Lazare Carnot

Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot was born in 1753 in Nolay, Côte-d'Or.  He went to a military school and rose through the ranks to the level of Captain. During this time period he also wrote on artillery and mechanics.

During the French Revolution he would first become part of the Legislative Assembly and then the National Convention.  He was involved in the south of France creating defences in the event of an attack by Spain.  This experience would see him become one of the Ministers of War when he joined the Committee of Public Safety in 1793.  He was key to the raising of levees to populate the French Revolutionary Army.  He would also sought to supply the massive demands of the army.  He would see action himself fighting in the French victory at the Battle of Wattignies.

He was under suspicion during the Thermidorian Reaction which saw the fall of Robespierre but many could not find with the man who had led to such great successes on the battlefield.  He would serve in the Directory and would even be appointed to Minister of War when Bonaparte took over the reins of government.  He was increasingly alarmed at Bonaparte’s adoption of regal titles and would go into retirement when the Corsican crowned himself Emperor.  He would write a series of articles on the uses of artillery and fortifications.

He would emerge out of retirement to defend Antwerp which he would only surrender to the future Charles X in 1814.  He would even serve as Minister of the Interior when Bonaparte briefly returned from Elba in 1815.  Having voted for the death of Louis XVI some twenty years before he was exiled as a regicide.  He would die in Magdeburg in 1823.

Barère on Carnot’s action’s in the Committee of Public Safety.  Taken from Memoirs of Bertrand Barère Volume 2, H. S. Nichols, London (1896) p89

Hardly had Carnot become a member of the committee, when he felt the need of making a general requisition of young Frenchmen, from the age of eighteen to twenty-five. He had foreseen that this sort of levy, once carried out, would suffice for all the requirements of the armies necessary on all the frontiers of France, and would save her in the space of a year. Carnot made the plans of campaign, with a facility equal to that with which he drew up the bills and decrees, relative to their execution. He pointed out to me his needs of legislation in various respects, and I immediately wrote my report, in order to explain the objects of these laws from the tribune.