LS in French, signed “Np,” one page, 7.25 x 9, May 4, 1811. Letter to Minister of War general Henri-Jacques-Guillaume Clarke, concerning a troop movement to Catalonia. In part (translated): "Let General Baraguey d'Hilliers know that he must inform the Plauzonne Division to come to Catalonia to help him." In fine condition, with a light crease to the upper right edge.
From May 5 to June 29, 1811, during the Peninsular War, Louis Gabriel Suchet's French Army of Aragon laid siege to a Spanish garrison at Tarragona, Catalonia, led by Lieutenant General Juan Senen de Contreras. Emperor Napoleon offered Suchet a marshal's baton if he could capture Tarragona, so the general pursued his goal vigorously, ultimately capturing the city while crippling the Army of Catalonia.
Henri-Jacques-Guillaume Clarke, 1st Count of Hunebourg, 1st Duke of Feltre (1765-1818) was a French general and politician who made a career in the Revolutionary Army and under Napoleon. In 1793 he was promoted brigade general and commanded the vanguard of the Rhine Army. During the Reign of Terror, he fell under suspicion, was briefly arrested, and discharged. Lazare Carnot restored Clarke to his rank in 1794 and, in December 1795, he was made a general of division, serving under Napoleon in the Army of Italy for several years. During the War of the Third Coalition in 1805, Clarke was appointed governor of Vienna, and during the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806 he served as governor of Erfurt and of Berlin. Napoleon called Clarke back to Paris in 1807 to serve as Minister of War, a difficult office that he administered with skill, but with a level of personal ambition that raised Napoleon's suspicion from 1812. His opportunism became most evident at Napoleon's fall in 1814, when Clarke voted to depose the emperor and was appointed Peer of France by Louis XVIII in return. Apart from the interruption of the Hundred Days from March to September 1815, Clarke served as Minister of War in the restored Bourbon Government until September 1817. Clarke was made Marshal of France on 3 July 1816 and, following the end of his term as minister, took command of the 15th Military Division until his death in 1818.
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