assurance that only a wise and virtuous pontiff could be elected by such a wise and virtuous assembly.[2]
His older brother, Marie-Charles-César de Fay also became a general.
