Louis-Nicolas d'Avout (English: duh-VOO, French: [lwi nikɔla davu]; 10 May 1770 – 1 June 1823), better known as Davout, 1st Prince of Eckmühl, 1st Duke of Auerstaedt, was a French military commander and Marshal of the Empire who served during both the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. His talent for war, along with his reputation as a stern disciplinarian, earned him the nickname "The Iron Marshal" (Le Maréchal de fer). He is ranked as one of Napoleon's finest commanders, and also stands among the most outstanding military commanders of the modern era.
Born into a minor noble family in Burgundy, Davout was educated at the École Militaire and joined a royal cavalry regiment in 1788. On the outbreak of the French Revolution, Davout embraced the revolutionary cause and first distinguished himself at the Battle of Neerwinden. Rapidly rising through the ranks, he took part in the 1796 Rhine campaign and Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, and by 1800 he had reached the rank of divisional general.
Davout was named one of the original 18 Marshals of the Empire upon Napoleon's ascension as Emperor in 1804. As commander of the III Corps of the Grande Armée, he played a major role in the French victory at Austerlitz. He achieved further successes at Auerstedt—where he routed the Prussian army of the Duke of Brunswick despite being vastly outnumbered—as well as Eylau, Eckmühl and Wagram. In 1807, Napoleon named him governor-general of the Duchy of Warsaw and granted him the title Duke of Auerstaedt. Davout took part in Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, and was in the middle of a six-month siege of Hamburg when Napoleon abdicated.
Davout went into retirement upon the First Restoration of the Bourbons. He rejoined Napoleon during the Hundred Days and was appointed Minister of War, but did not receive a field command. Following Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo, he held Paris until July when he ultimately submitted to the again restored Bourbon monarchy, after which he was exiled and deprived of his titles. In 1819, his titles were restored and he was made a Peer of France.
Davout was born in the small village of Annoux, Yonne, in Burgundy, as the eldest son of Jean-François d'Avout (1739–1779), a cavalry officer and his wife (married in 1768), Françoise-Adélaïde Minard de Velars (1741–1810). The d'Avout family was an impoverished minor nobility with a tradition of military service. Because Davout was the eldest he was expected to also have the same career. So despite the family's economic problems, Davout was still educated in the nearby Brienne-le-Chateau, in their military academy also attended by Napoleon, before also transferring to the École Militaire in Paris on 29 September 1785. He graduated on 19 February 1788 and was appointed a sous-lieutenant in the Royal-Champagne Cavalry Regiment in garrison at Hesdin (Pas-de-Calais).
On the outbreak of the French Revolution, Davout embraced its principles. He was chef de bataillon in a volunteer corps in the campaign of 1792, and distinguished himself at the Battle of Neerwinden the following spring. He had just been promoted to general of brigade when he was removed from the active list because of his noble birth. After he divorced his wife in 1794 he served in the Rhine campaign of 1796, and accompanied General Louis Desaix in the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte.
On his return, he did not take part in the Battle of Marengo, where his friend Desaix was killed while making a decisive contribution to the victory. Napoleon, who had great confidence in his abilities, finally promoted him to general of division and arranged his marriage to his sister Pauline's sister-in-law Aimée Leclerc, thus making him part of Napoleon's extended family, and gave him a command in the grenadiers of the Consular Guard.
At the ascension of Napoleon as Emperor in 1804, Davout was named as one of the original 18 Marshals of the Empire. Davout was the youngest and least experienced of the generals promoted to marshal, which earned him the hostility of other generals throughout his career. On 18 June 1805 he was present at the Battle of Blanc-Nez and Gris-Nez after joining a Batavian flotilla, headed for Boulogne, as an observer.
As commander of the III Corps of the Grande Armée, Davout rendered his greatest services. At the Battle of Austerlitz, following a forced march of 48 hours to fall on the left flank of the Russian army, the III Corps bore the brunt of the allies' attack. In the subsequent War of the Fourth Coalition, Davout, with a single corps, with the intention to fall on the Prussian left wing, fought and won the Battle of Auerstädt against the main Prussian Army, under the Duke of Brunswick, which had more than twice as many soldiers at its disposal (more than 63,000, to Davout's 28,000). His actions in this battle earned him the nickname 'Iron Marshal'. Napoleon after hearing reports about the alleged battle would mock Davout, telling his aide-de-camp "your Marshal must've been seeing double", mocking Davout's spectacle wearing. Historian François-Guy Hourtoulle writes: "At Jena, Napoleon won a battle he could not lose. At Auerstädt, Davout won a battle he could not win". As a reward, Napoleon let Davout and his men enter Berlin first on 25 October 1806.
Davout added to his renown in the battles of Eylau and Friedland. Napoleon left him as governor-general of the newly created Duchy of Warsaw following the Treaties of Tilsit in 1807, and the next year awarded him with the title of Duke of Auerstädt. During the War of the Fifth Coalition in 1809, Davout took part in the Battle of Eckmühl, and also distinguished himself in the Battle of Wagram, where he commanded the right wing. He was later made Prince of Eckmühl following the campaign. In 1810 Davout travelled to Compiègne with Napoleon to collect the 18-year-old bride Marie-Louise of Austria.
In 1810 he was sent to Hamburg when Marshal Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte left for Sweden; Davout was entrusted by Napoleon with the task of organizing the "corps of observation of the Elbe", which would become the gigantic army with which Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. In this, he commanded the I Corps, the strongest corps, numbering over 70,000. On 1 July he left Vilnius. On the order of Napoleon Davout secretly took over the command of Jérôme Bonaparte, occupied Minsk but had lost a third of his men due to sickness and desertion. Davout went very far in humiliating the 33rd regiment, which was no exception. He defeated the Russians at Mohilev before he joined the main army at Smolensk, with which he continued throughout the campaign. During the retreat from Moscow he conducted the rear guard, which was exhausted by food shortage and deemed too slow by the emperor, so Davout was replaced by Marshal Michel Ney in the Battle of Vyazma. His inability to hold out against general Mikhail Miloradovich in the Battle of Krasnoi, threatened his forces with destruction, until the arrival of the Old Guard led by Édouard Mortier. Davout managed to successfully cross the Losvinka brook, albeit at the cost of his rearguard's sacrifice. Davout's jammed carriages, fell into the hands of the Cossacks. Among the booty captured by the Russians were Davout's war chest, a plethora of maps of the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and Davout's Marshal baton. The loss of his baton led him into disgrace and he would not meet with the Emperor again until his return from Elba.
In April 1813, on his return from Russia with 4,000, the remains of 70,000 men, Davout commanded the military district of Hamburg and Dirk van Hogendorp left. (The French had initially been driven out by the Russians in March 1813.) He defended the poorly fortified and provisioned city, through the long Siege of Hamburg, only surrendering on direct order by King Louis XVIII, who had come to the throne after Napoleon's abdication in April 1814. The French restored their authority with many reprisals among the population. During the siege, he expelled up to 25,000 of Hamburg's poorest citizens out of the city into the cold winter, many of whom perished of cold and starvation. Between 1806 and 1814, when the French occupation came to an end by Davout's surrender, the population decreased by nearly one-half, to 55,000.