Charles René Magon de Médine
Charles René Magon de Médine | |
|---|---|
.jpg) 1846 portrait of Magon by Olivier Pichat | |
| Born | 12 November 1763 Paris, France |
| Died | 21 October 1805 (aged 41) |
| Allegiance | Kingdom of France French First Republic First French Empire |
| Branch | French Navy French Imperial Army |
| Service years | 1777–1805 |
| Rank | Counter admiral |
| Commands | Prudente Vertu Algésiras |
| Conflicts | |
| Signature |  |
Counter-Admiral Charles René Magon de Médine (12 November 1763 – 21 October 1805) was a French Navy officer who served in American Revolutionary War and French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was killed in action at the Battle of Trafalgar while commanding the ship of the line Algésiras. His conduct in the battle has been praised by French historians as one of the few redeeming features of the French navy's performance in the battle, and his name is engraved on the Arc de Triomphe.
Early life
From a noble family in Saint Malo, Magon became a Garde-Marine in 1777. His father, the governor of the Mascarene Islands, died in 1778 and left his son his slave plantation of Médine on Isle de France, from which Magon derived his full name.[1] He fought in the Battle of Ushant in 1778 on the ship of the line Bretagne before participating in the English Channel campaign on Saint Esprit. Promoted to ship-of-the-line ensign in 1780, he served in the Antilles on Solitaire in Luc Urbain de Bouëxic, comte de Guichen's squadron. He fought in three battles against George Rodney's fleet off Dominica before serving in François Joseph Paul de Grasse's squadron on Caton, fighting at the battles of the Chesapeake, St. Kitts and the Saintes, where he was captured by the British and released at the end of 1782.
In April 1783 he set out for the Indian Ocean on the frigate Surveillante, and spent the next 15 years there. On 1 May 1786 he was promoted to ship-of-the-line lieutenant and in November 1786 was placed in command of the frigate Amphitrite. On his return he served as second officer of the frigate Driade then of the frigate Pandour, with which ships he served another 18 months in the seas off India and China.
French Revolutionary Wars
In April 1788, he embarked as second officer of the Dryade, before taking command of Minerve in June 1791, then Cybèle in November 1792. As an aristocrat he was arrested at Port Louis but quickly released, becoming the aide de camp to Anne Joseph Hippolyte de Maurès, Comte de Malartic, the governor of the Mascarene Islands. In 1793, he commanded Prudente in Jean-Marie Renaud's frigate division (which included Cybèle and Coureur), participating in the inconclusive Battle of Île Ronde against HMS Centurion and HMS Diomede off the Rivière Noire District on 22 October 1794. Promoted to ship-of-the-line captain shortly afterwards, he became the interim commander of French naval forces in the Indian Ocean (then consisting of three frigates and a corvette) until the arrival of Counter-admiral Pierre César Charles de Sercey's frigate division. On Prudente, he served in further campaigns, sometimes alone, sometimes with the rest of the division - his notable battles of that period include the action of 9 September 1796 between six of the division's frigates and the ships of the line HMS Arrogant and HMS Victorious, in which Sercey refused to press home the advantage won by the French frigates, resulting in an inconclusive outcome.
In January 1798, he took command of Vertu and, alongside Régénérée escorted a convoy of two Spanish ships of the line back to Europe. He beated off an attack by the frigate HMS Pearl off Guinea in April 1798 before doing the same with HMS Brilliant in July. Arriving back in Europe, he was rewarded for his services by the Spanish, notably with a magnificent suit of armour, before taking his frigates on to Rochefort. On arriving back in Paris he had his property confiscated after being accused of colluding with Malartic in preventing two representatives of the French Directory, René-Gaston Baco de la Chapelle and Étienne-Laurent-Pierre Burnel, from applying the Law of 4 February 1794 which abolished slavery in French colonies.[2] Admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix engineered Magon's restoration to his former position and a few months later Magon rose to chef de division.
At first employed in Paris in reorganising the navy, then in inspecting mainland France's ports, in 1801 he was put back into active service, at first on the ship of the line Océan, then on the Mont Blanc, the latter of which was part of the naval force under Vice-admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse for the Saint-Domingue expedition. Put in command of four ships of the line and two frigates and ordered to capture fort Dauphin, Magon did so so quickly and successfully that the expedition's supreme commander Leclerc immediately promoted him to counter admiral, stating in his report "This nomination was on the army's unanimous wish, and I do not doubt that the government will confirm it", which was done in May 1802.
Napoleonic Wars and death
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In 1803, Bruix summoned Magon to Boulogne to command the right wing of the flotilla for Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom. On 11 December 1803 he was made a member of the Legion of Honour, rising to a commander in it on 14 June 1804. Napoleon ordered the flotilla to carry out an exercise and fleet review in the open sea. Magon considered this dangerous due to bad weather, but Bruix refused to excuse him from it. It proved a disaster as Magon had predicted, with a storm destroying 30 barges. In the months that followed Magon resisted several British attempts to destroy the flotilla.
In March 1805, Magon commanded a division at Rochefort that included the ships of the line Algésiras and Achille. He joined Vice-admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve in the Antilles and commanded the rearguard in the Battle of Cape Finisterre against British Admiral Robert Calder's squadron. At Trafalgar the following October (Magon's twelfth battle, aged only 42), Magon was still on the Algésiras as part of Spanish Admiral Federico Gravina's light squadron, which was attacked by Cuthbert Collingwood's squadron. The crew of the Algésiras was about to board the HMS Tonnant when the HMS Colossus and HMS Bellerophon came to Tonnant's aid. Magon was twice wounded by British musket fire but remained at his post for five hours before finally being killed by a third musket ball just before his vessel was itself boarded and captured by the British.
Images
- Geoffroy Dauvergne (1922–1977) was commissioned by the Mairie de Saint Servan (Saint Malo) to paint a portrait of Magon in 1960. Three versions of it exist - one in the Mairie de St Servan, one in the Musée de St Malo and one in a private collection.
Notes
Sources
- Six, Georges (1934). "Magon de Médine (Charles René)". Dictionnaire biographique des généraux et amiraux français de la Révolution et de l'Empire: 1792–1814 (in French). Vol. 2. Paris: Librairie Historique et Nobilaire. p. 140.
- (in French) Thomazi (Auguste) : Les Marins de Napoléon, Tallandier, Paris 1978.
- (in French) Tulard (Jean) (sous la direction de) : Dictionnaire Napoléon, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris 1999
- (in French) Monaque (Rémi) : Trafalgar 21 octobre 1805, Tallandier, Paris 2005
- (in French) Dictionnaire des marins francs-maçons (ed. Jean Marc Van Hille), Éditions le Phare de Misaine, Nantes, 2008